Hope Filled

Hope Filled

Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010

©copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder

Romans 5:1-5

Since we are justified by faith

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

and hope does not disappoint us,

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

In these computerized times, when what was once called typing has become a potentially error-free sort of thing we refer to now as “word processing,” I remember the old days when writing term papers and graduate theses meant dealing with typewriters with ribbons, and those maddening little bits of white, chalky paper which could be found in any office, and which could blanch out mistyped letters and words. I remember spending a good deal of my time while seeking higher education also seeking well-used little slips of correcting paper for blank spots to eradicate those term paper typos. One task I never even tried to master, though I knew secretaries who were very adept at it, was justifying the right hand margin of a typescript page.

Now justifying the left hand margin is no big trick. Unless you accidentally hit the tab key, the old typewriter carriage would always return to the same spot on the left hand side of the page. But the right hand side is a different matter. For those extra-special documents that some people wanted to look as crisp and finished as possible, secretaries had to master the multiple tasks of typing out a rough draft with a ragged right edge, counting spaces on lines of typescript, then retyping while adding enough additional spaces to make the right hand margin look as even as the left. These were no small tasks, and one little misspelled word could ruin a whole page, along with an entire afternoon’s work.

Now, with computers, justifying margins, right or left, even centering – which was for me the most thankless of all tasks on a typewriter – is no big trick. It can be done automatically, accomplished with the click of a button. So I’ve often thought it was strange that computer word processing programs include fonts by which documents can be printed in an undetectable imitation of a typewriter, including the option for the old ragged, non-justified right hand margin of typewriter days. Why this deliberate regression? Actually, though I use a computer every day, I have gone back to using the ragged right hand margin, I just kind of like it. I have supposed that those who send us clever solicitations in the mail with a typewriter-type font probably do this to try and make us think that their letter was hand-typed especially for us. I wonder if anyone is really fooled by this any more? If a company actually wanted to send out hand-typed letters today, where would they go to find such a machine? Or people who could operate them?

Anyway, in the old days, justification in the printing business had to do with lining words up in a right relationship with the page on which they are printed and with each other. Frederick Buechner once reminded his readers that the religious sense of the word “justification” is very close to this old print-shop jargon. Being justified means being brought into a relationship which can best be described as “right,” correctly lined up.

When Paul was still a Pharisee named Saul, and still believed that the rumor about Jesus rising from the dead was just that – a rumor, he was knocked down one day while on his way to see about locking up some of these new Christians. And though the voice that spoke to him that day belonged to the One whose resurrection he had disbelieved, the One whose church he had taken up wrecking, the One who had every reason to fry him on the spot, what he heard the voice saying to him was not “And now you’re going to get what’s coming to you, you wretch!” but, instead, “Now I need you as a witness.”

Paul never got over it, the sheer gift of it, the way in which it arrived totally unannounced and clearly without any meritorious acts on his part. This told Paul a lot of things about the person of Jesus Christ, among them was the fact that Christ could use even those who at one time had scorned him, that he was quite willing to put his finger on those who had done nothing to deserve being chosen. It’s more than a little unsettling when we think about it, isn’t it? From Paul’s experience we learn that we are not safe from the call of God even we are deep in a self-declared apostasy, that Jesus will not even disdain those who have made a profession out of disdaining him.

Apparently there is nothing we can do or be to merit this attention from God. It’s on the house. It is justification freely given to those who only need to receive it in order to have it. God has justified us, lined us up, made us right. It’s even a bigger miracle than computers.

Well, this is a great thing to know, but where does it lead us? Paul says being justified by faith leads to peace with God. Now that’s not some little personal, prayer-closet peace which stands for a lack of conflict, but the old Hebrew “shalom,” a peace, a serenity which stands for a life so in relationship with God that no matter what suffering or tragedy, or hoplessness or violence life might bring, there still exists a deep assurance of God’s love undergirding all of life.

The mid-twentieth century theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, is often credited1 with having written what has become one of the world’s most famous prayers. The first part of the prayer is the part that is familiar as the “Serenity Prayer” to 12 step folks, indeed, to people the world over:

God grant us the grace to accept with serenity the things which cannot be changed,

courage to change the things that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Whether Niebuhr originated that little prayer or not, it is less well-known that Niebuhr finished the prayer with the following, seldom-quoted lines:

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace; taking, as [Jesus] did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Today is Trinity Sunday on the church calendar, so here is some trinitarian thinking to stand alongside that prayer. Ending with only the first sentence of the prayer, serenity or peace could be understood as a sort of indirect affirmation of the power of positive thinking. The second part of Niebuhr’s version of the prayer is so key to understanding that the person who authors the peace that passes understanding is God himself through Jesus Christ. And here we can see the wisdom of thinking of God as Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit, faith, love, and hope. For the person of God the Father reminds us that we may have faith because God has proven faithful from the very first dawn of creation and the experiences of the people Israel in the whole of the Old and New Testaments; the person of God the Son has expressed the ultimate nature of the love of God by going to the cross for our sakes; the person of God the Spirit expresses the hope that fills us, knowing the God of faith and love will also be the God of hope who moves with us into the future.

