/Sermons/2003 http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives en-us Tue, 7 Sep 2010 21:20:46 GMT Caravel CMS RSS App A Sunrise of Mercy Shining December 7 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=A Sunrise of Mercy Shining December 7 2003.rtf@CB1 A Sunrise of Mercy Shining
 Malachi 2:17-3:7
Sermon by Anita Yoder Kehr
 December 7, 2003
 Second Sunday of Advent
Just about as soon as the bulletins were finished printing on Friday, I began to wish that we had put a note in them about what the other Scriptures for this morning are. Of all four lectionary texts, I picked the harshest one for Tim and Sadie to read. The lectionary is a three-year schedule of Bible readings that tries to cover a wide scope of Scripture within those three years. We here at Berkey Avenue do not use the lectionary to guide our worship and preaching schedules except sometimes during Advent and at Lent. We are indeed using the lectionary Scriptures this Advent season, and soyou seeI could have chosen any of three other passages to be read this morning. But I didn't. I picked the most judgmental one, and not only that, I asked Tim to add verses to the reading that made the passage even harsher. In addition, I chose not to have some really beautiful, gracious, and poetic passages read. And so, before I go farther, I want you to write down the three other texts for this week, and then I hope you read them sometime today, maybe at lunch, or in the next few days. Here they are; in addition to the passage in Malachi, we have these three beautiful passages of Scripture: Luke 1:67-79; Luke 3:1-6 (this one ends right before John the Baptist really gets going!); and Philippians 1:3-11.

So, why did I ask that Malachi be read this morning with its refiner's fire and fuller's soap, with its demanding inquiry``Who can endure the day of the Lord?''with its scouring of the people? Why? Because I believe that Malachi's word of judgment is also a word of grace, that the two are not so separate as we are tempted to think that they are.

We don't get to the book of Malachi very often, there in its last place position in the Old Testament. We don't know much about the prophet who wrote it. We're not even sure about his name since the word Malachi means messenger and we don't know whether Malachi was really the prophet's name or whether he just used it as a pen name to emphasize his mission to proclaim God's message. Malachi wrote the book in the form of a dialogue or disputation; he first raises questions and then answers them. In this morning's text, we see several of these question and answer pairs.

The first one is in chapter 2, verse 17. Malachi's told the people that God is just plain tired of them, and in response, Malachi imagines that the people might ask, ``How have we wearied God?'' Here's the first answer: by not calling evil evil and furthermore by masking evil and pretending that it's good. And the second answer is this: by pretending that the God of justice is absent, gone, a nonentity.

Malachi's prophetic wordhis answerfrom God to the people continues in chapter 3, verses 1-5. Look, God says, I'll send a messenger to youthe messenger of the covenant in whom you say you delightbut when that messenger comes, who of you is going to be able to endure the coming? Because my messenger will demand that you all change, that you be purified, that you be made ready for renewed right relationships with me in worship and with everybody else in the community. God says, I will judge against anyone who pretends to be me by fortunetelling or magic. I will witness against anyone who is false in their marital or legal or business relationships. I will stand against anyone who is unjust in their caring for those who mourn and who are abandoned or who are strangers in your land. I will declare against anyone who does not worship me in heart and soul and mind and body. Get rid of what is evil among you!

There is judgment here. There is a stern call to obedience to the covenant. But there is also grace. Listen to the word in verses 6 and 7: God says, I've never left you. You , however, have left me and my covenant with you. You have made your own decisions about how you want to live, and you have completely disregarded me. I have become nothing to you. However, I am still here; I have never gone. And if you return to me, you will even yet live.

Malachi then imagines the people asking, ``How shall we return?''

How indeed? The answer for us lies in those beautiful, gracious, and visionary texts that we did not read this morning. In Luke 1, Zechariah proclaims the coming of the Savior, the One promised for generations, the One who will save the people in order that they might worship and serve in holiness and righteousness. Zechariah's son, the newly-christened John, will be the prophet of the Most High, preparing the way for the Savior, imparting knowledge of the salvation that will come by the forgiveness of sin . Close your eyes and listen to Zechariah's word picture of the Adventthe comingof Jesus Christ: ``By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.''

It's beautiful, isn't it? To give light to those who live in darkness and to remove the shadow of death, to guide us into peace. There's still a question, though, isn't there? How do we receive the light? Will we allow ourselves to be guided anywhere? Perhaps that's where the preaching of John the Baptist comes into play in Luke 3. Johnwhen he was old enough and readybegan to fulfill the prophecy his father had made for him. He began to preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In order, perhaps, to explain what he meant by this, he quoted from Isaiah: `` Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh will see the salvation of God.'' Even as his father had prophesied word, John preached a salvation in line with Abraham's covenant, the one that included all the families of the world as receiving the salvation and blessing of God (Genesis 12). John also preached that there must be preparation in order to receive that salvation: repentancethe high made low, the low high, the crooked straight, the rough smooth.

Repentance is a tough word for us, particularly for those of us who grew up learning about a God of no-nos. A stern God, who judges harshly, demands a life of strictures, and says no to what seems like everything! I regularly meet and visit with people for whom that God was the one they met first. Many folks share those memories, but there are also many who haveover time and through experiencelearned to know a God who is gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. However, it seems as if we humans are tempted to extremes. As we have rushed to move far away from a punitive God, we have ended up with a God who accepts everything. Then we still have an inaccurate picture. Because God does make judgments.

According to today's texts, God has created us to live in holinessthat is, living in awe-filled awareness of the purifying presence of God. And God has created us to live in righteousnessthat is, living in unbroken relationship with God through Jesus Christ and then, as a result, living in unbroken relationship with others in the community of faith. We have been created to serve and worship God with our whole selves, with heart, soul, mind, and strength. God has created us to live in ways that are just and that yield peace for everyonenot only those who share our faith. God judges us by the standard of who we were created to be and how we were created to live. And when we don't measure up, when we hold onto thoughts, attitudes, practices, and activities that prevent us from living in holy, righteous, serving, worshiping, just and peaceful ways, then that is sin. And when we avoid thoughts, attitudes, practices, and activities that help us to live in holy, righteous, serving, worshiping, just, and peaceful ways, then that is also sin. The first are sins of commission, and the second are sins of omission. And we all sin. We all fall short of the mark for which we've been created. It is then that repentance is called for.

Repentance is handing ourselves over into God's merciful hands. It is turning back from a path forged by following what the culture deems good or by what we ourselves think is good. It is, instead, turning back toward God and saying, ``My path, now, is toward you and must be directed by you.''

Repentance is yielding our own will to the will of God. It is an attitude of seeking the way of God for daily living.

Repentance is relinquishing control in order that we can be shaped and used by God. Repentance is the way to get into right relationship with God. It is asking God to forgive us our sins. When we repent, we receive the forgiving, grace-filled, and merciful salvation of Jesus Christ. And then God, through the Holy Spirit, can begin to prepare us to become who we were created to be.
Let me say something about preparation. There is not a lot in this world that doesn't need some kind of preparation in order to be used. Think for a momentwhat can be used without being prepared? Here's what I came up with. I came up with a tomato in the garden and a blueberry in the blueberry patch. You can eat those right where you are and you don't need to do anything to them beforehand, although I'll bet some of you are cringing at the idea of not washing them first. Of course, if you want to keep them any longer than a few days, then you have to do something with them: freeze them or can them or dry them. And, I suppose you could say that prior to the picking, there was preparation for the bearing of fruitplanting and watering and weeding.

Most things, thereforeat least the things I can think ofneed preparation before they can be used. So let's go back to Malachi with his refiner's fire and his fuller's soap. The first image therethe refiner's firedescribes the process of heating silver ore to a certain temperature and for a certain length of time, neither too short nor too long. The aim is to make the ore both pure and malleablemoldableso that it can be shaped according to the silversmith's aims. Imagine trying to shape my wedding ring with its braid of gold and silver out of two rock-like lumps of unrefined gold and silver ore! It just couldn't be done. Through refining, all the other elements that pollute the pure ore need to be removed first and then, again with heat and with artistry, a gold- or silversmith can create the desired object. The refining process is also necessary in order to achieve that bright reflecting polish that enables silver to mirror the image of its refiner.

And as for fuller's soap: a fuller was a person who took newly woven, usually woolen, cloth, and washed it clean of all leftover grease and grime. In a process of wetting and pressing and shaping and all other kinds of manipulations, a fuller took rough cloth and made it usable, and beyond usable, made it into full, rich, soft cloth, capable of being formed into garments of beauty. The fuller's soap was part of the indispensable first step of the process, the cleansing of all that was left over from the sheep itself and whatever else the wool picked up in the rest of the process. Neither the soap nor the fulling process was gentle, but both were necessary.

When Malachi tells us that the One coming is like a refiner's fire and a fuller's soap, then he is saying that the One coming is one who will prepare us for God. The One coming desires to shape us and conform us to the reign of God rather than to the ways of this world. The One coming refines us in order to make us into people of beauty who reflect the image of their creator. Jan Richardson's poem in the bulletin today suggests that the One who we know has already come wants to draw us into his own patterns rather than allowing us to be constrained by the boundaries we draw around ourselves or the ones that we let others draw for us. All of this refining and shaping and patterning is preparation for becoming the people we were created to be, those who live in holy, righteous, serving, worshiping, just and peaceful ways.

Now, inanimate objects have no choice about how they're handled. They undergo whatever preparation is needed because they have to; someone else makes the decision about what to do when. The blueberry plucked in the patch and the tomato picked from the garden can't choose whether they'll be just washed and then eaten fresh or whether they'll be frozen or canned. Someone else makes that decision.

Human beingswedo have choices. Repentance is one of them. It is an act of will. Malachi reminds the people that God has always been available to them; they're the ones who moved away. Therefore, they're also the ones who have to turn back, to repent. The same is true for us. God will never force us to repent: to turn or yield or relinquish. But God will always be ready to receive us whenever we're ready, to forgive us our sins, to save us by entering into a healed relationship with us, and then to prepare us to become the people we are created to be. All of this is grace, and it is enabled through of the work of Jesus Christ, the one who came and dwelt among us, even as a merciful sunrise out of heaven shines on those who sit in darkness and dispels the shadow of death hanging over them. 1

Now hear this word from Philippians 1 as a benediction: ``This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blamelessrefined and shapedhaving produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of Godhaving become the people you were meant to be.'' Amen

 Note
1. Adapted from John Nolland, Word Biblical Commentary, Luke 1-9:20 .
Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:10:44 GMT Bringing Our Stories to the Table October 6 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Bringing Our Stories to the Table October 6 2003.rtf@CB1
Bringing Our Stories to the Table
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Sermon by Heidi Siemens-Rhodes
 October 5, 2003

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (NRSV)
My path to this place and this day is made up of many foundational stories. Let me briefly share four of them with you:

1) I was born in Sacramento, CA, during a nurses' strike, 45 minutes after my mother arrived at the hospital.

2) I was baptized by immersion at College Community Mennonite Brethren Church as a 9 th grader, just before my family moved to Bangkok with Mennonite Central Committee.

3) During a year studying abroad I spent a week in silent retreat in the French ecumenical community ofTaizé, where the sung chants soothed my lonely soul, and I was welcomed to the communion table with thousands of other Protestants and Catholics (and I'm not sure how many other Anabaptists!).

4) One of the more foundational stories to who I am now, that is, a pastoral intern here at Berkey, begins in the year 2000, when Mitch and I visited Berkey after having been away for three years. A month or two later I received a letter from AMBS (spell out?) saying that Anita had mentioned my name as someone who might benefit from seminary studies. As I began to think about the possibility of studying theology, and living in a community of others also studying theology, the idea blossomed, more doors opened, and here I stand, in my second year at the seminary.

These are just the nutshell versions of a few of my stories. I hope, over the course of my internship (and beyond), to learn more of yours.

In 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Paul retells the church in Corinth the foundational story of their shared meal. This particular telling of this story has become all the more precious to since I took an on-line class from AMBS called Pauline Theology and Ethics. I came to the class with a few chips on my shoulder about Paulwhat he wrote about slaves and women and Jews has had some devastating effects for the church through the ages, regardless of how progressive it may have sounded at the time he wrote it, in its original context. I worked toward answering these questions through the reading and discussion of that class, but in my reading of the Pauline letters I began to have a new, more disturbing question: how much did Paul really know about the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth? Much of what Paul writes about Jesus is very salvation-oriented, Jesus the Christ as Savior and Lord, all on which is very important. But what about the stories the Gospel gives us? What about Jesus' teachings? What about the Sermon on the Mount? Scholars tell us that there are anywhere from 3 to possibly 20 or so specific references to the life and earthly ministry of Jesus in Paul's letters…only that many. What could this mean?

Several things I learned put this new question into perspective for me, especially these two:

 First, Paul's letters were most likely written around 50 AD, that is, about 20 years after the events of Jesus' ministry, and about 20 years before the Gospels were written. So Paul's writings are the earliest representations we have of who Jesus was, and thus this story in 1 Corinthians is the earliest telling that we in the 21 st century can read of the story of the new covenant.
Second, Paul refers often to traditions that were passed on to the churches when he or others founded them, as in the opening phrase of this passage, ``For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…''. We do not have a record of what those teachings were, but we can assume that the story of Jesus would have been foundational. In fact, its very scarcity in Paul's letters speaks, perhaps, of its living presence in the Christian communities. Paul wrote to the communities to encourage and chastise them on specific topics, not to retell the whole tradition, which he trusted that they knew.

Why, then, did Paul retell this particular story, quoting Jesus in more length here than anywhere else in his letters? Read 1 Corinthians, and the answer is immediately clear (by verse 11 of the first chapter, to be exact)the church in Corinth was in the midst of a numbers of conflicts, several of which concerned table fellowship. The Corinthians were not taking seriously the Lord's Supper, some were gorging themselves at the expense of others. The Corinthian church was one of great diversity, and they were allowing their diversity to divide rather than energize them. In these circumstances, Paul retold the story, inviting them to realign themselves with God's story in Christ. In Chapter 10 of this letter he had written, ``The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.'' (vv. 16-17). For Paul, unity in Christ supercedes any diversity of Christians, in fact enlivens and makes that diversity work like the members of a body work together. The retelling of the story in chapter 11 is a precious reminder of the importance of coming together to the Lord's Table as one.

What has been your path to this day, to this place? When did you first understand that these words of institution, Christ offering his blood, his body, were meant for you? When have the bread and the cup meant most to you in healing of relationships, either with other people or with God? When has the ritual rung hollow? What stories do you bring to the table today? What hurts, what joys, what prejudices, what ideas waiting to be born? How does sharing communion today, on World Communion Sunday, fit into your story?

There is a more recent story of communion which illustrates this same point that Paul was trying to get across in his storytelling. It was the spring of 1865, and the faithful had gathered in an Episcopal church in Richmond, Virginia. The Civil War was over, and the slaves of Richmond, as well as all the black people of the South, were now free. And yet, this was a Sunday morning like any other before itthe white folk in their place, the black folk in theirs, separate. It was a Sunday morning like any other until the moment came for Holy Communion, and a black man rose from his section and approached the altar rail, where he kneeled to receive the bread and wine. The white congregants froze, the white priest froze, the black congregants probably froze as well, fearing what the reaction might beblacks had always taken communion after whites. Into the tense quiet broke the sound of another man rising, an elderly white man, who approached the rail and knelt to receive communion beside his black brother in Christ. The man was Robert E. Lee, the freshly defeated commander-in-chief of the Confederate troops. 1 Here, at the communion table, Christ's body began to come back together in a real, raw, holy moment.

As we approach the table today, we bring our own foundational stories, the stories of who we are today. As we do so, let us also pledge to learn from the brothers and sisters who have come to the table before us, those who sit here around us, and those who gather today elsewhere in the world, as different from ourselves as they may be. This is what it means to be one body with many membersnot that we all understand one another, but that the faithfulness we strive toward strengthens not only ourselves, but the whole.
Communion is a time of coming together to affirm that each of our stories finds its home in the marvelous story of Jesus the infant, the boy, the young man, the teacher, the leader, the triumphant, the betrayed, the martyred, the resurrected. Ours is the story of Christ the Savior of all, Christ the lover of each, Christ who is the bread, Christ who is the cup, Christ who calls us to be one body. So bring your stories, come to the table, take, eat, drink, remember, re-member the body of Christ broken for us all, so that we might be one. This is our story, and to remember it well and tell it again and again is among the greatest privileges we have been given as children of God.

Note
1. Jay Winik , April 1865: The Month that Saved America . ( NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001 ), 362-3.
 www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> October 5, 2003, Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship<style type="text/css span.c11 {font-size: 80%} span.c10 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} span.c9 {color: #ff0000; font-family: Times New Roman} sup.c8 {font-family: Times New Roman} span.c7 {font-family: Cou Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:48:57 GMT Busting Up February 2 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Busting Up February 2 2003.rtf@CB1
Busting Up
 Mark 1:9-28
Sermon by Dan Schrock
February 2, 2003

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ``You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.''

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching--with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee . (NRSV)
In the gospel of Mark there is no baby Jesus so tender and mild, no shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, no angels singing gloria in excelsis deo, no magi from the east who stumble into Jerusalem and ask politically stupid questions which lead to the deaths of innocent children down in Bethlehem. For the gospel of Mark, Christmas is irrelevant.

Mark refuses all that wrapping paper and instead gives us the gift of good news in blunt, pithy language. ``The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ,'' he writes, and the very first person he introduces to us is the unwashed, unshaven, smelly, prickly John the Baptizer, a man most of us would not want to have over for Sunday dinner. And even if we invited him, he might not eat our marinated chicken and steamed asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, accustomed as he is to grasshoppers and honey.

After a brief appearance by John the Baptizer, Mark next introduces to us the main character of the story, Jesus. But Mark doesn't tell us much about him, except that he comes from Nazareth, which is way up north in Galilee. That information all by itself makes this man a little suspect, because southerners from Jerusalem and the surrounding region of Judea felt that you could never quite trust those Jews from the north. In the first place, Galilee was full of gentiles, which meant that Jews who lived up there rubbed shoulders nearly every day with gentiles and their impure ways. In the second place, those Galileans were a little liberal, with funny notions about religion and politics. Galilee, for instance, was a hotbed of radical politics. Some people up there were bandits--you might even call them terrorists. Galileans were certainly not good upstanding conservatives like us. If this Jesus was from Galilee, you'd better be careful. He was probably not a man you could trust. 1
Which is why the lack of information about Jesus is so troubling. Who are this guy's parents, and are they people we know and trust? Where did he go to college? What does he do for a living? More importantly, what does he believe about some of the important religious and political questions of the day? Does he fast, or doesn't he (2:18-20)? Does he keep the sabbath laws, or does he ignore them (2:23-28)? Does he wash his hands before he eats, or not (7:1-23)? What precisely does he believe about life after death (12:18-27)? What is his position on paying taxes to the Roman emperor (12:13-17)? Is he for Rome or against Rome?

