The Mayberry Preacher

"Thirty Seconds of Gratitude" from Thoughts & Musings

I don't usually cross-polinate between my sermon blog and "other" blog. But since it's going to be a few weeks between sermons (the family was on vacation this past Sunday and we're welcoming a guest preacher this Sunday while I share some music in worship) I thought I'd direct you to a blog post I made today at Thoughts and Musings on comic book Bibles, kind notes left on restaurant napkins, and the power we have to express gratitude to another. Just click on the picture below.  Enjoy, and if you like what you see, feel free to subscribe via email or RSS feed. Thanks for taking the time to read!

FINDING EVERYTHING IN AN EMPTY TOMB

Luke 24: 1-12
Steve Lindsley
March 31, 2013
Easter Sunday

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There is a place out in the vast expanse of our universe that has within it, quite literally, nothing.  A massive void, nearly a billion light-years in diameter.  Inside this void you will find no stars, no planets, no galaxies, no gases.  One scientist, realizing the limits of the human brain to comprehend such things, simply described it as “a big bubble in the cosmic pancake batter. ”  If that image doesn’t describe this void any better, at least it makes it sound more tasty. (http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040449&item_id=93051428&keywords=massive%20void, visited on 3.29.2010)

So for the record, one light year is the distance light travels in a year; roughly six trillion miles.  You and I have church members who run marathons, and 26 miles seems like a long distance to me.  Try six trillion miles, and then multiply that by a billion.  That's how large this void in our universe is.

I don’t know about you, but It’s hard for me to comprehend something that massive.  But you know what’s even harder?  Comprehending something that massive with nothing in it.  I mean, surely the scientists have missed a lone planet or a renegade star, right?  It's got to have something in there.  And yet, all the data is conclusive: there is nothing there. This billion-light year void way out there in space is 100% empty.

How do you think something like that feels?  It’s an odd question, I know – we’re not accustomed to thinking about something like space having feelings.  But humor me for a minute: what does a billion light year void in our universe feel like?  What kind of words come to mind - Cold?  Alone?  Hopeless?  Isolated?  What would it feel like to be right in the middle of a cosmic heap of nothing?

Empty space.  An empty place.  An empty tomb.  A universe of nothing.  A tomb of nothing. 

“Perplexed” is the word Luke uses to describe how they felt when they entered that nothingness on Easter morning.  Perplexed.  Because it was not at all what they expected to find there.  They fully anticipated a body there, because that is what you find in tombs.  A tomb without a body in it is....well, it’s empty space, isn’t it?  They fully expected to find the body of Jesus there, and as was their custom, they would anoint that body with the spices they brought. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

How do you think Mary Magdalene felt in the midst of all that emptiness – the agonizing pain one feels when the space their best friend used to occupy is now empty? She was in the midst of the week-long period of mourning, as was their custom.  They all were.  And now, just three days removed, she has come to the tomb, armed with those spices; the ritual of her faith being the only thing filling up the emptiness.  She expected to find Jesus’ body there.  And what did she find? Nothing.  An empty tomb.

We all have “massive voids” in our life, of one kind or another; and we know what they feel like: the empty space that exists when things that used to be there, or should be there, are not.  It happens when we give our heart to someone who doesn't give theirs back.  It happens when we practice and practice and practice, and still don't make the team.  It happens when we wake up the day after being let go from our job with nothing to do.  It happens when we try to do the right thing but somehow keep screwing it up over and over again.  It happens when everything changes, and yet nothing seems to change.

We try, of course, to pretend the emptiness isn’t there; that we have our fill.  Because the society you and I live in doesn’t look kindly upon empty things.  So we tell ourselves, and tell others,  Everything is fine.  We’re managing real well since the funeral.  Oh, we have plenty in the bank account.  No, no, we’re not depressed.  My mom and Dad – they’re getting along great.  We’re not anxious one bit about life after graduation. We’re just fine. We’re fine. 

And yet even our most well-crafted and well-intentioned rituals cannot fill up the empty space.  These are huge cold spots; massive voids. Coming to the tomb and finding no body there.  How does that make you feel?   

They were perplexed, scripture tells us.  Do ya think?!  This is not what happens!  From the time they were tiny children, from that moment when they first understood the fleeting nature of life and inevitability of death, they understood the harsh and iron-clad truth: tombs have bodies in them that never leave.  So they were perplexed, and certainly other things too.  Confused.  Frightened.  Discombobulated.  When the gospel of Matthew talks about an “earthquake” at the tomb on Easter morning, it very well could have been the earthquate going on inside of Mary's mind! 

Two men in dazzling clothes suddenly appear next to them.  More perplexing; more confusion!  Don't you see?  From the minute the women set foot on that sacred ground, from the minute they peered inside the tomb, all bets were off!  The two men – not angels, as other gospels suggest, but two men.  In dazzling clothes, it says – sequins, maybe?  Is it their clothes that were dazzling, or what they said that made them all bright and shiny?  The question they asked; posed in the context of billions of light years of questions that surely were running through the minds of those women still trying to make sense of an empty tomb.  The question they asked:

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Why were they looking for the living among the dead?  Better yet, was it even the living they were looking for?  They had come to the tomb that morning to anoint a body, three days dead. And yet the bright and shiny men had asked them why they were looking for the living.  Is it possible that those women didn’t fully understand what they were looking for on that Easter morning?  Is it possible that we don’t, either? 

Every year, on this day, we follow in the footsteps of those women.  We come before this cross – a symbol of death, the worst kind of death – and we cover it with flowers.  Front and back, top to bottom.  A cross.  It’s almost as if we know that those dazzling men weren’t just speaking to the women.  They are still speaking, and they are asking us that same question today.

So why, my friends?  Why?  Why do WE come to this place, on this day, looking for the living among the dead?

Is it because we feel we have to, because it’s Easter?  Or could it be because we, like Mary and the others, want so much to fill that massive void with something?  We do not like empty things!  We much prefer to find life in places where there was once death.  We are creatures of beginnings, not endings.  Around 350 years ago, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal surmised that the human heart is like an “infinite abyss.” Perhaps a billion light years big. He said that we try in vain to fill our hearts with everything around us — education, jobs, homes, money, friends, family.  But none of these can fill the void completely.  And so as Pascal so aptly puts it:

This infinite abyss can only be filled with an infinite and immutable object;
in other words, God.

Do you see what this means?  Do you see the astounding paradox of it all?  In finding nothing in the tomb, those women found everything.  In confronting the cold dark abyss of death, they were surprised to find new life.  That is what Mary and the other women came to understand as they ran back to find the others and tell them of all they had not seen and all they’d seen. Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he is risen!

You know, every Easter Sunday we gather in this sanctuary and celebrate the resurrection to the nth degree.  We do Easter pretty well, I gotta say!  We wear our lovely Easter outfits and ties; we bring our flowers to the cross.  We sing rousing hymns like “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and “Christ is Alive!” and fill this empty space with joyful sound.  We gather before the Lord's table and share once again this holy meal.  There’s an extra spirit in the air – handshakes become hugs, smiles smile a bit wider, and the joy of the day rests upon each of our hearts.

Have you noticed how it never gets old, no matter how many Easter services we attend in our life; no matter how many times we bring our flowers and sing our hymns and share in our meal?  Have you noticed that the joy is always there?  You know why that is?  It’s because what fills the empty, hollow spaces on this glorious day is more than we can possibly imagine; more than we could ever hope for.  You and I plunge head-first into the scandalous, outrageous reality of this day – that death does not have the last word.  That death has been transformed into new life.  That you and I are transformed in it.

In fact, that's why I love the way the gospel of Mark ends the Easter story.  It’s similar to Luke's – the women come to the tomb, they find it empty, they’re met by a stranger who tells them to go tell the world.  And you know what happens after that in Mark?  You know what happens?  Nothing!  Absolutely nothing! Unlike the other gospels, there are no resurrection appearances, there’s no road to Emmaus or doubting Thomas, there’s no eating grilled fish on the beach with Jesus.  Nothing but empty space.

Except it’s not really empty.  Because you and I get to fill that space up!  You and I get to write our own ending to the Easter story!  Those women have come to us, to tell us the Good News: that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  And you and I get to fill up that space and write our own ending and respond with our lives – by living as Easter people.  By being a transformed people.  By following the resurrected Jesus in loving our enemies and caring for the least of these and healing the broken and infusing new life in billion light-year voids.

So we leave the tomb behind – because, as the shiny guys said, he’s not there anymore.  Jesus is out there, waiting for us to meet him and tell the world that they need not look for the living among the dead one moment longer.

