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1 Kings 19:4-16

4But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

 

9At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” 11He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” 15Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place.

 

            There was an older woman who lived by herself and found herself to be growing more and more lonely as she got older.  So one day she decided to go to the pet store and buy a parrot so that she could have a conversation partner in her home.  But when the lady got the parrot home, the parrot just started to curse and swear.  The old lady wasn’t going to take this ‘foul’ language, so she put the parrot in the freezer for two minutes.

            After the bird had served its penalty, the lady told him, “If you don’t clean up your language, I’ll put you right back in there, this time for 5 minutes.”  So the parrot agreed to watch his mouth.

            The very next day the parrot was at it again, cursing and swearing, complaining about the food he had to eat.  So being true to her word, the old lady grabbed the parrot and put him back in the freezer for five minutes.  After the time had passed the woman pulled the bird out, frost forming on his beak.  And she told him again, “If you don’t clean up your language, I’m going to put you right back in there.”  This time the parrot seemed scared and he promised to clean up his language.

            Months passed and the parrot kept his promise and cleaned up his language.  The old lady asked him one day what it was that made him change his ways.  The parrot replied, “Well I knew you were serious when I asked the turkey what he had said to be put in there and he didn’t reply.”

            Loneliness is something that we all deal with from time to time, isn’t it?  We were created to be relational beings, to live in communion with one another.  But sometimes we find ourselves separated from other people and that can be difficult.  Today we are going to look at the life of Elijah and see that God does not intend for us to be alone, though sometimes he does call us to moments of solitude to connect with him.

            Our text for today picks up soon after Elijah’s confrontation with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah that we looked at last week.  Elijah stood strong against these other prophets, outnumbered 850 to one.  He has his victory over these prophets, but when all of the excitement (and bloodshed) is over, Elijah finds himself right back where he began: by himself.  He wanders for a day into the wilderness and he sat himself down under a tree.  He has no friends, he has no family, he doesn’t even have a pet to keep him company.  He is alone.

            And I am sure that there are a number of factors that are playing into his emotions, one of them being loneliness.  And as Elijah sits there by himself under a single broom tree, Elijah asks God to take his life.  This man who has stood up against the king and against these 850 other prophets and had a convincing victory is so depressed that he wants to die.

            But God wasn’t done with Elijah, there was still work for him to do.  So God provided food and drink for Elijah so that he could make a forty-day journey to Mt. Horeb, which is also known as Mt. Sinai.  And as Elijah is taking shelter in a cave at Mt. Horeb, the word of the Lord comes to him and asked him, What are you doing here?  And Elijah replies in verse 10, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

            Whoa, right there, that says something to me.  Elijah knows that his life is in jeopardy.  He knows that people in high places are seeking after him to kill him.  So if he really wants to die, why is he running away?  I would say that Elijah didn’t want to die.  What Elijah wanted was a different life.  What Elijah wanted was friends, people he could count on, talk to, share with, break bread with.  It wasn’t that Elijah wanted to die, he just didn’t want to keep on living in the same way that he had been living.  The lonely life of a prophet is good for no one’s soul.

            Is there anyone out there that gets lonely from time to time?  You don’t have to raise your hand, because I am sure that we all do.  I know I get lonely.  In Genesis God says, It is not good for man to be alone.  So what does God do?  God creates a friend for Adam.

            Now some people will take this passage and twist it a bit and make it into something that it is not meant to say.  I get pretty frustrated when I hear someone talk about how we are not “complete” until we find a mate, a husband or a wife.  For some parents, marrying off their daughter seems to be the ultimate goal.  It is not good for a person to be alone, I agree 100%.  But this does not mean that a person needs to be married to be complete.

            We look at people in the Bible such as the apostle Paul.  Paul says that he is glad that he is single because…it frees him up to do more ministry!  If Paul was married with a wife and three kids, he wouldn’t have been able to travel all around telling about his encounter with the risen Jesus Christ.  No, he would have had to stay put, working at his job as a tentmaker, paying the mortgage, putting food on the table because women did not often work outside of the house in the first century.  This is why Paul encourages people that are unmarried to stay that way in 1 Corinthians 7.  So when someone says about needing to be married to be complete, I look at the people in the Bible that we know were single: Paul, Jeremiah, and Jesus, for example.  I say that if you are single, you are in good company!

            I had some single friends in Seminary and they shared with me the hurt that they had experienced being single in the church.  And the hurt that they experienced was not that they felt incomplete.  The hurt that they felt was coming from church people that were always trying to “fix” this perceived problem; people wanting to set them up with other individuals.  And these were well-intending people, but my friends were quite comfortable being single and they realized the opportunities that singleness presented them in serving the Lord.

            My sister-in-law is twenty seven years old and single.  She doesn’t seem to be interested in getting married any time soon.  Stacy is in her first year of medical residency in family practice in Omaha, Nebraska.  She really doesn’t know where she wants to work when she finishes up her residency, but she wants to have a flexible schedule because she has always wanted to be able to work on medical mission teams to third world countries.  Two weeks, month-long, whatever length trips to Guatemala, remote parts of Africa, or even working locally in free clinics.  These are the things that appeal to Stacy.  Near or far, high or low, she wants to be able to travel and help other people with the gift that she has been given.

            If Stacy would have gotten married in her early 20’s like her sister did, these opportunities would probably not be available to her.  Paul was a single man and being a single man freed him up from home responsibilities and allowed him to serve God in ways that some of us could never do.  The same is true for Stacy.

            Does Stacy get lonely?  Absolutely.  But loneliness is not a good reason to get married.  God said that it is not good for a person to be alone, but God never said that every person must get married to avoid being alone.  We need friends, relatives, loved ones that can fill that emptiness.

            One of the most challenging things about my job is that I may go all day long without seeing or talking to another human being.  When Sonya comes home after work in the evening, she will often ask me, Did you talk to anyone today?  And sometimes I have to think long and hard about that.  Sometimes I remember, Yes, I spoke with a telemarketer on the phone for awhile.  (Telemarketers hate me because they will call and talk with me for about 10 minutes until they find out that I have absolutely no intention of buying whatever they are selling.  I just like to hear the sound of another person’s voice sometimes.)  It is so amazing to her that I can go all day without speaking to another human being!

            But I am thankful that the church does not require that I spend all of my day in the office at the church.  I know of one church that the pastor is expected to be in his office for 40 hours each week.  I would go nuts.  Thankfully I can go and sit at a coffee shop and at least be among other people.  And a part of my job includes going out and visiting with other people, seeing them in the nursing homes and at their private homes.  And yes, sometimes it is a challenge to go into the nursing homes but I know what it is like to be lonely, and I don’t want people to have to endure that.  Especially during difficult times.

            Last Monday, a man from our congregation had a simple out-patient surgical procedure done to remove one of his toes.  He is going through a lot right now; he is confused and suffering.  But on top of all of this, he is alone.  He hasn’t had any family around since his wife died a number of years ago.  No siblings, no children.  Really, he has nobody but the people of this church.  And I am thankful for the way that Danny and Frances have cared for him over the last couple of months.

            So when this man needed surgery, he was going through all of this alone.  And for a man who is already confused, this was surely scary.  I am glad that he did not have to go through it alone. 

            But there are times when being alone is a good thing.  In verses 11-13 from our scripture this morning, we find that Elijah is at Mt. Horeb where he is to meet God.  And as he stands there at the opening of the cave, a great wind passes by.  This wind was splitting mountains and breaking rocks into pieces.  But we are told that the Lord was not in the wind.  Following the wind came an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  Then there was a fire, but again, the Lord was not in the fire.  Where did Elijah meet the Lord?  V. 12-13, “And after the fire a sound of sheer silence.  When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.  Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah.’”  God met Elijah in the silence. 

Solitude, silence.  The Bible tells us that there are times when it is good to be alone.  If we look at the life of Jesus, we see him slipping off alone from time to time.  Before he began his public ministry, Jesus went out into the wilderness, into the silence, by himself to fast and pray.  He often snuck away from his disciples and those who were following him so that he might have some time alone with God. 

            Silence and solitude are great things.  I know that I am personally hardwired to want noise in my life.  When I walk into my house or sit down in my car or work in the office, the first thing that I do is I turn on the radio.  I never drive anywhere without music or talk radio going on in the background.  If I am working outside I strap my iPod to my arm, put the headphones on, and jam out to something, anything, just to make the silence go away.  But sometimes, silence is a good thing.

            When you read the Bible or pray, it is good to not have anything else going on to distract you.  That is why some people have prayer closets and this is why some people go on spiritual retreats to secluded places where there isn’t another living human being within sight.  This is why some religious people have joined monasteries and convents and take a vow of silence.  Jesus modeled for us that sometimes you just need to get away from all of the hustle and the bustle and the noise to focus on hearing God’s voice.  But Jesus also models for us that this is never meant to last forever.  God calls us to join with other people, to fellowship with one another and serve him together.

            Getting back to our scripture for this morning, we find that God meets this depressed, lonely Elijah in the silence.  And after Elijah explains to God what he is doing there (as if God didn’t already know), God does something about Elijah’s condition.  He gives him something that will help with his loneliness.  God gives Elijah a job, or three jobs to be precise.  Go to the wilderness of Damascus and anoint Hazael as king of Aram, anoint Jehu as king of Israel, and anoint Elisha as your successor as God’s prophet (vv. 15-16). 

            Now anointing these two people as kings isn’t going to take very long.  The longest part of the task is going to be in finding these people.  Then you pray over them, pour some oil on their heads, and you leave.  There is no long-term commitment from Elijah needed here.  But this third part, this anointing of Elisha, this does not end when the oil has flowed from the horn and onto Elisha’s head.  What God has called Elijah to do is on-going mentoring, teaching Elisha how to be a prophet of the one true God.

            Now that God has given Elijah work to do, Elijah can feel like he is serving a purpose.  His life has meaning because he is serving God.  And through his service to God he has gained a partner, a companion, and a friend.  Loneliness will no longer be a problem for Elijah.  And if we look forward in the life of Elijah, we can see that even when Elijah was uncertain of his future, when he was about to be taken up into heaven on a chariot of fire, Elisha was the kind of friend that would stand beside his mentor.  Elisha says, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” (2 Kings 2:2)

            My friends, I know that I am not the only one here that gets lonely from time to time.  And while, yes, I do believe that God calls us into solitude for periods of time to spend time with him, I do not believe that God intended us to be alone all of our days.  And I believe that one of the best things that we can do to overcome loneliness and the sense of worthlessness that sometimes comes with it is to serve the Lord.

            Volunteer at the Valley Mission, serving food to the homeless, cleaning the facilities, whatever you can do will be appreciated.  Visit the homebound people that you know would love to have company.  Or even better yet, move in with them and care for them.  You can benefit financially by sharing living expenses and you both gain a conversation partner.  Go to the nursing homes and talk to people you know and meet some people that you don’t know.  If you can’t leave your home, call an old friend.  Knit sweaters for the homeless.  Serve the Lord by loving other people and that loneliness will start to disappear.

            It is not good for a person to be alone.  Marriage, children, family life…these things don’t make a person complete.  What makes a person complete is a relationship with God, serving Him and loving others.  The next time you find yourself being lonely, and we all get lonely, perhaps this is God calling you to something.  Perhaps God is calling you to be a blessing to others.

Standing tall while respecting others

1 Kings 18:20-40

20So Ahab sent to all the Israelites, and assembled the prophets at Mount Carmel.  21Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” The people did not answer him a word. 22Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets number four hundred fifty. 23Let two bulls be given to us; let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it; I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. 24Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God.” All the people answered, “Well spoken!” 25Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; then call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” 26So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. 27At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” 28Then they cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them. 29As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

30Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come closer to me”; and all the people came closer to him. First he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down; 31Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, “Israel shall be your name”; 32with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. Then he made a trench around the altar, large enough to contain two measures of seed. 33Next he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. He said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” 34Then he said, “Do it a second time”; and they did it a second time. Again he said, “Do it a third time”; and they did it a third time, 35so that the water ran all around the altar, and filled the trench also with water. 36At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. 37Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” 38Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. 39When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.” 40Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” Then they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon, and killed them there.

 

            A Sunday school teacher was telling the story about Elijah’s confrontation with the false prophets of Baal to her elementary-aged students in class one day.  She told them about how he cut and prepared the bull for an offering and then how he had 12 barrels of water dumped over the offering.  The teacher asked her students, “Does anyone know why Elijah had them dump all of the water over the offering?”  An eager girl in the back started waving her hand in the air because she knew the answer.  When the teacher called on her, the little girl replied, “I bet they were in charge of making the gravy!”

            Today we are going to look at the story of the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal and I hope to show you that we are called to be like Elijah and stand up for what we believe in, even when the odds are against us, 450 to 1.  But I also hope to show you that unlike Elijah, we are called to respect all people even when we disagree on what we believe to be foundational to our lives.

            I remember in elementary school when we were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Of course, many of my classmates threw out the usual answers like: a cowboy, a football player, an astronaut, a teacher, and president of the United States.  Not once did I hear anyone say, “I want to be a prophet one day.”  Oh sure, the whole talking with God thing.  That was great.  But the hours were long, the pay was nothing, and there was a really good chance that the people in town were not going to like you and would possibly seek to kill you.  Prophets ate weird things, often cooked over questionable fuel sources, and dressed a little on the funny side.  Plenty of reason why one would not choose to be a prophet.  That is why the role of prophet is given by God, not chosen by the individual.  It was a tough line of work with few earthly perks.

            In the text leading up to our scripture for today, we find that Elijah has been hiding out in the desert for somewhere between two and three years.  They were in the third year of a drought and God told Elijah to go to King Ahab and tell him that the drought was about to end.  King Ahab has been searching for Elijah for these two to three years and why was he searching for Elijah?  Not to invite him over for tea, but to kill this dude.  And here he is, waltzing into Ahab’s home.  And Ahab accuses Elijah of causing the drought.  Elijah tells him, No, you are the reason for the drought.  Because you have worshiped the false god Baal, you and your people have suffered.

            So Elijah comes up with a bit of a contest to prove once and for all that Baal is nothing and that Yahweh is God.  They are to gather the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah at Mt. Carmel for a showdown.

            You have to love those odds, don’t you.  850 versus 1.  Now we don’t hear about the 400 prophets of Asherah once they get to the mountain, but our text tells us that the 450 prophets of Baal are there.  And Elijah challenges them to prepare an offering of a bull on a pile of wood next to an altar to Baal and he would do the same thing on an altar to the Lord.  They would each get their own opportunity to call to their god and to see which god would set fire to and consume their offering.  And whoever’s god was able to do this would be known throughout the land as the one true God.