Later on in his letter to the Romans, Paul declared that those who live in the relationship of peace and serenity which God has granted can be assured of the love of Christ in any and every circumstance. Such peace can turn the suffering we may know back on itself. Instead of bringing the horrors we may expect suffering to bring, the gift of the shalom of God’s justification means any suffering we may come to know can bring something quite unexpected:

• Instead of causing us to live with a perpetually short fuse... unexpectedly, suffering redeemed by God’s shalom could even bring us patience, serenity, and endurance!
• Instead of making us into small, mean little people... suffering, infused with God’s shalom, can actually produce good character!
• Instead of the despondency and depression we might expect, suffering in light of God’s shalom can actually, serendipitously, bring hope!

None of these possibilities in a life justified by the peace of God are spoken prescriptively. That is, Paul is not unloading a container of guilt on those who in suffering have occasionally felt short-tempered, mean, and despondent. Rather, he is saying that while those may seem like the only possible fruits of suffering, the peace of God can produce a new thing, an unexpected thing. The accent is not on our work but on God’s gift. If Christ can save even someone like Paul, a thug who once persecuted the church, imagine what he might do for us!

As we look into our lives, what is the good news we least expect to hear ever again? Could it be that the gift of God’s life-transforming peace means that that might be just the news that is coming our way? That, rather than despair, our lives might be hope-filled?

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 Justice and Mercy: Reinhold Niebuhr, Ursula M. Niebuhr, ed., Harper & Row, 1974, title pages.

Woosh!

Woosh!

© 2010, Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2010
Acts 2:1-21

How can we know if ours is a Spirit-filled church? If we are Spirit-filled people? The very first two verses of the second chapter of Acts give us a significant clue: Here the evidence of the presence and power of the Spirit of God is both as audible as a mighty wind and as visible as flames of fire. The work of the Spirit is heard - as in mighty winds and in the brave proclamation of the message of the apostles to an unbelieving world, and seen - as in the tongues of fire distributed to every believer and in the lives of incredible compassion and risk which the the believers undertook from that Pentecost Day onward.

Whatever else we may know when we read this particular passage, we may be assured that where we neither hear nor see evidence of the Holy Spirit, we can be reasonably certain that the Spirit of Christ has not yet successfully invaded that person or gathering. Not yet. By the same token, where we hear and see Spirit-empowered ministries of proclamation and care taking place, we may be assured that the Spirit of Christ has graced that person or gathering.

Isn't it somehow surprising - given a natural tendency to human activism - that instead of concocting a plan of attack and inflicting themselves on the world by sheer human effort, the church began instead by withdrawing to wait and pray to see what God had in store and to ask that God live up to God's promises? “The next move was up to God, and the church recognized the wisdom of waiting for God's time to act.”1 When we pray the Lord's prayer, we are simply praying that God will be true to God's promises: “Thy kingdom come...thy will be done.” What could appear to be a swaggering or even a manipulative prayer for kingdom and power is in reality a deeply humble prayer, recognizing as it does that only God can give the church what it most desperately needs. All our human maneuvering is pointless unless it is empowered by the Spirit of God.

One preacher said, “[God] is never nearer than when [God] excavates a sense of emptiness in us.”2 Whenever we gather for the Lord's Supper, for example, our invitation includes these words like these: “And so our Savior invites us to come and feed the hunger which bread alone can never fill.”

Filled as they were with the gift of Jesus' companionship for three years of ministry, the grief of the crucifixion, the exaltation of the resurrection, one thing was lacking in the hearts of the disciples, an emptiness remained. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, those who were disciples and apostles were empowered to become the one thing they had not been: witnesses. And what is witnessing, really, but the audible and visible willingness to say what we believe to be true, and to try to live by the guidance of that Word?

As if to give special emphasis to that dramatic empowerment, unlikely Peter - the one who, when Jesus was arrested, could not find within himself the boldness to own up to his discipleship to a serving girl in the courtyard of the High Priest's house - suddenly Peter, of all people, found within himself the courage to witness to thousands in the middle of Jerusalem on one Spring morning. Whatever else we may not be sure about, there is little question that the Holy Spirit empowers us to be what we had not had the strength within ourselves to be before.

Finding ourselves at a gathering where the good name (or even the questionable name) of someone else is being trashed, being a faithful witness to Christ might mean no more than turning away and refusing to participate in hurtful gossip, but it might also mean speaking up. Only each of us knows the call to which the Spirit is leading us. But we can rest in this assurance: No matter how bad the consequences of faithfulness in the face of opposition might seem, the Spirit continually gathers the church around us, the Spirit will never forsake us.

How can we comprehend this presence of the Holy Spirit?