So what are we waiting for, my friends?  What are we waiting for?!  Let's go find the risen Jesus!  Let’s go find him and invite him to live in us forever, so we can embody him in this world.  So empty tombs are no longer an ending but a beginning.  Let's go find Jesus - because he is alive.  He is alive!!  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God!  AMEN!

WASHING FEET

Maundy Thursday
John 13: 1-20
Steve Lindsley
March 28, 2013

Tonight’s Maundy Thursday service includes, among other things, a footwashing. Let me emphasize that it is optional.  I want to emphasize this because apparently some of you are grossed out by the idea of any footwashing that is anything other than you washing your own feet.  I know this because, at our session meeting earlier this month, when I asked for volunteers to help me wash feet at the service tonight, I was greeted with blank stares. 

And I do get the whole hesitancy toward footwashing; I do.  Feet can be, if not properly cared for, pretty gross parts of the human anatomy.  There’s toenail fungus and athlete’s foot, which may or may not be the same thing, but does it really matter?  There are planter’s warts, which don’t exactly scream, “Hey, someone else, wash me!”  And then there is the foot odor.  Nothing can be more unpleasant than smelling that foot odor smell, particularly if it’s being generated by your own feet.  Because you know if you’re smelling your own feet, it’s got to be pretty bad!

I realize this is a weird way to start a Maundy Thursday meditation, but I just want to lay it out all there, because let’s be honest – that’s what Jesus did.  This little meal and little gathering in the upper room was not a simple Seder meal and observing the ritual.  Stuff went down at this meal!  Bread broken and wine poured; my body and my blood, Jesus said.  That kind of cuts through the pretense, doesn’t it?  One of you will betray me – nothing like laying that one out on the table!  Judas, getting up and running out without as much as a “goodbye.”  Whoa.  And then that moment, according to John’s gospel, when Jesus grabbed a basin of water and a towel, and walked over to Peter.  That wasn’t what rocked Peter’s world, I don’t think.  It’s when Jesus kneeled down in front of him, lowering his whole body beneath Peter’s when it hit him: this man is going to wash my feet.  Jesus is going to wash my feet! 

We know what Peter’s response was.  Maybe it’s not too different from our own.  No, no, not my feet.  You want to wash my hands?  That’s cool.  Even my hair – I’m okay with that. But not my feet, Jesus.  Not my feet.  That’s……well, that’s just kind of weird.  They’re dirty and they probably don’t smell all that good.  You don’t need to wash my feet.  But the more Jesus persisted, the more uncomfortable Peter became – until Peter relented, because he realized Jesus was going to do it no matter how he felt. 

So what was it exactly that freaked Peter out?  Here’s what I’m thinking: Peter wasn’t freaked out because of foot fungus or planters warts or unpleasant odor.  He was freaked out because you don’t wash the feet of a subordinate.  Peter was freaked out because Jesus washing his feet changed the relationship between the two.  There is no way to wash someone’s feet without lowering yourself before them.  The master becomes the servant, and that makes the servant uncomfortable.  Out of place.  Vulnerable.  And Peter didn’t like being made vulnerable.  And you know what?  None of us do.

So that’s what I think it is – that’s why I think we have a problem with getting our feet washed.  Same as it was back then.  We don’t like being exposed, being made vulnerable.  Which is what the Good News of the Gospel does to us, if you think about it – the idea that Jesus was about so much more than simply being a wise teacher and healer.  You are the Son of God, Peter once said.  And because he recognized that the Son of God came “not to be served but to serve,” the act of washing feet was yet another example of how Jesus, whom he dearly loved, continued down that path of risky, radical service – a path that Peter surely knew would lead to his death. 

We, too, have a sense of what that vulnerability feels like – don’t we?  It’s why these last few days of Jesus’ life can be such a hard pill to swallow - the Last Supper in the Upper Room, and the footwashing, and a broken Jesus crying out to God in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the cross, and the silence after.  Look at us – we try to live good lives and honor God in everything we do.  We give to the church and we engage in study and mission together.  We gather around the table, as we will do here in just a minute; because we desire to serve our God and live lives pleasing to God and do all of that in communion with each another.

And yet whatever we do, wherever we are, we keep coming face-to-face with a grieving yet determined Jesus, kneeling before our uncovered feet.  He lovingly takes them in his hands and places them in the cool refreshing water; and with great care scoops the water over our feet as it drips back into the basin.  Then he places them in a warm towel and wraps them up, massaging them back and forth until they are dry and refreshed.

And somehow, in the midst of our greatest vulnerability, we emerge from this footwashing renewed – even in scandal of such an act.  We are embraced by the never-ending love of God because we know that what will happen on Friday morning – and what will take place three days later.  And it’s then we know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that there is victory in defeat, that there is light that shines through darkness, and that there is life even in the midst of death.  We know that Jesus serves us just as much as we long to serve him.

So here’s the deal: I’m not going to pressure you to participate in the footwashing if you don’t want to.  I will say that the technique I’ll be using employs good hygiene!  If you really don’t think this will mean anything to you, that’s okay.  But if your hesitancy is about me – or anyone – kneeling before you and lowering themselves underneath you, and you making yourself vulnerable, then know this: thanks be to God that this is precisely what Jesus does for us.  Not just in washing feet, but with his very life.  Thanks be to God that we celebrate this holy meal together as an act of Jesus giving his very self to us, his body and his blood, his life.  Thanks be to God that our God is a God of turning tables and servanthood and blessing the meek.  And washing feet.  No matter how bad they smell.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

GROWING SPIRITUALLY AS A CHURCH: EXTRAVAGANT GENEROSITY

Exodus 35: 4-29, 36:2-7; 2 Corinthians 9: 1-15
Steve Lindsley
March 24, 2013

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Perhaps you’ve been lucky enough in your life to know someone like Oseola McCarty.  Mrs. McCarty was a Mississippi washerwoman, born in the early 1900’s.  She had to drop out of school in 6th grade to help take care of the family.  Oseola began doing laundry and ironing people’s clothes for money – anywhere between $2 and $10 a bundle.  She would always put the money in a savings account at the First Mississippi National Bank and never took anything out. 

After almost 75 years of washing people’s clothes, the balance in her account stood at a whopping $150,000 – which at the age of 87, she promptly gave in its entirety to the University of Southern Mississippi for scholarships for needy students.  When she was asked why she gave money to a school she had no ties to, Oseola responded that she wanted others to have an opportunity she never had herself.  And when she was asked why she didn’t spend some of the money on herself, her answer was always the same: as far as she was concerned, she did. (Guideposts, Sept. 1995:5, pgs. 88-89.  Also http://www.usm.edu/pr/oola1.htm, visited on 9.27.2004)

Or maybe you’ve heard stories like the one Bishop McCabe used to tell.  At the time, the bishop was leading a rather large congregation in the throes of a huge capital campaign – the goal of which was to raise a million dollars for a huge missions initiative.  All the plans had been made and carried out: the information had been sent, the sermons preached, and now it was time to wait for the response. 

Each day Bishop McCabe received dozens of letters, some from disgruntled members who scoffed at the lofty, unattainable goal.  One day, he came upon a letter from a 7-year old boy in his church.  As he opened it, out rolled a badly battered nickel.  The letter, scribbled in handwriting only a child could appreciate, read: “Dear Bishop McCabe, I am so glad you are going to get a million dollars for missions.  I’m going to help you get it, too!  Here’s a nickel!  It's all I've got now, but when you need any more, call me!'(http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords= stewardship&imageField2.x=0&imageField2.y=0, visited on 9.27.2004)

Or maybe you’ve heard stories like that guy we hear about on this Palm Sunday.  We don’t know his name, because we’re not told one, but let’s just call him Jonathan.  Scripture tells us that some strange men came to Jonathan on the streets of Jerusalem.  We need to borrow your donkey, they said.  And when he asked them what for, the only reason they gave was that “The Lord needs it.”  And so Jonathan let the strange men take his donkey, like you and I would let a stranger take our only family car.  He had no idea that the next time he saw his donkey, it would have Jesus on its back; the crowd surrounding him singing praises and laying palm branches at its feet, just like our children laid their palm branches before the cross today.

So what is it about people like Oseola McCarty and the 7-year old nickel boy and “Jonathan?”  What is it about people who give, and give for all the right reasons – not for notoriety or to earn “brownie points?”  What kind of people give of their time and talents and treasure in such selfless and amazing ways?
Now if it sounds like I’m prepping you for a Stewardship/Discipleship sermon, I sort of am!  Sort of. 