            The prophets of Baal went first.  They called to their god and cried out to him, but nothing happened from morning through noon.  The prophets cut themselves with swords and spears, pouring their own blood out on the offering and showing their earnest desire for Baal to come to that place and consume their offering.  But nothing happened.

            So it came time for Elijah’s offering to the Lord.  He rebuilt the altar to the Lord, placed the wood on the altar, prepared the bull offering, and then he drenched the whole thing with water.  Twelve large containers of water were dumped on the offering until it was soaked and water was pooling all around the offering, the altar, and the wood.  Then Elijah offered a simple prayer to God and fire came from the sky and consumed the offering; the wood, the stones, the dust, and even the water was burnt up.  And our text tells us that the people turned back to God and said, “Indeed, Yahweh is God.”

            So that’s all cool, right?  I love that Elijah was bold in his faith and that he stood up for what he believed in, even among 850 other people.  I know that it can be difficult to stand up for what you believe in even when the odds are 2:1, even 1:1, or even in your favor.  And my life has never depended on it.  I’ve never been threatened.  Elijah knew very well that Ahab had been looking for him, wanting to kill him, and that if things didn’t go Elijah’s way, he was a goner.

            The prophets were often not the most poplar people in their time.  Rarely did they single out an individual and critique that person, but they often called attention to the sins of the community around them.  When Israel was prosperous, yet forgot about the widows and the orphans, Isaiah called the people out on the carpet.  He said “This isn’t right!  You know it, I know it, and I’m not going to stand for it any longer.”  People usually don’t like to hear that stuff.  So I have much respect for Elijah and the other prophets who were willing to sacrifice their popularity, their personal comfort, and even their lives for what they believed to be right.

But Elijah is not perfect; Elijah is a human being just like you and me.  And there are some things we see here about the character of Elijah that I don’t think are helpful for us as Christians today, things that we should not emulate.  And it isn’t just Elijah that fails God from time to time, we all do!  Even the greatest leaders in the Bible stumble from time to time.

            The Bible is full of imperfect people trying to follow God’s perfect will.  Some of the time we are called to do as these people did, and some times we are to learn from their mistakes as well.  And sometimes we are left to figure out who falls into which category.  We look at guys like Moses and we know that he was a great leader, but he also was a murderer.  David was called a man after God’s own heart, but he was an adulterer and also a murderer.  Jesus said that there was never a greater man born of a woman than John the Baptist, but John was a doubter and questioned Jesus as to if he was the messiah.  These are all godly men, with an emphasis on men.  They are not God.  Neither was Elijah.  I think that Elijah did great things.  As I said last week, he is one of my favorite prophets.  So while I think we can look at him and admire his bravery in standing up to the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, I think we can skip the mocking of people from other religions.

If we look at verse 27, we find a little humor coming from Elijah.  I like humor, I tell jokes.  Elijah is being sarcastic, calling out to the prophets of Baal, “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.”  When Elijah says that Baal must have wandered away, this is a Hebrew idiom referencing wandering into the woods to do his business.  I can tend to be a little sarcastic myself, so I laugh a little bit when I read these things.

            But the Bible tells it like it is in verse 27.  It says that Elijah “mocked” the prophets of Baal.  He is demeaning them, making fun of them, laughing at their expense.  To be honest, I would say that Elijah was being a bit of a jerk to these other prophets.

            I think the Elijah did well to stand his ground when it was one versus 450 or even 850.  Stand up for what you believe.  But don’t be a jerk about it.  I sometimes hear Christians laugh about what people from other religions believe.  Yeah, Mormons believe that Joseph Smith translated a golden book that nobody else ever even saw.  And how heavy would that book be if it were made entirely of gold?  Right, like that could happen.  L. Ron Hubbard wrote that human existence came into being from aliens planting life on earth (or something like that).  We hear these things, and we laugh.  But are some of the things that we believe that much easier to believe?  That Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, and rose from the dead? 

            Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, and rose from the dead.  My point is, if we believe something as abnormal as these things, then why do we make fun of other religions that believe certain abnormal things as well?  Or why do we single out a religious group and mock them as Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal?

            I went to a very white, very middle class, very culturally Christian high school in Ohio.  And most of us had never even met a person of a different religion.  Then in the sixth grade, a family from India moved to our school district.  I believe that school was pretty rough for Kunj.  He spoke differently than the rest of us, his skin was darker, and he was shorter than most of the kids his age.  So we made fun of him for these things.

            But it wasn’t until we got to high school gym class, after over two years of being made fun of for his physical characteristics, just when the other kids were starting to accept him, we found out something else about Kunj.  Kunj was and is a Hindu.  We first noticed in the locker room after gym class that he had this string that ran from his shoulder around his waist.  This was new to us, so we asked about it.  It is what is called the janoi, or the sacred string.  When a Hindu child turns about 13 years old, they go through a rite of passage ceremony, like a Jewish boy would have a Bar Mitzvah.  This string was something that Kunj wore all of the time, under his clothes, in the shower, in class. 

            So now religion became one more thing that we could make fun of Kunj about.  Thankfully, none of us really knew what a Hindu was.  But when we had hamburgers for school lunches, we would give Kunj a hard time saying things like, “I think I’m eating your grandma!”  Man, we were so mean to Kunj.  And as bad as it is when kids make fun of other kids, the really sad thing is that some of us never grow out of it.  I don’t think Elijah was right in his mocking the prophets of Baal.   

            If we are to follow any individual from the Bible, let us follow Jesus Christ.  If we look at Jesus’ interactions with other people in the Bible, we find that he is kind of harsh to some people, and often loving and accepting toward others.  Who is he harsh toward?  Those that think they have everything figured out, those that criticize other people’s actions, those that condemn others because of their lack of religious zeal.  Jesus is most critical of the Scribes, Sadducees, and the Pharisees.  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.  It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” (Mat 23:23).  It was the people that thought that they had it all together who were missing the point!

            But how did Jesus interact with those outside of his religion?  We don’t have many examples in the Bible, but in one instance, Jesus describes a Samaritan as “good” and uses that Samaritan as the example of how all people should act.  When he meets the Samaritan woman at the well, he does not mock her, but he enters into a conversation with her.  The only example we have of Jesus speaking poorly of a person of a different faith background is when he encounters the Syrio-Phoenician woman and he calls her a dog.  I really don’t know what to do with that scripture, to be honest!

            So when I hear Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal, I don’t think that we are to mimic his actions.  We are to stand tall when we are in the minority, but we are to respect all people, and that means respecting their beliefs, even when we don’t believe what they believe at all.  Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t have conversations about faith and that we can’t invite people of other faith to consider the foundations of their faith and whether they should be following Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  This doesn’t mean that all religions are the same.  But it does mean that we should treat all people with the same amount of dignity and respect that they deserve as people created in the image of God.

            Elijah took it one step further than simply mocking the prophets of Baal.  He then went to the extreme measure of massacring all 450 of them.  When the people saw that the Lord was indeed God, they repented of what they had done, they repented for having worshipped Baal and Asherah.  They new that they had been in the wrong and they were willing to do whatever they needed to do to make things right.  So Elijah said, “Kill them” and the people did just that.

            The Bible doesn’t tell us that God told Elijah to kill the 450 prophets of Baal, but if you just read through the text, you might assume that Elijah is doing God’s will.  But we have seen time and time again throughout the Bible that people that are following God do make mistakes, they do act out of their own emotions, and they do often miss God’s intentions.

            I don’t know that Elijah needed to have those prophets killed.  I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them who had seen this great act would have converted and given their lives right then and there to follow the one true God.  But instead it is often our first response to just kill the other people.  Now that the power is in our favor, we are going to exercise that power!

            Just over a week ago, thirteen American soldiers lost their lives on US soil at Ft. Hood in Texas.  The gunman was a major in the Army, and the gunman is a Muslim.  When things like this happen, especially on our home turf, Americans tend to retaliate in an extreme way.  After September 11^th, 2001, Muslim mosques were bombed by everyday people, property was defaced, messages of hate were sprayed on homes and cars belonging to Muslims.  On our televisions and computers we hear messages from Christian leaders saying that we need to attack back.  If they take 13 American lives, we will take 1,300 of their lives.

            Let’s stop this cycle of hate!  I follow the Prince of Peace, Lord of lords, who told us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, and to pray for those that persecute us.  A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that says, “Love your enemies, it messes with their heads!”  Indeed, it does.  When we love our enemies, it does mess with their heads.  And sometimes, they end up loving us back.

            I saw Kunj a couple of years ago at a high school football game.  He was still just as short as ever, but yet he seemed to be walking a lot taller.  He walked back into his old school where he was mocked and persecuted by the jocks, the preppies, the rich kids, even the nerds.  And now, as the jocks had seen their waistlines grow and their hairlines recede, Kunj, a successful software engineer with a beautiful wife and child, could have turned the tables on those jokes, I mean jocks, and mocked them.  But he didn’t.  He approached them as friends, shook their hands, and caught up with them.  He asked them about their lives and showed an honest interest in what they were doing.  And I’m glad he did.  You’ve gotta love it when a Hindu teaches how to be Christ-like.

            Standup for what you believe in.  Even if you are outnumbered 850 to 1, even if it might cost you your life.  But if you find yourself in a power position where you can persecute others, mock them, or even slaughter them, remember the teachings and life of our Lord and love those people instead.

God is calling

1 Kings 17:7-16

7But after a while the wadi dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

8Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 9“Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” 11As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 12But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” 13Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. 14For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” 15She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. 16The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

 

Two cannibals meet one day. The first cannibal says, “You know, I just can’t seem to find a tender missionary. I’ve baked ‘em, I’ve roasted ‘em, I’ve stewed ‘em, I’ve barbequed ‘em, I’ve even tried every sort of marinade. I just cannot seem to get them tender.” The second cannibal asks, “What kind of missionary do you use?” The other replied, “You know, the ones that hang out at that place at the bend of the river. They have those brown cloaks with a rope around the waist and their sort of bald on top with a funny ring of hair on their heads.” “Ah ha!” he replies. “No wonder…those are friars!”

What do you think of when you hear the term “missionary”?  I would bet that most of us have at least some understanding of what a missionary is.  We often think of a missionary as the people that the church supports financially and prayerfully to send them into the remote parts of the world to work with indigenous people, teaching them about Christianity and trying to teach them what we believe to be better ways to live (reading, writing, arithmetic).  And indeed, this is mission!  But mission is so much more!

            I would define mission as joining with God to bring shalom to all of the world.  We often hear shalom translated as “peace”.  And that is somewhat correct.  Peace is an aspect of shalom, but the definition of shalom is much bigger than peace.  Shalom means “well-being.”  So when I say that mission is joining in with God to bring shalom to all of the world, I am saying that mission includes economic development in third-world countries, mission includes feeding the poor, clothing the naked, sharing God’s redemptive message, the forgiveness of sins, digging wells for fresh water, teaching inner-city school kids, working with AIDS victims in Africa and in our neighborhood, prayer, and financial support.  Mission is joining in on what God is doing and not just sitting back in our easy chair, going to church once a week, and saying, “It’s all good, I’m under grace.”

            Rob Bell was asked once what the mission statement for his church is and he replied, “We are disciples, who are making disciples, who are making disciples, who are making disciples…”  I like that!  Because to bring about God’s shalom, we need followers of Jesus Christ.  Now I did not say that we need believers in Jesus Christ.  The Bible tells us that even the demons believe.  When Jesus gave his great commission in Matthew 28 he tells his disciples to go out into all of the world and make more disciples, more followers, not just believers.

            Today we are going to look at the prophet Elijah and we will see on this Missions Sunday that if we are doing what God has called us to do, God will supply us with what we need to work for God’s shalom.  We will also see that sometimes answering God’s call requires a leap of faith.  So let’s jump into the scripture to see what we can learn about joining God in his mission.

            Elijah is an interesting character who leads an interesting life.  In the scripture leading up to our text for today we find that King Ahab has come to power and married a woman named Jezebel.  Ahab begins to worship the god of his wife, who is named Baal, and builds a temple and an altar for Baal, and then puts up an Asherah pole.  So we have the new king of Israel and many of the people breaking the first commandment “You shall have no other gods before me.”  God doesn’t like it when his chosen people reject him, so God sends the prophet Elijah to Ahab and tells him that because of his sin, that there will be a great drought in the land. 

            God then speaks to Elijah telling him to move east of the Jordan, and it isn’t clear why God told Elijah to do this.  It is either to keep him safe from Ahab, to lead him to water, or likely both.  So this is what Elijah does, he picks up and moves to the Jordan.  And God led him to water to drink and the ravens, birds from the air, brought him bread and meat twice a day.

            Elijah was doing God’s work, was he not?  He was a prophet of the most High God, working to bring God’s shalom to the world.  And God sent him to a place where he would be safe and God delivered food for him.  God provided what was necessary for Elijah to do the things that God had called him to do.  And I believe that is true for people that are doing God’s work today as well.  Now God never promises to keep us safe when we are doing God’s work.  We have large volumes of books naming people that died serving God.  One of which is the Martyr’s Mirror.  But we have probably all heard stories of how God supplies for those who are committed to his service.

            We in Virginia Mennonite Conference have a wonderful mission organization just up the road in Harrisonburg.  Virginia Mennonite Missions supports around 200 mission workers every year in at least fifteen countries, often in partnership with other mission agencies.  They tend to concentrate missionaries in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean region, and some Asian and European countries.  Not only do they participate in overseas ministry, but Virginia Mennonite Missions is also very involved in local ministry as well; planting churches and equipping the established churches for ministry in a rapidly changing world.  I get a monthly newsletter from Ed Bontrager informing us of resources for those in pastoral leadership in these times.  VMMissions is a great organization, and I am glad that we as a church support this organization.

            Now as many of you probably already know, the past year or so has been a pretty tough year for many people financially.  Many people have lost jobs, lost hours at their work, taken a pay cut, lost homes, and so on. We are in a recession; times are tough.  So when times get tough, non-profit organizations like churches tend to take a hit financially.  It makes sense, when your constituents are making less money, less money will be donated.  This is true for most churches, and it is often true for organizations like Virginia Mennonite Missions.

            VMMissions has an annual budget of about $2,000,000.00 and they operate on a September 1-August 31 fiscal year.  During this past year individual and congregational giving was down 6%, which is not really that much when compared to other mission organizations.  But that wasn’t their only hit financially.  One thing that we often overlook is that the exchange rate of the US dollar to the Euro has not been in our favor recently.  So even if VMMissions is able to raise money, it is worth less when it is sent into other countries.