Right there in the Bible it talks about it like a sort of liquid presence, “I will pour out my Spirit on everyone.” In our neat, family-kitchen-thinking we may imagine this to be a pouring like pouring a glass of milk from a pitcher. But I think that mental image is much too tidy for us to use as a mark of the work of the Holy Spirit. I think there are much better ways to conceive God's Spirit being poured over God's people. Think of other ways we generally use the word “pour”:

1. When we have been estranged from one another, our emotions all bottled up, when we have suffered the emotionally constipating effects of a heart filled with sorrow and anxiety combined with a mind and mouth that refuses to allow us to share what consumes us from the inside, when after that the dam has finally broken and in tears we have been able to tell another human being about the fears and emotions that have been eating us alive, have let go a torrent of hurt and heartache, we call that pouring your heart out.
2. When our team is ahead of the other team 65 to 7 and there is only one minute left in the final period, and we score yet another touchdown, and the coach sends in the play from the sideline telling his team to go for 2 extra points instead of 1, the fans turn to each other and say, “Wow, they're really pouring it on!”
3. When the sky turns not grey but black, the lightning creases the thunderheads, the thunder cracks like a volley of canon fire, we run for cover, saying to each other, “We'd better hurry; any minute it will be pouring down rain.”

Pouring, as it is used in the second chapter of Acts, has nothing to do with pouring into a glass from a pitcher. It is more like pouring into the glass from Niagra Falls. Either way the glass gets filled, but by the second method there can never be any doubt about whether there will be enough.
Pouring out his Spirit, God gives to people the power of God's love not in sufficiency, but in superabundance. There is enough, there is more than enough of God's Spirit to empower the work of the church. It is not a zero sum game. God's Spirit is available in such plenty that to be touched by it can mean being overwhelmed by it and changed completely and absolutely.

The late Clinton Marsh served for years as president of Johnson C. Smith Theolgical Seminary in Atlanta, and was once moderator of our Presbyterian Church's General Assembly. Jokingly, he characterized himself as one half Presbyterian, and one half African American. About 35 years ago at the meeting of the General Assembly I heard Dr. Marsh say to the assembly that he hoped the Spirit would change us so that, if we could not be one half Presbyterian and one half African American, some of us could at least develop a little better suntan. The Spirit, poured over the people, drenches us, changes us, so that we are not the same people we once were.

Dr. Martin Marty has served for decades as a contributing editor of Christian Century magazine, a journal highly respected among clergy and lay leaders. He also once taught second grade Church School - one wonders which is the greater honor! He tells a story that shows the pouring-out of the Spirit can even come upon 8 year-olds, demonstrating that the Spirit is alive and working in places we might never expect. His story is about an 8 year-old boy who once attended his classes. Stephen was a special child, and by the time he had reached second grade, his progressive mental and physical disabilityies had become obvious to his friends. Dr. Marty said that one of his greatest concerns in teaching Stephen's class was whether the other eight students could hold on to their love for Stephen as they came increasingly to realize he was falling behind them and that he was different. In April of that year, he asked his students to bring to class a small object they could hide inside one of those plastic egg-shaped containers that some products are packaged in, something that represented the gift of new life. But because he was afraid Stephen might not have understood, he placed all the unmarked containers in the center of the table, and asked Stephen to open them, one at a time.

The first one held a crocus, and one of the students erupted with the pride of possession, saying, “I brought that one!” Next came a rock which Dr. Marty thought would surely be Stephen's, since rocks don't symbolize new life. But one of the other students shouted, “That's mine! The rock has moss on it, and it has just turned green again!” A butterfly flew from the third container, and another student beamed that her choice had been the best so far.

But the fourth container was empty. Dr. Marty thought it had to be Stephen's and was going to move quickly to the next egg, but Stephen objected and said, “Don't skip mine!” You know how second graders can be; they all shouted with one voice, “But it's empty!” “That's right,” Stephen said. “The tomb was empty. New life for everyone!” Stephen knew.

That Summer, Stephen died. At the grave, mourners found eight small egg containers. All of them empty. The story is true. So is the mystery, and Stephen knew.

What Stephen knew was that when God's Spirit is poured out, there is no controlling it. The black, the white, the blind, the lame, the healthy, the sick, the disabled, the frail, the husky, the slender, every one can be drenched in the Spirit. It was poured out on all believers without discrimination. There's more than enough. There's no limit to the power of God's Spirit to reach us and make us understand, even by means we might never have anticipated.

The disciples were drenched in the Spirit that first Pentecost day. Not dribbled, not sprinkled, aerosolled, misted, dampened, daubed or dipped, but drenched. They were overcome with the power of God's Spirit, poured out upon them. May God drench our fellowship with his Spirit in our own day, in our own times.

_____________________
1 Acts, by William Willimon, John Knox, 1988, p. 27.
2 Drumbeat of Love, by Lloyd Ogilvie, Word Books, 1976, p. 23.

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder

Seventh Sunday of Easter , May 16, 2010

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

See, I am coming soon...

Amen, come Lord Jesus!

Our Scripture lesson today is brief enough as it is, but even in the space of these few verses, we find one word that is repeated, in one form or another, more than any other:

“See, I am coming soon...”

“The Spirit and the bride [the church] say, ‘Come.’”

“Let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’”

“Let everyone who is thirsty come.”

“Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

It sounds to me as though John believed something important is coming, even if we aren’t quite sure what it is! The invitation, the claim, the image of something coming, something on its way, is inescapable.

Some people have said that the phrase at the end of our reading is one of the earliest Christian prayers: “Come, Lord Jesus!” Paul thought it was such an important prayer that when he ended his first letter to the Corinthians with it, he even preserved it in its original Aramaic language, writing, “Marana-tha!”

Clearly, in his vision, John believed that something important was on its way, and that the appropriate response from believers was to welcome what was coming, even to encourage it, to pray for it. But I have to ask myself, if this early Christian prayer was so important, what has become of it? When I am in prayer with others, I rarely hear those exact words spoken: “Come, Lord Jesus.” Oh, it’s part of the Lord’s prayer, of course, the part that says, “Thy kingdom come..,” but how often do we really emphasize that intention behind the Lord’s Prayer? What’s the problem? As believers, have we given up on the idea that Jesus is coming, that his kingdom is being established in the world? Or are we just so unsure how he will bring it off we simply prefer not to think about it?

I can think of two ways to ponder Jesus’ promise that he is coming and the ancient church’s prayer that he will.

Threat

“Just wait ‘til your father comes home!” When my imaginary 7-year-old children’s sermon friend, Clayton, hears that, he does not begin to rejoice in anticipation of the arrival of the one who is to come! This word of Revelation can be a word of judgment. The phrase “I am coming soon!” can be heard as a threat under many circumstances. We might not mind this little passage so much if it just said, “I am coming soon,” and left off that part about coming “to repay according to everyone’s work.” That makes us nervous. That’s the threat. This little passage contains words of judgment as well as words of salvation. Is Jesus coming to judge or save, or is Jesus coming to judge and save? It makes a big difference. Which do we believe?

What if he is coming to judge or save, to divide us into one of two categories, the judged and the saved, the condemned and the rescued? What if my good works aren’t judged to be enough? What if my bad works are judged to be more than plenty? What then? Never mind the sins for which I have asked forgiveness, what if I have forgotten to confess some? And what about those sins that are logs in my eye, but which I haven’t really even noticed because I have been working so hard to help point out the specks in the eyes of others? What about the long-forgotten transgression, the casual gossip? There’s a lot of my work for which I hope not to be repaid! If Jesus is coming to judge or save, I could be in pretty bad shape. Could judgment be coming my way, while saving waits for someone more deserving?

Jesus coming soon? We’ve accommodated ourselves to the world as it is pretty well, thank you, so please, no great shocks, no dramatic intrusions by heavenly messengers, no opening skies and trumpets of angels and the Lamb of God descending to earth on a cloud. Our poor old world of warfare and riots and thieving and careless injustice and cruelty may not be perfect, but at least we know what to expect. We also have something to eat, and a place to sleep, just like those slaves in Egypt before the coming of God’s word to them in the form of a stuttering Moses. Please, don’t rock the boat! Shall we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus”? What if he came to judge rather than to save, what then?

Promise

“Coming soon to a theater near you.” “Coming to America.” “Hold on, I’m coming.” “I am coming soon,” can also be heard as a promise, a hope-filled pledge. Have I spent my life trying to measure up to standards which I am beginning to realize I will never meet? Have I begun to despair of ever understanding the answers to the big “why?” questions? Does the purpose for my own existence seem increasingly unclear, does life seem senseless?

“I am coming soon,” says Jesus.

The 911 operator takes the call from a distraught mother. Her baby has just been fished out of the backyard swimming pool, but he’s not breathing. If the Emergency people take any time at all to come it will be too much time. Patiently, the operator tells the mother what to do to help get the baby some air while the medics are on the way, racing through city traffic. “Please hurry!” screams the mother. “Just keep trying,” says the operator, “we’re coming.” Why was the baby left unattended? Why did we build that pool anyway? Why was that door left unlatched? Plenty of time later for judging. Time now for saving.

Revelation declares that Jesus comes to judge and to save, to demand repentance and provide healing, to say to anyone who is thirsty for righteousness, “Come,” and “take the water of life as a gift.”

The very coming of the One who is perfect judges our imperfection, yet not in order to destroy, but so that we can be made perfect, we can be made whole, we can be healed.

Reality and Hope

The word for all those who must face the future, which is all of us, is that whatever future it is, it is a future in which Jesus will be present in the world which he has claimed. He is coming because he has already come.

How should I live my life? What career should I choose? Should I go on for more schooling, or get a job? What lies ahead for me?

Revelation asks a question in return. John asks, “How will you choose to live your life since you know Jesus is coming?” What do you want to commit your life to doing in light of the fact that Christ is coming soon? How does the promise of a future filled with the love of God for the world change what you believe he is calling you to do today?

Of course Jesus’ coming is a threat. It threatens at the very deepest level the very idea that we can live our lives for ourselves alone. It threatens and judges all those past decisions on which we are tempted to build our lives. Jesus’ promise to come soon judges our past.

But of course Jesus’ coming is a promise, too. The world could certainly stand some improving. Jesus’ promise to come soon certainly gives us at least some hope of a better future.