 But Mark doesn't answer any of these questions, at least not right away. The first thing we see Jesus do is to be baptized, and we are told that during the act of baptism he has some kind of mystical experience where he, and he alone, sees the heavens ripped open and God flying down to rest on him like a dove. Then immediately afterward, he trudges off all by himself to live in the wilderness with all the wild beasts for forty days. All this raises the very real possibility that this Jesus, whomever he may be, is mentally unstable. Is he schizophrenic? Anti-social? Maybe we ought to take him to Oaklawn as soon as he gets back from that wilderness.

For all its wealth, however, the city of Jerusalem had no psychiatric facility. So the good conservative folks in Jerusalem and Judea probably breathed easier when Jesus left the wilderness and immediately went back north to Galilee, where he originally came from. Whew! Another potential troublemaker out of the way, back with all those other Galilean troublemakers!

But up in Galilee, meanwhile, the Galileans are not so sure about this Jesus either. The very first words out of his mouth--the first words Jesus utters in the gospel of Mark--are: ``The time has come! The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent, and believe in the good news!''

Now what is all that supposed to mean? Fortunately, there are enough people in Galilee who speak Greek and who have some inkling of what these words mean. ``The kairos has come,'' says Jesus. Since the Greek word kairos has the sense of a ``decisive moment,'' he seems to be saying that some major turning point in history has arrived which will be pivotal for the future. 2 ``The basileía of God'' is a word that in the New Testament primarily refers to the ``dignity'' of a king, or in this case, the dignity of God. 3 Then he says that this dignity of God has come so near to your hands that you can reach out and touch it. Metanoeíte has the sense of converting to God's ways without ifs, ands, or buts. 4 Finally, there's the word euangélion or ``good news,'' which originally meant the good news of victory which a messenger delivered after a battle. 5 The word comes from war, from the fighting and winning of battles against some enemy.

 So the very first words out of Jesus' mouth could be translated like this: ``The decisive moment has come! The dignity of God is so close you can touch it if you want to! Convert to God's side, and believe it when I tell you that victory has come!''

What's going on here? Is Jesus engaged in some kind of battle? Is he fighting a war between God and some kind of enemy? And if so, what enemy? Mark doesn't say. At least not yet.

The next thing Jesus does is to walk along the Sea of Galilee, looking for some likely candidates to join him in this battle for the dignity of God. For a while he watches two pairs of fisherman brothers at work. The first pair, Simon and Andrew, are in a boat throwing their fishing nets out into the lake, hoping for a good day's catch. ``Brothers,'' he yells across the water, ``I'll teach you to fish for people if you join me.'' For reasons which Mark does not bother to explain, the brothers instantly beach their boat and follow Jesus. A bit further down the shore, Jesus sees another pair of fishermen mending nets with their father. The brothers are named James and John, and the father is named Zebedee. Jesus also invites this second pair of brothers to join him, but not their father. Why on earth would they join Jesus at the drop of a net, and why in the world didn't Jesus ask the father to come along too? We don't know. No explanation is given.

Now comes the strangest part of the story, and also the most illuminating. These five people--Jesus, Simon, Andrew, James, and John--go to Capernaum, a moderately-sized fishing village of about a thousand people on the north side of the lake. On the sabbath they go to the Capernaum synagogue along with other Jews for the weekly service of Torah reading and Torah teaching. This Jesus, whoever he is, goes to the front during that service and teaches from the Torah. Everyone is astonished, because he doesn't talk like the scribes they are used to hearing. He speaks authoritatively--with confident self-assurance, with commanding power--persuasively, decisively, conclusively. Who is this guy? And why does he speak this way?

Suddenly a man stands up in the middle of the congregation and yells in an unnatural voice, ``What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I . . . I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God!''

``Shut up and come out of that man!'' replies Jesus.

Shaking the man violently, the evil spirit flies out, screeching: ``Eeeeeeoooow!''

Now it is clear.

This Jesus is God's Holy One. No wonder he acts strangely. No wonder he gets into the bloodstream of the conservative Jerusalem establishment and swims around in there like some deadly virus. No wonder even the Galileans, radical as they are, are not sure they want this guy around either. No wonder he has such decisiveness in his voice, unlike any other religious leader.

And no wonder the evil spirits are scared spitless. Evil knows what the humans in the story do not know at first. Evil knows that Jesus is much more powerful than it, and that he has come to wage war against it. Evil knows that for a very long time it has done almost anything it wanted to in the world, thumbing its nose at God, sneering at God's holiness, maligning God's dignity. But evil also knows that its days are numbered, that the war with God is essentially over even before it begins, because the power of evil is puny compared to God, and the weapons of evil are ultimately powerless against God. ``Eeeeeeoooow!'' is evil's scared cry of defeat.

Has Jesus Christ come to bust up evil and restore God's dignity? The answer is most emphatically yes, without ever using fighter jets or missile launchers. Throughout the rest of Jesus' life, evil will try its very best to wreck him on the shoals of history. And for a brief period of time near the end, three days to be precise, evil will in fact have the upper hand, putting him away in hole behind a thick rock door. But only for three days, after which evil is stripped of its power, busted.

So the decisive moment is here, always here. The dignity of God is so close to us that if we want, we can stretch out our hands and touch it. Join up with Jesus, because the victory is his.

 Notes
 1.       For more on the political and religious character of Galilee, see the fine website on From Jesus to Christ at www.geocities.com/tuorfa =-->Busting Up<style type="text/css a.c9 {font-size: 80%} span.c8 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} b.c7 {font-size: 80%} span.c6 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c5 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c4 {text- . See especially the discussion about Galilee by various New Testament scholars at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/galilee.html" class="c9 .
 2.       Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., translated and abridged by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 389.
3.       Kittel and Friedrich, p. 99.
4.       Kittel and Friedrich, pp. 642-643.
5.       Kittel and Friedrich, p. 269.
<span class="c2 Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:48:57 GMT Calling Sinners March 2 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Calling Sinners March 2 2003.rtf@CB1
Calling Sinners
Mark 2:13-17
Sermon by Dan Schrock
March 2, 2003

Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me."

And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples--for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" When Jesus heard this, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." (NRSV)
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick do need one. Jesus has come to call not the righteous, but sinners.

One day many years ago I was finishing up my work in the church office and thinking fondly about going home. The day's work had been intense and I very much looked forward to spending the rest of the afternoon at home with Jenny.

As I was packing my things up, the doorbell to the church office rang. When I opened the door, I saw a man standing on the porch. ``Are you the pastor of this church?'' he asked nervously as he snuffed out the cigarette he had been smoking and threw the butt into the bushes. Then he glanced furtively up and down the street and said, ``I need to come in. Please let me in right now before anyone sees me. I'll explain when I'm inside.''

Over the last two decades I've met scores of people who come to the doors of the church asking for help. Most are shabbily dressed, odoriferous, and spin a barely-believable yarn about why they need some money. My guard almost always goes up: are they telling the truth about their need, or are they scamming me for some nefarious purpose?

But the man standing in front of me that afternoon didn't look like a typical street person at all. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. Mixed in with the odor of cigarette smoke was the smell of cologne, applied perhaps earlier that morning. His eyes were clear, not bloodshot. His breath was normal, not laced with alcohol. His fingernails, while stained a mild yellow from cigarettes, were nevertheless well manicured. His clothes--ironed black jeans with a cream colored sport shirt and a black leather jacket--appeared to be as clean as mine, and probably a lot more expensive. His hair was styled and held in place by the appropriate amount of mousse. But about him was an air which I have never detected before or since in a street person: the air of a man who was afraid for his life. As soon as he came in and closed the door, he went to the window and discreetly pulled the curtain aside to check the street outside.

We sat down and he told me his story. He was, he said, a member of the Mafia. He himself was descended from Sicilians who had emigrated to the United States. For many years he had done whatever his Mafia bosses told him to do. If they told him to extort money from someone, he extorted money. If they told him to threaten someone, he threatened someone. If they told him to kill someone, he killed them. In reward for his unquestioning obedience, his Mafia bosses rewarded him well. He had plenty of money to buy almost any kind of clothes he wanted. He ate at the best restaurants. His favorite meal which he ate several times a week, he said with a smile, was seafood and pasta at a certain restaurant where all the entrees cost between $20 and $30. And if anyone got mad at him or crossed him, his bosses would take care of it. While it was true that his work prevented him from getting married, having children, and settling down in one place, he was satisfied with his life, all in all.

Except for one thing. All the killing was starting to trouble his conscience. At first killing was no problem. Just do it, get rid of the body so the police would never find it, and move on to the next assignment. He hadn't actually killed all that many people, only a handful. But in the last year or two the killing was starting to get to him. Was killing people right? What did God think about killing? What did God think about the Mafia?

He had been born into the Catholic church, he continued, and while he went to mass from time to time, Christianity was so peripheral to his life that it hardly mattered much. Then about three years ago, he had met in one of the cities where he was then working an evangelical pastor named Philip. Philip was about his own age--early thirties--with a handsome wife and two wonderful children. He and Philip became friends, and during their conversations in Philip's home while his children played on the floor, they talked a lot about God. There was a lot about Philip and Philip's life that he found attractive: a stable life, a strong marriage, delightful children, and above all, an intimate connection with God that seemed to give Philip a deep sense of peace. During those months of friendship with Philip, he had thought seriously about becoming a Christian and asking Philip to baptize him. But when his boss in the Mafia moved him to a new assignment in another location, he lost contact with Philip.

Now he was in a crisis, because last week his boss ordered him to get kill another person and get rid of the body. But this time he knew he couldn't carry out the order because his conscience would not let him. For a few days he procrastinated, telling his boss that he had not yet been able to find the person in a position where he could do the job quietly. But that excuse didn't last long and the boss had gotten suspicious that he was getting soft. So he ran, and had been running ever since, eluding the men his boss had sent to catch him. If they did catch him, they would kill him and dispose of his body without a trace. That's the way the Mafia was: obey orders, or be killed. But he had had enough of killing, and he wanted out of the Mafia. He simply could not continue. He would run as long as he could, take a Greyhound bus, perhaps, and escape to the western U.S., alter his appearance, forge a new identity for himself, with a new social security card and driver's license, and find a new line of work. Maybe someday he could even get married and have children. Yet it was more likely that he would die for his decision to leave the Mafia, that they would catch him and kill him, but so be it. He would not kill anyone else.

And he wanted to become a Christian. Would I baptize him, now, this afternoon? ``I don't know how much longer I have left to live,'' he said, ``maybe hours, maybe days, maybe weeks. I know all their tricks for finding people, but there are more of them than there are of me. I have been struggling for several years with becoming a Christian, and the time has arrived. I want to do it now. And to symbolize my new identity as a follower of Christ, I want to have a new name. I will not tell you my real name, because the less you know about the details of my life, the better, just in case you are ever questioned. I want to be baptized with the new name of Philip, in honor of that pastor who first helped me connect with God.''

So thirty minutes later, after we talked more about his spiritual life and Jesus' willingness to be killed rather than to kill someone else, the two of us faced each other on our knees at the front of the sanctuary. Using the Mennonite Minister's Manual , I read him the questions of commitment, using his new name:

 §         Philip, do you renounce the evil powers of this world and turn to Jesus Christ as your savior? Do you put your trust in his grace and love and promise to obey him as your Lord?
§         Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; in Jesus Christ, God's Son, our Lord; and in the Holy Spirit, the giver of life?
§         Do you accept the Word of God as guide and authority for your life?
§         Are you willing to give and receive counsel in whatever congregation you eventually join?
§         Are you ready to participate in the mission of the church?
Putting my hands on his shoulders, I then baptized him, the cool water cascading off the top of his head, bouncing down his shoulders, rolling from his lap to the carpet, using those familiar words:

``Philip, upon your confession of faith in Jesus Christ, I baptize you with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.''

 My hands still on him, I prayed. Prayed for protection. Prayed for safety. Prayed for the gift and the power of the Holy Spirit. Thanked God for this new life, this new person, this new saint and member of the household of God.

After we were done, I took Philip to the Greyhound bus station. Before he would get out of the car, he asked me to circle around the station several times so he could look for any signs of danger. Finally he consented to get out, fear dancing in his eyes.

 I never saw or heard from Philip again. I do not know if he still lives, or if he is dead. But I do know this: that Jesus Christ has come not to call the righteous, but to call sinners.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Eating with Sinners<style type="text/css span.c8 {color: #000000; font-size: 80%} span.c7 {color: #000000} span.c6 {color: #000000; font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-size: 80%} span.c4 {font-family: Courier New; font-size Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:48:57 GMT Clothes for the Soul December 28 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Clothes for the Soul December 28 2003.rtf@CB1
Clothes for the Soul
Colossians 3:12-17
Sermon by Dan Schrock
December 28, 2003

 As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him . (NRSV)
This morning after getting out of bed, you and I put on some clothes. It's possible that getting dressed this morning may have had a few rough moments, especially if your children insisted on wearing baggy old sweats instead of that lovely new Sunday outfit you just gave them for Christmas. In that case, getting dressed may have included flashing tempers, a lecture about the morality of which clothes are appropriate to what setting, and a heated discussion that made everyone in the household late for church.

Generally speaking, however, putting clothes on our body is one of the simplest things we do in life. We take them out of the drawer or off the hanger, and slip them on. We fasten a few snaps, slip a few buttons into their holes, and tie a few shoe laces. For most of us the process takes only a few minutes. Getting dressed is quick, easy, and routine.

I don't know about you, but I find it much more difficult to dress myself in things like compassion and kindness, humility and meekness, patience and love. It's much harder for me to put these soul clothes on than it is to put on body clothes. Putting on patience and love are harder than putting on a pair of socks. Almost as soon as I manage to get these soul clothes on, they slip off again.

One of the clothes I have the most trouble wearing is compassion. It slides right off me a few minutes after I put it on, meaning that most of the time I end up wearing competition, which is the opposite of compassion. You would think that pastors might be some of the most compassionate people around, mercy and sensitivity and kindness exuding from their pores like fragrant perfume. Some pastors are indeed truly compassionate people. But as I look around at my pastoral colleagues, both in the Mennonite Church and in other denominations, I see a lot of competition over who preaches the best sermons, who works at the biggest church, who has the most young people, who has the snazziest programs, who is constructing new church buildings, and especially in the last twenty years, whose church is growing the fastest. We pastors want to be compassionate, but we often end up being competitive. Back in 1985 the Mennonite Church adopted Vision 95, a ten-year effort to plant new congregations, convert people to Christianity, and increase church membership. Vision 95 was somewhat successful, although not wildly so. Some new congregations were begun, some people became Christian, and some churches increased in size.

But what I noticed about this evangelistic emphasis is what it did to pastors. The emphasis on evangelism created competition among pastors. The competition was not overt, mind you, but it did subtly infect relationships among pastors. The main place I noticed it was at conference and denominational meetings, where in casual encounters with other pastors during coffee breaks the conversation inevitably turned to numbers. ``What's the attendance at your church now?'' pastors would ask each other. ``Is your attendance holding steady, or is it going up?'' Behind these questions was one-upmanship. In a conversation between any two pastors, the pastor with the highest attendance always won, while the pastor with the lowest attendance, or Lord have mercy on him, the pastor with a declining attendance, always lost. The pastor who walked away feeling smugly superior was the one who could casually mention that their attendance was going up so significantly that they needed a bigger building. And the pastor who walked away feeling lower than a snake's belly was the one who had to admit his church was small, struggling, and declining in average attendance. That poor sucker, the rest of us thought. He works at a failing church. There must be something wrong with him. Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.

This competition among pastors is one of the reasons why I dread going to conference and denominational meetings. Since I hate getting into competitive conversations, I do everything I can to avoid other pastors. I arrive at those meetings as late as I can and leave as early as I can. During breaks I go get coffee, I visit the restroom, I look at the exhibits, I find a quiet corner all to myself, I walk around outside, I go to my car out in the parking lotwhatever it takes to prevent myself from meeting some pastor I barely know who will ask me about attendance. Occasionally when I see a pastor headed my way, I might start walking in another direction if I can do so without being rude. One exception to this is are the pastors whom I already know well. If we know each other well, we don't need to talk numbers because our relationship is deeper than that. Those are the pastors I often try to talk with, because that too is a strategy for fending off those other pastors who will drag me into the competition of the numbers game. People probably think I am anti-social. But in truth I am tired of finding out who has the higher attendance.

At the present time our denomination has the goal of becoming a more missional church. It's a little too early to tell how this will play out among pastors, but I wonder if the drive to be missional will once again push pastoral relationships into competition. I hope it won't, but I'm afraid it might. Every time we point to a particular congregation and say, ``That congregation over there is a truly missional church; what they're doing is a model of what it means to be missional; that exemplifies what we mean by missional,'' then I get nervous that competition is rearing it head once again. As a result the rest of us who aren't so missional drag our tails in the dust and conclude we must be failing.

Competition is not peculiarly Mennonite. I've spent enough time with pastors from other denominations to know that competition is keen in every denomination I know about. You don't even need to belong to a denomination to compete. Non-denominational churches, which are often independent, evangelical churches, are some of the most competitive anywhere. Usually it comes down to numbers: who has more staff, who has a higher budget, who prints brochures on the glossiest paper, who sponsors the biggest conferences, who sends out more missionaries, who has the faster growth in attendance, who has radio or TV shows, who starts more new church plants, what pastor has the higher salary, what pastor drives the newest, most expensive car. The people with the highest numbers are always regarded as the most successful. These so-called successful pastors get invited to lead seminars and speak at special conferences to which less successful pastors come and pay good money to learn from the so-called successful pastors how to do their jobs better and not fail so badly.

My intention here is not to sound harsh, but to illustrate how nasty the competition can get, and how hard it is to fit into the clothes of compassion. Last month in the church office we received a large envelope from four Mennonite pastors. I won't name their names or the names of their congregations, except to say none of them are in Indiana. It was obviously a mass mailing to Mennonite churches all over the country. Crassly put, it was a bragging letter. They wrote about a wonderful new program the four of them had borrowed from a large, well-known evangelical church which they claimed turned their own congregations around and created tremendous numerical growth. On one sheet they listed glowing statistics from each of their congregations: what percentage increase in attendance, how many young families with children, and so on. On the day this letter came, Anita walked into my office and said, ``Look at this, Dan. Look at what they point to as signs of success. None of the four Mennonite pastors promoting this program talk about how many elderly people they have, how many singles they have, how many childless couples they have, how many single parents they have, how many widows and widowers they have. It's all about young families with children, as if those are the only people who really count.'' I looked, and she was right. I think Anita and I were both a little disgusted, and little sick.