            But perhaps the biggest hit that VMMissions took last year was in their long-term investments.  We often refer to these investments as endowments.  They put a large sum of money in a high-earning account, like a money market or CD, and use the interest off of these accounts for their operating expenses.  VMMissions usually depends on 10% of their income coming from endowments.  That’s $200,000 that they usually rely on from endowments.  This year they lost money on their endowments.  I don’t know many non-profit organizations that can take that kind of hit and survive.

            So VMMissions was looking for ways to save money in the upcoming year, as we all should.  Pay cuts for staff personnel, elimination of staff positions, elimination of missionary positions; all were considered.  Chris and Melody Riddle were home on furlough this past summer after only 2 years of ministry in Italy.  They believed that they were just getting settled in their community, just getting comfortable with the language, their kids were just starting to connect with other kids, they were finally feeling like they were doing ministry, and they were told that there might not be enough money to send them back.

            Perhaps God was saying that the work of VMMissions and the work of the Riddles was no longer needed, because God provides for those who are doing His will, right?  Maybe this was God’s way of saying, “It is time to find something else to do.”  But in August, and remember that this is the last month of the fiscal year for VMMissions, approximately $600,000.00 in unexpected donations came in, mostly from bequests.  Now not all of this money was made immediately available for VMMissions, but it gave a huge boost financially to VMMissions as well as a huge boost to the attitudes of the 200+ workers with VMMissions.  There was still a need to reduce this year’s budget by 9%, but Chris, Melody, and the boys have been able to return to Italy to continue in the work that they have begun.  God provides when we are doing God’s will.

            Now this is not a call to complacency.  I am in no way suggesting that we sit back and do nothing and just expect that God will take care of things.  No, we are called to action.  We are called to service.  We are called to give of our time, we are called to give of our energy, we are called to give of our money, and we might be called to give our last bit of food.

            In our scripture for this morning, Elijah goes to the town that God directed him to.  And Elijah approaches a widow that God told Elijah would provide food for him.  But when Elijah asks her for bread, she tells him her sad story.  She only has enough flour and enough oil to make a small loaf of bread.  When that is gone, every thing is gone.  So she is going to go home, make what bread she can, share it with her son, and then die of hunger.

            But Elijah informs her that God has a different plan.  God wants to use her and God will make sure that the small amount of flour and oil will not run out until the drought is over and there is food in the region once again.

            How many of you know what an impala is?  Now I’m not talking about the Chevy Impala, I’m talking about the African antelope-like creature called an impala.  Impala’s are herbivores, meaning they eat plants.  They are not a predator to anything but grass and shrubs.  However, impalas make a pretty tasty treat to lions, tigers, and other carnivores.  Impalas grow to about 3 feet tall at the shoulders, and can weigh up to 170 lbs. so they are quite comparable to our white tail deer that so many of us like to eat.

            Now the interesting thing about an impala is that God gave them the ability to escape danger in an amazing way.  Impalas can jump over 10 feet high into the air, and over 30 feet long.  So when a predator approaches an impala, they just start jumping around, covering long distances in a single bound, until they reach safety.  To put that in perspective, if you put an impala on a basketball court, an impala could jump high enough to land on top of the basket and it could jump far enough to go ten feet beyond the three-point line. 

            Now if you go to the zoo, you will see impalas enclosed in an area with only a short wall around it that is about three, maybe four feet high.  And it doesn’t take a physicist to figure out that an impala should be able to jump out of a pen that has a wall that is only three feet high.  And having grown up on a farm, I know exactly how difficult it can be to keep an animal within the confines that you choose for it.  So why don’t the impalas jump out of their pens?

            Well someone figured out that impalas will not jump somewhere if they can’t see the place where they are going to land.  In order to have the confidence to leap over that wall, they need to see what is on the other side.  So as long as the wall is at or above eye level, they will not jump over it because they are afraid of what’s on the other side.

            We have the ability to do great things.  We have been called to join God in his shalom making mission to this world.  We have been called to join in what God is doing, but so often we are afraid because we are uncertain of what might happen.  We refuse to jump out of our pens because we don’t really know what is on the other side of the wall.  It is safe in our pens.  We have food to eat and a place to sleep.

            And this is understandable.  We all fear the unknown.  The woman from our scripture hesitated to give Elijah the last of her food and there is good reason to hesitate in this situation.  I would hesitate too.  Wouldn’t you?

            Now the interesting thing to me is that in verse nine God tells Elijah that he has instructed a widow in the town to feed Elijah.  But when Elijah comes to the woman, she says that she can’t feed him.  She only has enough to feed her son and herself one more time, and then they are going to die.  But Elijah instructs her to first make him something to eat, and then she will see that God will provide for her until the great drought is over.  They will not run out of flour and they will not run out of oil.  There will be plenty.  And evidently the woman listened to Elijah because what Elijah had said would happen did happen.

            See the thing that makes God’s calling so much easier to answer is when other people are hearing the same thing as you are.  God had told this woman to feed Elijah, but she didn’t listen.  She was like that impala, not knowing what was on the other side of the fence, afraid to jump because of the unknown.  But when Elijah comes along and confirms what she has heard, then she knows that her original call from God was authentic.  Someone else has heard it as well.

            Now I know that the Bible shows us some special cases where an individual is called by God and nobody else seems to know about it.  We don’t know that anybody else was able to confirm Abram’s call to leave Ur, we don’t know that anybody confirmed Moses’ call to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  But I believe that when God calls us today, God does so by speaking not only to us, but to other people as well.

            Diane Zaerr Brenneman worked for Mennonite Church USA in a role that the business world might call human resources.  She was in charge of getting pastors to fill out what is called the Ministerial Leadership Inquiry documents which are then matched with a similar document that churches that are looking for a pastor fill out.  So Diane was in a position where a lot of pastors would come to her to say, Hey, can you help me find a job? 

            Diane told me that quite often she would have newcomers that would come to her office, call her on the phone, or send her an email saying, “God is telling me that I should be a pastor.”  And her response was always, “Great.  Who else is telling you that?”

            I encourage you to ask the same question of yourself when you sense that God is calling you to do something scary, life-changing, life-altering, or new.  If you sense that God is calling you to join in on God’s mission, ask friends and family to help you discern if that calling is truly from God.  If the impala would only ask the neighboring orangutan if it was safe to jump over the fence, then maybe it would find the confidence to do just that and explore new territory.  And maybe, just maybe, if we partner together, affirming God’s call on our lives, we might be able to join together to seek God’s shalom for all of the world, disciples making disciples, who make disciples.

God is listening

Hebrews 9:11-14

11But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), 12he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. 13For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, 14how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

 

            I went to a pastor’s appreciation dinner on Tuesday, and I decided to wear my navy blazer, which most of you have never seen before because I so rarely wear it.  I was looking classy that evening with my starched-white shirt, navy blazer, and khaki pants.  I was, that is, until the lady next to me asked me to pass the sweet and low and I reached a little too low for it and dragged my sleeve through the chocolate cake on the table.  But of course I did not know immediately what I had done.  So I rested my arm at my side, I sat it on the table in front of me, I put it on the back of my chair.  And by the time I noticed what I had done, I had spread chocolate all across the right side of my fancy blazer, the chair, and the white table cloth.  By this time I was not looking as classy as I had when I left the house.

            So what did I do to clean it all up?  I rubbed some blood and ashes from a burnt heifer on the chocolate stains.  No, of course not!  I’m still looking for a good dry cleaner in the Staunton area.  Blood, ashes, what are these things going to clean?  I’ve cut myself enough times and cleaned enough fire pits to know that these things do not clean, they do not purify.  They stain.  I saw a joke on the internet this week saying that the best thing to do when you get a blood stain on a t-shirt is to spill more blood around the stain so that it doesn’t stand out as much.

            So there is something counterintuitive about God’s cleaning agent, because it is by the blood of Christ that we are made clean.  It doesn’t make sense, and perhaps that is one that we can chalk up to the humor of God.  I did not choose today’s scripture because it is an easy one to preach on or because it makes sense, but I hope that we can all be challenged to grow by looking at God’s cleaning agent.  Today I want to look at two different things that have come about because of the actions of Jesus: the atonement and purification.

            Today’s scripture is full of references to Judaism, which we might expect by the name of this particular book of the Bible: Hebrews.  The author of Hebrews is writing to Jewish people and is attempting to show them how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish messianic expectations.  So in order to understand today’s scripture, we need to understand Judaism a little better.  Actually, I would say that in order to understand scripture at all, we need a pretty good background in Judaism.  So it might seem like today’s sermon is a little heavy on the Jewish teachings and practices, but I believe that this is essential for us to understand what scripture is intended to teach us.

Verse 11 begins by telling us that Jesus came to the greater and more perfect tabernacle or tent.  This is a reference to the old, portable tabernacle that the Israelites took with them as they wandered from captivity in Egypt to the Promised Land over a period of 40 years.  Then, as they set up in the Promised Land, they continued to worship in the tent style tabernacle up until Solomon built the temple just after the year 1000 BC.  So we have a couple hundred years where the Israelites worshiped God in a moveable tent, or more precisely a series of tents.

            When Solomon built his temple, it in many ways was structured the same way that the tabernacle made out of the series of tents was to be assembled.  Both had a holy place inside where the priests would perform the religious practices and then there was the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place where only the high priest could enter one time each year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to make sacrifices to God to atone for the sins of the people.  To atone for something means to compensate for something done wrong, ie the forgiveness of sins.  These two rooms, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place were separated by a curtain, or perhaps two curtains.  God was believed to dwell within the Holy of Holies and if anyone other than the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies they would die.  If the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies without first going through the correct rituals to purify himself, he would die.  I’ve even heard it said that the High Priest would tie a bell around his neck and a rope to his leg that way if they were struck down dead by God when they entered into the Holy of Holies the other priests would hear that the bell stopped ringing and they could pull the priest out with the rope.

            Before the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement they were to get two goats and a bull and bring them into the temple.  The High Priest would then take the bull and slaughter it as a sin offering to atone for his own sin and the sin of his household.  If he didn’t do this, he didn’t live through the whole process.  A sinful person could not enter the Holy of Holies and have direct contact with God. 

So this now-atoned-for priest takes the goats and one of them will be sent out into the wilderness as a scapegoat, a symbolic carrier of the sins of the people away from the camp, and the other one is slaughtered for the sins of the people.  The High Priest then takes the blood of the goat and blood of the bull and smears it on various things within the Holy of Holies and within the tent of meeting.  The bodies of these animals are then burned as an offering, and the remains are taken out of the camp and disposed of.  Then they did it again the next year, and the year after that, and so on.  Every year, on the Day of Atonement, they went through this process.

But the author of Hebrews says that Jesus came as High Priest in a perfect tabernacle.  And in verse 12, “he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.”

That, my friends, is what we call the Good News.  No longer do we need to slaughter a goat and cast our sins upon another goat and send it out into the wilderness to atone for our sins.  But Jesus came and acted as both the High Priest and as the sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all those that would know him as Lord.

Now there is a clear division between verses 12 and 13.  Verse 12 is comparing the Day of Atonement in the Jewish tradition and the way that Jesus has served as both priest and sacrifice in his death on the cross atoning for the sins of his followers.  There is a stipulation here.  If you are a follower of Jesus, then this atonement is for you.  It’s not just for Jews, it’s not just for Mennonites, but it is for those that know Jesus as Lord.  However, I would say that verse 13 changes gears a bit and goes from the atonement and transitions to purification. 

The Israelites had a fair number of purity laws concerning what they could and could not touch, what they could or could not eat, with whom they could or could not eat it with.  You cannot touch dead people or you will be ceremonially unclean for a week and you can’t enter into the temple for worship, you can’t be in contact with other people.  You can’t eat shellfish, pork, and other animals, or else you will be unclean and you cannot enter into the temple and you can’t be in contact with other people.  Don’t eat with a Gentile, or…you get the idea.

In Numbers 19 we find an interesting ritual that was used for the purification of the people when they became unclean.  The priest was to slaughter and burn a red heifer, and the ashes of the burned heifer were to be mixed with water and dumped on the unclean person.  Then, after the prescribed time had passed, that person could enter into the Jewish community and into worship, into the presence of God once again.  This is what the author of Hebrews is referring to when he says, “13For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, 14how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!”

I would say that atonement is contingent on making Jesus your Lord, but this purification is universal.  These are separate acts that took place through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We often focus in the church on the atonement aspect of Jesus death and resurrection, but we should not take lightly this purification that took place.

It is because Jesus has purified all people that we can approach God without going through the High Priest.  At Jesus’ death, the Gospel of Luke says that the curtain that separated the common people from the Holy of Holies was torn in two.  God does not reside in the Holy of Holies.  Now God lives with us, among us, and within us in the form of the Holy Spirit.  And again, there is nothing that we have to do to acquire this.  Jesus already took care of it.  So whether you are the finest, clean cut, church-going Christian, or a drug-dealing, thieving, lowlife, God will hear your prayers.  Jesus bridged the gap that once divided God and humanity, the gap that once could only be bridged by a High Priest who had gone through the purification rituals.  And I believe that Jesus bridged that gap because Jesus, as God incarnate, came and dwelled among us, among the sinners, the tax collectors and prostitutes.  Now all can come directly to God.

Would you not agree that all people can come to God in prayer?  Or does God only hear the prayers of those who are righteous and upright?  If God does not hear the prayers of sinners, then when I prayed to God and asked him to be Lord in my life, that prayer was not heard.  I was not a Christian when I dedicated my life to following Jesus.  If I had already been a Christian, then I would have already made that decision.

In Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells a parable about two men that went up to the temple to pray; one a Pharisee and one a tax collector.  First the Pharisee stands up to pray, makes a big show about things, and prays out loud, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

But then we hear from the tax collector, the un-holy one, the one that the Pharisee used as an example of what he was glad to not be like.  And the tax collector beats his breast and says, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”  And who does Jesus say is heard by God?  Trick question!  They are both heard by God.  But the tax collector is the one that goes home on God’s good side.

Yes, I believe that God hears all prayers.  If we truly believe that God is all-knowing, then God must hear all prayers, regardless of our outward piety.  Righteousness is not a criteria in the New Testament for being heard by God and righteousness in not a criteria in the New Testament for God answering your prayer.  The criteria in the New Testament that we are given for God answering prayers is when we ask for things according to God’s will in Jesus’ name.  And it was God’s will to forgive the tax collector in Jesus’ parable.

This was not the case in the Jewish way of thinking.  If we look at John chapter 9, the story of the man born blind and healed by Jesus, we find that the Pharisees were questioning this now-healed man about Jesus to see if he sinned by healing on the Sabbath.  And this man born blind says that Jesus could not have sinned by healing him because God does not hear the prayers of sinners.  Chapter 9:31, “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will.”  He is saying, Jesus couldn’t have been a sinner because God answered his prayer.  We find scripture in the Old Testament that confirms this in Proverbs and Psalms.  But because Jesus has come to this earth in the form of a human being, spent time with the sinners, and torn the curtain separating the Holy of Holies, now all can come to God in prayer.