But what difference does it make for us today that Jesus died to save us? Any difference? And knowing that he has not washed his hands of us, but has plans for us, how does that alter our thinking, our hoping, our dreaming? Has the Messiah come? Is the Messiah coming? John answers both questions with a resounding yes, but not without declaring that something important is going on in the present.

Has the Messiah come? Yes. History. One named Jesus came, centuries ago, and the world has never been the same because of what he did. Past tense. Recorded. Entered in the book. Codified. Over.

Is the Messiah coming? Yes. Just as surely as it declares that the Messiah has come, the Bible claims that he will come again, “that I may receive you to myself,” as John’s gospel puts it.[1] That is the future. Coming, on its way, just wait — but for who knows how long?

What, then, of the present? I think the present is changed, moment by moment, because Jesus declared to John, “See, I am coming soon.” Soon. That little word changes everything. The presence of Christ is not only historic, not only promised for some remote future in heaven, but just ahead, just over the next rise, just around the bend, as close as your next breath. He can come to us that soon, and all he awaits is our invitation. We can offer it.

“Amen. Come Lord Jesus.” Say it with me, as a responsive prayer:

Amen. Come Lord Jesus...

To triumph over our pain and to glory in our praise...

Amen. Come Lord Jesus...

To set us free to serve, to cut the knot of self-interest that binds our hearts and hands...

Amen. Come Lord Jesus...

To declare victory over life as well as victory over death...

Amen. Come Lord Jesus...

To rejoice the hearts of the grieving, to give courage to the fearful...

Amen. Come Lord Jesus...

Amen.

Come.

Amen.

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1] John 14:3.

Come Over and Help

Come Over and Help

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder, Pastor

Sixth Sunday of Easter May 9, 2010

Acts 15:36, 40-41, 16:4-15

During the night Paul had a vision;

there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying,

“Come over to Macedonia and help us.” NRSV

I’m not sure if the name “Silas” is all that familiar to present generations of church people, but it will become more familiar again, I believe. We know from today’s reading in Acts, as well as in the story in Acts directly following our reading – where Paul and Silas found themselves imprisoned in Philippi and their miraculous escape from jail there – that Silas was a traveling companion with Paul in his missionary work.

I recall in my youth having to read Silas Marner, by George Elliot (which, now that I think about it, may not be the ideal association to bring up on Mothers’ Day!) and I recall a few folks from my parents’ generation – and moreso from my grandparents’ – named “Silas.” But if you look on the internet at a site called “Baby Name Wizard,”[1] where you can see how many times per million babies any name has been used in the last 125 years, we can see why the name has not been all that familiar in the so-called baby boom generation. While in the 1880s the name was chosen for 330 boys out of every million born, by the 1960s, that number had fallen to fewer than 20 per million. Since the turn of the century, the name has experienced an increase in popularity, chosen by parents for 250 of every million boys born. Maybe it’s a trend. I suspect the name might still sound sort of old-fashioned to most of our ears. Other than that, and one old uncle of a college friend, I have only one other immediate connection with the name, which came by way of the 60s folk trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, who sang a version of a traditional 12-verse carol on one of their early recordings, called “Children, Go Where I Send Thee.” Do you remember it? As with most spirituals, there have been a lot of different versions of it, but here is one:

Children go where I send thee: how shall I send thee?

I’m gonna send thee one by one

One for the little bitty baby

Who was born, born, born in Bethlehem

Children go where I send thee: how shall I send thee?

I’m gonna send thee two by two

Two for Paul and Silas

One for the itty bitty baby

Who was born, born, born in Bethlehem.

Three for the Hebrew children...

Four for the four that stood at the door...

Five for the gospel preachers...

Six for the jars where the wine was mixed...

Seven for the seven that never got to heaven...

Eight for the eight that stood at the gate...

Nine for the ninety-nine in line...

Ten for the ten commandments...

Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven...

Twelve for the twelve Apostles...

Now, as a youngster in 8th grade, two years into learning to play the guitar and playing with my brothers, I sang that song with relish, not having a clue as to the meaning of some of the references. Oh, I knew about the itty bitty baby born in Bethlehem alright, I knew that “Hebrew children” wasn’t really a reference to children but to the Hebrew people who were children of God, I knew there were 12 apostles and ten commandments. But who were the four that stood at the door? Why was it “five for the gospel preachers” when there were but 4 gospels? How come seven never got to heaven, while eight got as far as the gate?

Well, if you want to know the answers to these and other mysteries involved in that little song, you’ll just have to pick up a copy of the sermon, there isn’t time to go into all of it here.[2] One verse that I didn’t know much about as a child was the one that says “Two for Paul and Silas.” Oh, I knew at age 14 who Paul was, but Silas? I didn’t know a thing about Silas. Those of you who come well-tutored in the New Testament will recall that Paul and Silas spent an evening together in the Philippi County jail before a midnight earthquake released them.

Today I have the advantage of a bit more study on the subject and I know that Silas was a reasonably well-known person in the New Testament, known both by his Greek name, and by the Latinized version, Silvanus, when he makes an appearance in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, Thessalonians, and gets an honorable mention in I Peter.