The bright spot in all this competition is women. As a whole I think female pastors are significantly less competitive than male pastors. By that I do not mean that women pastors work less hard than men, because the reverse is in fact true: woman pastors often work harder than men. Instead what I mean is that in my experience women don't seem to pay as much attention to competitive numbers as men do. They are more interested in cooperating with other people instead of competing against them. Of course there are exceptions, but in general the female pastors I know are less competitive and more compassionate than the male pastors. This is one reason why I think churches that refuse to have women pastors may be in some spiritual jeopardy. I sometimes wonder if churches that refuse to have women pastors might end up being a little more competitive.

However, both women and men are able to opt out of competition. Three years ago I attended an ecumenical spiritual retreat for youth workers in Nashville. Virtually every kind of American Christian was there: Catholics, evangelicals, and mainline folks, even one Mennonite. One of the speakers was Mike Yaconelli, who devoted most of his life to working with youth but who also pastored a small congregation in his spare time. During one of his meditations, he said this: ``Many years ago when I first came to the congregation I pastor, we numbered about eighty people. But during the years I've been there, we have grown by the grace of God to thirty people.'' A soft gasp escaped from the lungs of us who were listening, and then gentle laughter. Mike had just deftly popped our bubble of competition, freeing us from the need to be first, the need to be best, the need to be biggest, the need to be famous, the need to be successful in any shape or form.

Like the congregation Mike pastored, parts of the Mennonite Church are also growing downward. Conventional wisdom says that declining budgets, and declining numbers of missionaries, students, and employees in our church institutions are a tragedy. Conventional wisdom says that declining numbers of congregations and declining attendance in adult Sunday school are also tragic. Many people mourn these losses. But what if in the grace of God it actually turns out to be a good thing? What if God turns these losses into opportunities for something much better suited to God's purposes in the world? What if these declines help us to relinquish our pervasive competitions, so that we can become more compassionate, more Christ-like?

I do not know the answer to these questions. But I do know that according to the faith of the early church, Jesus dropped out of the struggle for competition that saturates not just the church, but also the rest of the world. I've talked about pastors and churches this morning because that's the part of the world I know best. It would be interesting to hear you talk about whether competition also infects the world you work in. How prevalent is competition in your field, whether your field is education, medicine, business, or something else? When and how are you able to drop out of whatever competition may be going on around you? What makes it possible for you to dress yourself in the clothes of compassion, and to keep wearing them even when to other people those clothes look ridiculous?

Not too long after Jesus died and came back to life, some Christian poet sat down and crafted a hymn about competition and compassion which soon became much beloved in early Christian worship services, as far as anyone can tell. Paul quotes this hymn in his letter to the Philippians (2:6-11), and it goes like this:

His state was divine,
yet he did not cling to his equality with God
but emptied himself
 to assume the condition of a slave,
and became as we are.
And being as we are, he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death, death on a cross.
But God raised him high
and gave him the name
which is above all other names
so that all beings in the heavens,
on earth and in the underworld,
should bend the knee at the name of Jesus
and that every tongue
should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Adapted from The Jerusalem Bible.)

The early Christians believed that the clothes of compassion looked beautiful on Jesus. By the grace of God, you and I will look beautiful wearing them too.
 Tue, 30 Dec 2003 15:53:24 GMT Contentment September 14 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Contentment September 14 2003.rtf@CB1
Contentment
Sermon by Anita Kehr
Philippians 4:10-14
September 14, 2003

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my distress. (NRSV)
When my brothers, sister, and I were little children, we could send my mother straight up the wall if we'd do either of two things. One of the things we could do was to come to her when she was with other adults and then begin to whisper in her ear about something that we thought we needed to talk to her about but that we didn't want those other adults to hear. She would firmly push us away and tell us we needed to stop whispering. That was so frustrating to me! How were we supposed to ask her our private questions if we couldn't whisper? But, even though her refusal to listen to our whispers irritated me then, I found myself doing the same thing to my children when they were littler. It was a classic case of me doing what I said I'd never do!

The second thing we did that could launch my mother right through the ceilingand which is more pertinent to today's textwas to whine. Now, my Mom is really not an impatient person, but she also does not have one bit of patience for whining, and she doesn't particularly think she needs to. Why should she have to listen to complaints about something that can't be changed? Why should she put up with begging for things we neither needed nor had money for? And, why in the world should she ever be compelled to listen to her child trying to communicate with her in that voice: that whiny voice, the one that gets pitched higher, comes through the nose, and draws out all of the words to become more and more excruciatingly nerve-wracking. ``Please, Mom.'' ``I don't wanna.'' ``Do we have to?'' ``Everybody else has one!'' We were guaranteed denial of anything if we tried to whine in order to get it; whining very rarely achieved what we were hoping for. And, once again, I hear my mother's words coming out of my own mouth whenever I catch my children in whining modenot that I'm completely whine-free myself!

Now, the thing about whining is that its motivation usually comes from a chronic unhappiness with the current situationno matter what that current situation is. Something else would make everything better: more money, more time, more sunshine, more rain, fewer bills, lighter demands, less heat, less cold, a bigger house, a smaller house. Or, if someone else would just behave differently, things would be so much better: if the other person would be nicer, more efficient, more laid back, less demanding, less confusing, more agreeableat least with what I think!more affirming, less critical. Most of us are tempted to whine sometimes; many of us give in to that temptation now and again. But it is a spirit of whining that is the opposite of what Paul is talking about when he says in his letter to the Philippiansin the passage that Jenny read``I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation….'' Why'd he have to keep it a secret?

Well, let's look here. Paul is writing to the first Christian community that he founded in Europe. (1) He loves the people of the Philippian church, and he has a special place in his heart for them. He's writing to them from prison, and the tone of the letter is gentle; the language often is beautiful and poetic. By the time we get here to the end of the letter, we have heard teaching, encouragement, exhortationbut most of it has come without the challenging abruptness that Paul uses when he's writing in order to correct a community with which he's frustrated. As Paul is writing these closing paragraphs, he realizes that he needs to acknowledge the gift of money that the Philippian community, poor though it was, sent to him by way of Epaphroditus. But it's an odd sort of thanks to a people he loves so wellin fact, there is no ``thank you'' in it! Instead, Paul rejoices for the gift as evidence of the Philippians' concern for him, and then he goes on to say that he really doesn't need the gift! He says that he's experienced abundance and scarcity, hunger and fullnessand through it all, he's learned this secret of contentment.

Soagainwhat's the secret? Perhaps the first thing to consider is that Paul is writing about the material world. He's explaining his attitude toward things . He seems to be somewhat uncomfortable with the gift that the beloved Philippians have given him, and even in his gratitude for it, he wants to make clear that having or not having are not so very important.
Second, Paul is writing from the perspective of an older man. He's figured out the secret over the course of his lifetime! It didn't happen overnightperhaps not even very quicklybut eventually he came to understand the mystery of contentmentof being able to maintain his emotional balance independent of his circumstances. And Paul's life had had a little bit of everything in it: honor and power, humiliation and struggle, fruitfulness and barrenness, wealth and poverty. What Paul did, though, throughout his lifetime was to allow those experiences to teach him rather than to embitter him. He didn't spend a lot of time wishing that things were different than they were.
And finally, Paul plays with philosophy. The secret he has learned, the mystery which he has come to understand, is how to be content the Stoic way. At least, the word Paul uses here is the same one that Stoics used to describe their life's goal and it is a different word from the one used for ``contentment'' in other parts of the New Testament. According to the Stoic philosophical system, one of the highest goods, one of the most sought-after virtues, was self-sufficiency, and that's the word Paul uses here in Philippians. A person should be able to live independently of anything or anyone else. You ought to find your happiness within yourself rather than finding it in your circumstances, and you never, never admit that you need anything or anybody. (2)

That doesn't sound right. It sounds American more than Christian! But Paul's not finished yet. He turns that virtue of self-sufficiency inside out. ``I can do everything through him who gives me strength,'' he writes. It is through Paul's reliance upon the One who is all-sufficient that he is able to find contentment. It is by his yielding relationship to the risen Christ that he is able to face any situation that arisesgood and badwithout longing for things to be different, without needing to whine when things get tough. It is by dependence that Paul's fundamental outlook can become independent of the highs and lows of his daily life.

Now, it's pretty important to look at this very famous verse in context. I grew up and learned ``I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me''the King James version of this verseas a promise that nothing was insurmountable. Somehow, with Jesus in my life, I could become nearly super-human. Nothing would be impossible, and everything would be within my reach. # But as true as that can be sometimes, that's not what Paul is saying here. Instead he's reminding the Philippians that it is the strength of Christ which sustains them and enables them to face their daily struggles and their daily accomplishments with contentment and equanimity so that they will not be thrown off course. Louise Stoltzfus writes about the God who is concerned with the ordinary events of the everyday, ``a God who calms the body and kisses the soul, infusing us with the quiet confidence and strength we need to sustain our busy lives.'' (3) This is the same God whom Paul is writing about here, the one who gives us strength for moment-by-moment living in the ordinariness of our lives.

Does learning to be content by yielding to Jesus Christ mean that Christians are never permitted to complain or to challenge? Of course not. Paul was concerned about all kinds of situations, and we all know that he didn't simply sit back, aloof and separate, hoping that things might get better. Paul preached. He taught. He berated and challenged. He confronted. He jumped into difficult situations with straight-ahead energy. Contentment doesn't need to end up in apathy. Don't you think that contentment, if it's a dependence upon the One who is all-sufficient, might enable us to face all kinds of situations without fear? I do.

And what about mourning and lamenting? I was kind of hard on whiners at the beginning of this sermon, wasn't I? Is whining the same thing as lamenting? Well, it probably is sometimes. But God is big enough to hear us and infinitely more patient than my mother and I. Neither does God mind a whisper in the ear. But, I still want to say that there's something about the quality of whiningwhich, you all know, is not a biblical conceptthat dwells on the circumstances of the person doing the whining. Lamentation and mourningwhich are biblical conceptstake those same circumstances and lay them out before God. Even when we come to God with outright anger or confusion or demand, the very act of laying everything out in honesty before God becomes an act of hope. ``The more we dare to reveal our whole trembling self,'' wrote Henri Nouwen, ``the more we will be able to sense that God's love, which is perfect love, casts out all our fears.'' (4)
Dan has been saying around the office recently that we need to be remembering that the Bible is filled with people crying out their pain to God. The psalms are full of tears as well as praise, there's a whole book of the Bible called Lamentations, Jesus cried out his alienation from God on the cross, the disciples huddled together and wondered how things could get worse, the fledgling Christian community was reminded to weep with those who need to weep. And there was cause to weep because of the growing opposition and persecution of the young church. The kind of centered yielding to God that brings the contentment Paul describes in Philippians does not rule out our need, sometimes, to struggle with God.

So, what does contentment look like? It seems to be easier for me to describe `` dis content.'' I can come up with a whole list of words like restlessness, a critical spirit, dissatisfaction, and envy. But when I think about contentment, I wonder whether the best way to describe it is to look to the fruit of the Spirit; a person who is content looks like someone who has let the Spirit of God nourish the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, and self control. You know when you're with a person who has ``learned the secret of being content in any and every situation,…whether in plenty or in want'' because it's palpable. Contentment looks like detachment from things . Contentment looks like some of you who have been through abundance and scarcity, through trial and reward, and who have learned to rest in the strength of the One who is all-sufficient. It would be easy for me to name your names. Contentment might look like my grandmother, who was a middle child in a big family of strong-minded people, whose husband left her with four children to raise, who worked as a bookkeeper until she was past retirement age, paying all the debts that her husband had accrued. My grandma never tried to turn her children against their father; she was the mediator among her sisters; and last spring, when it became difficult for my mother continue to take care of her, she released her children from guilt and said, ``It's time that I go to the nursing home.'' She doesn't complain there, either. She raised her children in faith, and she's listened to the counsel of her church, even when it was difficult to follow.

Contentment looks like the reward that comes from the discipline of turning in trust to God, over and over again, in every circumstance. It takes time to develop that kind of discipline. Some of usbecause of our personalitiesmight have a longer road to go to find contentment. Let me just say that I was doing my share of whining last night about the difficulty of writing this sermon! But the contentment that comes from trusting God with everythingwith the good, the bad, and the uglywith everything in our lives is a secret that all of us can discover along with Paul. We can claim the truth of the psalmist's words, ``You, O Lord, are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. You are faithful and gracious. You uphold all who are falling and raise up all who are bowed down. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. You are near to all who call upon you.'' May you go from here and learn the secret of leaning upon the strength of the one who enables you to be content. Amen.

 Notes
 (1)      Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, p. 338.
(2)      Fee, Gordon. Philippians: The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. InterVarsity Press, 1999. Available at biblegateway.com.

(3)      Stoltzfus, Louise. Traces of Wisdom: Amish Women and the Pursuit of Life's Simple Pleasures. New York: Hyperion, 1998, p. 118.

(4)      Nouwen, Henri. A Cry for Mercy. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, p. 3.
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Cut to the Heart
Acts 2:37-42
Sermon by Dan Schrock
June 8, 2003
Pentecost and Membership Sunday

Today I begin a summer series of eight sermons on conversion stories in the book of Acts. My purpose in this series is to explore the distinctive characteristics of different conversions. Although in all these conversions people turn toward God, they are not stamped out of the same mold. Some of the conversions happen before baptism and some after, some are of Gentiles and some Jews, some include the visible bestowal of the Holy Spirit while others do not, some are gentle and some are passionate. Sometimes people convert with very little fuss, while at other times the Holy Spirit drags people through a conversion kicking and screaming. Behind all these stories is the one Holy Spirit, acting as it pleases when it pleases in the way it pleases, beyond the control of any man or woman. In this series we will see just how endlessly varied the experience of conversion is. Since other people will occasionally preach during the summer, not every Sunday will focus on conversion stories in Acts, only the Sundays when I preach.

 Today we begin with the conversion of 3,000 people on the day of Pentecost. When those 3,000 folks got up that morning to eat their breakfasts of day-old barley bread dipped in olive oil with figs and fresh goat's milk on the side, none of them could have guessed what would happen to them by the end of the day. Breakfast over, they left their houses and in groups of one or two or three, walked the streets of Jerusalem to conduct the day's business of buying and selling, of visiting friends and overhearing the conversations of strangers. That, it turned out, was what turned their day upside down. Shortly before 9:00 AM, some of them were going about their business in the street when they heard the strangest of noises coming from a certain house. It sounded a bit like the wind of a storm but also different from any storm they'd ever heard. A moment later the people standing nearest that house heard the people inside speaking in a cacophony of languages: Greek and Latin, Persian and Aramaic, Phrygian and Arabic and dozens of others, all pouring out through the open windows to the street outside.

As is typical in Middle Eastern cultures where news travels fast by word of mouth, the astonished people closest to the house turned to whomever was standing near them on the street and said, ``Listen! Do you hear that? The people in that house over there. They're talking in different languages. I'm originally from Egypt, and some of them are talking in Egyptian. I also hear a little bit of Libyan, even though I don't speak it myself. What's going on? What happened to those people?'' And so the news passed from person to person on the street, racing down the hill and around the corner, jumping over to the next block, going in scores of directions at once. As they heard the news people came running, crowding around the house to hear this babel of foreign languages, pressing as closely as they could to hear for themselves this phenomenon that none of them had ever heard before. ``They're drunk!'' a man over by the sycamore tree yelled, ``the people in that house have been tippling the wine!'' Some in the crowd laughed and some jeered at the sheer weirdness of it, but all were highly amused.

At that moment a man inside the house stuck his head out one of the windows. Seeing thousands of laughing people looking right at him, he hesitated a moment as if unsure what to do. Then he disappeared back into the house and a moment later reappeared out the front door. Climbing on a rock he waved his arms for the crowd to be quiet. ``People of Jerusalem and Judea!'' he began, ``listen to me! We're not drunk as you suppose. After all, it's only 9:00 in the morning! How could we possibly be drunk already? No, what you're hearing from inside this house is what the prophet Joel predicted hundreds of years ago about God pouring out the Spirit into sons and daughters, into men and women, into masters and servants. Listen! Some of you were here in Jerusalem a few weeks ago when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. Some of you saw him die. Some of you even shouted at Pilate to crucify him. But Jesus is not dead anymore! God raised him up and brought him out of the tomb! We in the house have all seen him alive! That Jesus is our long awaited Messiah and our Lord, exalted at the right hand of God!''

His speech finished, Peter (for that was the name of the man standing on the rock) paused for a moment to catch his breath. And this is what happened next. Listen as ____ reads for us from Acts 2:37-42:

 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him." And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (NRSV)
They were ``cut to the heart.'' The phrase suggests someone taking a knife and cutting right through to the very center of things, laying the contents bare before the hot and holy glare of God's gaze. A cut heart could well be painful, like a cut hand. The crowd on the street stands dazed at the possibility that one whom they wanted crucified is now, just a few weeks later, enthroned at the right hand of God. The very ideathe idea of a crucified Messiah now enthroned next to Godslices down into the heart of their existence and turns them inside out. In response, they say the only thing perhaps any of us could say: ``What should we do?'' With Peter's encouragement, what they do is repent and receive baptism, that very morning. So there, in that house and on that street, the apostles baptized 3,000 people into Christian faith.

Let us note four features of this conversion story.

First, no human being planned for any of this to happen. The Jerusalem church launched no advertising campaign, organized no crusade in the local football stadium, and did not even schedule a revival meeting. The members of the church did absolutely nothing to make any of this happen, except to gather together in one place to wait for God to act in their midst. But the Holy Spirit revived them anyway, blowing through their discouragement, licking them with tongues as of fire, causing them to speak in languages they didn't even know. That in turn pricked the interest, and also the conscience, of a crowd, opening them to a new reality of crucified but exalted Messiah. From first to last, it was all the doing of the Holy Spirit.

Second, the Spirit's arrival is unpredictable, noisy, vivid, and messy. People are initially confused. Contrary to what we sometimes think, the arrival of the Holy Spirit does not always wrap things up in tidy packages. Sometimes it upsets us terribly, cutting us to the heart and proposing possibilities that at first seem absurd. After reading Acts 2, we might want to be a little cautious about asking for the Holy Spirit. It might upset the order and predictability we've created for ourselves.

Third, no other conversions in Acts happen quite like this one. Here there is a five-fold sequence of being cut to the heart, repenting, accepting baptism, receiving forgiveness, and finally having the Holy Spirit come. Sometimes we've taken this sequence as the norm that will happen to everyone. Not so. Even though other conversion stories in Acts share a few things with this sequence, none of the other conversions in the book exactly fit this pattern.

Fourth, the pouring out of Holy Spirit is not primarily for the benefit of individuals, but for the benefit of the whole church. Here the Spirit comes first to a group of 120 in a house, then comes in a different way to 3,000 out in the street. In fact, this story strongly suggests that the Holy Spirit is most likely to move when the church gathers together in one place. This is one of the reasons why we come together each week, in hope that the Holy Spirit will cut us to the heart, forming us more fully into the people of God.