            This is hard for some of us to understand today.  We want to believe that we are the ones that God hears and nobody else.  We want to be like the man born blind and say, “God does not hear the prayers of sinners.”  We feel like we are entitled to God hearing our prayers and not the prayers of the sinners, not the prayers of riff-raff and vagabonds.  We have dedicated our lives to serving God!  We have sacrificed money, fame, power, prestige.  We have given to the poor, loved our enemy, forgiven people that did not deserve to be forgiven.  God must hear our prayers; God must hear my prayers.  It just doesn’t seem fair to think that God would hear the prayers of all people.

            But then we realize, Christianity isn’t about what I have done.  Christianity is about what God has done through Jesus Christ.  And to be honest, sometimes that scares me.  That scares me because I like to be in control.  If I just do this, and if I just do that, then God will love me more, then God will hear my prayers, then God will answer my prayers.  But no, it is not about what I do.  It is about what God has done.

One thing that I get from time to time when people find out that I am a pastor or a church-going man is that they will ask me to pray for them.  And it is not that they are asking me to pray with them as they pray, but to pray for them because they think that they are not good enough to pray to God.  They believe that they are sinners and that there is this separation between them and God and that God can not hear them across that gulf.  I try to assure them that my prayers are no better than their prayers.  God will hear you whether you are the pope or a prostitute, a reverend or society’s reject.  Perhaps the best thing that I could do for people in that situation is to say, Yes, I will pray for you.  Will you pray for me?

Today is All Saints Day.  We in the Mennonite Church don’t often make a big deal about All Saints Day because we don’t like to venerate individuals.  Perhaps that is a good thing, because as I have said, it isn’t about what we do, but about what God has already done that deserves veneration.

But yet we do have a decision to make.  We are faced with the decision to accept the gift of grace and follow Christ, or not.  And to be honest, accepting grace is the easy part, following Christ, what we call discipleship, is not.

In his letters to the Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, Paul addresses his recipients as “saints”.  To the saints in Corinth, to the saints in Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae.  Paul doesn’t call them saints because they are perfect, but because they have made the decision to follow Jesus, accepting the atonement brought about by his blood, and not the blood of goats and bulls, and dedicating themselves to a life of service.

As I look out upon the faces of the saints of Staunton, we know that we are not perfect, but we are here today because we seek to serve the living God.  Maybe you wouldn’t think of yourself as a saint.  Maybe you can think of a grandparent or a neighbor that was truly a saint.  But me, a saint?  Come on!

If that is where you are today, praise God, because we serve a God that came to this earth in the form of Jesus Christ to bridge the gap between sinful humanity and a holy God.  Now sinners like you and sinners like me can come to God to ask for healing, to ask for guidance, to ask for forgiveness so that we can work toward becoming the saints that we are called to be.

Blood and ashes leave stains.  I’ve got the shirts to prove it.  But the blood of Christ has cleansed us.  Is this counterintuitive?  Yes indeed.  Is it effective?  I’m counting on it.  And I am thankful that everyone, sinners and saints, can come to our Lord.  Praise God.

Who is Blind?

Mark 10:46-52

46They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

 

            I remember an experiment that we did in High School Biology class involving crickets.  We were given a live cricket and we were told to see what effects it would have on the cricket if we removed its legs one at a time.  So I pulled off one of the cricket’s front legs and I yelled at the cricket “Hop!”  And the cricket hopped.  I pulled off another front leg and again yelled “Hop” and the cricket hopped again.  I pulled off the third leg, yelled hop and got the same result.  Finally, I pulled of the last leg, yelled hop, and this time I got no response from the cricket.  So I wrote up a report with my findings from the experiment and do you know what we discovered?  When all of the legs of a cricket have been removed, they become deaf.  (Please don’t pull legs off crickets.  It was a joke.)

            I tell that joke today because I was listening to a segment on National Public Radio the other day about crickets.  We get crickets in our house all of the time, though I am not sure where they get in.  I love to hear crickets outdoors singing their songs, but as Sonya assures me, they do not need to be in our house.  So when I heard that this segment on crickets was coming right up, I made myself comfortable and tuned in to hear about these varmints hoping to find out how to remove them.

            As many of us are well aware, crickets make a unique sound and I really don’t know how to explain it other than to say that it is a kind of chirping sound.  They make this sound by rubbing their hind legs together.  Some claim that this is their way of communicating with one another.  Some people claim that it is a way to tell the temperate, by counting the number of chirps per minute and plugging it into a formula.  But the thing that I found most interesting about the chirp of a cricket is that if you record the sound of a cricket chirping and slow it way down, you can actually hear that each chirp is made up of eight individual chirps that are made too quickly for our ears to discern.  We simply perceive every eight chirps as one.  It is truly amazing what we can learn when we just slow down and listen.  This pest, this varmint, this bug turns out to be a pretty fascinating creature.

            Sometimes we treat people in our community as pests, varmints, and bugs as well.  They seem to get in the way of what we are trying to do, and they might even seem to us to be getting in the way of what God wants to do.  But today, I want to slow things down a bit to see that there might be more to God’s plan than we often see, and if we slow ourselves down a bit and truly listen to the Spirit, we might hear God’s plan a little more clearly.

            Our scripture begins by telling us that Jesus and his disciples are just a passing through the city of Jericho.  They have another 17 miles to go until they get to their destination of Jerusalem.  Just before or scripture begins, Jesus tells his disciples what is going to happen to him in Jerusalem.  He is going to be handed over to the religious authorities who will then hand him over to the secular government who will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him.  Who wouldn’t want to go to Jerusalem?!  Sounds like a blast.  At least we find in the next chapter that Jesus received a good welcoming into the city, but things went from good to bad pretty quickly.  

            So they are passing through Jericho on their way to Jerusalem on the days leading up to what we often call Holy Week, and they pass along side a blind beggar.  And someone must have recognized Jesus because this blind beggar heard the conversations among the people, “Hey, isn’t that Jesus of Nazareth?  No, that’s not him.  Sure it is.  See, he is running around with that group of twelve ragged men.”

            This wasn’t the first time that this blind beggar had hear of this man named Jesus.  The stories had been circulating for some time now.  This Jesus guy travels from town to town, talking about a new way of life, a way of life that doesn’t end with death but will transcend into eternity.  And not only does he teach about this new life, he gives new life!  He gives people a taste of what is to come when all of the world recognizes him as the true king.  He heals the sick, the lame are able to leap like deer, the mute are able to speak, and the blind…the blind are able to see!  And that is what excites our blind beggar sitting alongside the road in Jericho.

            So this blind beggar yells out, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  And this title “Son of David” is nothing less than a messianic title.  This blind beggar recognizes that this Jesus of Nazareth is the one that Isaiah had spoken of almost 700 years earlier, saying that he would be the one to bear the infirmities of the people.  This blind beggar knew that Jesus was the Messiah.

            Let’s pause that story for a moment and come back to it after we look ahead in our Bibles.  In Luke’s Gospel (chapter 7) we read that John the Baptist began to question whether or not Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the anointed one.  So he sends his disciples to Jesus to find out if he is actually the one that they have been waiting on.  And what is Jesus’ response?  He tells John’s disciples to tell John what they have seen: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. (7:22)

            I think that this is a little bit ironic.  John the Baptist, who first met Jesus when he was nothing more than a baby in his mother’s womb, the very man that spoke so boldly about Jesus early on in his ministry, the very man that baptized Jesus and witnessed the sky open up and God’s voice speaking about this man was now questioning if he was the messiah.  The blind man that saw none of this, he had never seen anything at all, yet he knew that Jesus was the Messiah.  So who was blind in this case?

            You see, John must have fallen into the trap of the popular culture that understood the Messiah to be one that would come and lead the Jewish people back to their once prominent position in sole possession of the Promised Land.  And John was getting anxious waiting on Jesus to do what he thought Jesus should be doing.  And in taking his expectations of the Messiah and broadcasting them upon Jesus, he began to even question if Jesus was the one that he was to be looking for.  He was anxious for action and he was ready to do what he believed was necessary.  But his skewed messianic expectations caused him to be blind to the way that God was moving in that time and in that place.  He didn’t first take the time to discern the Spirit.

            So I have thus far only referred to this blind beggar as a blind beggar and I have not used his name, which Mark tells us is Bartimaeus.  Mark says that his name is Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.  Now Bartimaeus is a Hebrew name, which means, “Son of Timaeus”.  Bar is the Hebrew word for son, Bat is the Hebrew word for daughter (ie Bathsheba).  So when Mark says that his name is Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, he is writing that in Greek for his Gentile readers.  And essentially it sounds like the blind man doesn’t even have a name.  At least his name is not important enough to even be recorded.  He was only known as the blind man or the son of Timaeus.

            See, because this blind man, and I will call him Bartimaeus from now on, because Bartimaeus was blind, he was considered defective.  He was damaged goods.  He may not have been accepted in the temple in Jerusalem to worship because of his physical defect.  He would have been looked at as either a sinner or his parents would have been looked at as sinners.  We read that in John chapter 9 with the man born blind.  People were convinced that because this man was born blind that he or his parents must have sinned against God.

            So here we have this blind man, a man that could not worship in the temple, a man that was considered a sinner, a man who was so insignificant that nobody even knew his name or if he even had a name.  And he was calling out to Jesus as he passed by.  Jesus, the Messiah, have mercy on me.

            But here is the amazing thing.  As Bartimaeus is calling out to Jesus, the people try to quiet him down.  The NRSV says that they attempt to sternly quiet him down.  This wasn’t a little “hush” from the guy standing next to Bartimaeus.  They were threatening him!  Why were they doing this?  Did they not know the prophesies?  Did they not know that the Messiah was to come to take on the infirmities of the people, to heal the blind, the deaf, and the lame?  No, they were more interested in what Jesus could do for them than what Jesus could do for others.

            Maybe they weren’t there to heard Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth about three years earlier when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19).  But for some reason, this blind beggar knew that Jesus was not only able to heal him of his blindness, but this blind beggar seemed to know that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah that he and everyone else had been waiting on for the redemption of their people.  Who is blind?

            I believe that we see this today as well.  Many Christians would agree that Jesus offers forgiveness for our sins as a free gift.  But so few seem to recognize that Jesus is more than just a ‘Get out of hell free’ card.  He is calling us to live a transformed life as a part of a kingdom that is not of this world, a kingdom that will only be fully realized when Christ comes back to rule over his people as the one true king.

            That Good news that Jesus came to announce was not just that we can escape from this world and all of its fallen-ness, but that we can transform this world to make it more like the kingdom of God that is yet to come.  When in Jesus’ first sermon he announced the good news to the poor, the oppressed, and the blind, it was not just a message that these people needed to accept him as savior and wait until they die for things to get better.  He said these things have been fulfilled in your hearing.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  It is both coming and it is here.

            But I believe that so many people miss this point because they are so sure of what God wants to do or is doing that we don’t take time to listen to the Spirit.  We don’t slow down to listen to God and anyone and anything that gets in our way, like blind Bartimaeus, are called to hush up, or we forcefully cause them to hush up.

            If you spend as much time as I do on the internet, you may have come across this story about a church in North Carolina that is having a bit of a Fall Harvest Party this year, though their’s is much different from the one that we will be having on the same night.  We plan to get together this coming Saturday, October 31^st to roast hotdogs and marshmallows.  They are getting together to roast copies of the Bible, copies of books by authors such as Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and Mother Teresa, and copies of contemporary music.  Even Christian music.

            This church claims that every version of the Bible, with the exception of the King James Version, is a perversion of God’s message.  The pastor calls the NIV, the NRSV, ESV, the Message, even the NKJV satanic and demonic.  So they are going to burn them.  Books by authors that they believe to be heretics, like that devil himself, Billy Graham and Mother Teresa, will be torched and condemned.  Music of every genre, from Bluegrass to Southern Gospel, to praise and worship music will be tossed in the fire.  All in the name of keeping true to the message of God.

            This is both funny and sad to me at the same time.  It is funny because, come on, Billy Graham is seen as a threat to Christianity?  And while it is true that some translations of the Bible are better than others, to claim that the KJV is the only version that we should use and that all others should be burned seems somewhat counterintuitive to me.  Why would God bless one translation of the Bible and not another.  All translations have their problems because we are trying to capture thoughts from 2,000 years ago that were recorded in Hebrew and Greek in contemporary language.  But to burn them and denounce these Christians as heretics?  Come on.  The only thing on that list that I support burning is the Bluegrass albumsJ. 

            The thing that strikes me about this church in North Carolina is that their church name is The Amazing Grace X Church (denomination name left out because I wouldn’t want to be associated with them, either).  And the line from the song Amazing Grace that comes to my mind is “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”  Who is blind?

            When I hear of this church burning versions of the Bible, burning music, even Christian music, I can’t help but associate them with those that wanted to silence Bartimaeus.  I don’t have a problem with a person having a favorite version of the Bible.  I have a preferred version and you probably do as well.  But burning these other versions seems to me to be a stifling of the Spirit of God.

            If someone came to me on the street or here at the church and they wanted to know more about this Jesus guy, I wouldn’t hand them a Bible that uses language that we don’t use today.  If you grew up with the KJV and you can understand it, great.  But to someone that doesn’t know Jesus from Jonah, I’m going to give them a copy of the Message or the New Living Translation.

            As we read through the New Testament, we find that there is no other group with whom Jesus butts heads with more frequently than the Pharisees.  The Pharisees are a group of religious scholars that believed that if keeping the law of Moses was a good thing, then they should not only keep the law themselves, they should force every last person to keep it as well.  If you didn’t keep the law, they could cause an impromptu stoning, such as was the case with the woman caught in adultery or with Paul and the stoning of Stephen. 

            But the real issue that Jesus took with the Pharisees was not that they were keeping the law and expecting others to do it as well.  The problem was that these Pharisees tacked on extra laws to the law of Moses and then failed to extend grace to others when they failed.  Furthermore, Jesus knew that the Pharisees were just as guilty of sinning as anyone else.

            If we read through Matthew 23 we find Jesus’ “woes” to the Pharisees and the scribes.  He says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”  The Greek word for hypocrite essentially means “actor”.  A hypocrite is one that puts on a persona, though that is not really the way they are in real life, like an actor becomes a person in a play.