Silas deserves to be better known, by all counts. He was a leading member of the new Christian community in Jerusalem following the resurrection of Jesus, and he later traveled with Paul to Antioch, and accompanied him in his second missionary journey to Galatia, from which our story in Acts today comes... He was, by all accounts, faithful, loyal, brave. Parents could do a lot worse than to name their little boys after this man.

Silas is listed with Timothy and Paul in the very first lines of both First and Second Thessalonians, as a co-author or at the very least a co-sender of those letters. Silas is also mentioned with Peter on missions in Pontus and Cappadocia. He served as scribe for the writing of I Peter.[3]

I hope all this conversation about Silas – and Paul – serves to remind us of struggles in the early church. Real struggles. For those of us who think church life ought to cater to our needs or be fun or at the very, least mildly entertaining, the book of Acts snaps us back to the realization that commitment to the gospel was and is downright serious business, especially the spread of the good news. Any time the gospel has reached into new places in the world and in people’s hearts, it has met with opposition. I suspect that when Paul went to sleep in the harbor city of Troas (better known to us as Troy, the farthest west of all the cities of Asia, across the Aegean from and in view of Europe), he apparently had no inkling that soon God would be calling him to cross over to Europe, to Greece and Macedonia. But sure enough, that is what happened in his nighttime dream or vision of a man standing and pleading that he “Come over to Macedonia and help us” across the straights that separate two continents

Paul was in the midst of his second missionary journey, on which he had meant to go and strengthen churches already established in Asia on their first journey in what is today southwestern Turkey, meaning to go to Ephesus, and Colossae. But as we heard in today’s lesson, they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia,” winding up in the port city of Troas. We don’t know the form in which the forbidding took place, just that it happened and stopped them in their tracks.

We might think of our spiritual journeys in faith as some sort of self-generated “Mapquest” in which we plug into the celestial computer the request for directions, and then we are on our own way. But God does not want us to go on our own way, God wants to make the journey with us, and God can be quite insistent about this too.

Sometimes the only word the Spirit has for us along our pilgrim way is something like the signs we occasionally see blocking old forest tracks: “Road Closed.” Sometimes the Spirit senses our determination to go one way in the walk of faith and responds “No, you can’t go that way. Not now.” Sometimes the road is blocked by bad weather or a traffic jam. Sometimes the recruiter who interviewed us for that job we really, really wanted calls to say, “Sorry, we chose someone else.” Sometimes the perfect college for all our dreams fails to admit us. Sometimes aspirin won’t work, so we have to try Advil. Sometimes what we thought was our best chance for romance turns out to be the date from purgatory. “No” is the word we sometimes hear even when we have made extensive plans to go a certain way, as Paul and Silas must surely have done. At such times it’s important to remember that “No” doesn’t mean “Stop everything; Give up.” It only means “Stop going that way. Find another way.”

Probably Paul and Silas came to the city limits of Troas totally confused about where they were to go, but they were not confused about where they were not going.

A friend of mine once wrote,

“Often when someone is standing at the crossroads of a difficult decision he or she will come to see the pastor. I’m often struck by the wonderful opportunities they have. They could stay home with the kids or keep working. They could take the new job or keep the old one. They could move into the retirement home or keep the big house. ‘Well isn’t it wonderful,’ I say, ‘that you are not a serf on a medieval farm?’ But most of the time they are not impressed by my cheery optimism. What they want to know is: what is the right choice? What choice does God want them to make? This is when I usually shrug my shoulders and as profoundly as I can, say, ‘I dunno.’ It is then that people realize why pastoral counseling is free. But just to drive home the point, I continue, ‘Do you really think God is up nights worrying about whether you’re going to move to Boston or Houston?’

“We all need to live with a good theology of Plan B. This theology goes like this: I thought I was supposed to head this way. Apparently I was wrong because the road is now closed. Now I need Plan B. The Bible is filled with people who had to go to Plan B. Abraham’s Plan A was to have a child with Hagar. Moses’ Plan A was to kill the Egyptian. David’s Plan A was to be a shepherd. Peter’s Plan A was to prevent Jesus from going to the cross. Paul’s Plan A was to evangelize the Jews. All of them had to go to Plan B. But in the discovery that Plan A was not working, all these people grew closer to God which was God’s plan for them all along. Some of you are up to Plan X, Y, or Z, by now, I know. That’s okay. Go to double letters if need be, but you have to get off the hook for being right all the time. That is called hubris, and it is one of the deadlier sins.”[4]

Of course, Paul discovered where he was supposed to go with the help of a dream of a man from Macedonia, the little country just north of Greece, across the Aegean from Troas. The man was saying “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Macedonia. In Europe. The gospel had not yet been taken to Europe. What if Paul had waked up and said to Silas that he had a dream that they should carry the good news to Macedonia. But after conferring with Silas, they decided the boat trip would be too risky – the Macedonians were all Gentiles anyway – and, delivering the crushing blow the church often applies to all new ideas, they uttered what are often called the Seven Last Words of the Church: “We’ve never done it that way before.”