Today is the final day of our Spring Discipleship, where Tom McCluskey and Hampton Hatcher, co-moderators of our Discipleship Ministry Team, have posed the question to you: What Can I Do?  What can I do for this church and its mission of helping build God’s kingdom on earth? Today is also the fifth and final chapter of the book we’ve been studying this Lent, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.  We’ve talked about radical hospitality and worshipping passionately and being intentional in our faith development and taking risks in mission and in service.

And today, we come to EXTRAVAGANT GENEROSITY.  Being generous with our time and our talent and our treasure.  And not just token generosity.  Extravagant generosity!  You know what that word “extravagant” means?  It can mean two things, according to Merriam Webster’s.  It can mean, “lacking restraint in spending money or using resources.”  Which can be a good thing, but can also be a bad thing, too.

I’m personally more drawn to the second definition: “exceeding what is reasonable or appropriate; or absurd.”  How’s that for a stewardship slogan: Absurd Generosity!  Don’t laugh – because that’s not too far removed from what the apostle Paul lays before the Corinthian church in our scripture today.  If it sounds like Paul was also giving a Stewardship/Discipleship sermon, it’s because he was! 

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind,
not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance,
so that by always having enough of everything
 you may share abundantly in every good work.

Keep in mind that Paul is writing to a congregation that is not too far removed from ours.  People of all different means, coming together as one body of Christ to join in one mission.   And that’s why the beauty of Paul’s words to the Corinthian church – and to us – is that it paints a much larger scope of responsibility than the traditional understanding of church giving.  Extravagant, absurd generosity, Paul seems to say, cannot be reduced to a simple math equation.  Rather, our giving should be a response to the wonderful things Christ has done in our lives – not as some kind of repayment, but as a joy-filled reaction.  We don’t really have to think all that hard about it.  We just do it.

I wonder if that’s what’s behind those extravagant generous folks I mentioned earlier.  I wonder if that’s what led Mrs. McCarty to donate her entire life savings to a single school, or a little boy to give a simple nickel out of his piggy bank toward a million dollar campaign, or that unnamed guy on this day long ago to say to those strangers, “Sure, you can have my donkey.”

I wonder if that’s what happened here, in this church, on December 24, when you all gave over $1200 for our new Saturday Sandwich ministry in a single offering. I wonder if that’s what happened right after that service, when I was accosted by half a dozen folks who wanted to help Dennis – a man none of you knew – to get home to Texas to his family.  I wonder if that’s what is happening with our “Raise The Roof” campaign, where all signs indicate that we will, in fact, meet and possibly exceed our $100,000 goal?  I wonder if that’s what happens every time a Friends Feeding Friends list fills up the Sunday it’s posted, or when one of our elderly gets a phone call or visit from a member of this church every day of the week, or when good church folk show up on your doorstep after your knee surgery with chicken pies and lasagnas?

Is that what Extravagant Generosity looks like? Is it like what happened with the Israelites in our other scripture today?  I mean, it’s pretty amazing if you think about it, right?  Pretty absurd.  And the thing is, there was no strategic plan, no capital campaign.  Just Moses saying to the people: Look, do this for me, would you?  Gather an offering together for God. We’ll take whatever: gold, silver, bronze, fine linen, goats’ hair (yes, goats’ hair), acacia wood, lamp oil, spices and incense.  We’ll even take your skills, because it’s not all about money and possessions.  It’s about your time and talent, too.  We need to build a tabernacle, a church, to worship God during our journey into the Wilderness.  We need you to be generous and to give extravagantly!

And scripture says everyone left the presence of Moses; and when they came back, they brought all kinds of things, whatever they had, whatever was needed.  Women and men, young and old – all of them brought something to the Lord.  So much of it, in fact, so much of it that Moses actually had to put the skids on it.  Did you hear me?  Moses had to tell the people to stop giving their money, stop giving their gifts, stop giving their time, because it was too much, because it was absurd.  Stop it, he told them.  Cut it out!  It’s too much.  Too much!

Can you imagine a Sunday morning in this church, around the end of the year, when someone has to come up here and give “that talk;” and so after the announcements are done I say something like, “And now, I’d like to call Mike Beal up for a special announcement:”

Good morning. Friends, I come before you this morning to share some difficult news.  And I know this kind of talk rubs some people the wrong way, but it needs to be said.  My friends, your church needs you to stop giving so much!  Alright?  It’s too much!  If we had line items in our budget that we were going over on; if we had bank accounts that were close to bottoming out, we might need more funds.  But we don’t, we’re nowhere near that; which is why Discipleship is respectfully requesting that you consider a percentage decrease in your pledged giving for next year.  If you could do that, that’d be great. 

And I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but we also need you to stop giving so freely of your time and your talents.  The sign-up lists are already full, and we don’t know who put the waiting lists up there – it wasn’t us.  I mean, your enthusiasm for being SPARK teachers for our children is admirable, but honestly, a 6-to-1 teacher-to-child ratio is a little overkill, don’t you think?  And it doesn’t matter how many times you ask them, or in what ways you try to cozy to a member of the Mills family, there simply aren’t any more spots for the summer Mexico mission trip.  I’m just shooting straight with you all; I don’t like telling you this anymore than you like hearing it.  The hard truth is that your extravagant generosity is…well, frankly, it’s absurd!  So, on behalf of the session, we are asking you – begging you – please, cut it out!  Thank you very much.

I’m not going to lie, y’all, I’d love to hear that announcement made someday!  Wouldn’t you?  Wouldn’t you?

What is it??  What is the magical potion, the silver bullet that can turn churches into Exodus chapter 35 and 36 kind of churches?  How can we catch, like lightning in a bottle, those beautiful instances where First Presbyterian Church has given with extravagant generosity, so we can open that bottle and replicate it when we’re trying to meet an operating budget, or trying to find folks to instill the story of our faith in our children?

I’ll tell you how.  In a few minutes, you’re going to be given an opportunity to be like one of those Israelites and to bring your gifts to Moses and to God.  Today is Dedication Sunday for Spring Discipleship, where we focus on giving our time and our talents to God in service to the church.  You’ll notice an insert in your bulletin; it’s been in there for a few weeks already.  And hopefully you’ve notice that, unlike in years past, there’s not an exhaustive list of every single role and responsibility for you to check as you see fit.  That’s because Tom and Hampton wanted you to focus not on what the church thinks we need, but what you think the church needs.  Sure, there are the standard tasks of ministry, as our sign-up boards out there remind us; and we need your time and talents there for sure.  But we also need you to prayerfully think on your own what you have to give to God’s church, and what you feel called to do for God’s church. So at the end of the sermon, Ellen will play some soft organ music and you’ll be invited to fill yours out – children, youth and adults.  And then, like our children who laid their palm branches at the foot of the cross this morning, you can lay your commitment in this basket during the offering, after the offering plate has made its way down your pew.  This, my friends, is time for you to think outside the box, and to dream big, and to be a people who embrace extravagant generosity.  Just do it!

Because I’ll tell you this – dear old Osceola McCarty didn’t wait until someone else gave first – she just did it. That nickel-kid didn’t wait until the giving “felt right” – he just did it.  Jonathon, or whatever his name was, didn’t wait to see if a better use of his donkey came along – he just did it.  Those Israelites didn’t think about whether Moses and their religious leaders had “earned” their giving – they just did it.

So at the risk of sounding like a Nike commercial, maybe all we need to do to be extravagant givers is to JUST DO IT.  Don’t wait for God’s extravagant generosity to come to you – just do it!  Don’t wait for the giving to “feel right” – just do it!   Don’t wait to see if something better comes along – just do it!  Because the extravagant generosity of our God that we long for so much, it’s already in us.  It’s in this church.  And it’s absurd!  May we never be afraid, as the body of Christ, to be absurd!  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

GROWING SPIRITUALLY AS A CHURCH: RISK-TAKING MISSION AND SERVICE

Matthew 25: 31-46
Steve Lindsley
March 17, 2013

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When I was in seminary, I had to take a unit of what’s called “CPE,” or “Clinical Pastoral Education.”  The program lasts from three months to a year and involves some pretty intense, “trial by fire” experiences in a particular context, usually a hospital.  It also focuses as much on internal processes as external ones.  All of which is to say it’s designed to take you out of your comfort zone.

At the beginning of my CPE program at Rex Hospital in Raleigh, each of us in the group – there were six of us, I think – each of us were asked to share two or three things that we were most anxious about having to deal with during our three months at the hospital. 

For me, there were two. The first was cancer.  Like most people I had lost some family members to cancer, but it was still a mystery to me, and we human beings are naturally afraid of what we don’t know. There was no manual on how to provide pastoral care to someone with cancer, and that’s why it was something I was afraid of having to deal with.