            Verses 25-28 read, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  You blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

            Jesus isn’t saying that what is on the outside doesn’t matter.  Jesus was very interested in making sure that people lived in a way that honored God, cared for those around them, and manifested the kingdom of God.  But what he is saying here is that the Pharisees went about it backwards.  They began by making sure that they were doing all of the correct religious practices.  They tithed, they prayed, they read scripture in public, they gave to those in need.  Jesus is not saying that these things are bad!  In fact, he says that they are beautiful.  But these things must come about from an inner change first.  All of that beautiful piety, those actions are only pleasing to God if you first have a change of heart and you do those things out of a desire to love God and love your neighbors.  Those acts radiate out of the center.

So I come back to these crickets.  It always seems like they make the most noise when I sit down with a book and want to concentrate for a while.  So I try to remove them, humanely, of course.  But this is easier said than done because that simple chirping carries a long way.  The cricket may be in the basement, but I can hear it all the way upstairs.  So I get out my trusty flashlight and search every corner, behind every box, and inside every crevice.  And usually I give up and go back to my reading.

            It is because that chirping carries so much that the crickets are so difficult to pinpoint.  Their sound radiates from their rear legs and spreads through the house like ripples in a pond when you throw a rock into it.

            Blind Bartimaeus might have seemed like a pest in his day, but he was a part of God’s plan for Jesus because Jesus came to give sight to the blind.  Those that believed that Bartimaeus was only in the way were missing the point.  But when we slow down and listen to God’s Spirit, we are able to discern things that we couldn’t otherwise hear.  And these actions cannot simply be religious acts that we perform to be seen by others, like the Pharisees.  They must ripple out of a changed heart.  The effects of which will be heard throughout the house, like the chirping of a cricket.

Keep these Words

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

4Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (NRSV)

 

A minister told his congregation, “Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. To help you understand my sermon, I want you all to read in advance Mark chapter 17.”

The following Sunday, as he prepared to deliver his sermon, the minister asked for a show of hands. He wanted to know how many had read Mark 17. Every hand went up. The minister smiled and said, “Mark has only sixteen chapters. I will now proceed with my sermon on the sin of lying.”

I think we would all agree that lying is wrong.  We were probably all taught early on in life that lying, and many other things are bad things to do.  Now as adults we might say that these things are unethical.  Ethics are described as a set of moral principles.  We as Christians adhere to a certain set of moral principles referred to as Christian Ethics, that is, ethics that are Christ-like.

But where do we learn our Christian ethics?  And more importantly, how do we develop into the kinds of people that live out what we believe when we get right down to the nitty gritty of things?  Today I hope to show you that Christian ethics are best learned and developed within the gathered body of believers that we commonly refer to as the church.  Let’s begin by looking at our scripture for this morning.

            Our text for today is a very well known section of scripture often referred to as “The Shema”, named for the first word of verse 4 in Hebrew.  Shema means hear.  Most of us probably know at least part of this scripture because when Jesus was approached and asked which of the commandments was the greatest, he lifted out verse 5 as the most important command out of all of the commandments.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 

To the Jewish person, living today or living two thousand years ago, the Shema was a daily part of their lives.  A devout Jew even to this day still repeats the Shema twice a day; once when they wake up and once before they go to bed.  Some would even recite it more often than that!  But the minimum of two times a day comes from the end of verse 7 which says to recite these words, among other times, when you lie down and when you rise.  Recite these words, time and time again, until they become more than just words to you.  Recite these words until they become a part of your life and a part of your in-most being.

            They say that practice makes perfect.  I don’t know that this is true, because obviously you can practice something in the wrong way and it will not be perfect.  But it will be ingrained in your skull in a particular way.  That is why some people have taken to the saying, “Practice makes permanent.”

            For instance, I don’t have a lot of experience in construction.  I may have other gifts that I am to pursue, but I am not overly gifted at erecting buildings.  But I like to get outside and swing a hammer every now and then.  So I was very quick to offer my assistance a week ago in helping a friend frame a barn.  I quickly realized that I was out of my league.

            You can tell how much experience someone has by a few basic criteria:  How many swings of a hammer does it take them to pound in a nail, do they know the right name for parts of the building like fascia, top plate, and bird’s mouth.  The crew that I worked with was skilled, they were proficient, they knew what they were doing.  And they didn’t get to that point by reading magazines or watching “This Old House” on PBS.  As we sat around the table at lunch I noticed that mine were the only fingernails that were pink at the beginning of the day and now had hints of a deep purple, and I realized that these guys had done this before.  Swinging a hammer to them was like second nature.  Swinging a hammer to me was…well…painful!  I probably hit as many finger nails as I hit framing nails.

            Verse six from our scripture says, “6Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.”  How do you get them into your heart?  Verse 7-9, “7Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

            Devout Jews today obviously take this very seriously.  Like I said, twice a day they recite the Shema.  Some do bind these words on their hands and on their foreheads in the form of phylacteries.  Some do write them on the doorposts of their homes and of their gates in the form of mezuzahs.  The point in doing this is not so that you have the words close by in case you ever forget them and it isn’t because these words possess some kind of supernatural power to protect you from evil and harm.  The point is that the words of God that are to shape our life, to shape our very being need to be ever-present.  They need to be on the tips of our tongue, they need to be at our fingertips, they need to be on our minds at all times, and they need to be in our hearts.  And by immersing ourselves in a culture where the word of God is so prevalent, the teachings of God will manifest themselves in our lives.  Like driving in a nail, practice makes permanent.

            Some people have argued that ethical training, knowing what is right and what is wrong, comes from logic and education.  The theory goes, “If you know what is right and what is wrong, you will choose to do what is right.”  Well, I’m not so sure that I agree with that.

            The apostle Paul writes in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” and picking up in verse 19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

            Paul is saying that even though he knows what is good and what is evil, he still often does not do the things that he knows he should do, but instead does the very things that he knows that he should not be doing.

            I would say that we must first know what is right and what is wrong in order to do what is right and not do what is wrong.  But just knowing right from wrong is no assurance that we will always do what is right.  It’s like this.  I could read all of the books ever written about how to build a barn and I could watch a million swings of a hammer by a million different carpenters.  But none of these things would keep me from hitting my finger with the hammer when I try to drive a nail.  The thing that will keep me from hitting my own finger is practice and real-life experience.

            So how do we develop ethical Christians; ethical children and ethical adults?  How do we get the words of God within our hearts?  How do we foster within one another a desire to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might as well as loving our neighbor as ourselves? 

            John Roth, professor of history at Goshen College, has written a wonderful book titled Practices: Mennonite Worship and Witness that I borrowed from the library recently and I love the way he connects worship with the ethical development in Christians.

            Roth brings his readers’ attention to a story that is all too familiar to many of us: the West Nickel Mines Amish School shooting that took place now over three years ago.  Charles Roberts bound and shot, execution style, 10 Amish girls ranging in age from 6-13.  Five of the 10 girls died from their wounds, as did Roberts, who turned the gun on himself after the shooting.

            We all know what we should do in that situation.  If we were the parents of one of the children that was shot and killed, there wouldn’t be any doubt in our minds as to what we should do.  We all know that we should forgive the killer and care for his family.  The thing that strikes so many of us is that the Amish community did just what they knew that they should do.

            Nobody expected that of the Amish community.  Our society would not hold it against the parents of Naomi Ebersole, the youngest girl shot and killed, if they held a grudge against Roberts and his family.  Our society would not hold it against the family of Rosanna King, the six-year-old that has been forced to live out her young life in a wheel chair and severely disabled, if they hated the man who did that to their daughter.  But they didn’t.  They forgave.

            This act of forgiveness is not rational to many of us modern-day thinkers.  It is not rational because that is not a part of the society in which we live.  If someone doesn’t shovel their sidewalk and we slip and fall in the winter time, we do not forgive them.  We sue them.  When someone calls us a bad name behind our backs and word of it gets back to us, we don’t forgive and forget.  We retaliate.  It even seems to be a competition among some people to see who can say the worst things about another person.  Forgiveness is not a part of our society.  But forgiveness is a part of the counter-cultural community that meets regularly to worship our risen Lord.  Forgiveness is essential to the life and livelihood of the church.

            Those in the Amish community of West Nickel Mines meet regularly for worship and to hear stories of God’s forgiveness for his people and how we are to forgive others because we have been forgiven.  Those in the Amish community of West Nickel Mines not only heard these teachings, but they saw them being lived out in the daily lives of their fellow believers.  Forgiveness is a part of the society in which they live.  So when they were faced with the option of holding a grudge against Charles Roberts and his family, or forgiving them, there really wasn’t a question as to which they would do.  Forgiveness was so engrained in their understanding of the lifestyle that they were called to live as Christians that it became second nature.

            Our ethical decisions do not simply come from knowing right from wrong, they come from being in, living in, residing in a community that talks about and demonstrates these kingdom ethics every day of their lives.  Our ethical decisions as parents in our own homes influence our children and they influence our spouses, and even the neighborhood children.  Our ethical decisions in the church form each and every one of us into people no longer conformed to the ways of the world, but transformed into the image of Christ.

            Imagine if you will, looking at a church service through the young eyes of John Harvey Cassel (who was dedicated earlier in the service).  We begin by singing praises to God, the creator of heaven and earth.  Then we have a time for announcements.  As we look at the announcements we see what is important to this church: fellowship, retreats, sharing with those less fortunate than ourselves, leadership, and stewardship.  As we move on in our service we have a call to worship, focusing our attention on why we are gathered today.  There is then a children’s time, showing that we believe that we are called to teach the younger generation the ways of God and that everyone, no matter how old or young they might be, is important.  Then we spend more time praising God through music, which forms us theologically as we sing about God and to God.  Then we take up an offering, saying, “Times might be tough, and though I would love to keep this money and spend it on myself, I am giving it to the church to fund the kingdom work set before us.”  Then we share in one another’s joys and concerns and bring these things to the Lord in prayer.  Then there is a time of reading the Scriptures together, hearing the word of God, followed by a time of explaining what we have just heard and how to apply it to our daily lives.  We sing some more, and we close with a blessing and a charge to manifest the kingdom of God in our lives and through our lives in the rest of the world.

            John Harvey may not know it now, but these things are shaping him into a follower of Jesus Christ.  Even this morning, when his parents decided that they were not going to stay in bed late or do something that might be considered more fun, but instead would come here, John saw choices being made, priorities being lived out.  So while I hope that John Harvey never is put in a situation like the Amish community in West Nickel Mines, I believe that his parents and we as a church are taking the right steps and doing the right things so that if he is faced with such an ethical decision he will not have to ponder whether or not to forgive, but rather he will instinctively follow Jesus because he has grown up in a community that does just that.

            Swinging a hammer is an easy thing to do.  Most people can do it.  All it takes is the ability to grasp and lift it and allow it to fall back toward the earth.  However, hitting the nail on the head takes practice.  That is what we are doing here today, we are practicing.  We are practicing kingdom ethics within the church so that we are formed in the image of Christ and will instinctively choose to follow him when we find ourselves in a situation that requires that we make a difficult decision.

            We do not recite the commandments of God throughout the day or bind them on our hands, foreheads, and doorposts for any reason other than to train ourselves in how to live for God.  It is my prayer today that we will be so immersed in God’s will throughout our days, in our churches and in our homes, that when we are challenged to do what is right, we will instinctively know what it means to follow our risen Lord.  We live in the word so that we might live out the word.

Living and Active

Hebrews 4:12-16

12Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

14Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

 

            I think it would be good to begin today with a short quiz.  There is documentation of three people walking on water in the history of humanity.  Two of them are documented in the Bible.  The first is Jesus.  The second was Peter.  Now can anyone tell me who the third person to ever walk on water was?  It was this guy.

 

            I hope that it is obvious to us all that he was not really walking on water.  Very shortly he will be getting wet and possibly getting hurt.  But simply by looking at this picture, you might assume that he was walking on water. 

            Pictures don’t tell the entire story, do they?  We don’t know why the bull is chasing the man, but we do know why the man is running!  We don’t know where this picture was taken.  We don’t know the time of day or even the year.  Pictures capture a fraction of a second and put it down on paper.  Some people say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I believe pictures do not replace words.  Pictures need explaining.

            Pictures help us to capture a memory of a certain place at a certain time.  We have the opportunity to look through pictures later and say, “Ah, I remember being at Niagara Falls in the spring of 08.  That was magnificent.”  Or, “High school graduation, man, look at my hair back then!  What was I thinking!”

            Pictures are also a way for other people to gain from our experiences.  I was back in Ohio this past weekend for my grandfather’s 90^th birthday party.  We drove to Ohio Thursday evening after work and then we had all day Friday to work at setting up and preparing for the party.  We got the church decorated, food prepared, and we went through album after album of old pictures.  There were pictures that were almost a century old, obviously most of them in black and white.

            I went through most of these pictures by myself or with Sonya.  And this was a lot of fun for us, but yet it also left a lot to be desired.  I didn’t recognize most of the people in the 90 year old pictures.  Even though many of the people were my relatives, I didn’t recognize them in the old pictures.  A lot has changed since then.  And it was difficult for me to figure out where the pictures were taken.  I needed my grandfather there to tell me who those people were and where they were taken.  Pictures are great, but they don’t tell the entire story by themselves.

            Our scripture for this morning begins by saying, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

            That phrase, “the word of God” is a little bit confusing to me.  Is the author of Hebrews talking about something that God has spoken like you are hearing the word of Kevin now?  We know that God spoke to certain persons directly in the Old Testament.  Genesis even says that God spoke creation into existence.  Or if we look at John’s gospel, the “Word” is a reference to something else all together.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  In John’s gospel, the word of God is a reference to Jesus.

            But the way that the author of Hebrews is using the phrase “word of God” here is as a reference to the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures and the first five books of our Old Testament.  We could probably substitute Torah for word of God and have the same meaning that the author of Hebrews was intending (though I know some people will object to this).  Indeed, the Torah is living and active… 

            We can gather that he is talking about the Torah by looking at the text above our scripture for today where the author of Hebrews talks about keeping the Sabbath.  He goes through the reasons why we keep the Sabbath: God created the world and then rested on the seventh day, God punished the Israelites for not keeping the Sabbath.  The Torah actually tells us multiple times, most clearly in the Ten Commandments, to observe the Sabbath.  Keep that day separate, keep it holy and set aside.  Don’t work, don’t make your employees work, don’t even make your mule work on the Sabbath. 

            Then the author of Hebrews continues in our scripture for this morning by saying that the word of God, the Torah, is living and active.  He tells his readers, the Jewish converts to Christianity, that this is still applicable.  Sure, we are no longer under the law, we are now under grace.  But observing the Sabbath is still something that we are to continue under the new covenant.  See, Jewish tradition says that Moses wrote the Torah and Moses lived somewhere between 1500 and 1200 years before Christ.  So by the time that the author of Hebrews came along, this was an old, old text.  Ancient, by all means.