But they did not respond that way, they went over to Europe and carried the gospel of Christ with them. And from Europe, the gospel eventually made it’s way to the Americas, and after a couple centuries it was carried around the Horn and across the Oregon trail until, in 1882, some frontier Presbyterians carried it to a meeting of eight men and seven women here in Vancouver and started the very church congregation which has continued in ministry until this very day.

Who is saying, “Come over and help us” today? Let’s listen to the Spirit to find out. And let’s go.

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Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

Sermons are made available in print and on the web for readers only.

Any further publication or use of sermons must be with written permission of the author.

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[1] http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/

[2] Four for the four that stood at the door... (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) Five for the gospel preachers... (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and all gospel preachers who followed after) Six for the jars where the wine was mixed... (the six jars of wine at the miracle feast in Cana, John 2:1-11) Seven for the seven that never got to heaven... (This verse may originally have meant the seven that came from heaven, the seven-fold spirit of God) Eight for the eight that stood at the gate... (The eight who entered Noah’s ark) Nine for the ninety-nine in line... (Those who waited while the good shepherd sought the one lost sheep) Ten for the ten commandments... Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven... (The disciples, minus Judas Iscariot) Twelve for the twelve Apostles...

[3] I Peter 5:12

[4] Craig Barnes, “Road Closed,” preached at Shadyside Presbyterian Church, January 9, 2005.

Passing Fancies

Passing Fancies

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder
Fifth Sunday of Easter , May 2, 2010

Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...

I remember when, many years back now, some people from a congregation began telephoning me in Texas. They turned out to be members of a church’s Pastor Nominating Committee, of course. I’d been serving a church in Texas for about 7 years, I wasn’t really thinking about moving again, but apparently new events were preparing to change that accustomed world. It was a long time ago now, but I still remember it as though it was just last week. Today’s reading from Revelation brings that memory back to me, unbidden.

“And he who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’” All things? We’ve heard religious-sounding phrases enough in our lives that we are apt to let this one go by without really paying enough attention. But let’s don’t be too hasty. Remember, there are some things, many things, perhaps even most things in this world to which we are pretty attached as they are. I can’t believe we really want everything made over new.

I have tried to hear this phrase with new ears during the past week. I began to think that if everything is to be made new in the kingdom, it might do us good to make a little catalogue of those things that we hope could possibly stay pretty much the same. For example, maybe we like living in a comfortable place on a nice street, having access to good roads and highways, and most of us have cars to drive on them.

We like our church. We really do, don’t we? I’ve been privileged to hear from many of you over the short time I’ve been here in Vancouver, and one thing is clear to me: you really love your church. Oh, the old place could use a change here and there, but for the most part, you seem to like it pretty much as it is. Perhaps a few more new members, or some touchup of this or that program, as long as the big things stay about the same. But, reflecting on what the author of Revelation said: everything made new? Maybe we’re not so sure about that. We shouldn’t gloss over those words too uncritically. It can be a threat as well as a promise. And I’ll bet there were those who read it for the first time after John wrote these words who saw it that way too.

Think of the ancient British ritual of formal afternoon tea. When it is practiced in its proper context, nothing could be more pleasant. On the veranda with Lady Quizenfield, or in a Victorian parlor, or even in the headmaster’s office at a nice country day school. I can’t see anything wrong with that. But it becomes little more than an odd caricature when it is served on African safari, complete with linen tablecloths that have to be lugged overland alongside all the crockery that is necessary for a proper British tea. In the 1980s movie, Out of Africa, one of the most telling moments occured when the lady of the house finally allowed her native table servant to stop wearing a pair of ridiculous white gloves, which throughout the movie had only served to hinder his dexterity and cause a near tragedy with a bottle of wine. Out of the context of the genteel English countryside, afternoon tea can seem like little more than fodder for New Yorker cartoons, surely not something someone would seriously consider doing in the wild.

The world order changes, our accustomed context shifts, what was once the appropriate thing to do becomes less than appropriate, even demonic when cherished long beyond its usefulness. Like it or not, we will be called upon to change with the new world that is emerging or be changed by it. This promise that all things will be made new is not merely a gentle, spiritual promise, but a life-changing, possibly even wrenching experience as well. No wonder it comes near the end of the book of Revelation, for only after readers have waded through one fantastic image after another in this fabulous New Testament book can we join John in this affirmation with anything but astonishment.

As with John’s Revelation, Paul spoke of Christ’s coming kingdom through the image of a woman hard at the labors of childbirth. Things are becoming different, powerfully different. And even those who would welcome a change from the present order will find themselves going through a change such as comes on a woman giving birth.

Perhaps much of what we have given our lives to will be of no use as the new order emerges. We will have to become accustomed to the fact that a whole host of things just simply are not to be left alone in the kingdom of God. All the little compromises of life, all our having it both ways, all this will change. It is not simply a load of smiling, happy, no problems good news, this loaded promise coming out of the most loaded of the New Testament books.