If you dare, pray that it will be so here, among us.
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The Invitation to Abide
 John 15:1-8
Sermon by Dan Schrock
May 18, 2003

 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.'' (NRSV)
When I was in high school my family had a vineyard. Maybe that word ``vineyard'' is a little too high and mighty for the humble row of Concord grape vines which my great-grandfather and great-grandmother had planted around 1900. There were only 6-8 plants in that vineyard, laid out in a straight row, supported by wires and posts.

Nearly every time I looked at those grape plants I noticed I couldn't tell where the vine ended and the branches began. To my eyes the vine and branches were so interwoven as to be indistinguishable from each other. From the hard wood base just above the ground to the tender shoots curled around the supporting wire, those plants were all of a piece, one continuous whole. Even in winter after all the leaves had fallen off, I still couldn't tell the difference between vine and branch. The plants looked to me like a unit, so interconnected that vines were abiding in the branches and branches were abiding in the vines.

``I am the vine and you are the branches,'' observes Jesus, so ``abide in me as I abide in you.'' If in vineyards vine and branches are indistinguishable from each other, then we are intended to be indistinguishable from Jesus. He the vine and we the branchesso alike, so intertwined, so interconnected, so much all of one piece, that the world cannot tell us apart.

Perhaps Jesus means us to understand this metaphor as a process. Just as a vineyard does not grow overnight, so we do not become completely interconnected with Jesus overnight. Last Sunday some of you were baptized into Jesus. You have now officially begun living in Christ. However, you will soon discover if you haven't already that the old nature continues to hang around.

Becoming indistinguishable from Christ takes a while and does not happen overnight. Very few if any of us are indistinguishable from Jesus when we first become Christians. Even though in baptism Jesus busts up the power that evil and sin formerly had in our life, the old nature keeps slipping back in, sometimes when we least expect it. But if we stick with Christ, we will become more like him over the course of our lives. I have known some older people who by the end of their lives have clearly been graced with a spirit that can only come from Christ. They and Christ have spent a long time living together, sharing thoughts and feelings and experiences and ideas. Eastern Orthodox Christians speak of this as a process of divinization. That's not a word we Protestants use very often, but I think it's a very good word. It simply means that over the course of our Christian lives, in fits and starts, we slowly become more like Christ, taking on some of the qualities of his divinity.

How can such a thing happen? How do we participate with Jesus in this lifelong process of divinization? Jesus himself gives us the answer. Abide in me, he says. At least that's the translation offered in the New Revised Standard Version . The New International Version translates it as ``remain in me.'' Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase called The Message , translates it as ``Live in me; make your home in me.'' However we choose to translate it, it's the one and only command Jesus gives us in this passage: abide in him, remain in him, make our home in him.

Notice that Jesus does not command us to grow grapes. Growing grapes is the whole purpose of having a vineyard; yet Jesus oddly does not command us to grow grapes. Even though he speaks of bearing fruit in verse 2, he does not turn it into a command. We Mennonites have a long theological history of discipleship, of saying we will follow Christ and serve our neighbor no matter what the cost to ourselves. I'm glad to be part of this theological history because the call to discipleship is indeed one of God's loudest voices in the Bible. Yet we sometimes misunderstand how to go about being disciples. We have sometimes thought we are the ones who have to change our lives; we are the ones who have to transform our will; we are the ones who have to bear the fruit; we are the ones who have to make ourselves like Jesus.

No. That is simply not correct. It's God's task to change us, to transform us, to see to it that we bear grapes. Immediately before this passage, Jesus promises that God will send us the Holy Spirit (he calls it ``the Advocate'') who is God's fertilizer, water, and sunlight for producing grapes at the edges of our lives. Jesus knows God will do this in us, and so does not command us to bear fruit. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul agrees with Jesus. In chapter 5:15 and following, Paul's words sounds very much like Jesus': he tells us to ``live by the Spirit.'' In verse 22, Paul observes that ``the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . .'' etc. Not ``the fruit of the Christian is love, joy, peace,'' but ``the fruit of the Spirit is.'' Our job is to abide in Jesus, to live in Jesus, to stay connected with Jesus, and to let the job of bearing fruit up to the Spirit. If we stay connected, the Spirit will grow fruit in us and around us as a natural and inevitable consequence.

What's it like to abide in Jesus? A few months ago I checked a book out of the Goshen Public Library on twins. I was so fascinated by these stories of identical twins, fraternal twins, and conjoined twins that I read the whole book that same evening. It felt to me that in their stories I was walking on holy ground. Most of these twins, regardless of their specific life circumstances, felt oddly connected with each other.

One set of identical twin sisters, Claudia Jefferson Beckman and Colleen Jefferson Hisdahl, invented their own language when they were toddlers. They used this special language to talk with each other before they finally began to speak English at the age of four. Claudia and Colleen are now married adults, and long ago forgot this special language they had used as toddlers to communicate with each other. One time, much later in life when they were adults, both twin sisters returned home to visit their parents, and that night slept in the same room. In the middle of the night, their mother got up and heard her daughters talking to each other in their sleep. She stuck her head in the bedroom and realized they were talking in the special language they had invented as toddlers. 1
Or consider Ralph and Robert Mendez, identical twin brothers who work as kidney transplant surgeons in Los Angeles. ``When we operate together, it's sort of automatic. We can go through a whole surgery and not say a word,'' observes Ralph. ``It's just like four hands out of the same brain. We can operate in about half the time of somebody else.'' Robert agrees. ``There is a lot of synergy working together,'' he says. 2
The connection between some twins is so strong and peculiar that when one of them is injured, the other twin immediately knows what has happened without being told. On July 5, 1949, identical twins Raymond and Robert Brandt, then twenty years old, were working as electrical linemen on top of separate utility poles five miles from each other. ``All of a sudden,'' says Raymond, ``I experienced this tremendous electrical jolt in my body, and I was mystified because I wasn't working [on] energized conductorsbut my twin was. And I felt . . . I felt Robert's spirit separate from mine. I said [out loud] `Take me with you . . . take me with you. . . .' My supervisor told me to come down [from my pole], but I already knew what he was going to say. I knew it the very moment it happened. `You don't have to tell me,' I told him. `My twin's dead. I felt his shock.'''

Raymond, the surviving twin, has spent most of his life since then trying to adjust to the loss of Robert. ``We were inseparable [as boys]. We were in complete union,'' he says. ``We had the other one for comfort. . . [we] worked as a team.'' 3 By many measurements Raymond has had a rather successful life, including earning two doctorates in human engineering. But these worldly accomplishments don't mean much to him in comparison to having had a twin brother. ``Even though we had only twenty years togetherand I've now had 47 years of separateness from himI would not trade those 20 years for those 47. Never. One moment of twinship is worth a lifetime.'' 4
I think the kind of life described by twins like these evokes the odd connection between us and Jesus. Through the miracle of baptism, we and he share the same spiritual DNA. We and he speak to each other in the peculiar language of faith that non-Christian outsiders do not understand. We and he work together through the same mind of God, animated by a synergy beyond ourselves. The relationship is so interconnected that if something happens to one of us, the other knows with a sixth sense beyond words. If we and Christ were cut off from each other, it would undo us, just as a branch dies when it falls away from the vine and lands on the ground.

Abiding in Jesus is not actually that difficult. Twins don't have to work very hard at abiding in each other. Once the zygote divides, twins simply live in each other's company. By using ultrasounds and sonograms, doctors have documented twins holding each other's hands, kissing, and hugging each other in the womb. 5 After birth they continue living together, eating, playing, talking, sharing together all that life has for them.

 Christian discipleship is not a gigantic, burdensome task that we do all by ourselves. It is, in fact, more about being and less about doing. Disciples simply live with Christ, day in and day out, from the moment of our baptism, through the rest of eternity. So, just live in Christ, and let the Holy Spirit grow grapes at the fingertips of your life: grapes for a famished world.

 Notes
1.       Ruth and Rachel Sandweiss, Twins (Philadelphia and London: Running Press, 1998), p. 136.
2.       Twins, p. 108.
3.       Twins, p. 85.
4.       Twins, p. 88.
5.       Twins, p. 88.
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The Power of Forgiveness
Sermon by Dan Schrock
February 26, 2003
Luke 23:32-34a

Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with Jesus. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ``Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.'' (NRSV)
Our God has entrusted us with a great gift. Our God has given us a great tool for expressing healing and hope in the world. This gift, this tool, is forgiveness.

To set the context, I begin with a story that reveals how desperately people want to be forgiven, and how difficult it is for victims of wrong to forgive those who have done the wrong.

Near the end of World War II, Simon Wiesenthal, who later became the great hunter of ex-Nazis and a relentless public voice against hate crimes, was a prisoner in Nazi Germany. As a young Polish Jew, he had looked on helplessly as Nazi soldiers killed his grandmother on the stairway of her home. Eventually 89 of Wiesenthal's relatives died at the hands of the Nazis.

One bright, sunny day in 1944 as Wiesenthal's prison detail was cleaning rubbish out of a hospital for wounded German soldiers, a nurse approached him. ``Are you a Jew?'' she asked hesitantly, then motioned for him to follow her. Apprehensive, Wiesenthal followed her up a stairway and down a hallway to a dark, musty room where a lone Nazi soldier lay swathed in bandages. White gauze covered the man's face, with openings cut out for his mouth, nose, and ears.

The nurse left, closing the door behind her to leave Wiesenthal alone with the spectral figure. The wounded man was an SS officer, and he had summoned Wiesenthal for a deathbed confession. ``My name is Karl,'' said a raspy voice that came from somewhere within the bandages. ``I must tell you of this horrible deedtell you because you are a Jew.''

Karl began by reminiscing about his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had lost while in the Hitler Youth Corps. He later volunteered for the SS and had only recently returned, badly wounded, from the Russian front.

Three times as Karl told his story, Wiesenthal pulled away as if to leave. Each time the officer reached out to grab his arm with a white, nearly bloodless hand. He begged him to listen to what he had just experienced in the Ukraine.

In the town of Dnyepropetrovsk, abandoned by the retreating Russians, Karl's unit stumbled onto booby traps that killed 30 of their soldiers. As an act of revenge the SS rounded up 300 Jews, herded them into a three-story house, doused it with gasoline, and fired grenades at it. Karl and his men encircled the house, their guns drawn to shoot anyone who tried to escape.

``The screams from the house were horrible,'' he said, reliving the moment. ``I saw a man with a small child in his arms. His clothes were on fire. By his side stood a woman, doubtless the mother of the child. With his free hand the man covered the child's eyes, then he jumped into the street. Seconds later the mother followed. Then from the other windows fell burning bodies. We shot . . . Oh God!''

All this time Simon Wiesenthal sat in silence, letting the Nazi soldier speak. ``I am left here with my guilt,'' the soldier concluded at last:

``In these last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.''

Simon Wiesenthal, in his early 20s, a prisoner dressed in a shabby uniform marked with the yellow Star of David, felt the immense crushing burden of his race bear down on him. He stared out the window at the sunlit courtyard. He looked at the eyeless heap of bandages lying on the bed. He watched a bluebottle fly buzzing the dying man's body, attracted by the smell.

``At last I made up my mind,'' Wiesenthal said, ``and without a word I left the room.'' 1
People desperately want forgiveness; people find it difficult to grant forgiveness. During 18 years of pastoral work, one of the patterns I've noticed is how many people just want to be forgiven. I'm not talking about forgiveness for small things like writing in green ink instead of black ink. I'm talking instead about evil actions which inflict significant harm on someone else and about which the guilty person feels great shame and sorrow. ``I did this terrible thing! The guilt crushes me like a stone crushing a tulip. How can I shake this off and be at peace? How can I be forgiven?'' Not many people that I've personally known have done things as terrible as the SS officer in Wiesenthal's story. Yet many people have done things about which they feel profound shame.

Wanting forgiveness is one of the deepest yearnings of the human spirit. And we, the people of God and the followers of Jesus Christ, are given the power to forgive! We have one of the finest gifts anywhere in the world, a gift that others want desperately. God has forgiven us! When Jesus was hanging on the cross and wished forgiveness for the people who were killing him and mocking him, he performed the greatest single act of his entire ministry: ``Father, forgive them.'' His act of forgiveness is the peg upon which Christian faith hangs, the nexus that makes Christian faith Christian, the shape and substance of what the followers of Jesus are to be about. The vision statement of this congregation, which also happens to be the vision statement of the Mennonite Church USA, declares that we want to offer healing and hope to the world. Offering this healing and hope is largely achieved by offering forgiveness. Healing and hope flower most easily in the sunlight of forgiveness.

 Pastoral work has also shown me how tough most people find it to forgive. Simon Wiesenthal could not find it within himself to forgive that dying Nazi officer, even though Wiesenthal probably realized that doing so would have been a powerful gift to a dying man. Perhaps Wiesenthal, whose faith was not centered on Christ, simply did not have the spiritual resources to forgive. Maybe a Christian person would have been more inclined to forgive. But in fairness to Wiesenthal, let us admit that even a Christian might have done what Wiesenthal did: walk silently out of the dying man's room, withholding forgiveness, forcing the German officer to die in guilt.

 So let us Christians admit that forgiving others can be excruciatingly difficult, particularly when the evil act has inflicted trauma on us. Consider how difficult it might be for a husband to forgive the drunk who smashed into his wife's car and killed her, how hard it could be for a teenager with fetal alcohol syndrome to forgive her mother for drinking not only beer but also whiskey and gin during the pregnancy, how unutterably arduous a woman might find it to forgive the man who raped her in a dark alley.

In the face of such trauma, the old advice to forgive and forget doesn't work. In fact, trying to forget is precisely the wrong thing to do. People in healing professions say that forgiveness actually lies in remembering, in acknowledging the truth that this terrible thing really did occur, and in recounting in a safe environment what actually happened in sufficient detail to begin putting the ghosts to rest. Expressing grief is certainly an important part of this remembering. This helps survivors to separate themselves from the event and integrate that event into their lives.

A second step on the road to forgiveness is to experience some sense that the injustice is being rectified. It certainly helps if the perpetrator expresses repentance. Of course this may not always be possible if the perpetrator is now dead. But in most situations, there is usually some creative way for the victim to feel that justice has not been abandoned.
A third step is to re-humanize the perpetrator, to recognize even if only in some small way that the perpetrator is a human being just as I am a human being. It might be as simple as understanding that he has to eat just as I have to eat, that she has to use the restroom just as I do, that they have mothers and fathers and siblings just as I do.

A fourth step in the journey toward forgiveness is to renew human relationships. This might range from basic civility to full reconciliation with the perpetrator. Of course these four steps are likely to take many years to accomplish, with numerous fits and starts along the way. 2
Some of the finest examples of Christian forgiveness in recent years have come from South Africa, a land plagued with a legacy of hatred, racism, and apartheid. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up during the presidency of Nelson Mandela, achieved a remarkable degree of healing and hope using many of these steps on the road to forgiveness. One of my favorite stories is what happened during a recent courtroom trial in South Africa.

A frail black woman rises slowly to her feet. She is over 70 years old. Facing her from across the room are several white security police officers, one of whom, Mr. van der Broek, has just been tried and found guilty in the murders of both the woman's son and her husband some years before.

It was indeed Mr. van der Broek, it has now been established, who had come to the woman's home a number of years back, taken her son, shot him at point-blank range and then burned the young man's body on a fire while he and his officers partied nearby.

Several years later, van der Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of her husband's whereabouts. Then, almost two years after her husband's disappearance, van der Broek came back to fetch the woman herself. How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were, ``Father, forgive them.''

 And now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. van der Broek. A member of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks, ``So, what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?''

 ``I want three things,'' begins the old woman, calmly but confidently. ``I want first to be taken to the place where my husband's body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.''

 She pauses, then continues. ``My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly, therefore, for Mr. van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining within me.''

 ``And, finally,'' she says, ``I want a third thing. I would like Mr. van der Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across this courtroom so that I can take Mr. van der Broek in my arms, embrace him, and let him know that he is truly forgiven.''

As the court assistants come to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he has just heard, faints. And as he does, those in the courtroom, friends, family, neighbors all victims of decades of oppression and injustice begin to sing softly but assuredly, ``Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.''

We, the followers of Jesus Christ, know that forgiveness saves the world. Forgiveness is the balm that heals. Forgiveness offers hope that tomorrow can bring new possibilities. Forgiveness is why God created the church. This is our vision and our mission: to offer others the amazing grace of forgiveness.
Notes
1. Adapted from Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing about Grace?, pp. 109-111.
2. Many articles are available detailing the steps of forgiveness. These four steps come from Kyle A. Pasewark, ``Remembering to forget: A politics of forgiveness'' in Christian Century, July 5-12, 1995, pp. 683-685. Another fine article is ``At the Fork in the Road: Trauma Healing,'' by Nancy Good Sider, originally published in Conciliation Quarterly, Spring 2001; Volume 20, No. 2, an on-line version of which is available at www.geocities.com/tuorfa =-->The Power of Forgiveness<style type="text/css b.c6 {font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-size: 80%} div.c4 {font-size: 80%; text-align: center} div.c3 {font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c2 {color: #000080; font-weight: bold; text-align: center}.
Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:04:32 GMT The Prayer for Protection June 1 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Prayer for Protection June 1 2003.rtf@CB1
The Prayer for Protection
Zechariah 2:1-5 and John 17:15
Sermon by Dan Schrock
June 1, 2003

I looked up and saw a man with a measuring line in his hand. Then I asked, "Where are you going?" He answered me, "To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length." Then the angel who talked with me came forward, and another angel came forward to meet him, and said to him, "Run, say to that young man: Jerusalem shall be inhabited like villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and animals in it. For I will be a wall of fire all around it, says the LORD, and I will be the glory within it." (Zechariah 2:1-5, NRSV)
I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. (John 17:15, NRSV)
A very long time ago, people built walls around their cities for protection. All the ancient cities had walls to protect against enemies: Jerusalem, Damascus, Babylon, Ninevah, Troy, Rome. Unlike small villages that had no walls and were notoriously vulnerable to destruction, ancient cities always had strong, protective walls.

The mother of all protective walls is the Great Wall of China. The Chinese built this wall on their northern border as protection from marauding tribes. Begun 2,200 years ago during the Qin Dynasty, the Great Wall eventually stretched 4,500 milesthe same distance from Miami, Florida, to the North Pole. The Great Wall stands 15-30 feet tall and measures15-25 feet wide. The roadway on top is wide enough to drive a 18-wheel truck. As you might expect, building this wall was a massive project: it took 3 million people, or 70% of China's population at the time. For every person who actually worked on the wall, another 6 were needed to provide building materials and supplies. When finished the Great Wall was guarded by more than a million men spread out along its 4,500 mile length. The ancient Chinese were serious about protection!

We moderns are equally concerned about protection. Back in the 1980s, President Reagan proposed that this nation build a Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly dubbed the "Stars Wars missile defense system." The idea was to create a network of defensive missiles that could shoot down incoming missiles from the Soviet Unionin other words, to build an invincible wall of protection around ourselves using computers, rockets, and bombs.