            But even though the Torah was so old, it was still applicable to the lives of God’s people.  The Torah was not dead, it is living and active.  That isn’t to say that it changes, but that it remains current, even today, 3,500 years after it might have been written down for the first time!  (This is a conservative estimate of when the Torah was written.  More likely the Torah existed as oral tradition and was later written down during the 6^th century before Christ.)

            As Christians, we believe that God not only inspired Moses to write the Torah, but that God also inspired the prophets of the Old Testament and the evangelists and the writers of the epistles of the New Testament.  I believe that God inspired all of these people to write down their accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as well as the history of the early church and what God expects of his followers.  So even though the author of Hebrews was only referring to the Torah when he spoke of the word of God, today we should think of the entire canon as the word of God.

            There was an early Christian theologian that lived from about 85-160 AD by the name of Marcion.  Marcion believed that Jesus Christ was sent from God to be the savior of the world and that his chief apostle was Paul.  However, Marcion found many discontinuities between the God of the Old Testament and the Jesus proclaimed by Paul.  So what did Marcion do?  He threw out the Old Testament.  Not only did he throw out the OT, he also did a pretty good job of chopping up the New Testament.

            Marcion only included in his Bible the writings of Paul and 10 of the 24 chapters of the Gospel of Luke.  He heavily edited Luke so that it only said what he wanted it to say.  What he did was he went into the Bible with a pre-conceived understanding of who God was and who Jesus was and anything that did not fit into his notion of the divine was excluded from the Bible.

            Marcion was later excommunicated and denounced as a heretic.  Today if someone calls you a Marcionite they are not giving you a complement.  The term is used to describe people that choose to overlook certain passages of scripture, only looking at the ones that support their theology or their particular point of view.

            You see, the way that Marcion approached the Bible was like it was a picture album.  When you look through an album you don’t get the stories behind the pictures.  All you do is look at the ones that are appealing to you.  Marcion would see something that he liked in the Bible, lift it out of its intended context, and take it to mean something other than what it was intended to mean.  Just like pictures need to be explained, so do passages of scripture.

            In our scripture the author talks about the word of God being able to pierce our bodies like a double edged sword.  It is able to separate ligaments and tendons, bones and marrow.  What a great image!  The word of God is even able to separate spirit and soul.  I don’t even know what the difference is between spirit and soul, but yet the word of God is able to separate the two.  I don’t even know what that means.

            What the author is trying to say is that we are accountable to the scriptures because the scriptures are from God.  No matter how old they are, we need to wrestle with all of the scriptures and decide how they are applicable to our lives today.  In verse 13 we read, “And before him (God) no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”  Now if we just took that passage of scripture and tried to understand it, well first of all I would be pretty scared of God and even scared of scripture.  I don’t want my joints and tendons separated!  That sounds painful.  And if we stopped reading right there God would sound like a vicious, blood-thirsty, angry, vindictive god just waiting for us to slip up so that he can punish us eternally.

            But we don’t just read that section of scripture as if we were looking at a picture.  We keep reading and look at that scripture in context.  We ask, “What is the story behind the picture?”  As we read on beginning in verse 14 we find out that yes, God does have high expectations of us.  But we do not have a God that is unable to sympathize with us.  No, we serve a God that came to this earth in the flesh, was tested, and was able to overcome sin.  And because we serve a God that knows how difficult this life can be we read, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

            Now rather than looking at just a snapshot, rather than just looking at a small segment of what God wishes to communicate with us, we are seeing the larger picture.  God is holy.  God is righteous.  God desires for us to follow him perfectly and God knows when we fail.  Yet we serve a loving God that can sympathize with our failures who offers us mercy and grace in times of need.

            I believe that many people have a poor understanding of humanity because they form their theology on a few snapshots of scripture rather than the larger context of the entire Bible.  For instance, where does your Bible begin?  Page 1 of my Bible puts me at Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.  This is important.  We need these first few chapters of the Bible.  But it seems like many people’s Bible’s don’t begin until Genesis chapter 3.  If we begin in chapter 3 we begin with the fall of humanity.  Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit.  They sin.  That sin brings punishment upon them as they are forced to leave the Garden of Eden.  Adam is made to till the soil; Eve is made to give birth to children. 

            But if we begin in chapter 1 we see that God created humanity as good, in God’s own image.  Man and woman had full fellowship with God.  They ate of the food that was grown in the garden.  They lived side by side with the animals in peace.

            If we neglect the first two chapters of the Bible and just jump right in to chapter three, we might look at humanity as fundamentally bad.  You might walk down the street and look at someone and immediately see them as a sinner.  Maybe you see a homeless person and you assume that they are an alcoholic or a drug addict.  You see a young girl pushing a baby carriage and all you can focus on is that she had that child while she was still a child herself.  Shame on her, she probably didn’t have good parenting.

            But if you begin by reading in Genesis one, you see these people in the way God sees them.  Fundamentally good, created in the image of God, yet marred by sin.  I’m not trying to downplay the role of sin, but to call our attention to how God sees us.  Rather than condemning people, you have compassion for them.  Rather than looking the other way when you see someone in need, you look at them with love.

            You see, we need the entire Bible to make sense out of any of it.  It is not a group of individual stories that are unrelated and packaged between two leather covers.  It is one grand narrative that begins with God creating the world and calling it good and ends with God re-establishing things as good, redeeming the world.

            The Bible is not a text book that is meant to tell us how old the world is.  The Bible is not a rule book.  The Bible is not some collection of proof texts that we are to use as ammunition to defend our particular political position.  The Bible is the living and active word of God that tells us the story of God’s redemption of creation and how we are to take part in that.  When we just take a section of the Bible here and a section of the Bible there, we are looking at individual snapshots, and not at the entire story.  It is like we are going through my grandfather’s picture album.  If we do not have the story behind the pictures, we are left to guess at who those people are, what they are doing, and where they are.  We might enjoy looking at the pictures, we might be able to get a few things out of them, but with out the entire story the Bible becomes like a few random pictures of people we don’t know doing things we are unfamiliar with, in places that we do not recognize.

            Today we have an opportunity to participate in the biblical narrative through an act of remembrance.  Today we partake of the cup and of the bread which represents the blood and body of Christ.  We don’t do this in church just because Jesus told us to do it.  In fact, we are never told to take communion in the Bible.  Jesus tells his disciples to do this in remembrance of him, but never are we told to do it.

            But today we do partake in these elements because we are a part of this grand narrative.  We are living out God’s word today because God’s word is living and active within us and through us.

God of Compassion, Hear Our Prayers

James 5:13-20

13Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. 14Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. 17Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest. 19My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, 20you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

 

There were these two boys who lived with their Grandma. They were about to go to bed but before they slept they prayed. The older grandson started to pray. He prayed about the day he had and about everything he had done. The younger grandson then started to pray, he prayed much louder than his elder brother, he prayed for bikes and toys, and when he finished the older brother asked him “Why are you praying so loud? God is not deaf.” The younger son responded and said “Yea but Grandma is.”

I am not advocating that we pray to God as if he were a genie in a bottle, existing to grant our three wishes.  But today I would like to search the scriptures to see that God is a God of compassion who cares deeply about us and therefore is a God that hears and answers our prayers.  So we will start today by looking at some background stories leading up to our scripture for today.

They say that God never changes, that God is immutable, which is not to say that you can’t mute God, but that God does not mutate.  Not only do “they” say this, but God says this.  In Malachi 3:6 we read, “I the Lord do not change.”  It doesn’t get any clearer than that, my friends.

We also believe that Jesus is the manifestation of God on earth; Jesus is God incarnate, in the flesh.  Jesus says “If you have seen me, you have seen the father.”  So if Jesus is God and God does not change, Jesus does not change.  Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

What does that mean?  What does it mean that God does not change?  It means that God does not stop being like God.  There are characteristics about God that do not falter or fail.  One of the most challenging thoughts that was given to me in seminary is that there is one thing that God cannot do: God cannot act outside of his character.  God cannot stop being righteous, just, and loving.  These are things that describe the God that we serve and because God does not change we can always count on God to be righteous, just, and loving.  And I want to add one more item to the list of God’s characteristics: God is compassionate.  Now prepare yourself for this, I’m now going to throw a little confusion into the equation.  Because God is compassionate, God does change.

Now you’re probably thinking, “What in the world are you talking about?  You just got done telling me that God does not change and now you are telling me that God does change?”  And if that is what you are thinking then you are hearing me correctly.  You see, I believe that the characteristics of God do not change, but that does not mean that God does not change his plans, his will, and his mind.  In fact, I would say that because God has the unchanging characteristic of being compassionate, God will change his plans, his will, and his mind.

We find a number of examples of God’s compassion causing God to change his mind in the Bible.  The first one that comes to my mind is the story of Abraham pleading for God to spare the city of Sodom from destruction.  It was announced to Abraham by his three visitors that God was going to wipe out this city because of the sinfulness of the people.  Abraham didn’t like this, so he began to plead with God to spare the city because it wouldn’t be right to wipe out the righteous with the wicked.  Abraham began pleading with God saying, If there are fifty righteous, will you spare the city?  And this bargaining went on until Abraham got God to agree to spare the city if there were only 10 righteous men to be found in the city. 

Some have minimized this story by saying that God knew that there were not 10 righteous in Sodom and therefore he already had his mind made up that he was going to destroy the city.  But this wasn’t the first time that God changed his mind, and it won’t be the last either.

Beginning in Genesis chapter 6 we find that humanity had strayed far away from their creator.  There was a huge division between God and people, which was not the purpose for which God made humanity.  No, God made humanity so that they might be in fellowship, in communion with God.  So God decides to wipe out all of humanity.

Some people have said that God wanted to wipe out humanity and start again, but Genesis 6:7 says, “So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”  There is nothing in that verse about starting over again.  This is about God scrapping the entire plan and giving up on humanity.

But there was a guy named Noah that found favor in the sight of the Lord, and God decided to spare him.  And not only did God change his mind and not eradicate all of humanity, God also chose not to scrap all of creation.  That seems like a pretty big change in plans to me.  We may not be sitting here today if God had not changed his mind.

            Jesus as God incarnate even shows us how God changes his mind when given the opportunity to be compassionate.  We find in Mark’s Gospel the story of Jesus walking on water.  If you remember the story, Jesus had sent the disciples on ahead of him to cross the sea.  Then when evening came, Jesus looks out on the sea and sees the disciples struggling at the oars, fighting against the wind.  So he walks toward them on the water.  Then verse 48 tells us that Jesus intended to pass them by.  But the disciples were scared and they were tired and Jesus had compassion on them.  So Jesus changed his plans and joined them on the boat, calming the sea.

            We also read about how Jesus was ministering to the Jewish people when a foreign woman of Syrophoenician decent approaches him and asks him to heal her daughter of an unclean spirit.  Jesus responds to her by saying that he came to feed the children, that is the Jews, and that it would not be appropriate to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.  The woman responds that even the dogs eat from the scraps of the master’s table.  Jesus’ heart was moved by this woman’s faith and he did as she requested.

            Contrast these examples to a different understanding of God.  There is a school of philosophy known as Deism that claims that God created the world and all that is in it.  But then God stepped away from the world and allowed the world to function on its own.  The view of God within Deism is often referred to as “God the clockmaker” where a clockmaker would make a time piece and then not have to mess with it again.

            Deists do not believe that God has ever intervened for the people that he has created.  Deists deny miracles, deists deny the incarnation of God in the form of Jesus Christ.  They believe that God created the world and then turned us loose on our own.

I believe that the examples from the Bible reveal that God does change because there is a part of God that does not change.  God is compassionate.  That does not change.  And because God is compassionate, God sometimes intervenes and changes things up a bit.

            So what does any of this have to do with the passage that we started with from James chapter five?  I think this answers the question of why we pray.  We pray because we serve a compassionate God that does hear our prayers and does change his mind and his plans.  We serve a God that does break into this world and intervene on behalf of those that he has created and loved.  If God did not care about us and if God did not care about what was important to us, then prayer would be nothing but a waste of time.  But no, our God is a compassionate God.

            James 5 tells us when to pray and how to pray.  In verse 13 we find that if any are suffering, they should pray.  James is encouraging us to pray for ourselves.  Now he doesn’t go into detail as to how these people are suffering that should lead them to pray for themselves.  But I would assume that he is not talking about being sick, because he gives instructions for how to pray when you are sick separately in the next verse.  So these sufferers are suffering from more than a flu bug.  They are suffering physically from oppression, slavery, life situations, and very likely persecution.

            I’ll be honest with you all, this is when prayer is the most difficult for me.  When life is tough, when things are not going the way that I want them to go, I am supposed to pray?  Prayer is the last thing that I want to do when times are tough, and I really don’t know what suffering is.  I hear some of your stories and all of the things that you have been through, the sicknesses, the loss of loved ones, and I know that I do not know what it truly means to suffer.

            Last night Sonya and I went to a benefit auction for a couple of our friends, Dawn and Paul, that have been trying to get pregnant for about 2.5 years.  They are trying to raise money to adopt a child from Russia.  They both come from a very family-oriented background and they both want children very much.  So when things didn’t happen naturally they underwent numerous fertility treatments; they have gone to numerous doctors.  They have been poked, probed, stuck with needles, and questioned. 

Dawn shared with me one day that every month they go through a time of mourning, mourning the loss of opportunity, mourning the loss of another child not born.  They have suffered, they have prayed, and I know that they have struggled to pray as they know that they should.

            One of the hardest things that I have had to do in a long time was to tell Dawn and Paul that we are expecting a child in January.  Having known their struggles and knowing Dawn’s role at her church as the pastor of youth and family ministry, I realized that our news would be tough for Dawn to hear, even though I also knew that she would support us full heartedly.

            Prayer is tough when you are in the middle of suffering.  And people mean well, telling you things like, “God will see you through this.  God will help you.  God will (fill in the blank).”  But when you are in the middle of suffering, it can be hard to believe in God at all.  But I believe that God can and often does intercede.  We serve a God of compassion.  That is why we pray. 

But prayer is not just something that you do on your own behalf.  Look at verse 16, which says, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.  The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.”  I don’t want to focus so much on the confessing your sins to one another now (though I do believe this to be a good practice), but the praying for one another.

            There are times when we just cannot bring ourselves to pray.  When we are hanging on to our lives by a thread, when our faith is dwindling, that is when we need prayer the most.  James instructs us that when we are sick to invite the elders of the church to pray for you.  I don’t believe that James instructs us to do this because our own prayers are not effective, but because our prayers might not be happening.

            I think that verse 13 lifts out another important aspect of prayer that we find on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and that is how to pray when things are going well.  James says, “Are any of you cheerful?  They should sing songs of praise.”