The second thing I was anxious about was dealing with very sick kids. Particularly if they were young and the illness was life-threating.  You can understand when an older person stares mortality in the face.  But not kids, you know?  They should have their whole life ahead of them.  Call it a defense mechanism of holding onto my last little bit of innocence, but I was anxious about dealing with sick kids.

So – we had been told to be open and honest with our CPE group, which is why I told them that my greatest fears beginning this program were facing people with cancer and facing very sick kids.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

During the weekdays, we each had a particular section of the hospital we provided pastoral care for – mine was the bone and joints surgery wing.  But once a week, when everyone else left at 5pm, one of us got to stick around until 9am the next morning.  It was our on-call shift.  We had to make some rounds, but as long as no one paged us, we could hole up in the chaplain’s quarters, sleep in the hospital bed there and watch cable TV.  And since this was a neighborhood hospital and not a downtown hospital, things were pretty calm at night.  Nothing serious.

Now do you see where this is heading?

It was 5pm and my facilitator had just handed me the beeper for my first on-call.  Everything should be fine, she said.  I’ve checked around and nothing serious is going on.  I’ll see you in the morning.  I went to the coffee shop to grab a soda and chill out for a bit.  Then what?  Well, there was a Braves game on TV and maybe I’d watch that for a bit…..

…..And then the beeper went off.  It was 5:02!  I called the number.  Come to the ER, we need you now.  And when I walked into the cubicle they pointed me to, I saw a 11-year old kid lying in the bed, with a very anxious mother and father on either side. Tried to get high by OD-ing on Tylenol, I’d been told.  Eleven years old.  I fumbled through a conversation with the girl and her parents, and then I was called out in the hallway.  Turns out this wasn’t an isolated incident; and this girl was one of twenty middle-schoolers who pulled this dangerous and stupid stunt at school during Field Day.  The kids would be trickling in for the rest of the evening.  And so, for the rest of the night I made my way from cubicle to cubicle to cubicle; sick kid in bed, very anxious parents on either side, doing my best to have an unfathomable conversation.

I had barely crawled into my chaplain room hospital bed, it seemed, when the beeper went off again; this time calling me to Floor 5.  Wanna take a guess what Floor 5 was?  You got it!  It was a man in his late 60’s; terminal lung cancer.  I was so nervous, the nurse had to prompt me as she was in and out of the room: Maybe you should read him a Psalm or something.  Maybe you could say a prayer?  I asked the man, would you like for me to say a prayer with you?  And with perhaps every last ounce of energy and frustration in his cancer-ravaged body, the man shot out, “YEESSSSSSS!”  We said that prayer together, we talked some more, we read a psalm and I left a little before dawn.  He died later that morning.

Funny how stuff works out like this, you know?  And you know what?  I’m so glad it did.  Because it made me a better pastor.  I’m more comfortable now going into those uncertain and uncomfortable places.  Because I don’t go alone.  And that’s true for all of us, is it not?  Taking a risk and stepping outside of our comfort zone is not what sometimes happens when we follow Jesus.  It’s what always happens when we follow Jesus.

Our Lenten journey began a month ago, being radically hospitable in reaching out to others to bring them into the transforming presence that is the body of Christ.  Next came passionate worship – not just going through the motions of a service, but engaging our God with heart, mind and soul.  After that it was intentionally developing our faith, not just assuming it would happen accidentally.

But the journey of faith cannot end here. Because if that’s all there is, then our Christian faith is nothing more than a self-help program.  And so that brings us to the next practice in our quest to grow spiritually as a church: RISK-TAKING MISSION AND SERVICE.  And like all the other practices we’ve talked about, there’s that wonderful qualifying word: risk-taking.  In other words, this isn’t “comfortable” mission and service.  This isn’t simply doing mission and service in a way that’s familiar to us. This may not even be mission and service that makes us feel good or “rewarded.”  This is mission and service that is bold, that calls us out of our comfort zone, that breaks the mold, that unsettles us.  As if it were Jesus himself we were serving.

Which is precisely what we find in our scripture today!  And you know, I love when folks assume this story is about heaven and hell and the Rapture; about some distant (or not-so-distant) point in the future when everyone’s eternal destination will be revealed.  Because it gives us an opportunity to reveal the truth to this passage; that is not about heaven and hell, and that to make Matthew 25 all about the life hereafter is to totally miss what Jesus really wants us to focus on, which is our life on earth.

See, the real question we should be asking ourselves is not who the goats are, but why the goats did what they did.  Which is an excellent question, by the way.  Who knows why those goats didn’t feed that hungry person or give water to the thirsty; why they didn’t welcome in the stranger or why they failed to clothe the naked; why they didn’t visit the imprisoned or care for the sick.  It’s possible that they were all just bad, depraved, evil people at their core and wouldn’t have done anything else.  But I can’t help but think there’s more going on here than that.

I mean, the logical thinking is that these goats would’ve rolled out the red carpet if they had recognized Jesus, right?  They would’ve served him the best food; made him a welcome guest in their homes.  They would’ve invited all their friends over, taken pictures and posted them on Facebook.  The local newspaper would’ve done a feature story on it.  And when Jesus said goodbye, they would’ve never stopped talking about the day that Jesus came to be with them.

But Jesus doesn’t come like Jesus, does he?  And that’s the rub!  Jesus comes in an entirely different way – and not to trick or fool people, but to get people to see him for who he really is!  I was thirsty, Jesus said, as he rings the church doorbell in the middle of a sweltering July and asks for a simple drink of water.  I was a stranger, Jesus said, as the new kid in school, eating lunch all by himself at the end of the cafeteria table.  I was naked, Jesus said, wandering the streets as that homeless man, decked out in old coats that do little to hold back the winter chill.  I was in prison, Jesus said, as he grips the cold metal bars that keep him inside his 8 x 8 cell, serving out his debt to society.  Jesus comes, consistently and intentionally, as the “least of these” – as inconspicuous as possible.

And there’s an element of this that is downright terrifying, don’t you think?  For we live in a world where we’ve trained ourselves not to see “the least of these,” or even designed things so the "least of these" are nowhere to be found.  I’m reminded of the months leading up to the 1996 Summer Olympics, when the city of Atlanta bought one-way bus tickets for the tens of thousands of homeless women and men there.  One way tickets.  It didn’t matter where – in fact, folks got to choose where.  What mattered was that they just went ­–away, so that when the world showed up on their doorstep, the “least of these” would not be seen.  Kind of sad, isn’t it, that in a city bursting at the seams with people from all over the planet, Jesus would be noticeably absent.

Risk-taking mission and service is not just about stepping outside our comfort zone to help people.  It’s not just about learning to see Jesus in the “least of these.”  It’s also about making an honest effort to find out what kind of mission and service is most needed, rather than what we think is needed. Author Shane Claiborne tells the story about the time he and some of his college friends worked at a local homeless shelter:

One day we received a box of donations from one of the wealthy congregations near our college.  Written in marker on the cardboard box were the words, “For the Homeless.”  Excited, I opened it up, only to find the entire box filled with microwave popcorn.  My first instinct was to laugh.  We barely had electricity, much less a microwave, and popcorn wasn’t on the top of the needs list.  My second instinct was to cry because of how far the church had become removed from the poor.

Claiborne goes on to say that the following week, there was a group of folks who brought bicycles for the kids, cooked turkeys for the families, and thousands of dollars to the sponsoring organization so they could update the facility with things like electricity and microwaves.  Wanna know who the group was?  It was the local chapter of the mafia!  Claiborne mused, I guess God can use the mafia, but I sure would like God to use the church.  Folks, when the church gets upstaged by the mafia, something needs to change! (Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Grand Rapids: Zondervan: 2006, 63)

Something does need to change.  And maybe the first thing that needs to change is our perception of things.  See, I had with, in ER cubicle after ER cubicle after ER cubicle, telling him that he was going to be alright, that he had his whole life ahead of him, that this little middle school field day stunt was but a bump in the road.  I had no idea, at three in the morning, that I would fumble my way through a psalm and a prayer with Jesus, holding his hand before the cancer literally took his breath away.  Maybe if I had know that was Jesus, I would’ve been more relaxed and at ease.