Nations plan for protection, but so do households. Many years ago I had a friend who sold home security systems. His job was to convince homeowners that they needed to buy not just the basic security system for $99, but also the expensive add-ons to the basic system. These add-ons were where the company really made its money, sending the final cost into thousands of dollars. My salesman friend found it remarkably easy to sell these systems, even the expensive add-ons. He simply appealed to the customer's fears by asking a few simple questions: "Don't you want peace of mind? While you're at work during the day, or away on a business trip, don't you want to feel that your family is safe? When you're asleep at night, don't you want to know that no one can break in? Don't you want security for your loved ones? Don't you love your children?" My friend discovered that this last question about children often made the sale.

This story reveals that fear motivates us to build walls of protection around ourselves. We are afraid of enemies. We are afraid of robbers. We are afraid of shadowy men in face masks with cold, loaded steel in their hands. And we are particularly afraid for our children. Afraid some accident will steal their life away from us. Afraid they will make bad choices and fall in with bad company. Afraid they will humiliate us by getting addicted, getting pregnant, getting thrown in jail. We are afraid they will reject our faith and declare God to be a silly old fool.

So we try to build walls of protection around them. We teach them basic safety rules When they play dangerously we help them to imagine who might get hurt in this situation or what might get damaged. We warn them about talking to strangers, or even worse, accepting rides from strangers. We give guidance in the kinds of friends they choose. We make sure they go to Sunday school, and at the right time, attend a baptism exploration class. And we pray for themoh, we pray like mad for our children, sometimes even after they're grown up.

Some of the walls we build for protection are prudent: we lock our doors at night, carry our wallet in our front pocket instead of our back pocket, commit ourselves to one person and have sex only with that person so we don't get AIDS, and so on. Yet the truth is that none of the walls we build are invincible. So far as I know, all the ancient city walls were broken through at one time or another, whether by battering rams, starvation, or Trojan horses. That massive Great Wall of China, built at huge expense and maintained at huge effort, was broken through one day when someone bribed a Chinese gatekeeper who then unlocked the gates and allowed a whole army to march right through into China. The great ship Titanic , built as a wall of protection against the cold waters of the northern Atlantic, and thought to be unsinkable, smacked into an iceberg on its first trip and promptly sank. I hate to point this out, but despite our best efforts some of our children will get hurt, some of them will fall in with the wrong crowd, some of them will make bad choices with awful consequences, and some of them will think God a silly old fool. Yes, God steps into those situations with mercy. But sooner or later, the twin forces of sin and evil will find a way to break through our walls. Our walls will turn out to be too low, too thin, or built in the wrong place.

In our text from Zechariah, Jews are preparing to build a new stone wall of protection around the city of Jerusalem. The old city wall, originally built by Kings David and Solomon, had been destroyed in the Babylonian invasion of 587 B.C. As the book of Zechariah opens, people want to rebuild that wall around Jerusalem. In our text a young construction worker with a measuring tape sets out to measure the length and breadth of the city so the other workers can assemble the materials.

At this point God intervenes. God sends an angel to the prophet Zechariah with this message, which I paraphrase: "Zechariah, run after that construction worker with the measuring tape! When you catch him, tell him that I, the Lord God, do not want you all to build a new wall around Jerusalem. Tell him that I want Jerusalem to be like a village, built without protective stone walls. I want you to build a new kind of city, one without walls." In the ancient world, this was unheard of: nobody built a city without walls. How else could you defend against evil? How else could you feel secure? What could God possibly have in mind?

God's answer is found in verse 5: "For I will be a wall of fire all around [the city], says the Lord, and I will be the glory within it." Jerusalem doesn't need a stone wall because God will be a fire wall of protection. God had been a fire wall of protection once before, you know, way back during the flight out of Egypt into the Promised Land. If God did it once God could do it again. As a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, God unfailingly protected Israelduring daylight hid them in a fog from all enemies and during nighttime surrounded them with fire so fierce and hot and holy that no enemy dared approach.

The protection of God is powerful. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who respect God, says Psalm 34:7, and protects them. They who live in the shelter of the Most High shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty, assures Psalm 91:1. God will command angels to guard us in all our ways, we read in Psalm 91:11, to bear us up on their hands so we do not so much as dash our feet against stones.

In our second text for today from John 17, Jesus prays that God will protect his followers from evil. In this prayer Jesus cannot possibly mean that God will prevent us from dying, for immediately after this prayer Jesus himself will be arrested, and the next day crucified. And just before this prayer, Jesus told the disciples that the world will persecute them just as it persecuted him (15:20). But take courage, he says, because I have conquered the world! (16:33).

So the protection Jesus prays for is a protection beyond death. As God cared for Jesus by gathering him up and leaping over death to new life on the other side, so God will care for us by gathering us into the divine arms, leaping over death and ushering us into eternity. Death is never the end of the story: because God leaps, and Jesus prays for us.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> The Prayer for Protection<style type="text/css span.c6 {font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c4 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c3 {font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c2 {font-size: 150%; font-style: it Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:04:33 GMT The Price of Transformation August 2 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Price of Transformation August 2 2003.rtf@CB1
The Price of Transformation
John 5:2-9a and Isaiah 43:19
Sermon by Dan Schrock
August 2, 2003

 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethzatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalidsblind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ``Do you want to be made well?'' The sick man answered him, ``Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.'' Jesus said to him, ``Stand up, take your mat and walk.'' At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk (John 5:2-9a, NRSV).

 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:19, NRSV).
You and I pray for transformation. We pray for God to change other people and pray for God to change us. We ask God to give a conversion experience to that teenager, Michelle, who won't have anything to do with Christian faith. We implore God to take away the breast cancer in Sam's sister, Laura. We beseech God to make Jim realize that he drinks so much Wild Turkey Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey that he needs a detox program. We beg God to stop those rabid religious terrorists in the Middle East and change them into quiet lovers of peace.

 We also ask God to change us. In prayer we claim, maybe, that we want to be healed of the hate we feel for the people across the street who will not keep their yard looking nice, or to be healed of the anger that explodes inside us whenever that kid next door blares his rock music all over the neighborhood. In prayer we ask, maybe, for a better relationship with our parents or our spouse or our children. We insist, maybe, that we want to become intimate with God, to feel God's soft love washing over our shoulders, to feel God's holy fire burning blue and hot inside us.

It may be, however, that you and I do not know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26), that our prayers are too superficial, too glib. We make transformation sound as easy as frying hamburgers for lunch, but forget that in order for raw hamburger to be changed into well done, it first must be fried over excruciating heat. Change comes at a price.

Jesus once walked up to an invalid lying beside a pool in Jerusalem, stared down at him, and asked what sounds like a stupid question: ``Do you want to be made well?'' (John 5:6). I know many people with some kind of illness, and all of them, I think, would answer ``yes!'' to that question. If there's anything sick people want, it's usually wellness. This particular man lying by the pool has been sick for thirty-eight years. Can you imagine what it would be like to be sick for thirty-eight years? I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the reality of thirty-eight years, let alone being sick for that long. Thirty-eight years ago I was a child of six, getting ready to start first grade. Thirty-eight years ago Lyndon Johnson was president, we were sending more soldiers to die in Vietnam, and the Voting Rights Act was passed. Thirty-eight years ago The Sound of Music was the number one box-office hit, and Ford manufactured the first Mustangs. From then until now, an invalid? I have an equally hard time imagining what it would be like to be sick for the next thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years from now I will be an old man of eighty-twoif I end up living that long.

In thirty-eight years we might get used to being sick. After thirty-eight years we might find it ordinary to walk with crutches, dragging that shriveled leg of ours along the ground, taking twice as long to get somewhere as a person without crutches. After thirty-eight years the crutches seem permanently attached to our body. After thirty-eight years our self-identity becomes wrapped up in those crutches and in that shriveled leg: I am disabled. I am impaired. I am invalid.

After a while our self-identity becomes so attached to the very thing we want to be healed of that we cannot bear to give it up. A young man once came to Jesus and asked what he had to do to get the transformation of eternal life. Jesus looked deeply into the heart of this particular young man and replied: if you really do want that transformation, then sell all your over-privileged stuffyour camels and scrolls and fancy Italian wines and house on the Mediterranean and whatever else you've become attached tosell it all, give the money to the under-privileged, and then follow me (Mark 10:17-22). There it is: Jesus offering perhaps the most sought-after transformation anyone can imagine: the 24-carat gift of living forever. And what does this young man do? He walks away. Why? Because his self-identity is so wrapped up in those camels and fancy Italian wines that he cannot imagine what it would be like to live without them. He wants to live forever, yes; but the price of getting there seems too great.

The question Jesus asks is therefore not at all stupid, but profoundly wise: Do you really want to be well? Can you dare to imagine what life could be like without those crutches, to have a leg made whole and strong? Are you able to think yourself into a different world where you can run and jump and dance?

 The man lying by the pool doesn't seem to hear the question beneath the question. He doesn't even know who the person is standing over him, offering this chance to enter a world of alternative possibility. ``Sir,'' the man replies, ``I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way [to the water], someone else steps down ahead of me'' (John 5:7). So I never get healed. I want to be. I try to be. But I'm not fast enough, not strong enough.

This, apparently, is a good enough answer for Jesus. He says, ``Stand up, take your mat and walk'' (John 5:8). Run. Jump. Dance. And enter a new world.

 It doesn't take long for the man to begin paying a price for his transformation. Within a matter of minutes, his rolled-up mat tucked under his arm, he meets some authorities out on the street who stop him ``What are you doing breaking Sabbath laws?'' they demand. ``You're not supposed to be carrying that mat on the Sabbath!''

``Sorry, but the man who just healed me told me to carry it. So I am.''

``What! Somebody healed you on the Sabbath? That's breaking another law!'' So it turns out that the price he pays for transformation is conflict with the religious police.

Of course none of us ever knows ahead of time what price we will pay for transformation. When we agree to marry someone, do we ever know how this covenant will change us, and what it may cost us to make those changes? When we choose a career, do we ever know how that line of work will affect us, and what it may exact from us? When we decide to follow Jesus for as long as we shall live, no matter what the cost of discipleship might be, do we ever know the price we may eventually end up paying? No.

At the end of the gospel of John, Jesus has another conversation about the price of transformation, this time with Peter. It's the final conversation in the book, the last verbal exchange between Jesus and any human being. ``Do you love me?'' Jesus asks Peter. ``Lord, you know . . . I love you'' (John 21:17). In response to this commitment of love, Jesus then says this:

 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go (John 21:18).

 Even though we do not know everything Jesus means by this statement, he is clearly warning Peter that someday in the future Peter will be martyred. How Peter will be martyred remains to be seen, but the price he will pay for loving Jesus is dying a death he will not want to die, going to a place he will not want to go. To be transformed, Peter will spend his life.

 If your life is like mine, then circumstances may tie any number of belts around your waist, pulling you into transformations you would rather not experience. You open the letter with your SAT or GRE scores and die to the dream of going to Harvard. The police arrest your daughter for possessing cocaine, and you die to the goal of having a perfect home with perfect children. The boss fires you, a burglar ransacks your bedroom, or a plane purposefully crashes into a tower, and you die to the illusion that you are secure. A doctor says you have cancer, and suddenly you realize you may not even live to be fifty.

 All this talk of dying may sound morbid to our ears until we remember who is speaking to Peter: it is Jesus, but at a peculiar moment in his life. The Jesus who speaks here is not the Jesus who sweated temptations in the hot Palestinian wilderness for forty days (Mark 1:12-13); this is not the Jesus who sweated blood on the Mount of Olives, madly praying for some way to change the world other than dying for it (Luke 22:39-44); this is not the Jesus nailed on wood who screamed, ``God, why have you abandoned me?'' (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34, paraphrased).

No, the Jesus who speaks at the end of John's gospel has allowed all these deaths to pass through him. This is the Jesus whom death has touched so completely there is nothing left for it to touch. Death has passed all the way through this Jesus, leaving only life.

I know a woman who has died again and again. Decades ago her husband had an affair with another woman and then asked for divorce. One son turned schizophrenic, while another died from a heart attack. She lost most hearing in one of her ears, and a few years later found out that cancer is eating her bones. Yet in spite of it all, or more likely because of it all, God has sprung up a new thing in her, granting an intimacy that she never experienced before. God, whom she used to glimpse only occasionally on some distant mountain, now lives closer than her own breathing. Prayer, once an exercise of shooting words into the silence, now flows like liquid from her to God and God to her while she washes dishes, waters her plants, and walks the neighborhood. The communication surges in sighs and feelings, thoughts and images too deep for words. And her eyes dance.

So what do you think? Do you want to be changed?
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Reflections on Major World Religions<style type="text/css i.c7 {font-size: 80%} span.c6 {color: #000000; font-size: 80%} i.c5 {color: #000000; font-size: 80%} span.c4 {font-size: 80%} div.c3 {font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c2 {font-style: italic; font-weight: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:04:33 GMT The Price of Transformation September 7 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Price of Transformation September 7 2003.rtf@CB1
The Price of Transformation
John 5:2-9a and Isaiah 43:19
Sermon by Dan Schrock
September 7, 2003

 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethzatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalidsblind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ``Do you want to be made well?'' The sick man answered him, ``Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.'' Jesus said to him, ``Stand up, take your mat and walk.'' At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk (John 5:2-9a, NRSV).

 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:19, NRSV).
You and I pray for transformation. We pray for God to change other people and pray for God to change us. We ask God to give a conversion experience to that teenager, Michelle, who won't have anything to do with Christian faith. We implore God to take away the breast cancer in Sam's sister, Laura. We beseech God to make Jim realize that he drinks so much Wild Turkey Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey that he needs a detox program. We beg God to stop those rabid religious terrorists in the Middle East and change them into quiet lovers of peace.

 We also ask God to change us. In prayer we claim, maybe, that we want to be healed of the hate we feel for the people across the street who will not keep their yard looking nice, or to be healed of the anger that explodes inside us whenever that kid next door blares his rock music all over the neighborhood. In prayer we ask, maybe, for a better relationship with our parents or our spouse or our children. We insist, maybe, that we want to become intimate with God, to feel God's soft love washing over our shoulders, to feel God's holy fire burning blue and hot inside us.

It may be, however, that you and I do not know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26), that our prayers are too superficial, too glib. We make transformation sound as easy as frying hamburgers for lunch, but forget that in order for raw hamburger to be changed into well done, it first must be fried over excruciating heat. Change comes at a price.

Jesus once walked up to an invalid lying beside a pool in Jerusalem, stared down at him, and asked what sounds like a stupid question: ``Do you want to be made well?'' (John 5:6). I know many people with some kind of illness, and all of them, I think, would answer ``yes!'' to that question. If there's anything sick people want, it's usually wellness. This particular man lying by the pool has been sick for thirty-eight years. Can you imagine what it would be like to be sick for thirty-eight years? I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the reality of thirty-eight years, let alone being sick for that long. Thirty-eight years ago I was a child of six, getting ready to start first grade. Thirty-eight years ago Lyndon Johnson was president, we were sending more soldiers to die in Vietnam, and the Voting Rights Act was passed. Thirty-eight years ago The Sound of Music was the number one box-office hit, and Ford manufactured the first Mustangs. From then until now, an invalid? I have an equally hard time imagining what it would be like to be sick for the next thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years from now I will be an old man of eighty-twoif I end up living that long.

In thirty-eight years we might get used to being sick. After thirty-eight years we might find it ordinary to walk with crutches, dragging that shriveled leg of ours along the ground, taking twice as long to get somewhere as a person without crutches. After thirty-eight years the crutches seem permanently attached to our body. After thirty-eight years our self-identity becomes wrapped up in those crutches and in that shriveled leg: I am disabled. I am impaired. I am invalid.

After a while our self-identity becomes so attached to the very thing we want to be healed of that we cannot bear to give it up. A young man once came to Jesus and asked what he had to do to get the transformation of eternal life. Jesus looked deeply into the heart of this particular young man and replied: if you really do want that transformation, then sell all your over-privileged stuffyour camels and scrolls and fancy Italian wines and house on the Mediterranean and whatever else you've become attached tosell it all, give the money to the under-privileged, and then follow me (Mark 10:17-22). There it is: Jesus offering perhaps the most sought-after transformation anyone can imagine: the 24-carat gift of living forever. And what does this young man do? He walks away. Why? Because his self-identity is so wrapped up in those camels and fancy Italian wines that he cannot imagine what it would be like to live without them. He wants to live forever, yes; but the price of getting there seems too great.

The question Jesus asks is therefore not at all stupid, but profoundly wise: Do you really want to be well? Can you dare to imagine what life could be like without those crutches, to have a leg made whole and strong? Are you able to think yourself into a different world where you can run and jump and dance?

 The man lying by the pool doesn't seem to hear the question beneath the question. He doesn't even know who the person is standing over him, offering this chance to enter a world of alternative possibility. ``Sir,'' the man replies, ``I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way [to the water], someone else steps down ahead of me'' (John 5:7). So I never get healed. I want to be. I try to be. But I'm not fast enough, not strong enough.

This, apparently, is a good enough answer for Jesus. He says, ``Stand up, take your mat and walk'' (John 5:8). Run. Jump. Dance. And enter a new world.

 It doesn't take long for the man to begin paying a price for his transformation. Within a matter of minutes, his rolled-up mat tucked under his arm, he meets some authorities out on the street who stop him ``What are you doing breaking Sabbath laws?'' they demand. ``You're not supposed to be carrying that mat on the Sabbath!''

``Sorry, but the man who just healed me told me to carry it. So I am.''

``What! Somebody healed you on the Sabbath? That's breaking another law!'' So it turns out that the price he pays for transformation is conflict with the religious police.

Of course none of us ever knows ahead of time what price we will pay for transformation. When we agree to marry someone, do we ever know how this covenant will change us, and what it may cost us to make those changes? When we choose a career, do we ever know how that line of work will affect us, and what it may exact from us? When we decide to follow Jesus for as long as we shall live, no matter what the cost of discipleship might be, do we ever know the price we may eventually end up paying? No.

At the end of the gospel of John, Jesus has another conversation about the price of transformation, this time with Peter. It's the final conversation in the book, the last verbal exchange between Jesus and any human being. ``Do you love me?'' Jesus asks Peter. ``Lord, you know . . . I love you'' (John 21:17). In response to this commitment of love, Jesus then says this:

 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go (John 21:18).

 Even though we do not know everything Jesus means by this statement, he is clearly warning Peter that someday in the future Peter will be martyred. How Peter will be martyred remains to be seen, but the price he will pay for loving Jesus is dying a death he will not want to die, going to a place he will not want to go. To be transformed, Peter will spend his life.