            We have a lot to be happy about.  Each one of us.  I am thankful for the rain we got this weekend.  I am thankful for an abundant harvest from the fields and gardens in the area.  I am thankful for a roof over my head, clothes on my back, a loving wife that is carrying a healthy child in her womb.  I have much to be happy about.  And that…is…dangerous.

            We might think that James is simply stating the obvious here when he tells us to sing songs of praise when things are going well, but he says it for a reason.  I know that when things are going well that I tend to take God for granted.  God becomes a distant deity that I know is there if I need him, but I don’t take the time to thank God for what I have.

            I think part of this is because we live in a capitalist society where we have self-made men and self-made women.  We see the rich and the powerful and we hear stories about how Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, went from a college drop-out to one of the richest people in the world. 

So I end today by asking the question, does prayer work?  I say yes, prayer works.  And you don’t need to be a pastor and you sure don’t need to be perfect in order to have your prayer answered.  James lifts out the prophet Elijah as an example, saying that Elijah was just a plain human being, like you and me.  Flesh and blood, bone and hair.  He put on his tunic one leg at a time, just like anyone else.  But Elijah prayed, and he prayed fervently.  And because of his prayers, God made the rain stop and start again.

We all posses that kind of power with our prayers.  We can control the rain and the sun, the wind and cold.  Jesus told us his disciples that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed that they can move a mountain.  So if our prayers have that much power, then why do we so often not see any results?  Why can we pray and pray and pray some more, and a loved one still dies?  Why have Paul and Dawn prayed and been prayed for for years, and still not find themselves pregnant? 

Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. Campolo prayed boldly for the man’s healing. That next week he got a telephone call from the man’s wife. She said, “You prayed for my husband. He had cancer.” Campolo thought when he heard her use the past tense verb that his cancer had been eradicated! But before he could think much about it she said, “He died.” Campolo felt terrible.
But she continued, “Don’t feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. He was 58 years old, and he wanted to see his children and grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn’t take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence.

But the lady told Campolo, “After you prayed for him, a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We’ve sung. We’ve laughed. We’ve read Scripture. We prayed. Oh, they’ve been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing.”

And then she said something incredibly profound. She said, “He wasn’t cured, but he was healed.” (Tony Campolo, “Year of Jubilee,” Preaching Today Tape #212)

            The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.  God never promises to answer our prayers in the way we want him to, but God has promised to hear and answer our prayers.  As Paul and Dawn prepare to adopt a child from Russia, I know that they would say that there have been times when they have become frustrated, angry, and questioned God’s motives.  But yesterday as we sat at the benefit auction for them, we could see the love of God poured out through their many friends and family members.  Sometimes, even in moments of sorrow, God surprises us with blessings too great for us to even anticipate.

 

 

God you are unchanging, and for this we give you praise.

God of compassion, hear our prayers.

You have given sight to the blind and hope to the hopeless.

God of compassion, hear our prayers.

You are the great healer of physical, mental, and spiritual ailments.

God of compassion, hear our prayers.

You have loved us, redeemed us, and called us to follow you.

God of compassion, hear our prayers.

Help us, Lord, for you alone are holy.

God of compassion, hear our prayers.—Amen

Childish behavior

9/20/09

Mark 9:30-37 (New International Version)

Who is Greatest?

 33They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” 34But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.

 35Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

 36He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37″Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

 

Mark 10:13-16 (New International Version)

The Little Children and Jesus

13People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

 

            Growing up in the 1990’s was quite an experience.  I grew up during an era when the cartoons on television were worth watching.  We watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-man, The Thundercats, and perhaps one of my favorite cartoons of all times, Animaniacs. 

During my Junior High years I was quite the hit among girls and boys alike because of my ability to mimic the voice of Wakko Warner, one of the characters from Animaniacs.  I even had a Wakko shirt, which I bet still hangs in my closet in Ohio.

But something happened between the summer of my last year of Junior High and my first year of High School.  I remember being in the 9^th grade, a freshman, and speaking in my Wakko voice in a mixed gender group.  And this comical voice that had so often brought forth laughter in the 8^th grade now elicited a different response.  I got told by a girl that I was immature and that I needed to grow up.

What the heck!  Last year I was cool.  Now I’m immature?  That hit me hard.  I still remember that 15 years later.  Not only the experience, but the feelings with which I was overcome.  So what did I do?  I tried to grow up, to mature.  Gone were the silly voices and the silly T-shirts.  They were replaced by sarcastic banter and polo shirts.

Perhaps you have a similar story of when you made the decision that it was time to grow up.  But today I want to encourage you to be childish once again.  Today I want to show you that there are characteristics that most children posses at some point in their lives that we should all seek to reacquire today.  And we will get there, but let’s first start by looking at the context of our scripture for this morning.

            I sometimes feel bad for the twelve disciples.  They really are not made to look too bright in the Gospels, are they?  In the text leading up to our scripture for this morning we find that Jesus and his disciples are passing through Galilee and they stop for a teaching moment.  Jesus reveals to them yet again that he is going to be handed over to the authorities, killed, and then rise again on the third day.  And yet again the text tells us that they don’t get it.  And when these things really do happen, we see that the disciples still didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about until after the resurrection.

            So I feel kind of bad for the disciples because I think I can understand why they seem so confused so often.  Jesus was always teaching in parables.  He was always talking about mustard seeds, yeast, lost coins, lost sheep, lost sons, sowers, reapers, and now he was talking about dieing and rising again.  I would assume they were trying to figure out what it was that Jesus was trying to tell them in this parable, only what they didn’t know was that this wasn’t a parable at all.

            In addition to the fact that Jesus often did teach in parables, the disciples may have assumed this was a parable because it did not fit into their understanding of who Jesus was.  They understood him to be the next great king of Israel, like David and Solomon.  Jesus was going to reunite the chosen people and they were going to drive the Romans out of their Promised Land.  So there was no way that Jesus was going to die.  This must have been a parable.

            So these poor confused disciples are walking along the road to Capernaum after Jesus throws this non-parable parable at them and you can see by their conversation that they are still expecting Jesus to be some kind of militant leader or physical king.  They are talking among themselves and arguing about which of them is the greatest.  I would think that they are trying to establish some kind of hierarchy for their future positions under Jesus when he becomes the next king of Israel.  Jesus hears them chattering back and forth as they walk and after they arrive at their destination Jesus asks them what it was that they were talking about back there.  Oops, they just got caught.

Now Jesus launches into a parable, or perhaps more of a metaphor.  He takes this teaching opportunity and sits down to tell the disciples something important.  “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”  To illustrate this, Jesus gets a hold of the closest child to him and says that whoever welcomes one like a child welcomes him and welcomes the one who sent him.

At first glance it might seem like Jesus is just rattling off random things here about humility, children, and being welcoming.  But I think that these things are very much connected. 

How old was Jesus when he began his public ministry?  Around 30 years old.  Why would he have waited 30 years to begin his ministry?  This is God incarnate, he was probably more knowledgeable at three years old than most of us are at thirty or sixty for that matter.  No, Jesus waited until he was thirty to begin his public ministry because that was the common age for someone to be considered to have lived enough to be able to teach others.  Think of Paul’s letters to Timothy when he tells Timothy to not let anyone look down on him because of his age.  Your credentials in the first century included your birth certificate (okay they didn’t actually have birth certificates) that confirmed that you had gone around the sun at least 30 times and were therefore experienced enough to have something worthwhile to teach others.  This makes Luke’s account of a twelve-year-old Jesus teaching at the temple all the more impressive.

Children were to be seen and not heard.  Sure, children were a blessing, especially sons, but they also got in the way when grownups were trying to have a serious discussion.

So Jesus says that if you want to be first in his kingdom, you need to be a servant to all.  Even to the little children, welcoming them in as your guest.  That is humbling, especially for these disciples that were thinking that they were going to be the great decision makers, the great political advisors, and the great generals in Jesus’ kingdom.  No, they are getting stuck with diaper duty.

Evidently the disciples were not listening to Jesus when he spoke these things to them because if we look ahead to Mark chapter 10, people are bringing their children to Jesus and the disciples are chasing them off!  He just said to welcome them, now they are chasing them off!  Jesus rebukes the disciples for doing this and he gives them a stern lesson.  He tells them that anyone that does not receive the kingdom of God like one of these children will never enter into it.  The parallel in Matthew 19 says that unless we become like children, we will never enter into the kingdom of heaven.

So I am getting pretty excited about being a daddy in a little more than three months.  This last week I painted our nursery (Yukon Gold) and I found myself full of anticipation, more so than I have been for a while as I thought about the opportunities that I would have to raise up and teach another living, breathing human being.  But as I looked at these scriptures from Mark about Jesus and the children, I realized that perhaps there was something that we should be learning from children.  We are to receive the kingdom of God as a child does and if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven we need to become like a child.  So what does that mean?

I started thinking about what characteristics children have that we as adults should emulate.  And don’t worry, I know that there are also things that we should not seek to emulate.  The first thing I thought of is that children are inquisitive.  If you have ever been around children, you know that they ask a lot of questions.  How much longer until we get there?  Why can’t I have a candy bar?  Why is the sky blue and the grass green?  Why can’t I have a pet snake?

Many of you will remember Greta Shenk, who was a YPCA member that came to Staunton Mennonite as a part of the Y-church program.  Both of Greta’s parents are seminary professors and I had the opportunity to study under them both in my seminary days.  Greta’s parents, Sara and Gerald, are both quite intelligent people.  Gerald has a PhD in Sociology of Religion and Sara has a doctorate in education.  So they wanted their children to grow up with the opportunity to learn as much as they could.

Sara and Gerald made an effort to answer all of the “why” questions that their children asked.  They didn’t want their children to just mindlessly do as they were told, but to be informed even as little children.  So when asked “why?” they would take the time to explain things rather than just say “Because I said so!”  

But Gerald shared a story one time about when they rented a boat for a family vacation and they were having some issues steering the boat.  I don’t remember what they were heading toward, but I will say that it was a waterfall because that makes the story better.  So they were on this boat and they were heading toward this waterfall and Gerald just starts barking out orders to the three kids.  Grab the sail!  Lower it quickly!  Throw the anchor overboard!  And the kids kept asking, “Why daddy?  Why daddy?”  That was a time when he needed them to just do as he said and not take time to answer questions!

But kids are naturally inquisitive.  They ask questions.  They realize that there is a lot that they have to learn yet, and they believe that they can learn from other people.  I believe that the same is true for us as Christians. 

So often we are discouraged from asking questions as Christians because I guess that we are afraid that asking hard questions will damage our faith.  But I find it much more damaging to my faith when people just throw orders or doctrine or scripture at me than when they actually sit down with me and have a discussion, even if that discussion involves us all admitting that we don’t always have all of the answers.

I come back to the text leading up to our scripture for today where Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to be handed over, killed, and then rise again.  Chapter 9 verse 32 says, “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”

I remember being told that when you ask a question you run the risk of looking like a fool for a few minutes, but when you don’t ask a question you run the risk of looking like a fool for the rest of your life.  The disciples did not ask questions and they didn’t seem to understand Jesus’ role here on earth until after the resurrection.

How many of us have never asked the difficult questions that we have, either because it will make us look less intelligent or less spiritual or for whatever other reason you can think of?  I encourage you to ask those “why” questions like a little child.  Ask the tough questions. 

As I shared with someone from church that I would be speaking about the childlike characteristics that we are to emulate he responded by asking about the scripture form 1 Corinthians 13 where it says something along the lines of when I was a child I spoke like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child.  But when I became a man I put away childish things.  He asked me why the Bible seems to say in one place to be like a child and in another to put away childish things.  Why does the Bible contradict itself?  Those are the kind of questions I want you to feel free to ask.  Children are inquisitive and I believe that we as Christians should be inquisitive as well.  Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find.

The next characteristic of children that I think we need to adopt as our own is that children are inviting.  We were all children at some point in our lives, and we were probably all told, “Don’t talk to strangers.”  Why did our parents teach us to not talk to strangers?  Because most of us would talk to strangers.  Kids don’t understand the norms of society.  They look at people that they don’t know, they smile at them, they talk to strangers. 

Maybe you have had this experience as well, but I have been in a conversation with a young family, meeting them for the first time, and I always try to talk to the little kids as well.  And every now and then these little kids will invite me over to their homes.

I think that the parents are sometimes a little embarrassed by this.  “Hey little Johnny.  We just met Mr. Kevin.  I am sure that he doesn’t want to come to our home.”  Or maybe “He’s a busy man and he probably can’t come over to play right now.”

I think that it is great that kids are so open and inviting to other people.  Now obviously there are some safety issues involved when we are talking about kids, but at what point in our lives do we become so privatized?  When do we begin to walk past our neighbor on the street and not even make eye contact, yet alone say hello.  God forbid we invite them over to our home like I’ve been invited by a little child!  Our lives are private.  We build fences, both figuratively and literally between us and our neighbors.  We go to work in the morning, come home late in the evening, throw something together for supper, eat in our homes, watch television all evening, do it all over again the next day and we never have to interact with anyone else.

We have made our lives private, and following along those same lines we have made our faith private.  We even use terminology that indicates that our faith is private.  We talk about Jesus as our personal savior and we say that we have a personal relationship with God.  Where do we get this stuff?  That isn’t biblical.  Yes it is important to have a relationship with God, but it should never just be about you and God.  It is about a communal relationship with God.  Jesus isn’t your personal savior like you have a personal assistant or a personal trainer.  This even seems to suggest that there is another savior.  Jesus is my personal savior; you better go find your own.  No, John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son.  Jesus wasn’t just sent for me, he was sent for the world.  Privatized lives lead to privatized religion.  My God is too big to be my personal god.  We need to be more inviting, inviting people into our homes, into our lives, and into a life of following Jesus.

The third personality trait about children that I want to point out that we should emulate is that they are accepting.  Children are not racist.  Children are not sexist (until girls/boys become yucky).  They do not discriminate based on class, level of income, occupation, education, hair color, eye color.  Maybe even more impressive is that children do not judge other people based on what they have done in their past.  They just play with whoever is close by.  They might disagree on their favorite toys and their favorite baby food, but they don’t fight.  I’ve never heard of a baby killing another baby over the rights to oil, gold, or diamonds.  That’s something that they learn later in life, probably from watching us.

This accepting nature is the way that Jesus models relationships for us in the Bible.  Dining with the tax collectors and the sinners, hanging out with the prostitutes, even lifting up the actions of a good Samaritan as the way his followers should respond to people in need.