Which is why we in the church need to remember what evangelist and preacher Tony Campolo once pointed out: that Jesus never says to the poor, “Come find the church.”  No, he says to those in the church, “Go into the world and find the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the imprisoned” – Jesus in his many disguises.” (Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Grand Rapids: Zondervan: 2006, 102)

I love that – Jesus in his many disguises!  Let’s go looking for Jesus, shall we?  Not in spite of the risks, but precisely because of them.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

GROWING SPIRITUALLY AS A CHURCH: INTENTIONAL FAITH DEVELOPMENT

Deuteronomy 6: 1-9; Galatians 5: 13-25
Steve Lindsley
March 10, 2013

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So I told you I was going to share with you about this ribbon I’m wearing around my neck this morning.  It’s actually a stole.  I don’t know if I’m breaking some polity protocol by double-stoling it today, but I have a good reason for it.  The stole isn’t mine.  It actually belongs to a woman named Erin Hayes, who is a youth pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.  At least for another week or so, and then she’ll be accepting a call to a church in New Jersey.  She asked me to pray for her about this.

The thing is, I didn’t know Erin before this past week, when I picked up her stole at the national NEXT Church Conference in Charlotte. 650 Presbyterians from all over the country, gathering together for a day and a half of speakers, workshops, fellowship, and casual conversation about what the future of our denomination looks like.  Spoiler alert: it looks awesome. 

Anyway, back to Erin’s stole.  I picked it up during communion, as her stole – and mine and everyone else’s – were laid out on the communion table in closing worship.  When we came up to dip the bread in the cup, we were told to take a stole.  Any stole.  And I got Erin’s.  We had been asked to write on them our name and then three words that described our sense of call to the church.  The words Erin wrote were ENVISION. REFLECT. BRIGHTEN.  This was – this is – Erin’s story.

Now there is so much that I want to share with you about this conference and the organization called NEXT PC(USA) that is daring to imagine the future of our church, but I can’t do it all at once. So for the time being, I’ll just say this: there were many stories shared at this conference.  Stories from southerners and Northerners, West Coasters and Midwesterners and everyone in between.  Stories from women and men, black and white, Hispanic and Asian.  Stories from ministers and laity, conservative and liberal, young and old – lots and lots of stories.

We shared our stories in formal workshops, and we shared them in casual conversations in the hallway.  We shared stories of our experiences in ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  We shared a handful of stories of our concerns for the denomination and our local congregations, where attendance on a national setting is shrinking.  But mostly, mostly we shared stories and excitement of the wonderful new things we see God doing in our congregations, of the vitality and energy that takes hold in bodies of Christ whether they want it to or not, whether they’re ready for it or not. 

And through it all, we shared stories of how important “The Story” is – the story we read about in the pages of our Bible, the story we try to live each and every day following Jesus, and the story that we as the church work to convey to a culture and society that doesn’t always realize it’s the story they’ve been longing to hear.  There are other stories out there, of course: we are over-saturated with a vast mosaic of sagas and tales that compete for our attention. But the story of our faith is one that needs to be told; one that needs to be heard.

All of this, from a stole that belonged to someone I’d only met in passing.  Someone whose call to ministry, whose story, has now in a way become part of mine.  And that shouldn’t surprise us, should it?  Stories, by their very nature, are not meant to be held onto, like property.  Stories are meant to be shared; to be passed on, so they can put around the necks of others and introduced to even more people, so the story lives on.

You think that’s what Moses realized; the day he stood there before God’s people, on the threshold of the Promised Land?  I don’t know; I just like to imagine him standing there, his back to the Jordan River, the people gathered as a mass before him.  Across that river was the land God had promised them generations before; the very land that made those Hebrews some forty years prior wake up in Egypt and pack their things as fast as they could to head into their freedom.   Little babies who could barely remember that hasty exit were now holding their grandchildren, gazing ahead at the river and the land beyond it…

I get the feeling that Moses knew, in those last few moments with them, that now was the time.  Now was the time to tell their story.  It was a story they’d heard many times before. But just this one last time, they needed to hear Moses tell it, as they crossed the river and made their way into the Promised Land and their future.  They needed to hear Moses tell them this:

Attention, Israel!
God, our God! God the one and only!
Love God, your God, with your whole heart:
love God with all that’s in you, love God with all you’ve got!
Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.

Now we had a fancy name in seminary for this little speech of Moses: we called it “the Shema.”  It’s a Hebrew word that means “to hear” or “to listen.” And you know, I think it’s kind of cool that the name given to Moses’ speech here is a verb.  Something that requires action; something that isn’t passive.  Because faith and the story of our faith requires us to do something.  To hear it, to listen for it, and then to live it out.  Just as Moses implored those people on that day in that holy space between the river and the land. There’s a story in our faith that needs to be heard – that’s what the Shema has to say to us.

This Lenten season we are looking at Robert Schnase’s book, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.  You’ll remember that the first is radical hospitality, where we go out of our way to bring others into the transforming presence of the body of Christ.  Next comes passionate worship, where we gather together to praise God in a way that is authentic and heartfelt.  Worship is, of course, the center of the life of the church. But there has to be more to our story.  We can’t just remember it.  We have to tell it – what Schnase calls INTENTIONAL FAITH DEVELOPMENT.

And, you know, I love that clarifying word: intentional.  In other words, faith development not accidental.  It doesn’t just happen.  Intentional Faith Development is telling the story in a deliberate and meaningful manner.  It’s an active exercise, not a passive one.  We don’t just show up on Sunday morning and assume it’ll automatically happen to us. Intentional faith development is going out of our way to tell the story of our faith.  Because no matter how old or young we are, no matter how many years we’ve been a member of this church, we still haven’t heard the whole story.  There is always something new for us to learn and grow from.

In fact, we see that intentional part right in the Shema itself – what’s called the mezuzah.  A mezuzah was a tiny parchment of paper with the words of the Shema inscribed on it, then place in a decorative case and hung – as scripture commands – on the doorposts of their homes, or on their hands, or both.  It was there as a constant reminder.  It reminded the person wearing it on their wrist or posting in on their doorpost that they belonged to a particular faith story and needed to live as such.  Think about it: every time they looked down at their hands and saw that mezuzah, they had to ask themselves, are my hands being used for things that serve to uplift the story of my faith?  And every time they walked in the front door of their home, they had to ask themselves, does my home glorify God and the story of my faith? 

So the mezuzah reminded them of who they were and whose they were.  But the mezuzah wasn’t just for the person wearing it or posting it on their door.  It was for everyone who saw it.  It identified that person as a participant in a particular story.  It was a witness of sorts, inviting people to learn more about the story that was being told and the people who were telling it.

You know, we do the same sort of thing in other ways today.  When you see someone with one of those yellow LIVESTRONG bracelets, chances are it’s being worn by a person who in some way or another has been touched by cancer.  Just a few weeks ago, about 60 of you left this sanctuary on a Wednesday night with the sign of the cross in ashes on your forehead. I wonder if any of you got weird stares from family members or friends you ran into later that evening?  It may not have felt like it, my friends, but you were telling a story that night!

The thing is, we are constantly telling stories with our lives, aren’t we?  We are forever in the process of proclaiming something with how we live and who we are.  The apostle Paul talks about this in his letter to the Galatians – that the fruits of our lives come directly from whether we are anchored in the Spirit or not.  That anchoring – or lack thereof – tells a story. 

So the real question for you and me today is this: what is the story inscribed on our mezuzah?  What are the three words written on our stole?  How do these things define the life we live and the manner in which our faith grows and deepens?  And perhaps most importantly: how are we being intentional about that growth?

I’ve said it before from this pulpit, but it bears repeating: simply showing up at church on a Sunday morning does not automatically cause your faith to develop, any more than going to a McDonald’s automatically makes you a hamburger.  We have to be intentional about developing our faith.  That’s the very reason we offer all our Bible studies and Sunday school and SPARK, and all those other things in the life of our church that help us develop our faith.  All those things that build on the radical hospitality and passionate worship we already have here, so that our church can be a spiritually-growing one.

So: two things I want you to leave you with on this first Sunday of Spring Discipleship.  First: I want to challenge you to be intentional about finding ways to enhance and grow and develop your faith, other than just showing up for something.  Sign on for one of our Bible study groups, or come up with a brand new idea of your own.  Find a way not just to pay homage to the story of your faith; but to listen to it, to hear it, to engage it.  Find out what is written on your mezuzah or on your stole.

And speaking of that stole – I think you should have one of your own.  Because you are called to tell the story of the faith in the same way that the 650 of us at the NEXT Church Conference this past week were.  And so, the elders are going to pass out stoles to each of you – I hope there are enough.  They’re also going to pass out Sharpies; probably one per row.  You’ll have to share.  What I want you to do, while Ellen plays some soft organ music at the end of the sermon, is to write your name on your stole, and then write three words that describe the story of your faith.  Maybe it’s the name of someone in the Bible whose own story resonates with your.  Maybe it’s a descriptive word or phrase, like “passion” or “mission;” or a particular ministry of the church like “friends feeding friends” or “fellowship” or “music.” Don’t overthink this; there aren’t any wrong answers.  Save your stole for the end of worship.