 If your life is like mine, then circumstances may tie any number of belts around your waist, pulling you into transformations you would rather not experience. You open the letter with your SAT or GRE scores and die to the dream of going to Harvard. The police arrest your daughter for possessing cocaine, and you die to the goal of having a perfect home with perfect children. The boss fires you, a burglar ransacks your bedroom, or a plane purposefully crashes into a tower, and you die to the illusion that you are secure. A doctor says you have cancer, and suddenly you realize you may not even live to be fifty.

 All this talk of dying may sound morbid to our ears until we remember who is speaking to Peter: it is Jesus, but at a peculiar moment in his life. The Jesus who speaks here is not the Jesus who sweated temptations in the hot Palestinian wilderness for forty days (Mark 1:12-13); this is not the Jesus who sweated blood on the Mount of Olives, madly praying for some way to change the world other than dying for it (Luke 22:39-44); this is not the Jesus nailed on wood who screamed, ``God, why have you abandoned me?'' (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34, paraphrased).

No, the Jesus who speaks at the end of John's gospel has allowed all these deaths to pass through him. This is the Jesus whom death has touched so completely there is nothing left for it to touch. Death has passed all the way through this Jesus, leaving only life.

I know a woman who has died again and again. Decades ago her husband had an affair with another woman and then asked for divorce. One son turned schizophrenic, while another died from a heart attack. She lost most hearing in one of her ears, and a few years later found out that cancer is eating her bones. Yet in spite of it all, or more likely because of it all, God has sprung up a new thing in her, granting an intimacy that she never experienced before. God, whom she used to glimpse only occasionally on some distant mountain, now lives closer than her own breathing. Prayer, once an exercise of shooting words into the silence, now flows like liquid from her to God and God to her while she washes dishes, waters her plants, and walks the neighborhood. The communication surges in sighs and feelings, thoughts and images too deep for words. And her eyes dance.

So what do you think? Do you want to be changed?
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Reflections on Major World Religions<style type="text/css i.c7 {font-size: 80%} span.c6 {color: #000000; font-size: 80%} i.c5 {color: #000000; font-size: 80%} span.c4 {font-size: 80%} div.c3 {font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c2 {font-style: italic; font-weight: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:04:33 GMT Waiting to Meet the Lord Christ November 16 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Waiting to Meet the Lord Christ November 16 2003.rtf@CB1
Waiting to Meet the Lord Christ
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Sermon by Dan Schrock
November 16, 2003

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (NRSV)
When I was in elementary school, we went to meet President Lyndon Johnson in Elkhart. After it was publicly announced that on a certain date the president and his motorcade would be driving through Elkhart, people started talking about this big, upcoming event. ``Are you going to see the president?'' people would ask each other. ``Oh, I don't know,'' some replied, ``I haven't decided yet.'' But others were more definite: ``Yes, we're going to see the president. We'll be there.'' Never mind that the president was only going to drive through town at the posted speed limit of 35-40 miles an hour. Never mind that he was not going to stop and give a speech or anything momentous like that. He was only driving through; but this was a big deal. After all, Elkhart is a relatively unimportant town, dinky and out of the way. How many times does the president of the United States of America ever come to Elkhart, Indiana, even just to drive through it? So The Elkhart Truth printed daily updated reports. The White House predicted that the president would be at such and such an intersection at such and such a time. No, the next day's paper said, he might be a little later than that. Finally, upon the advice of the White House staff, the newspaper simply said: he'll be driving through at some point during this block of time. Nobody knows exactly when he'll show up. So if you want to see him drive by, come early, stand around and wait, and keep your eyes open, because it'll only take a second or so for his limousine to streak by.
For some reason which utterly escapes me more than thirty years later, I persuaded my mother to take me to meet the president. Ok, to see the president, not actually to meet him. So early one morning, as Saturday as I recall, Mom and I got in the car and drove to an intersection along the president's path that seemed to offer the best view. We parked our car several blocks away and walked. A crowd had already gathered, and more people arrived after we did. We waited and waited and waited. It was cold that morning, and the longer the wait went the colder we got. My mother had never been keen on this excursion because she had more important things to do, like grocery shopping. So the longer we waited and the colder we got, the more unhappy she became. But I was firm in my resolve: I wanted to see the president.
Finally, after waiting some 30-45 minutes, he zipped by in his limousine. We had almost no warning. I quickly glanced at the back seat of the black limousine with the American flag and saw a man who looked like the president, staring out the window at us, with a half-hearted wave of the hand and a bored look on his face. In a flash he was gone, and that was that. We got in our car and went back home, I to play with toys and Mom to buy the groceries. For one second I saw the president of the United States, not on TV or in a magazine, but in person. And my life went on just as it had before.
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul says that the Lord will return to earth in much the same way a king or an emperor comes to visit a city. With a cry of command, with the call of an archangel, with the blast of God's trumpet, the Lord will descend from heaven to gather his own to himself. Faithful followers of Christ will meet the Lord in the air. In verse 17, Paul uses a special Greek word for this meeting in the air. It's the only time Paul uses this word in any of his letters. The word is apantçsis . It's a technical word that specifically refers to a royal visit from a king or an emperor. By using this word apantçsis, Paul sets up a contrast between an official visit from the Roman emperor and the second and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the first century, Roman emperors mostly stayed in Rome, and only rarely traveled outside Italy. When they did leave Italy, they generally traveled only in the western half the empire, which meant that the eastern part of the empire, where Paul lived and worked, and where Thessalonica was located, almost never received a visit from the emperor. In fact, during the entire 1 st century, no emperor ever visited Asia Minor, where cities like Ephesus and Colossae were located. 1 Emperors simply did not think it was important to visit cities in the eastern part of their domains, just as presidents do not think it's important to visit places like Elkhart or Goshen.
All of which meant that if an emperor ever did choose to visit, it was a really big deal. If an emperor decided to visit a small town like Thessalonica, for example, the whole town would be affected. With great formality, fanfare, and florid speeches, town leaders would greet the emperor and his retinue outside the gates of the town. Special athletic games would be held to honor the emperor. Elaborate sacrifices would be offered to the gods for the emperor's health and long life, and afterward everyone in the town would feast on meat and wine, probably for many days in a row. There would be processions, dancing, and speeches. The town's normal life would be completely disrupted, and when it was all over, people would vividly remember, and talk about, the emperor's visit until the day they died. Paul's choice of the word apantçsis suggests that the second coming of Christ will be really big deal. The return of the Lord will not be something you will ever forget.
Paul says that when the Lord returns for this apantçsis at the end of history, all Christians who have died will rise up from their graves to join Christ. After these dead Christians have risen, then all Christians who are alive at that moment will be snatched up to meet Christ in the air. You might find it interesting to know that in Paul's day, cemeteries in Greece (remember that Thessalonica is in Greece) were located outside the cities and towns. If you visit the ruins of those ancient cities today, you can sometimes still see the remnants of these cemeteries. Along both sides of the virtually every major road leading into a city, you will see graveyards, sometimes stretching for several miles. So the picture Paul is painting here is that as the Lord Christ approaches for this final royal visit, accompanied by the blast of a trumpet and the proclamation of an archangel, his dead followers rise up out of the cemeteries to march in the air after him. Then his living followers join the procession in the air, to be with the Lord forever. 2
Notice that little detail about meeting Christ in the air. That's Paul's way of saying that Christ is Lord of the whole earth, that his dominion far surpasses that of any earthly ruler. In contrast to a Roman emperor who has to travel on the ground, Christ travels in the air. In contrast to a Roman emperor who rules only a few territories, Christ rules all territories. 3 The Lord is supreme, mighty, glorious!
That word ``Lord'' is significant too. Five times in this short passage, Paul refers to Christ as ``the Lord.'' As you know from your own Bible reading, Paul calls Jesus Christ ``the Lord'' dozens and dozens of times, in fact, about 175 times. 4 That name of course sets up a clear contrast with the Roman emperor, whom most people in the empire called ``lord,'' as in the sentence: ``the lord Caesar proclaims that gladiators will now fight to the death in the arena,'' or whatever it was that the lord Caesar wanted to proclaim. Whenever you and I read ``the Lord Christ'' in one of Paul's letters, he wants us to compare the power and glory of our Lord Christ with the pretensions and the delusions of the Roman emperors.
To get a clear picture of the contrast between the Lord Christ and the lord Caesar, consider who the emperor was when Paul wrote this letter to the Thessalonians, in about the year 50. The emperor at the time was a man by the name of Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus, usually known simply as Claudius. In comparison to some of the emperors both before him and after him, Claudius performed relatively well in his administrative duties. As a person, however, he had an unsavory reputation. Most people simply did not trust him. First of all was his personal appearance. The Roman historian Suetonius said the emperor frothed and slavered at the mouth, his tongue stuttering and stammering, and his body shaking and trembling. Medical historians have variously diagnosed his medical condition as meningitis, poliomyelitis, pre-natal encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, alcoholism, or congenital cerebral paralysis, but no one knows for sure. What we do know is that at every meal Claudius stuffed himself with food and drowned himself with wine, which sapped his health and hastened his death, not to mention leaving him drunk a good deal of the time.
His own mother called him a monster. He was ``an immoderate and relentless womanizer.'' His nasty temper frequently became sadistic. For instance, he liked to watch people being tortured. During his thirteen-year reign he assassinated 35 senators and 200-300 knights. The last four years of Claudius' reign were something of a nightmare. By the year 48, about two years before Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians, the emperor was clearly losing his mental grip, and the empire suffered as a result. 5
In comparison to Claudius, Christ is a far better Lord. Instead of assassinating his enemies, our Lord saves them. Instead of gleefully torturing people, our Lord tenderly has compassion on them. Instead of perpetuating evil, our Lord defeats evil. Instead of stumbling around the palace in a drunken stupor, our Lord stands steady with a clear head and a kind heart!
And at his second coming, our Lord will unite us with him for ever and ever. Our Lord will raise up Christians from the Violett Cemetery, the New Paris Cemetery, the Yellow Creek Cemetery, and all other cemeteries in this world: Aunt Martha and Cousin Frank, Grandpa Levi and Grandma Maude, your father and my mother, the spouse whom we have released into Christ's care, even you and I, if by then we have also died. On that day all Christ's people will join him in a marvelous manifestation of God's power, such as you and I have never seen.
On that day we will be safe. On that day evil will be vanquished. On that day sin will be busted. On that day violence will fizzle. On that day pain will dissolve to laughter. The world will finally know who is Lord, and nothing will ever be the same again.

 Note
 1.       S.R.F. Price, ``Rituals and Power,'' in Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society , ed. Richard A. Horsley (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997), 47.
 2.       Helmut Koester, ``Imperial Ideology and Paul's Eschatology in 1 Thessalonians,'' in Horsley, ed., 160.
3.       Beverly Roberts Gaventa, First and Second Thessalonians (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1998), 66.
4.       That is, in the seven letters all scholars agree to be authentic: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. If you add the other letters attributed to Paul, the number jumps to about 258.
5.       This information about Claudius is taken from Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), 126-148.
 Tue, 18 Nov 2003 17:21:08 GMT What Is Faith February 23 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=What Is Faith February 23 2003.rtf@CB1
What Is Faith?
 Mark 2:1-12
Sermon by Dan Schrock
February 23, 2003

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, "Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and take your mat and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"--he said to the paralytic--"I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!" (NRSV)
I invite you to imagine a little scenario. Let's imagine that one Sunday noon you invite three people to your house for lunch. The first person is an average North American Christian. The second person you've invited is Mark, the very same person who wrote the gospel of Mark. And the third person you've invited is none other than Jesus himself. All of them have accepted your invitation and are now seated around your dining room table, eating pot roast, fresh bread, watercress salad, and cherry pie with Breyer's vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Since you are the host or hostess, you figure it's your job to make sure there's good dinner conversation. So you ask a question that you think might lead to some stimulating discussion. The question is this: ``What does the word faith mean? What is faith?''

You glance first at the North American Christian. And he or she answers something like this: ``Well, faith is what you believe. Faith means to believe the right ideas. You know, like Christ is the Son of God, that he is both human and divine, that he was born to Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, descended into hell, rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God, from where he will come again to judge the living and the dead.1 Faith is accepting correct doctrine. It's intellectual assent. That's what the word faith means. That what faith is.''

You notice that Mark is fidgeting in his seat, as if he's a little uncomfortable with this understanding of faith. So you look at him next. ``What do you think, Mark? What is faith? When you wrote your gospel, you used the Greek word pistis, which we English-speaking people usually translate into the word faith. What did you mean by the word pistis? What is faith?''

``Well,'' answers Mark. ``The answer this person just offered is not what I meant by faith at all. If that's what you twenty-first century North American Christians think faith is, then you are living in a different world than I did in the first century. Maybe you've been affected too much by centuries of arguments over theology and by that philosophical movement you call rationalism. Whatever the case, you are being far too logical about it. Faith is not intellectual assent. It's not studying orthodox doctrine so that you will end up believing the right ideas. Indeed, faith has almost nothing to do with logic or reason or belief in some idea. Even though it's a good thing to think clearly, faith is something very different than clear, systematic thinking about ideas. You moderns waste far too much time wrangling over creeds, doctrines, and correct theology.

 ``Let me put it to you in provocative language,'' continues Mark. ``Faith is about what you do, about the quality of your relationships . It's not about the correctness of your beliefs . Faith is the social glue that binds people together. It's about loyalty, fidelity, and solidarity. A person has faith if he or she is loyal to other people, committed to other people, steadfast to other people. 2 The focus of faith is not on what you believe, but on how you behave, how you act, how you live your life. Faith is faithfulness to other people--to your spouse, your parents, your children, your friends, and of course, faithfulness to God. 3 Tell me what kind of relationships a person has, and I will tell you whether he or she is a person of faith.

``Think of a person,'' says Mark, ``who agrees with everything in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and all the other historic creeds and confessions of the church. But that same person spurns his friends, break his commitments, and ignores human need. That person has no faith. That person if faithless.

``Now let us think of a person who doesn't necessarily agree with much of anything in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and all the other historic creeds and confessions of the church. But that same person remains loyal to his friends, keeps his commitments, responds compassionately to human need, and in some way honors God. Now, that person is full of faith. That person is leading a faithful life. So anybody who is loyal, steadfast, committed, and faithful in their relationships exemplifies faith.''

You look over at Jesus, who is calmly savoring the cherry pie and ice cream, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ``How would you answer the question, Jesus? What is faith?'' you ask him. Jesus puts his fork down, grins, and says, ``Let me tell you a story.

``Many years ago I lived Capernaum, the small fishing village on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee. I had moved to Capernaum after growing up in the village of Nazareth, 20 miles southwest of Capernaum. Anyway, one day I returned to Capernaum after a few quiet days of retreat out in the countryside. I slipped into my house quietly, hoping no one would see me. But word got around the village that I was back home, and pretty soon people started knocking on the front door. No sooner would I let them in than another knock would come, and then another, until my house was full of people. So I just left the front door open, and they crowded around inside and even outside. Inside the living room, I seated the older folks on my best chairs, and then sat myself down on a stool to talk with everyone.

``After a while I heard some people walking around up on my roof. Nothing wrong with that at all, because there was a stairway on the side of my house that went right up to the roof, and whomever wanted to go up there could just walk right on up. But then I heard some scratching on the roof, and tapping, like someone was knocking on it with a stone, and then finally a pulling sound, as if the people up there were pulling my roof apart. Sure enough, that's just what they were trying to do. A small hole appeared in the roof above my head, which got bigger and bigger. Finally I stopped trying to talk to talk with the people in my living room and looked up, as did everyone else in the room. Up there I saw 4 guys yanking my roof apart with their hands!

``Now you should know how we made roofs in those days. The roofs were always flat. First we laid thick beams across from one wall of the house to the opposite wall of the house. These beams were laid parallel to each other about 3 feet apart. Next we laid thick brushwood between the beams, and then finally we packed wet clay into the brush. Once the clay dried, we had a hard, compact roof. So what these 4 guys had done was to take stones, knock the dried clay loose, and yank out the brushwood until they made a hole in my roof as big as a man.

``As I sat below in the living room, wondering what on earth they were trying to accomplish, the answer came through the hole in the roof. These four guys had tied ropes to a stretcher and were lowering it in front of me. As it came down I saw a man lying on it, paralyzed from his waist down. These guys had carried their friend to my house, and when they couldn't get in the front door, devised an ingenious plan to get their friend to me through the roof.

``As the stretcher came down, the people in the living room rearranged themselves to make room for it on the floor. When it finally came to rest on the floor, I looked back up at the hole in the roof with 4 heads arrayed around the edge. `Friends,' I laughed, `you have quite the faith, bringing this man to me. And because of your faith--your fidelity, loyalty, and commitment to this man--I am going to forgive his sins.' Then I looked back down at the man lying on the stretcher and said, `Son, because of what your friends up there on the roof have done for you, your sins are now forgiven. Their actions, and the quality of their commitment to you, have given you new life with God.'

His story now over, Jesus once again picks up his fork to finish eating his cherry pie, the ice cream now pooled in a wet circle on his plate. ``That,'' he says digging into what's left of the pie, ``is what faith means. And by the way,'' he adds as an afterthought, a piece of pie now balanced on his fork in mid-air, ``a few minutes afterward I also told that man lying on the stretcher to get up and walk home. Which he did.''

And with that, Jesus puts the pie in his mouth, and swallows it.
Notes
 1.       Adapted from the Apostles' Creed.
2.       Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 252-253.

3.       Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., translated and abridged by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 853.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Carried<style type="text/css span.c8 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} b.c7 {font-size: 80%} span.c6 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c5 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c4 {text-align: center} b.c3 {f Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:06:57 GMT When Conversion Fails August 31 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=When Conversion Fails August 31 2003.rtf@CB1
When Conversion Fails
Acts 24:24-27
Sermon by Dan Schrock
August 31, 2003

 For the first fourteen years of my life, I participated in a massive effort to convert sinners to Jesus Christwhich utterly failed.

 In the 1940s, Mennonites in the Indiana-Michigan Conference were attempting to be a missional church. The slogan you heard around the church in those days was ``a mission outpost for every congregation.'' 1 Every established congregation was supposed to start a mission outposta new congregationsomewhere close by. The established congregation not only started the mission outpost, but also provided its leaders, money, oversight, and prayers. You heard the slogan preached from pulpits and read it in conference publications: ``A mission outpost for every congregation.''

So the Prairie Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, then a creative, high-energy congregation of nearly 300, got right to work starting its own mission outpost. In 1947 and 1949, people at Prairie Street conducted surveys on the northeast side of Elkhart, and decided on the basis of those surveys to start a mission outpost there. The first task was to find land and erect a building for this mission outpost. They bought land on Independence Street, and started building in October 1949, finishing the building a year and a half later. Prairie Street got a seminary student, Darrel Otto, to be the first pastor (he lasted only one year), and sent five families over to get the mission outpost going, families with the last names of Cocanower, Chupp, Hooley, Troyer, and Ebersole. 2 They called it the Roselawn Mennonite Church, even though by the time I got to know the congregation, the lawn no longer had any roses, if it ever did.