But the new order need not take us by surprise. Jesus’ words are full of anticipation for this new order. He said, in dozens of different ways, what it is that we could expect. “Even as I have loved you, love one another.”

There are lots of other people in our time who look for a dramatic change in the world order, who welcome the possibility, who even go to the greatest lengths to help it come to pass. One definition of a fanatic is a person who has taken a little slice of the truth and tried to make it pass for the whole pie. Whoever the crazy people are who hatch plots to plant bombs on airplanes, subways, and in cars outside restaurants and embassies in cities all over the world, they are trying in a misguided way to force a new order of things into being.

But the new order for which others may look by such methods does not match the new order which John’s Revelation was calling into being. Believers begin with different assumptions. “As I have loved you... love one another.” This declares that at the end of the day, while drawing up a strategy for the new world order, we may not leave out the assumption with which we began: “I have loved you... so love.” God is love. This we believe. And this rules out many currently popular methods of bringing on a new world order, ways which resort to hate in an attempt to bring love into being.

Someone once said that for Christians to see the big change coming, to know that new things are on the way, is to be like a reader of John Grisham novels who reads the last chapter first... So that in the middle of the book, where the normal reader cannot decide whether to blame the murder on the crooked city official or the owner of the big company, this reader knows.

John was giving his people that kind of an edge in facing the turbulent historical forces of his day. We are in the world, but not to be too much attached to it the way it is, because we believe that God’s love is moving history irresistably forward, toward the birth of a new creation. One of the ways that God is accomplishing this is through the new witness of Jesus. “As I have loved you... love one another.” That was and is new. It is certainly new to a world so much persuaded that violence and threat of violence are the only ways to secure the peace.

One dilemma in a vision such as John’s is that it can be treated two ways:

1. We can see it as a fanciful vision of the way things might be some future day, but since we don’t see it now we don’t think about it too much. That places the whole load in God’s lap in some far-off future time. If God can bring it off, fine. Until then, give me all my accustomed material and familial security blankets to rely on.
2. But the other way to see his vision is the way he would have wanted his readers then, and now, to see it. Not as some nearly unattainable future utopia, but as a present witness now to the way things will be, causing us to live differently now. What mountain climber, if he knew he would be required to climb a mountain tomorrow, would not scour the house tonight for his best equipment? That is how John wants us to respond to his vision. Not merely to hear, but to begin to do. Begin to see the world not through jaded, accustomed eyes, but through new eyes. If this is the way the world will inescapably be, how can we justify continuing on in our old ways?

The Revelation of John shows us the direct connection between the “new commandment” that Jesus spoke to his disciples – the commandment that we love one another – and the new order that God will bring to pass. He calls us as actors in the new heaven and new earth, not passive observers. Even the sea, the old-time symbol of chaos from the time of the creation story and of Noah and the children of Israel walking between the walls of the sea, even the threat of that oldest symbol of the chaos, the raging sea, shall be tamed, no longer merely held at bay, but entirely defeated.

Any good scientist could tell us that each truly new technological possibility for our world must pass through an ocean of impossibilities. In every new discovery that changes the way the scientific world sees things, there is always the sense of the miraculous, the “Aha!” moment, when suddenly accustomed perspectives change, cherished ways of seeing things must be thrown out, and we have to begin again. It is not fulfillment which drives, calls, enriches humanity, but the mystery of what could yet be: the longing, hungering disatisfaction with what is because we have caught a glimpse of what could be and we won’t rest until we have achieved it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., said, in his last and most famous sermon, preached just prior to his death, “I have been to the mountaintop, I have seen the promised land.” Once Moses brought the children of Israel to that point, there was no way for them to stop there, to return to Egypt. They had become too committed to what could be to settle for what had been.

God’s people are led forward by promises. It is dreams that drive us and hopes that make us happen. I frequently correspond with an old friend who is also in the ministry. I was reminded not long ago of a letter he once sent me. I had written him that uncertain economic times inevitably show up in the church budget. But his response to me could have come straight out of Revelation, for it reflected the new times into which Jesus inevitably draws us. He wrote,

“What a community’s economic condition can do to the church is the typical [budget committee] question. My question is what the church’s hope can do for the community. My suspicion is that they have that to offer even if their finances are half of what they are now. Money moves with... and is moved by ideas. I think when leadership is bold and innovative it always moves money...”[1]

…as with our commitment to a community garden and other mission projects in a year that has been one of the toughest, budget-wise, in the history of this church!

Our response to John’s disturbing-happy-terrifying-glad-sad news must be to take a look at our world with new eyes. To realize that living in the old world can never be the same. And remember that “I make all things new” is preceded by,

Behold the dwelling of God is with humanity. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.

It’s some pretty solid evidence that God’s new world will be worth any pain we might be called upon to endure in helping to bring it about. One of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner, once wrote,

“Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Even the part about Judgment and Hell reflects the wish that somewhere the score is being kept. Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown-up is wishful thinking. Interplanetary travel is wishful thinking. Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes true on. Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it.”[2]

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1] George E. Chorba, personal correspondence
[2] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 96.