And as you do this, friends, remember this: the story of the faith is not just some words written in a book.  You are the story. You’re the story of the church as it is now, and the church as it will be.  Don’t ever stop telling the story.  Don’t ever stop listening to the story.  Don’t ever stop being intentional about allowing that story to grow in you.  Let the story come alive!  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

GROWING SPIRITUALLY AS A CHURCH: PASSIONATE WORSHIP

Psalm 84: 1-12
Steve Lindsley
February 24, 2013

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Back in 2001, a new Presbyterian church was founded in a quaint little town in our great state.  The church began, as most new churches do, with a small group of folks who possessed big ideas – a vision of the kind of church they felt God calling them to be.  They had great ideas and great energy and great resources.  They’d received nearly half a million dollars in grants from the denomination, from their presbytery, and from neighboring churches.  And because they were going to use an old church building that only needed minor upgrades, they were able to earmark nearly all of the money for other purposes. And they knew exactly what those purposes would be.

See, above anything else, this new church wanted to create a worship experience like no other.  Big and bombastic, lively.  A full-on assault on the senses.  If this church were going to grow, its founders reasoned, they would need to create a worship service that would attract young people and compete with a media-savvy saturated culture.  It would be their defining characteristic, and it would propel the church to grow by leaps and bounds.

So they went all-in, amassing an arsenal of the best audio/visual equipment money could buy.  A professional-grade sound system and 24-channel mixing board to easily take on the needs of a multi-member praise and worship band.  A 12-piece, top-notch electronic drumset.  Monitors and more cables than you could shake a stick at; dozens of mic stands and music stands.  Two state-of-the-art Bose tower systems for acoustic guitars; various amps for the electric ones.  A 500-watt bass amp, a high-end Yamaha stage piano.  Headset mics and wireless handheld mics.  And don’t forget the stage lights – 30+ professional-grade stage lights, affixed to four professional-grade light stands, all patched into a special light sequencer that would rival any rock concert.

The folks at this church installed a huge drop-down screen at the very front of the sanctuary to project the lyrics onto, but when some pointed out how it covered the large historic cross every time it was lowered, and how maybe that wasn’t a good thing, they said “no problem.”  So while keeping it there fully retracted (just in case that cross ever did come down), they installed two smaller (but still large) screens on either side of the cross, along with two top-notch LCD projectors sticking out from the sides where the organ pipes used to be.  And when the band mentioned how awkward it was to always be looking back at the screens behind them while playing, they installed an even larger screen and projector way in the back of the sanctuary, just for the band. 

On the day the church officially opened its doors and held its first worship service, they claimed about 50 members on the roster.  Within a year, that membership more than doubled.  Things were looking up for this little church with the big ideas and the big worship service!

Last month, I traveled to this church.  But not to join the masses and take part in some rock concert worship service.  I was there to help the church close its doors. As part of a presbytery administrative commission, some pastor friends and I packed up every last one of those speakers and lights and cables and stands and drums and keyboards and mixing boards, all in a U-Haul truck, and carried it to a storage facility near the presbytery office.  That previous Sunday, the congregation held its final worship service, which looked nothing like its first.  There were no stage lights, no electronic drums, no guitars, no lyrics projected onto huge screens, no praise being lifted by the voices of the masses.  It was a voice of seven; the number of people this congregation had dwindled down to in just eleven years.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  I know what question is gnawing at you, like an itch that can’t be scratched: what happened?!?  What in the world happened??  How could things have fallen apart so quickly?  Was it a scandalous-ridden pastor?  An empty bank account?  A building ravaged by black mold?  What?  The truth is, it wasn’t any of those things. In fact, as strange as it may sound, the thing that that caused the church’s downfall was the thing it had made it’s sole focus for all those years.

Psalm 84 is one of those praise psalms that doesn’t leave much to the imagination about what it’s talking about.  This psalm is talking about worship.  As you read it, you get the sense – as some scholars have surmised – that it may have been written by an Israelite pilgrim making his way to Jerusalem.  For Passover, perhaps.  And for the very first time in his life, he lays his eyes on the majestic temple.  Like seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, places you’ve been hearing about all your life, where the size and beauty and scope of it far exceeds anything you could’ve imagined it being.

Of course, the psalmist captures more here than just the beauty of a building.  He’s talking about what goes on inside it – the worship of God.  The fact that everybody has a place and a purpose in worship.  That lovely line: Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds a nest where she may lay her young.  Young and old, black and white, gay and straight, red and blue – they all are welcome in the worship of God.  They all have a home there. And there’s no other place they’d rather be: A day in your courts, the Psalmist says, is better than a thousand elsewhere.   

Seems to me that the 84th Psalm is hitting on what author Robert Schnase talks about in the second chapter of his book Five Practices Of Fruitful Congregations – a book, as you know, we’re focusing on this Lenten season.   If you were here last week, you’ll recall that we looked at the first practice of a spiritually-growing congregation: radical hospitality.  This is more than just being friendly to people.  This is going overboard and out of your way to draw others into the transforming presence of the body of Christ that is the church. 

But once they’re there – once they’re in church – what then?  That’s where the second practice comes into play: passionate worship.  Not just “worship,” but passionate worship.  Through radical hospitality, the doors are flung open for folks to enter the community of faith.  But it’s through passionate worship that those same people are connected to God and to each other in a deep and meaningful way.

So – all we’ve got to do now is worship passionately here, folks!  So, go ahead: worship passionately!  Right.  It is the question, isn’t it: what does that mean? What exactly is worshipping passionately? You know, sometimes the best way to figure out what something is, is to first determine what it’s not, like peeling the skin off an orange to get to the center.  Maybe that’s what we ought to do here.  Because right off the bat, the very first thing we need to understand is that passionate worship is not about style. It’s not about whether you’re singing to an organ or a praise band; it’s not about whether you use bulletins and hymnals or a big screen up front, it’s not about whether you’re dressed in your Sunday best or in t-shirt and flip flops. Passionate worship happens just as much in a highly-traditional and liturgical Main Street church, as it does at Firehouse Ministries here in town.

Which is weird, I know, because we’re not used to thinking about it that way.  We make the mistake of assuming that it’s all about style.  Those like the church I mentioned earlier, who bet the bank on worship as a rock concert; and those who cling tightly to liturgy and the organ and shun anything else.  See, it’s not the “how” of worship that makes it passionate or not passionate.  It’s the “why” of worship!  I mean, what a concept, right?  Simply asking the question, “Why do we worship?  Why do we drag ourselves out of bed on a Sunday morning and come to this place, when there are certainly other things we could be doing; other places we could be?  Why? 

Now I don’t have an email address for the author of this book, and the writer of the 84th psalm is long dead and gone, but if I could ask them what they think makes worship passionate, I have to think they’d say that churches who worship passionately know first and foremost WHY they worship.  And because they know “why” they worship, they know HOW worship works best for them.  But the “why” comes first.  It always comes first.  And when it doesn’t, when churches focus exclusively on the “how,” chances are they’re not far away from having to pack up their things and stuff it all in a U-haul truck and carry it off to storage.

Passionate worship is about being authentic in who you are as a community of faith; in the way you express your thanks, your prayers and your praise to God.  And while I’m admittedly biased, I tend to think our church has a pretty good sense of all of that.  We’re not perfect, but we’re in a good place – today’s worship being a great example of that.  You know, I love it when I’m telling some of my clergy friends about these Member-Led music Sundays, and how we give the organ a rest and bluegrass up the hymns and sing responses a capella.  And they’ll say something to the effect of, “Well, I’m sure your young people dig it, but I bet it drives the older folks nuts.”  And I love telling them about the congregational music study we did three years ago, where all of this was conjured up, and how a table of high school students told me they loved the traditional hymns and the organ, and a table of senior citizens expressed how much they enjoyed mixing things up every now and then.  You realize, I hope, that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in every congregation out there.  There’s always room for improvement, but I just feel that, when it comes to worship, our church understands that the “why” always trumps the “how.”

You know what else passionate worship is about?  It’s about movement.  Seriously, movement!  Take a look at the inside of your bulletin and the order of worship – a flow of worship, I might add, that is shared with other Presbyterian churches all across the country.  Look at the underlined, centered headings that you may not have paid much attention to before:

We GATHER for worship
We OPEN UP to God
God SPEAKS to Us (we GATHER around God’s word)
We RESPOND with Faith and Commitment
We GO FORTH to Witness and Serve

You may be sitting perfectly still in those wonderful First Presbyterian pews, but make no mistake: you are in constant movement in worship. You are gathering together and opening up, and gathering around and responding to, and going forth.  Every single Sunday, you are moving all over the place worship.