 After my parents were married in 1958, they decided to become members at the Roselawn mission outpost. They had, I think, the youthful vigor and vision that twenty-somethings often have. I was born nine months after their wedding, which is how I came to spend the first 14 years of my life at Roselawn Mennonite Church.

From the very beginning, the purpose of this mission outpost was to convert the neighbors to Christ. Many of the neighbors were originally from Appalachia and had come to Elkhart looking for a better economic life. They didn't exactly find it. Most were poor, at best on the lowest end of the middle class. Since the area was technically outside the city limits, normal building codes did not apply, which combined with low incomes meant that most houses were ramshackle constructions, poorly built and poorly maintained. Even in the early 1970s when I became a teenager, some of the houses around the church had dirt floors inside of them. One or two still had outhouses.

 The year I was born, the Roselawn Mennonite Church had a grand total of about 60 members. When I was 14, the Roselawn Mennonite Church still had a grand total of about 60 members, maybe less. Virtually all of us in the congregation were ethnic German-Swiss Mennonites. We believed in being missional. We wanted to be missional. We tried to be missional in every way we knew. In the 1960s and 1970s we worked hard to convert people to Christ. We had Sunday morning worship services that were as fervent as we could make them. Our pastor, a man originally selected by lot, preached the best sermons he could. We sang enthusiastically, our favorite hymn being ``O, Worship the Lord'' out of Life Songs No. 2 . We prayed passionately, even to the point of turning around in our pews and kneeling down on floor so that God might know how sincere we were. Every week we also had Sunday evening prayer meetings and Wednesday evening prayer meetings where we spent the whole hour praying for ourselves and praying for the neighbors in their dirt floor houses. We dressed plainly, refrained from jewelry, and made sure all the women wore head coverings. We were the best brotherhood we could be, there not being a sisterhood in those days.

At least once a year or so, we had revival services. We'd print up flyers ahead of time and pass them out to the neighbors, announcing that brother so and so would be in town for a series of special revival meetings, every night next week at our church starting at 7:00 PM. Occasionally one brave soul whom we had never seen before might show up from several streets away for one of these revival meetings. Occasionally one person.

In addition to the weekly Sunday school, our Christian education department of a dozen women also put on a summer Bible school for neighborhood children. We'd get 10 or 20 neighborhood children, maybe, plus the 10-12 children in the congregation. But none of those neighborhood children, or their parents, ever came to our church the rest of the time.

We had other special events each year intended to attract the neighbors. The women of the church organized an annual mother-daughter banquet in our fellowship hall and invited all the female neighbors. Lots of the neighbors came since the food was free and since they had figured out that Mennonite women knew how to cook. Not to be outdone, the men of the church put on a smelt supper every year. On a certain Friday in the spring of each year, two men from the church got in a pickup and drove to Michigan, where they caught smelt by the thousands. They brought them back on ice, cleaned them, and then we'd put on a smelt supper for all the men and boys in the neighborhood. That was also popular with the neighbors, since the fish were breaded and deep-fat-fried in hot oil, and came with enough tartar sauce, potato chips, cole slaw, and coffee with cream to close your arteries right up. Every year at the mother-daughter banquet and at the men's smelt supper we would make a point of inviting our captive audience of 70-100 neighbors to come back for church on Sunday morning. But only one or two of them ever did, and that was the last time we saw them.

In the early 1970s we got a new pastor who tried new ideas for converting people to Christ. Even though he had a different preaching style, his sermons were about the same quality as the ones we heard from our old pastor. Still, he had new ideas. The charismatic style of worship, which was new in those days, had swept our pastor off his spiritual feet, so of course he wanted us to become charismatic too. That ignited a congregational conflict that lasted quite a few years.

He also had the idea of knocking on all the neighbor's front doors and handing out copies of the gospel of Luke in the Good News for Modern Man translation, printed by the American Bible Society. Good old door-to-door evangelism. We thought we'd try that, so he made a colored map of the neighborhood, and one Saturday morning a bunch of us met at the church to decide who would get which streets. I got assigned two streets and a pile of Lukes. It took a hour and a half to get my assignment done. ``Hi,'' I said at each front door, ``My name is Dan and I'm from Roselawn Mennonite Church over on Independence Street, and we're passing out free copies of the gospel of Luke today. We invite you to read it and then come to our church at 9:00 on Sunday mornings.'' But the next morning at church it was just us who came for worship and Sunday school. None of the neighbors were there.

In short, all our efforts to convert the neighbors failed. So far as I remember, in the 14 years we were at that church, not even one person from the neighborhood ever came to our church for more than one Sunday. The handful of people who came once, never came back. We stayed the same small congregation of German-Swiss Mennonites we had always been. We did mission, surely; but our massive efforts to convert sinners failed. When it came to the central reason for our existence as a congregation, the reason for which that congregation was started in the first place, we failed completely. Our evangelism yielded no converts, no church growth. It was probably no one's fault. For whatever reason, it just didn't happen.

 In the 24 th chapter of Acts there is a similar story. Paul is a prisoner of Felix, the Roman governor of Palestine. Felix already knows quite a bit about Judaism, but he's not yet heard about Jesus Christ. So he tells soldiers to bring Paul from jail, and when Paul arrives, Felix wants to hear about Jesus. This is what happens. Listen as it is read for us now.

 Some days later when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him speak concerning faith in Christ Jesus. And as he discussed justice, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, "Go away for the present; when I have an opportunity, I will send for you." At the same time he hoped that money would be given him by Paul, and for that reason he used to send for him very often and converse with him. After two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus; and since he wanted to grant the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison. (NRSV)
Paul lays it on the line with Felix. There stands Paul, probably with chains around his ankles, and there sit the mighty governor, Felix, and his wife, Drusilla, on comfortable chairs wearing fine clothes. Paul is trying his very best to convert them to Christ. He not only tells them about Jesus, but he also lectures them about justice, self-control, and the coming judgmentin other words, about their personal morality. Let me take each of these three in turn.

First, Paul tells Felix about justice. Why? Probably because Paul has been unjustly imprisoned, and both he and Felix know it. Felix's own tribune, a trustworthy, high-ranking Roman named Lysias, told Felix very clearly that Paul has done nothing to deserve imprisonment or death (23:29). Yet Felix inexplicably continues to keep Paul in prison. Felix is not giving Paul justice, so Paul lectures this politician about it.

Second, Paul tells Felix and Drusilla about self-control. Why? Because this is the third marriage for Felix and the second for Drusilla. From historians of the time, Tacitus and Josephus, we know that Felix was about 50 years old, and Drusilla about 16. You heard that right: the man is 50 something, and his wife is 16. Drusilla had been married to King Azizus of Emesa. But when Felix laid eyes on her, he wanted her. So he paid a magician to help him woo Drusilla away from her husband. The magician was successful, and soon Felix married Drusilla. True, Drusilla was supposedly one of the most beautiful women in the world, but the fact remains that Felix and Drusilla are now living in adultery. Paul, therefore, lectures them about having self-control in marriage.

Third, Paul tells them about the coming judgment, the judgment by God at the end of time. Perhaps Paul threatens them a bit, suggesting that if they do not convert to Christ, God will not look too kindly upon them at the final judgment.

This is impudent, brazen speech from a prisoner in chains talking to the governor and his wife. But that's what Paul does, laying it on the line, calling a skunk a skunk. When Paul's daring speech is finished, Luke says that Felix is frightened (v. 25), as well the man might be, for Felix has some good reasons to be afraid of both God and this impertinent prisoner standing in front of him.

Felix, however, keeps Paul around anyway, ordering him to the governor's reception room from time to time, hoping that Paul will slip him a handsome bribe. Felix, you see, doesn't get it. All he wants is money, wealth, riches. He's not interested in Jesus.

The powerful politician Felix and his lovely wife Drusilla never do convert to Christ. This is one of the few stories in Acts where Paul, the church's q uintessential evangelist, church planter, and mission worker, slams into a brick wall. He utterly fails to convert the people he wants to covert. Sometimes this simply is the way it is: we do our best, but people don't, or won't, say yes to Jesus.

The good news is that failure sometimes happens. In conversion, we're not always successful. In a manner of speaking, this is more or less the way the book of Acts ends. There are a few more chapters in Acts after this, but no more conversions. In the remaining chapters, Paul goes to Rome, still a prisoner, to be tried before the emperor himself. He talks to other people about Jesus, yes; and yes, some of them are apparently convinced (28:24). But Luke does not say any of these people were converted or baptized. Luke ends the book of Acts with this sentence: ``He [Paul] lived there [in Rome] two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him [in prison], proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.''

So you and I come to the end of the book of Acts, our summer sermon series on conversion ended, with Paul still proclaiming the kingdom, Paul still teaching about Jesus, but getting no more converts. And Luke seems to think the proclaiming and the teaching are enough.

 Notes
 1.       John Christian Wenger, The Mennonites in Indiana and Michigan (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1961), 48.
 2.       Wenger, 220-221.
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Why God Bothers with Us
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Sermon by Anita Yoder Kehr
March 16, 2003 (Lent 2)

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous." Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
God said to Abraham, "As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her." (NRSV)
Have you ever wondered why God bothers with us human beings? Have you ever asked yourself why God keeps trying? It seems to me that it's a logical question, especially when we read the Biblical story and see the way that other people keep messing up. Last week we had the story of the flood, where God wipes out most of humankind because of their evil and sin but preserves one family who had proven themselves faithful. However, once that family gets out of the ark and back on dry land, they plant a vineyard and get into trouble with drunkenness, nakedness, in-family squabbles, and curses. Right after that, the Bible records the story of the tower of Babel, where humans once again think that they'll try to be like God. By the time we get to Abram, humans have already established quite a record of arrogance and evil for themselves.

Of course, the story of human sin doesn't end after God establishes a covenant with Abraham and Sarah. The Bible is a record of the ways that God continued to reach out in salvation to humans who kept falling away. And God's saving activity and the human need for salvation didn't end with the canonization of the Bible. We keep on sinning, and God keeps reaching out to us in salvation. So, have you ever wondered why God sticks with it?

Last Sunday in the Baptism Exploration class, we had an interesting conversationinteresting to me, at leastabout the creation of human beings and about free will. Perhaps one reason that God keeps trying with us is that God made us for relationship with Godself. We were created in God's own image, male and female we were created in that way, and perhaps God needs communion with us as much as we need communion with God!? And that relationshipthat communionwouldn't mean as much if God had not given human beings any choice in the matter, if God had created us so that we would certainly serve and worship but only because we were programmed that way. The relationship would have little significance and no integrity. What God wants is for human beings to come because of a desire for relationship, to come freely and without coercion.

Anyway, no matter what the reason, God does continue to bother with us. God has continued to invite human beings to come, to come without coercion but with joy, to come in order to experience a profound relationship of love and presence, to come and find meaning and purpose within the brief span of human life. Andrememberit is an invitation, not a demand.

In the history of God's salvation initiatives, in the ways that God has reached out, Abraham and Sarah play a pretty big role. Their significance lies not only in their being the parents of the children of Israel, but they are also the forerunners of all who have faith, of all who believe that God keeps promises.

By the time we read about God's appearance to Abram in Genesis 17, the passage that Jud read for us this morning, at least 24 years had passed since the first time the Lord came to Abramthe first recorded time, at least. In those 24 years, God had appeared to Abram at least three other times before the time that we heard about this morning.

The first record of God coming to Abram is found in Genesis 12. Abram was 75 years old then, and God instructs him to take his household, leave his country and extended family, and go to the place that will be revealed to him. God promises to make out of Abram a great nation, one that will experience special divine blessing. Now that must have been interesting, since there didn't seem to be any possibility that Abram and Sarai could have children. God also says that Abram will become a blessing to all families of the earthnot just the one that will come from Abram's own childrenbut to all families of the earth. God's salvation vision already in Genesis embraces all of us, but see here that that blessing begins with a covenant of faith with one man. Abram.

Imagine for a moment how Abram might have reacted to this first meeting with God. We know very little about him before this, but here's what we do know. Abram's father was Terah; he had two brothers named Nahor and Haran; his nephew, Haran's son, was named Lot; Haran died young, but Lot stayed with the family; Abram and Nahor took wives. They all lived in Ur but left to go into the land of Canaan. They ended up settling in Haran. Abram lived 75 years in the heart of his extended family, moving when needing to, finally settling in one place, and getting used to the idea of not having any descendents because his beautiful wife was unable to have children.

But, God steps into Abram's regular and predictable existence and disrupts everything. We don't know why God came to Abram instead of to someone else. We don't know what kind of prior relationship Abram might have had with God. We don't know why God picked this moment. We don't know a lot about the whys and wherefores of this story. But there it is: God came to Abram and said, ``Go,'' and Abram went. He got into some trouble along the way, but he went, taking his nephew, Lot, with him. And God also went with him.

After awhile, the land where Abram and Lot settled down became too small for the great herds and flocks and tents that each had accumulated. So, they decided that they needed to split up; Lot went east and Abram went west. After their split, the Lord appeared again to Abram and saidagain``[All] the land you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.'' But, as far as Abram and Sarai could tell, there were no children on the way as yet!

The next time that God appeared and repeated his promise of descendents and land, Abram gathered up his courage and asked a few questions. ``O Lord,'' he said after God had spoken of a great reward, ``so just what are you going to give me, because I still do not have any children? Perhaps you're thinking that my legal heir, Eliezer, is going to be the way that you fulfill your promises?'' But God assured Abram that he would have his own son. God asked Abram to look up at the stars and said, ``Your descendentsyours, not Eliezer'sare going to be as countless as the stars in the sky.''

After making that pronouncement, God cut a ritual covenant with Abram. You can read about it in Genesis 15, but it involved Abram preparing sacrificial animals, a deep sleep, a smoking firepot, and a flaming torch. Because of Abram's faithfulness, God granted him the promise of a homeland populated with many descendents. But still no children appear.

Abram and Sarai get impatient. They're also getting older; Abram's in his mid-80s and Sarai's in her late 70s. They begin to wonder whether they need to give God some help in this whole descendent business. So, Sarai offers her slave girl, Hagar, Abram accepts, and Ishmael results. Now, this is neither the time nor the way that God had planned for things to happen. God didn't need Abram and Sarai's help in keeping God's end of the covenant! Although Ishmael receives a promise and blessing in response to the pleading of both Hagar and Abram, it's not the blessing that God had intended for the descendents of Abram and Sarai.

Another 13 years pass, and then God shows up to Abram again, saying the same things as before. This particular theophanythis appearance of Godis recorded in Genesis 17, the text that we heard this morning. The message God gives this time is not much different than the ones that had come before: ``I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and you will be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you. This will be an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendents.'' And this time, God gives Abram a new name. Abram becomes Abraham. And this time, God includes Sarai in the promise, giving her a new name, too; she becomes Sarah. In addition, the men of the family are to undergo circumcision; they will carry a mark on their bodies of their allegiance to God.

When God finishes giving the provisions of the covenant, Abraham respectfully laughs. ``We are too old!,'' he says. ``Are you sure you don't mean Ishmael?'' And God says, ``No, I mean you and Sarah will have a son of your own.'' And God left Abraham…again.

Now, it is instructive to see what happens next. Abraham gathered all the men of the household together, and they were all circumcised. Abraham and Sarah did not wait to see if a baby was really on the way; they didn't wait for proof. Before there was any hint of morning sickness, all-day tiredness, or Braxton-Hicks contractions, Abram became Abraham and accepted circumcision, and Sarai became Sarah. In the year that follows this event, you and I know that Sarah will get her turn to laugh at God, but you and I also know that Isaac is born, and the fulfillment of the covenant begins. You and I know that this is not the last time in the history of the world that God reaches out to humans; these events are only at the beginning of God's moving among and through us, of inviting us to intimate relationship. You and I also know that we have needed that continuing movement because we fall away again and again. God, however, has never waveredwondered perhaps about our folly and sinbut never wavered.

So, what is important for us to glean from Abraham and Sarah's story? The last thing is the first thing, I think. God's love for humankind has never wavered. God's desire for intimacy with us has not waned. God craves our response of love and faithfulness. And God's love and faithfulness is offered to all of the human family. ``In you all families of the earth shall be blessed,'' God told Abraham at that very first appearance recorded in Genesis 12. All families. All those who trust God by faith.

The Apostle Paul carefully explains in Romans 4 how Abraham is the father of those who are both circumcised and uncircumcised. Abraham, Paul says, had faith before he acted in righteousnessbefore he was circumcisedand it was the faith that God blessed, not the work of circumcision. All of us who have faith in the promises of the salvation of God, Paul says, are the true descendents of Abraham.

Here's a second thing to learn from Abraham and Sarah: Because God loves, God acts. We are not abandoned, we are not left alone to the mercy of capricious fate. But sometimes we act as if we were. William Willimon, who is a professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, wrote a sermon using this story of Abraham and Sarah as his text. Here's what he says: ``[The] Biblical view [is] that there is no such thing as luck, chance, or random happenstance. What there is is God, moving, caring, hearing, acting behind the scenes of our lives. What there is is providence, the quiet conviction that, by God, our world is moving somewhere, toward some good end predetermined by God…[and let me say that we can claim that even in the midst of war and rumors of war, famine, hunger, illness, and disagreement.] Christians believe that there is a reason, a rationale behind the movements of our world. That reason is called the love of God.''(1) Abraham and Sarah looked for God and found God's providence. There was no dumb luck in their story.

A third thing to think about: Acceptance by faith of God's invitation and saving activity gives us a new identity and it results in our action. Sarai and Abram became Sarah and Abraham; Abraham was circumcised and Sarah gave birth. When we come to God through Jesus Christ, we are named Christian. We give ourselves over to the wind of the Spirit, and we seek to be transformed so that we may reflect more and more clearly the image of the one in whose image we were created. We cannot respond authentically to God's invitation and expect that we will not be changed. William Willimon, again, remarks on a contemporary sort of secular faith which says that ``God either cannot or will not do anything. Having destroyed God as an active, intervening agent, we also [end] up destroying ourselves as active, intervening agents.'' (2) If his statement is correct, then perhaps the converse is also true. If we believe that God can and will be an active, intervening agent in our lives and in the world, than we can also understand ourselves as capable of participating with God as active and intervening agents. Think about it, anyway.

Here's a fourth thingGod always respects the freedom of choice that God originally gave to humankind. That's the nature of covenant. There are two sides to it. Abram could have chosen to reject God's word to him. He could have stayed in Haran where the rest of his family lived. He could have ignored God's request to prepare the sacrificial animals. He could have refused to be circumcised. He and his wife could have stayed Abram and Sarai for the rest of their lives. Good grief! They were 99 and 91 already! But they chose to respond obediently. God revealed Godself. God invited. God promised. But God did not force.