We as Christians are quick to say that we need to love the sinner and hate the sin.  But how are we living that out?  I fear that too often we attempt to isolate ourselves from “sinners”.  And believe me, I get this.  I know why we avoid certain places and things.  We try to avoid certain temptations.  James tells us to resist the devil and he will flee from you.  But there is a big difference between resisting temptation and avoiding the very people that we are told to love; the very same people for whom Jesus died.

As we begin now to decorate the nursery in our home, Sonya has made the executive decision that she wants to decorate the room with items from Ten Thousand Villages.  She wants to decorate it with handicrafts made by artisans from around the world.  Wall hangings and toys from Africa, Asia, Europe, South America.  And though this will be a more expensive alternative to shopping at Target or Babies-R-Us, I support this idea.  I want our child to embrace the diversity of this world.  I want our child to know that all people are not just like him or her.  I want our child to respect other people’s opinions and their culture.  I hope that we can allow our child to maintain that characteristic that all children are born with that says all people are okay, even if we don’t agree with them.  But yet I also want my children to stand up for what they believe in.  Not to be wishy-washy on their theology, but to approach God with awe, reverence, and confidence.

Inquisitive, invitational, and accepting.  Those are three of the personality traits of children that I believe we should seek to adopt.  Which ones do you think would be helpful?

Taming the tongue

9/13/09

James 3:1-12

3Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 11Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

 

            *Not a true story*  The pastors of our district get together every third Thursday of the month for lunch and to share in one another’s joys and concerns.  Well at our last meeting only four of us showed up, which is kind of nice because it is more intimate and we share more deeply.

            One of the pastors opened up and shared about something that he struggles with frequently.  He told us that he is a gambler and he has gambled away all of his life savings and has at times even thought about helping himself to the church offerings to make ends meet.

            This pastor sharing about his problem led another pastor to share that he drinks heavily and that his addiction is causing his family to break apart.  A third pastor then shared that he has a huge crush on a woman in his congregation and that he is thinking about leaving his wife for her.

            I just sat there and everyone looked at me.  I began to fidget with my things and shift around uneasily in my chair.  Finally one of the pastors asked me if there was something that I wanted to share.  I said yes, I’m a gossip and I can’t wait to get out of here and to get on my cell phone.

            That was absolutely not a true story.  But today I want to talk about one of the most powerful organs in our body: the tongue.  I say that it is one of the most powerful organs in our bodies because it has the ability to direct our lives and the lives of those around us.  Today I want to break down the scripture that we have from James to see how we are called to keep a hold on our tongues and to use our tongues for good things, and not for spreading hate, deceit, and lies.  So let’s jump right in.

            I think that it is kind of interesting to look at the vocations of the people in our congregation.  Many people at our church are now or have been at some point in time teachers.  We have a large number of public school teachers or people that have been school teachers.  We also have many people that have spent time as Sunday school teachers.  So do you know what James is calling all teachers?  Sinners.  He says that not many of you should be teachers and it looks to me like we have many teachers.  I guess you will all be judged with greater strictness.  Too bad for you.

            No, seriously.  James isn’t saying that we should not go into the vocation of teaching.  And he isn’t saying that we shouldn’t teach Sunday school or teach our children.  The point that James is trying to make is that teaching is a job that should be taken seriously.  We as teachers (and I consider myself to be a teacher, not just a preacher) have a huge responsibility in molding the minds of youth, young adults, middle aged, and aged people.

            When you go into these classrooms for our hour of Sunday school, you are entering into a time where we are seeking to know God more intimately.  We are seeking to gain from one another’s knowledge and experiences.  And as we meet with the children, we are trying to provide for them the foundations of Christianity so that when they grow up they will be able to make the choice to follow Christ.

            What James is saying here is that we need to make sure that when we are teaching, whether it be teaching the children or teaching adults, that we do not lead people astray.  Because if we do, we are responsible for them.  Yes, ultimately the decisions that someone else makes is their decision.  But if we mislead someone and that causes them to stumble or even to fall in their walk with Christ, or to even stray away from Christianity, part of the responsibility is on us because of our false teaching or misleading of them.

            James recognizes that none of us is perfect and we make mistakes in teaching.  I’m guilty of that, and I would bet that if you are honest, you will probably also admit that you have made a mistake or two in your life.  But sometimes the mistakes that we make have huge consequences.

            The organ that we use the most when teaching is the tongue.  We speak words with our mouths.  And James compares the tongue with a number of things.  He compares the tongue to a bit that is placed in the mouth of a horse.  Many of us don’t ride horses anymore.  These massive animals have been uses for centuries to pull wagons, carts, and even plows, and still are in the Amish communities and in third world countries.  Draft horses can weigh over 2,000 lbs. with the largest horse ever weighed coming in at about 3,300 lbs.  Yet these large animals are controlled by a small piece of metal or a synthetic polymer that goes from one side of the mouth to the other and is connected to the reigns.  When the rider pulls gently on one side of the reigns, it puts pressure on the bars of the mouth, causing the horse to turn to alleviate the pressure.

            If that example doesn’t work for you, James gives another example.  He mentions ships and how they require a great amount of wind power (or rowing) to make them move, yet they only require a small rudder to steer them one way or another.  The Titanic was 882.75 feet long, but the rudder that was used to steer this gigantic ship was only 15 feet long.  Now the people that James was writing to would have never seen a ship as large as the Titanic, but living near the Sea of Galilee would have provided them ample opportunity to see a ship or two in their lives.

            The point that James makes is clear.  The tongue is a small and powerful part of the body.  Though small, it has the ability to steer your entire body in a completely different direction.  I like that he uses these two different metaphors for the tongue and its effect and then will follow it up with a third metaphor at the end of verse 5.  If we look again at that horse bit, look at how many people the bit affects.  It’s you and the horse.  If you turn the horse you are riding around, it doesn’t affect me.  It doesn’t affect Billy Bob or Janice.  It is you and the horse.

            Our tongues have a huge effect on us.  If you don’t believe me, try spending a day with yourself and saying nothing positive at all.  Say things like, The weather sure is bad today.  I hate this.  I want to leave.  I need this or I need that.  I hate my hair, my clothes, my life.  Even if you are the happiest and most positive person in the world, after a while, you will wear yourself down with all of the negativity.  And all at once you have changed your entire outlook on life.  Your tongue will affect you and the direction you are going with your life, just like a bit affects you and the direction that a horse is going.

            Then the second metaphor using a rudder of a ship takes it a step further.  Sure there are private boats, but James isn’t talking about a canoe.  I guess canoes don’t even have rudders.  He is talking about a ship.  In verse for he says that it is a large ship, big and capable of moving a lot of cargo and needing a large number of shipmates.  With this metaphor, that tongue of your’s is not only affecting you, it is affecting a large number of other people.  Everyone within earshot is being affected by your tongue.  Whether this is a reference to what we are teaching, or to people’s attitudes, I think it is clear that our tongues can affect other people.

            I probably don’t need to explain this too much, do I?  So James is pointing out that our tongues, though small, affect us and they affect everyone within earshot of us.  They can affect them for the better and they can affect them for the worse.  Unfortunately, the words of our mouths often have more of the negative effect.  And that negative effect goes much further than just the people within earshot.

            James uses a third metaphor to describe the words of our mouths and this one is of a wildfire.  Wildfires are powerful forces.  Even to this day with all of the technology that we have, all of the fire trucks, helicopters, chemical foams, and so on that we possess, wildfires spread like…well I guess like wildfire.  Just a week ago the wildfires in California were spreading, causing loss of property, loss of wildlife, and loss of human life as well.  Such is the human tongue.

            Okay, if you haven’t gotten that the tongue is a powerful little organ, then I don’t know what else to tell you.  But the hard part now is taking this verse and applying to our daily lives.  The application is not easy.  But the first thing that I want to address is that this pericope is not telling us to not say bad words, not to cuss or swear.  I’m not saying that we should cuss or swear, I’m saying that that is not what James is talking about here.  You might look at verse ten and say that James is talking about cursing, but this cursing is the opposite of blessing, not saying a bad word.

            I’m really not sure what makes a word bad.  The funny thing to me is that the words that we consider bad words were not even “invented” yet when the Bible was written.  But there are words in the Bible that some biblical scholars claim to be swear words.  In Philippians 3:8 Paul talks about the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ and that all other things are nothing but rubbish.  The word we translate as rubbish is essentially like the S word in English.  That’s in our Bible!

            Now before you all start to think that I am advocating cussing, I need to give the reason why I try to watch my language.  I watch my language because it is offensive to other people.  We are told in the Bible to use words that are mutually uplifting, edifying, and to avoid language that is unwholesome.  Now I don’t think we can write a universal ethic on what is and is not unwholesome, appropriate, or offensive.  I know that I have to be careful around children because words like “Shut up” or “Stupid” are words that their parents are trying to teach their children to avoid using.  That’s good, our children should grow up learning that some words are offensive and some are demeaning of other people.  But in a different context, I believe it is okay to say shut up or to call something, maybe not someone, stupid.

            In the same way, if you have ever worked on a construction site or something like that, you have probably heard language that might not be appropriate for church or words that you might not use in front of your mother.  Why is a word okay in one place and not in another?  It comes down to who is hearing the words, how they understand the words, and if they are offended by the words.  So again, I am not advocating that we all start dropping the F-bomb like it is going out of style.  I am saying don’t use language that might be offensive to other people.

            So offensive language is a bad thing, and perhaps even worse is language that is meant to tear others down.  Lies, gossip, slander.  These things should not leave our mouths.

            To lie is to tell something that is not true.  The Bible takes a very hard stance against lying.  Leviticus 6:2-7 tells us that lying is punishable by death.  In Acts 5 we find out that God struck down Ananias and Sapphira for lying.  Revelation 21:8 tells us that all liars will experience a second death when they are thrown into the lake of fire.  The point: Don’t lie.

            Gossip and slander are a bit different in that slander is always meant to tear someone down.  Slander is always negative.  Gossip may be positive, but it aint none of your business!  You can gossip about positive things, but gossip is usually considered bad.  People don’t tend to mind when others share good news around the neighborhood.

            One of the best examples of the effects of negative talking, such as lying, gossip, and slander, comes from a movie called Doubt, which was released in December of 2008.  In this movie a nun is making some serious accusations against the priest and the priest, in a passive-aggressive sort of way, preaches on gossip one Sunday morning.

            The priest tells the story about a woman that came for confession and she confessed to the priest that she was guilty of gossip.  The priest told her to take her pillow from her bed to the top of her apartment building along with her best kitchen knife and to just start stabbing into the pillow.  Stab it 100 times and then come back and tell him about it.  As the woman did this, all of the feathers in her pillow were taken up into the sky by the heavy wind and scattered across the city.

            The woman returned to the priest and told him that she had done as he had said and asked what else she needed to do.  The priest said, Now I want you to go out and collect all of the feathers from your pillow and stuff them back in.

            The woman replied by saying that this would be impossible.  That there is no way of knowing where all the wind could have taken the feathers and that even with a lifetime of searching for and collecting the feathers that she could never undo what had been done.  The priest replied by saying, “The same is true for gossip.”

            Why do we do this?  Why do we feel that it is necessary to spread stories about other people?  Why do I think that you need to know what my neighbor is doing or why do I think that my neighbor needs to know what you are doing?  Why can’t we just stop spreading rumors; why can’t we stop gossiping?

            There are a lot of verses in the Bible about gossip and many are found in Proverbs chapter 26.  And I like Proverbs 26:20 because it kind of picks up on the spreading wildfire that James is referring to when he talks about taming our tongues.  “Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.” (NIV)  Gossip is fueling the fire that burns and devours.

            This would be a real easy time for me to talk about politics, wouldn’t it?  Especially with all of the slander, gossip, and lying going on now surrounding healthcare reform.  But that is just too easy.

This past week I listened to a radio show on the internet where a commentator was breaking down a well-known pastor’s sermon for the week.  The way this worked was that he got a tape of a recent sermon and he listened to it ahead of time.  Then when it was time to go on the air, he played the sermon, stopping the tape frequently to “correct” the preacher.  He took at 45 minute sermon and critiqued it for three hours.  The pastor had barely begun his opening prayer before the radio commentator started to pick him apart and challenge his thoughts.  And did he ever challenged them!  He called this pastor names, criticized his education and background, and even questioned whether or not this pastor was a Christian.

Now I’m all for theological dialogue.  I’m all for having discussions on how we understand God.  And I’m all for correcting someone that is sinning in love.  But what this radio commentator was doing was far from having discussions.  He was doing a radio show and the pastor was not able to be there to defend himself.  I felt that the radio commentator took the pastor’s comments out of context, inferred things that the pastor was not saying, and he drug that pastor’s name, reputation, and so forth through the mud.  And he justified it by saying that he was trying to protect the truth.

I am trying to remember how Matthew 18 goes: If a brother or a sister sins against you, broadcast it over the radio waves and on the internet so that everyone with a radio or computer can hear what a lousy Christian they are.  No, of course not.  Go to them in private.  And if they don’t listen, bring another witness along.  And if they still don’t listen, tell it to the church.  If that doesn’t work, you treat them like an unbeliever.  This my friends is an example of gossip, slander, and I would say lies.

I will go just a little bit into the political realm and say that I am getting pretty tired of seeing my Facebook friends displaying status lines that are propagating hate, fear, name calling, and lies on one side of the political spectrum or the other.  It comes from both sides, but it does not come from our Christian convictions.

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”  Yes, there will be times when we need to say negative things, when we need to correct a brother or sister in love.  But as Jesus said to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:34, our mouths are a gateway to our hearts.  If our hearts are good, then good things will come out of our mouths.  Our mouths might pour out blessings and curses, but we are to choose the greater of these things.

I would like it if this week we would all pay attention to our tongues.  Like a bit in the horse of a mouth, our tongues do direct us.  And like a rudder on a ship, our tongues can affect many others.  When you feel the urge to say something that is hurtful, something offensive, or something that is meant to tear another down, bite your tongue.  And though spreading rumors and spreading gossip is a lot like stabbing a feather pillow with a knife, if you find yourself doing this, try to collect the feathers.  Apologize, not only to the one that you gossiped about, but also to the ones that you gossiped to.  Make a habit of not talking about someone unless they are there with you.  And if someone else tries to tell you something about someone else, stop them.  Tell them that you don’t want to be a part of their gossip any more, and make sure to do so in a loving way.  And thank God for the grace he has extended to us, because we have all fallen. 

I’ll leave you with a simple acronym that may help you to determine what to do with a juicy bit of information that you may hear this week.

• T—Is it true?
• H—Is it helpful?
• I—Is it inspiring?
• N—Is it necessary?
• K—Is it kind?

If what I am about to say does not pass those tests, I will keep my mouth shut! And it worked!

-Alan Redpath, from A Passion for Preaching

 

Psalm 19:14