And that’s a good thing, my friends.  Because worship shouldn’t be stagnant or still or lifeless or an isolated, individual affair.  I love the story evangelist Gordon Cosby tells about his experience guest-preaching at a Lenten mid-week service somewhere up in New England one time.  The worship service, conducted by the church, was particularly dull and uninspiring. Nobody sang the hymns; nobody smiled or reacted. The only thing that moved, Gordon said only half-jokingly, were the offering plates! After the service, Gordon and his wife retired to the room the church had rented them for the night, and they talked about what a drag the service had been.

And as they were talking, they became aware of this sound – many sounds, really.  They listening and finally figured out that it was the sound of the tavern just underneath their room.  Sounds of people talking and laughing; sounds of movement and celebration.  Sounds of folks who were there because they wanted to be, not because they had to be. 

And check out the epiphany Gordon had as he listen to all that was going on downstairs:

There was more warmth and fellowship in that tavern than there had been in the church that night.  And I realized that if Jesus of Nazareth had his choice, he probably would’ve gone to the tavern instead of the church. (http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=925, visited on 2.18.2013)

And you know what?  As scandalous as that may sound, I agree with him.  I Jesus would’ve chosen the tavern, hands-down.  Because in a weird sort of way, that tavern was worship.  Passionate worship.  See, here’s the thing: I think every Sunday morning, when God is with us in this place, I think what makes God smile is when we sing praises not with any particular instrument, but when we sing from our hearts.  I think what makes God smile is not when we read the right words from the bulletin, but when the words printed on a piece of paper in some way reflect the words that lie deep within our souls.  I think what makes God smile is when we’re not just going through the motions of a tired weekly ritual, but when we are actively moving with joy and with purpose.  When we gather in this place not because we have to, but because we want to, because we’re called to, because it’s why we are.

And if our passionate worship happens to sound like a tavern, then so be it!  Who can argue with the joyful sound of God’s people in worship, gathering together and opening up and going out.  What do you say we do it again next week?  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

GROWING SPIRITUALLY AS A CHURCH: RADICAL HOSPITALITY

Deuteronomy 10: 12-22; Luke 19: 1-10
Steve Lindsley
February 17, 2013

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So – since the first Sunday of this year, we have been pondering how we, First Presbyterian Church, can grow spiritually in the year 2013.  Not how we can grow numerically, or how we can grow financially, but how we can grow spiritually.  Since I posed that question in my first sermon of the year, I’ve had a number of you come up to me on Sunday mornings or during the week.  You’ve told me that you think this is a great idea; that this is precisely what we as a church need to be doing.  And then you’ve asked me how we’re going to do it. 

And you know what?  I have no clue!  There, I said it!  But see, that’s okay.  Because figuring out something like spiritual growth in the church is not any one person’s responsibility.  It’s something we figure out together, delve into together, work on together.  And what more perfect time to take on this collective journey of spiritual growth than in the season of Lent.

So over the next forty days, we’ll be taking a look at what a spiritually-growing congregation looks like – what qualities, what habits, what characteristic make up this kind of church.  And maybe, just maybe, our church.  And, like last fall, we’re going to let a book guide our way.  I want to invite you, as part of Lent, to read this book: Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.  I’ve asked Sandy at Pages Bookstore right up the street to keep a couple of copies on hand and want to encourage you to pick one up this week.

Five practices, the author says.  Five practices of fruitful congregations – or, we might say, spiritually-growing congregations.  Could this be the “how” that we seek in our year of spiritual growth at First Pres?  That’s the journey I want to invite you to join me on over the next six weeks. 

And as we begin this journey, we begin it, of all places, at the foot of a tree.  A sycamore tree.  As we pan our head back and look up into that sycamore tree, we see a man sitting there.  His name is Zacchaeus.  He’s up in that sycamore tree because he is looking for Jesus; he is waiting for Jesus.  He’s been there all day.  See, Zacchaeus and the rest of the town had heard Jesus was coming through, and so they wanted to make sure they got to see him.  Zacchaeus was up in that tree because he wasn’t a very tall guy and needed the height for a better view.

Some folks in that crowd were there that day because Jesus was a celebrity of sorts, given all the hubbub about his preaching and teaching and healing.  They wanted their 15 minutes of fame.  But it wasn’t a celebrity thing that put Zacchaeus in the tree.  He was up there because he was holding out hope that Jesus might be the one to speak to that broken piece of his heart, and bring healing where nothing else had.  He was hoping Jesus would see him up there, and perhaps wave at him, and maybe, just maybe that would be all he’d need….

Never in his wildest dreams – in the wildest dreams of his wildest dreams – never could Zacchaeus had hoped for what he got.  Never could he have imagined that Jesus would not only see him, not only wave at him, not only walk over to him, not only call him by name (how did he know his name?!), but say to him, Zacchaeus, hurry down. Let’s go to your house for dinner! 

Now, to us, it may not seem like the most polite thing to do – inviting yourself over to someone’s house for dinner – but make no mistake: this was Jesus doing something profound and powerful in the life of our friend in the tree.  Jesus was practicing hospitality in a way Zacchaeus had never experienced it before.  In fact, it was more than just hospitality.  It was radical hospitality – not just any “hospitality” but radical hospitality.  It’s what author Robert Schnase describes as that place “where Christians offer the absolute utmost of themselves, their abilities, and their creativity to welcome others into the faith.”

Now to be clear: radical hospitality is more than just being nice to people and exhibiting some of that wonderful “Southern charm” we’re famous for around here.  Radical hospitality is more than inviting folks who stop by your home in for a cup of coffee out of obligation.  Radical hospitality is more than bending over backwards to meet the needs of others at the expense of your own – which, depending on the situation, may not be a good thing.  No, radical hospitality is a manner of engaging and interacting with people of all shapes and sizes and stripes, in a way that helps bring them into the transforming presence of the body of Christ that is the church.

All of which sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?  Something the church should be able to do with relative ease, right?  If only that were the case!  If only Christians and the church could automatically and effortlessly engage in “radical hospitality,” like breathing.  It’s no wonder that this is the first thing we as the church need to focus on in our quest to grow spiritually.  Because the hard truth of the matter is that we Christians today get a bad rap, deservedly so, when it comes to our level of “hospitable-ness.”

Case in point: I wonder if you heard the story a week or so ago about a restaurant receipt left at a St. Louis’ area Applebees.  Did you hear about this?  There’s a copy of it on the back of one of your bulletin inserts.  The receipt was left by a woman, after a lunch she shared with a large group of her friends – thus, the standard 18% gratuity.  You’ll see, though, that the customer marked out the 18% and replaced it with a big fat zero.  To “explain” this, she wrote on the receipt: I give God 10%, why do you get 18?, as if her tithe to her church somehow nullified tipping at restaurants.  And as if that wasn’t enough, to drive the point home, the woman identified herself as “pastor.” The waitress was understandably taken aback and took a picture of it and posted it on Facebook, for which she was later fired.  But the damage had been done.  The pastor later publicly apologized, but primarily for embarrassing herself and her church, not for failing to tip the waitress. 

When this story came out a week or so ago, and shot across news outlets and social media as these things do, I immediately did a face-palm.  If you don’t know what that is, let me show you…. 

I find myself doing this more and more these days.  What was it that Gandhi apparently said? I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.  Why is it that there is this gap between our actions as Christians and the man we profess to follow? Think Westboro Baptist protesting funerals, or the Alabama governor saying he won’t work with government officials who aren’t Christian, or the Newtown Lutheran pastor who apologized for taking part in an inter-religious service for a community absorbed in its grief.  The stories are endless.

Back in 2007, the Barna Group conducted an extensive study on the perception of Christianity in North America, specifically among 16-39 year-olds; and the findings were downright depressing.  The study found in pretty convincing fashion that the majority of folks today see Christians as: hypocritical, judgmental, anti-homosexual, too involved in politics, and out of touch.

Now let me put this into perspective for you.  Say you sit down next to someone on a plane, and in the small talk before taxiing to the runway, it comes up that you are a Christian.  What this means, according to the study, is that before this person learns another thing about you, before you say another word, they will automatically assume that you are someone who holds others to standards you’re not willing to hold yourself to, that you are someone who judges others, that you hate gay people, that you desire to push a political agenda on them, and that you are out of touch with the modern world.  The plane hasn’t even gotten into position for takeoff yet, and already you’re got a lot of ground to make up.

The Barna study concluded that Christians today have an “image problem.”  I’ll take it a step further.  I think we have a hospitality problem.  I think we are our worst enemy when it comes to representing the welcoming, loving ,warm and embracing Jesus who stood at the foot of that sycamore tree all those years ago.  I think we are foregoing one of the foundational commandments that our faith is based on: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  In fact, our Old Testament scripture today unpacks it a bit more: You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.  (David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, UnChristian: What a Generation Really Thinks About Christianity, and Why It Matters, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).

Maybe that’s something we should remember – that we were all once strangers to the faith, even if we were born into the church.  That we all have resided outside the faith community at one point or another; on the outside looking in.  That we all have been, and maybe to a degree still are, Zacchaeus: perched up there in the tree, trying to get a glance at Jesus, hoping we’ll be seen by him; hoping we’ll be noticed by him.

You’ve probably picked up by now that the five practices of spiritual growth in this Lenten sermon series are five things that Jesus himself practiced.  Because we’re all trying to be more like Jesus, aren’t we – isn’t that what it’s all about?  So how do we as a church do this first thing – how do we practice “radical hospitality?” 

I wonder if a good place to start is in realizing that being radically hospitable is not the same thing as being “friendly.”  I mean, everyone wants to believe they are friendly.  Every church wants to believe it’s a friendly church.  But most of the time, we tend to be friendly to those we already know.  We are friendly to our friends.  Radical hospitality demands something more from us.  It forces us to ask ourselves some pretty hard questions: in what ways are we seeking out the Zacchaeuses around us; looking for the strangers in our midst?  In what ways are we faithfully representing Christ to our community and our world?  Are we doing the sort of knee-jerk reactionary things like the pastor’s restaurant receipt that betray the man we profess faith in?  Or are we living out the radical hospitality that Jesus emulated with every step of his feet, every breath of his lungs, every word of his mouth, every healing hand placed on a broken body or soul?

People don’t need a friendly church – and that’s a shame, because you all are certainly friendly.  I hear it every time I go see someone who’s been visiting the church and ask them why they keep coming here.  It’s great being a friendly church; please don’t stop!  But know people need something more from us.  People need a church that practices radical hospitality right out the gate - because, according to the book:

People need to know God loves them, that they are of supreme value, and that their life has significance.  People need to know that they are not alone; that when they face life’s difficulties, they are surrounded by a community of grace; and that they do not have to figure out entirely for themselves how to cope with it.  People need to know the peace that runs deeper than a mere absence of conflict, the hope that sustains them even through the most painful periods of grief, the sense of belonging that lifts them out of their own preoccupations.  People need to know that life is not having something to live on, but something to live for. (Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2007, pg. 18).

This is what people need from the church.  This is what people need from you and from me.  To be radically hospitable.  And not just with the words that come out of our mouths, but perhaps more importantly, the actions that come out of our lives.  My friends, if you don’t remember anything else from this first sermon on spiritual growth, remember this: what we say and what we do as followers of Christ matters.  It matters to Jesus, and it matters to everyone else.  But don’t take my word for it.  Just ask Zacchaeus.  In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

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IN THE WILDERNESS - ASH WEDNESDAY

Exodus 12:37-39, 50-51
Steve Lindsley
Ash Wednesday Service
February 13, 2013

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The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds. They baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt; it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.

 All the Israelites did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. That very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, company by company.

****************

And the journey begins.  A journey out of Egypt into the desert.  A journey to the rock that provides water.  A journey into our greatest fears or our hottest anger.  A journey to the Jordan to be baptized.  A journey to the heart of our temptations.  A journey to the agony of the garden, and a journey to the joy of the empty tomb.

This is our Lenten journey of 2013.  It's a journey into the wilderness – into those times and places where God's people go out of the city, away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, and into the wilderness. Where there is nothing.  Where there is only barren land, hot desert sun, dirt and sand and dust.

And yet there is so much in the wilderness.  Because sometimes in the midst of absence, we feel the presence.  Biblically-speaking, the wilderness is a place where people go to get away, to reflect, to move forward.  Moses went in the wilderness and found God on a mountaintop.  John the Baptist went in the wilderness and baptized thousands.  Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted, and later to grieve what the next day would bring.  And Mary Magdalene went into the wilderness to find her risen Lord.

This is our Lenten journey.  Tonight our journey begins with an entire nation of people, on the doorstep of a future of promise and hope.  It had been a brutal life living under Egyptian rule for the Hebrews.  The goodness of Joseph a generation before had been long forgotten by the time a new pharaoh came to the throne.  So he put them into forced labor – a nice way of saying “slavery” - and they built the infrastructure of his kingdom. The cries of oppression eventually gave way to the voice of justice and freedom – Moses standing before Pharaoh saying, Let my people go!  Nine times the message is ignored.  But on the tenth, Pharaoh relents: they are free to go.  Leave, he tells Moses, and never come back.

The moment that they never thought would come had arrived!  And it's amazing how scripture tells us they left – in a hurry, as quick as possible.  It is no small task to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people on a dime, but that is what they did as soon as they got the word.

You know, before I came to this church I lived in Welcome, North Carolina – a great name for a town, isn't it?  One of my next door neighbors was Clint, a young twenty-something who worked for Richard Childress Racing in town.  In fact, Clint had the distinct honor of being the official tire-changer for race car driver Kevin Harvick.  Now I've never really been a fan of NASCAR, but for those years that I lived next to Clint I took on a little more interest – I'd see him out in the yard on Mondays after race day and get the scoop on everything.

And one of the things that fascinated me the most was hearing Clint describe the orchestration of the pit stop.  These drivers have to get their cars tended to in the middle of the race, and time is of the essence.  So there are eight or nine guys who each have their own specific responsibility.  They work together and in a matter of seconds, the car is on its way.  I was amazed at all Clint and his pit stop buddies could do in such a short period of time.  But they had to, because a few seconds lapse could mean the difference between winning a race or coming in somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The Hebrews weren't trying to win a race as they exited Egypt, but they did want to head into the wilderness as soon as possible – and for them, every second mattered.  Every second in Egypt was a second of their life wasted. For the Hebrews, the wilderness meant a new destination and a new history – one they could write all on their own.  The desert was huge and vast, but somewhere out there, somewhere in their future, lay the Promised Land – a land “flowing with milk and honey,” they had been told.  And that is what kept them going for those forty years.

I like to think those Hebrews were not on a physical journey but a spiritual one, too.  Those forty years would challenge their faith in God and, most certainly, their faith in one another.  They would have to learn to depend on God for just what they needed to survive that day.  They would learn to trust one another; lean on each other when times were tough.  The spiritual journey those Hebrews embarked on was just as important as the physical one, if not moreso, in molding and shaping them into a nation of God's people.

Our spiritual journeys often unfold like that, don't they?  They come upon us unexpected, often surprising us.  And we willingly drop what we're doing to make the trip.  And as we embark on our times in the wilderness – much like Ash Wednesday itself – we are challenged to take stock of things around us and things within our own selves.  We are forced to ask the questions: what's really important in my life?  Who are the people that I sojourn with in the wilderness?  And how prepared am I to take part in the journey?

I like the way that one commentator puts it – he once observed that the wilderness stories of the Bible are stories of a people caught between promise and fulfillment. It's that “in-between” time of the journey that we find ourselves in right now, isn't it?  We are caught between promise and fulfillment; between hoping and having that hope realized; between longing for our salvation and experiencing that salvation; between our greatest fears and our greatest dreams.

So in this season of Lent, we journey from the raw vulnerability of the wilderness to that Sunday morning when death was rendered powerless.  And we cannot rush through the wilderness that lays before us.  Their forty years in the desert is our forty days – forty days from now until Easter morning.  We cannot make that glorious day come to us on our own timetable.  We must make our hasty exit this very evening into the wilderness before us – knowing that  as we go along we will find God there, and we will find ourselves.  On this night, as we mark the sign of the cross on our forehead with ashes, let the wonderful journey begin!  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

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O God, within this strange and quickened dust
    The beating heart controls the coursing blood
    In the discipline that holds in check the flood
    But cannot stem corrosion and dark rust.
In flesh’s solitude I count it blest
    That only you, my Lord, can see my heart
    With passion’s darkness tearing it apart
    With storms of self, and tempests of unrest.
But your love breaks through blackness, bursts with light;
    We separate ourselves, but you rebind
    In Dayspring all our fragments; body, mind
    And spirit join, unite against the night.
Healed by your love, corruption and decay
    Are turned, and whole, we greet the light of day.

- Madeleine L’Engle