And finally, here's a fifth thought: Even if we know, surely and truly, that God will act and move in our lives, we do not know just exactly how God will act and move in our lives except that it will be consistent with God's character. God is not predictable, and God is surprising. Think about the timing of Isaac's birth. It's funny! Especially when I think about the frailty of my grandma, who is 97. I just can't quite see her caring for a toddler anymore. No wonder Abraham and Sarah laughed! But the timing of Isaac's birth is also poignant. Abraham and Sarah waited painfully many years before Isaac was born, andin factmany years after God had promised his birth. The point is, though, thatmostlythey kept trusting in God. They learned that when they did try to take things into their own hands, it didn't work. Now remember that Abraham and Sarah did not have a written history like we have that records God's consistent faithfulness and care. Abraham and Sarah also did not have the benefit of reviewing God's work over centuries of human history. But they still had faith. Here's what Paul says about Abraham in Romans 4: ``[The promise] depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendents… to those who share the faith of Abraham…in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.'' (4:16-17, selected) There lies our hope: that God will call into existence more than we can ask or imagine, different, perhaps than what we can understand or anticipate. As soon as we think we have God figured out, we will be surprised. God gives us just what we need for each day; why worry? At least, so says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Dan wrote prolifically this week for the newsletter! He has two articles and you'll want to read them both. But in his first-page reflections on planning for mission, you'll read this: ``[The] Holy Spirit blows when and where it jolly well pleases, regardless of our carefully laid plans.'' That's true; we've seen the twists and turns of Abraham and Sarah's story. The foundation that we have to stand on, though, is our expectationthat is, our faith and our hopethat God's surprising activity emerges out of God's love for us, and God will be present in our need.

So there we are. We've come full circle. God loves us human beings. That's why God keeps bothering.
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Wineskins and Overcoats
Mark 2:18-22
Sermon by Anita Yoder Kehr
February 16, 2003

 Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. "No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins." (NRSV)
Every so often, it's good to have to deal with a difficult scripture passage. Really, there are enough of them in the Bible that we could give non-stop attention to them for quite a long time. Maybe they're allat some leveldifficult. But some are easier to like than others.
Now some of you who have heard the passage that Maya has read this morning might wonder what in the world I'm talking about. You may think, ``What's so tough about this story?'' And some of you might add, ``This teaching about new wineskins for new wine: It's one of my favorites! It ought to be the focus of how we plan and dream about the future!'' Well, I'm glad for you. Unfortunately, these two little versesespecially verse 22has created quite a struggle for me, for more than one reason.

The easiest reason for me to put into wordsand to be honest with you aboutis that this analogy that Jesus uses has so often been misused by his followers. The resounding cry of ``New wineskins for new wine!!'' has been used to drive a wedge between the generations. It's been used as a non-refutable reason to introduce some new way of doing things without regard to its implications. It's been a way to shut up critics: who wants to be lumped in with the old wineskins that can't stretch enough to hold the fermenting new wine of the gospel? It's been the simplest way to elevate anything new above anything old. Is that really what Jesus means here? Yuck.

A second reason that I struggle with this text, though, is much harder for me to admit. Wholesale, revolutionary change is not exciting to me. It is for some of you, but it's not for me. When I read this passage, I realize that I'm quite comfortable with the status quo, and I wonder how this Word might endanger my comfort. Another yuck, both for the implications of this text and for me. I don't want to be that comfortable!

And I have yet a third reason for struggling with this text. That is that these coat and wine analogies aren't consistent. They don't follow through with a one-to-one correspondence that easily moves from one to the other. Look at our passage here in Mark. First we have an old coat and a patch made of new, unshrunk material. If you use that new patch on the old coat, then the first time the coat gets wet, the patch will tear away and leave a bigger hole than was there before. So-o-o, what are we hoping for here? A whole coat or an intact piece of material? It seems to me that what we want is a good, warm, whole coatold or new! In the next analogy, the one about the wineskins, it's perfectly clear that we want to preserve the new wine, but don't we also want to preserve the wineskins, both old and new?

Now, to muddle things further, turn in your Bibles to Luke 5:36-39 (but also keep your finger in Mark). Here at the end of Luke 5, you'll see a variation on the same teaching we've heard in Mark. Luke theoretically clears up the coat question for us. He says, ``You wouldn't tear up new clothes just to fix a worn out old coat, would you?'' And we all answer, ``Of course not!'' Obviously we want to preserve the integrity of the new garment rather than sacrifice it for the old. So maybe that clarifies the coat analogy, but then Luke mucks up the wine illustration. He adds this line in verse 39, ``No one, after tasting old wine desires new wine, but says [instead], `the old is better.''' (pause) What's that supposed to mean!!?

Now let me assure you that several commentators have worked it out for us. They say that the taste of old wine is seductive; we get so enamored of the taste of the status quo that we're not even willing to try anything else, even though it might be truly superior. Okay. That makes sense… except thatin my understandingold wine really is supposed to taste better than new wine. That's the point of the new wineskins, isn't it? They're flexible and stretchable enough to allow for the aging and fermentation process that must happen to make good wine? So, yuck to the confusion of the text.
Buteven though I might offer my ``yucks'' in relationship to this textyou and I both know that, really, it is good to struggle with uncomfortable passages! This particular text may be especially important to us as we look ahead to our future and discern how God is already working in our midst and how God may want to continue to work in our midst. But to figure out the help that these two little verses might offer us, I think it's important to look at what's happening with Jesus right before and then right after he offers these enigmatic words.

This teaching about coats and wine comes because Jesus and his disciples weren't fasting like all the other pious people who devoted their lives to holiness. John's disciplesJohn the Baptist, that isand the Pharisees fasted regularly, as a discipline of righteousness, and to convey a posture of supplication, mourning, and repentance. Even though the Jewish law only mandated fasting once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the Pharisees generally fasted twice a week, and John's disciples evidently also regularly fasted as a spiritual discipline. But Jesus and his disciples didn't! They apparently ate and drank together with some gusto, enough so that their piety came into question. The questioners who came around had a tough time reconciling Jesus' active ministryby this time, he had thrown out a few demons and cured many sickwith his apparent disregard to the conventions of holiness.

And right after Jesus gives the coat and wineskin word, he and his disciples get into trouble again, this time with the way that they observe the Sabbath. This time, he and his disciples pick some heads of grain to feed themselves as they're walking through a field on the Sabbath. This is clearly against the laws that govern the weekly observance: they were harvesting when they were supposed to be at Sabbath rest and worship!

The responses that Jesus gives in these before-and-after occurrences provide the context for us to figure out what we need to know about coats and wineskins, I think. Let me suggest that we're being taught how to be effective stewards of the good news of Jesus Christ, to be stewards of the gospel.

When those people come up to Jesus and ask him why he's not fasting, he does not say that fasting is a passé discipline, that it's out of date, no longer effective, too traditional, or boring. No. What Jesus says is, ``Read the times! Look around you! This is not a time for sadness and mourning. This is a time of joy and celebration. For this moment in history, the bridegroom is right here with you. And a wedding is no occasion for fasting!!'' Jesus himself is the bridegroom, the one who came to inaugurate a new kind of covenant relationship with God. Fasting for atonement or in penitence while the One who can offer forgiveness and salvation is right there with you just doesn't make sense. It's not appropriate. Later on, Jesus says, when the bridegroom is taken awaythen is the time for fasting and mourning.

His point is that disciples must express their faith and piety in ways that are compatible with the time and the context. Pious activity doesn't make sense and doesn't do any good if you ignore what's going on around you and the ones whom you're talking to. So, does it make sense to put a brand new piece of cloth on a well-worn coat? Well, no, of course not. You tear a bigger hole in the coat and waste a perfectly good piece of material. So you make a patch from material that's already been shrunk and that matches the coat that needs fixing. And does it make sense to put new wine in old wineskins? Well no, of course not. You waste the wine and the wineskins. The important thing, Jesus says, is to make a clear connection between what is needed and what you do.

So in today's world, what is needed? Or perhaps the better question is: What is needed in the part of the world in which we live and work? Reliable and trustworthy connections with other people, times of space and rest in the midst of hectic rushing, an intimate relationship with the Transcendent God? Help in ethical and practical decision-making and then courage to follow through? A sense of meaning for our daily living and for the span of our lives? Assistance in making it through each day? Any or all of these? Probablyand many more. So , based on our reading of the time in which we live and based upon the hungers and thirsts of the people in our community, how do we steward the gospel? How do we offer the good news of Jesus Christ? Now, perhaps the best answer to that question lies in doing more of what we're already doing. But perhaps the best answer lies in communicating in a way so different that we haven't even been able to imagine it yet. And perhaps the best answer includes a little of both. Whatever the answer is, this coats-and-wineskins teaching of Jesus says that the right answer to this question is the one that matches the gospel to the need, that emerges from reading the times accurately and well. The right answer, however, does not always have to be the new answer.

Now let's look at what happened to Jesus after he gave his cryptic analogies, when he and his disciples apparently broke the Sabbath law. When the Pharisees challenged him on his disregard for this law, Jesus did not say that keeping the Sabbath is passé, out of date, no longer effective, too traditional, or boring. No. What Jesus said is, ``Look at what is true about the Sabbath. It was made for humankind , so that we might worship God and rest and be renewed.'' And then Jesus held up David, the Golden Boy, and reminded the Pharisees of how David had taken bread right out of the sanctuary in order to feed his companions. That is a much bigger deal than plucking a few heads of grain! What David understood, and what Jesus is teaching, is that Sabbath is a gift to humankind, not a punishment. When there's human need, then Sabbath law can yield in order to meet that need, because meeting that need is in the very spirit of Sabbath. That simple principle had been forgotten. Jewish tradition had built up a system of laws in order to maintain the worship and rest of the Sabbath, but the system was so elaborate that it buried the truthful meaning of the Sabbath observance. The focus came to be on obedience to the laws rather than on the covenant relationship with God. Things were skewed. Jesus simply reminded them of the whole point of the Sabbath. So, what does all that have to do with coats and wineskins?

Let me suggest that the point is to avoid making the wineskins and the patch the point. The point should be the wine and the garment of salvation. We need to evaluate everything we do together as a congregation by the standard of the gospel. Are the forms that we're usingin worship, in Christian education, in fellowship, in decision-making, in sharingare these forms faithful to the truth of the message of salvation? Do these forms and structures serve as tools to bring us to a closer relationship with God, to more faithful and grace-filled discipleship to Jesus, to quicker responsiveness to the breath of the Spirit? Or have the forms skewed into becoming the point themselves? We need to be able to discriminate between what upholds the truth and what has become obscuring. And sometimes that work of evaluating and discriminating might mean that the old forms need to be completely dismantled and new ways built from scratch. Sometimes a discriminating evaluation might show that the forms are working well and simply need to be maintained attentively and reworked periodically. The important thing here is the clear and truthful content of the message of the salvation of Jesus. The medium that carries that message is only good so long as it doesn't bury that clarity and truth.

In the next year, we as a congregation will pray and listen and discern. We will name what God is already doing among us, as individuals and as a body of believers. We will identify the direction that God is calling us (or perhaps the direction that God is pulling and pushing us!). We will try to be obedient and faithful disciples. And, in addition to all these very good things, we must also read our times and our context in order to offer the message of salvation that meets the needs of our community, both inside and outside of our congregation. And then we must be willing to see which forms and structures in our livesas individuals and as a congregationcarry the truth of the good news faithfully and well and which cover it up. Maybe we'll continue what we're doing now and expect God to give the growth. Maybe with the creativity of the Spirit, we'll imagine completely different ways of meeting and worshipping God the Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost.

Now, I reluctantly told you that I'm pretty comfortable with the status quo. So now I'll reluctantly tell you that these dreaming, creating, visioning words sound good on paper but they make me nervous in the stomach. Part of my nervousness comes from having seen these kinds of evaluating and visioning processes become divisive, not here but other places. One group will hold on to one thing and another group will hold on to something else and before long, instead of one strong and boldly-shining lamp sitting high on a lampstand, you get three flickering candles that give off a dim little circumference of light directly around their holders. Or, if one candle gets strong enough, it snuffs out the flames of the other two. I just don't think that that's the way it's supposed to be!

Surely, the good news of Jesus Christ challenges us and pushes us to move beyond ourselves, to grow beyond the boundaries we've set for ourselves. But surely as well, the good news is meant for everyone, not for just those ``out there'' nor for just those ``in here'' nor for just those who buy into my particular vision. The good news is for everyone. And surely, too then, the truth of the blessing of community must be part of our discernment of ways to steward the gospel ever more faithfully. But steward we must, beginning by seeing what God is already doing and then participating with it, perhaps by filling new wineskins or by drinking from the old.

Let me read a poem to finish, a poem that perhaps reminds us of our current context and the truth of God's presence with us but which also reminds us the necessity of sharing the good news well and clearly:
Dead Starlight
 By Michael James Peña
Once in science class they taught
us that the light we see is made
from stars that died a thousand
years ago, winked out of existence
by the time we see its light.

A friend of mine in the class leans
out of his seat towards me and says
``God is dead. The hope and faith
from a thousand years past reach our
eyes but there is no life left in the words.
We are alone here''

I fear that he was right, that God
has abandoned us here, that we
too are dead stars, and will wink
out of this world. I imagine the stars
dying, one by one. Has God left us,
did he ever exist to leave?

Lift up your head and look
There are still stars winking in the sky,
new stars created, always new ones
to replace the dead. The universe expands,
constantly being remade, the particles reformed,
everything being made new again. Open your eyes
and look. There is more of God in your life
today then there was yesterday.

God is alive, his hands wrapped around the fabric
of life, weaving new patterns from old matter.
Our own cells die and regenerate, our own bodies
made new again, recreated, reformed.
Everything is being born again, a new people,
a new heaven and a new earth.

 TheOoze.com , January 20, 2003
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Wineskins and Overcoats<style type="text/css i.c9 {font-size: 80%} div.c8 {text-align: center} b.c7 {font-size: 80%} span.c6 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c5 {font-family: Times New Roman} span.c4 {font-size: 80%} div.c3 {font-s Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:06:58 GMT The Burden of Success October 19 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Burden of Success October 19 2003.rtf@CB1
The Burden of Success
Genesis 9:8-11 (before sermon);
Genesis 9:18-27 (middle of sermon)
Sermon by Dan Schrock
October 19, 2003

 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ``As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.'' (NRSV)
You and I hope for success, especially in our work. If our work is to raise children, we want to be a successful parent. If we own a business, we want it to be successful. If we work for a church institution, we want the institution to succeed and we also want our performance within the institution to succeed. We are glad when the boss compliments our work, proud when the company promotes us, elated when they raise our salary for a job well done. If we had to choose between success and failure, we'd choose success.

But success sometimes comes with a burden. Consider Noah. Noah may win the prize for being the most successful man in the history of the world. Genesis uses two different words to describe Noah's success. Both words appear in Genesis 6:9, where the narrator says, ``Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.'' Hear those two words: righteous and blameless. I checked, and no one else in Genesis is ever called blameless . That's high praise.

Even God has high praise for Noah. In Genesis 7:1, God says, ``I have seen that you, [Noah,] alone are righteous before me.'' Like the word blameless, righteous means that Noah is without blemish, without sin, perfect in every way. Noah has succeeded where all others have failed. From the dawn of creation, humans have sinned in God's eyes, failed to live up to what God wants. But not Noah. He is blameless, righteous. God is so impressed with this darling man Noah that God preserves him from the flood. Noah has wiggled his way into God's good graces, performed so impressively at the game of morality that God is now completely dedicated to Noah. The future of the whole human race will depend entirely on Noah, because everyone except Noah, his wife, his sons and his daughters-in-law are wiped out. As the rotting corpses of evil humanity float around the ark, Noah stands alone at the helm of the future. Noah is at the top of the heap. Noah is number one.

 Now comes the part of the story we just heard from Genesis 9: God makes a covenant with Noah. If you like, call it a business deal between God and Noah. God says, ``Look, Noah, because I am so impressed with you, because you have been so righteous and blameless in my eyes, I will never again do what I just did to the world. I will never again kill all plants, animals, and people. You are so wonderful, so lovable, that I will not wreck the world again.'' Then God consummates this business deal with a rainbow.

Most business deals are quid pro quo. One partner agrees to thus and so, while the other partner agrees to this and that. But not this business deal between God and Noah. This one has a quirky feature: Noah doesn't promise to do anything. Only God promises. Noah, in fact, doesn't say anything. Noah has no obligations, nothing he has to contribute to the partnership. He receives but does not give. God is the only one who agrees to anything. This is one-sided deal, and the full weight of God's blessing, honor, and glory comes down to rest on Noah.

Imagine yourself in Noah's sandals. Think what this must be like for him. Except for your spouse, three sons, and three daughters-in-law, everyone else is dead. The flood of God has wiped them out. Only eight people left alive in the whole wide world, and you're one of them. The other seven are alive, in fact, only because of your religious success. All those years of clean and holy living have paid off handsomely. You have been uniquely successful. You are the only person God has promoted to continuing life. As if that were not enough, the whole earth now belongs to you. You can go anywhere you want, do anything you want. You have no taxes to pay, because there are no governments left. You have no laws to obey, because there are none. It's just you and God. You are God's darling, the one and only beloved. You are the focus of God's present and the substance of God's future. All people who will ever live in the world from here on out will be descended from you. You are the biological father of the world. God bets the future of the world on you. If it were not for you, God would have nothing left in the world. You are now God's hope, the agent of God's future. God's spotlight shines exclusively on you.

This is when the burden of success kicks in. The next scene in this drama is not pretty. In a moment, ____ will read what happens next. If you want to understand why Noah does what he does in this next scene, let yourself feel the full weight of Noah's success, the awful, excruciating burden of God's blessing. Listen now to the final, sad chapter of Noah's life.

 The sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah; and from these the whole earth was peopled. Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ``Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.'' He also said, ``Blessed by the LORD my God be Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.'' (Genesis 9:18-27, NRSV)
Do you understand what is happening to this man? Noah, successful beyond compare, blessed with the mercies and favor of God, recipient of an awesome, get all/give nothing business dealNoah walks off that ark, plants grapes, makes himself gallons of wine, hides in his tent, and gets flat out drunk.

 Noah has collapsed under the weight of his own success. The burden of blessing is heavier that he can carry. Holding the full weight of God's future, feeling the intense heat of God's favor, is too much for Noah. He looks for an escape, for a way out of the burden, and the escape he chooses is the escape of alcohol. Cup after cup, jar after acidic jar, Noah forces it down his throat to forget life, to forget God, to forget this awful, lonely success, to get out from under this smothering, suffocating expectation. Perhaps Noah is not sure he is worthy, and even if he was worthy of God's favor in the past he is not sure he can continue to be worthy of such favor in the future. Oh, God, why did you do this to me? (And Noah pounds his fist on the ground.) I don't want this! (Noah rips off his robes.) I don't want to be the only one left on this earth! (Noah kicks off his sandals and drinks and drinks until he passes out.)

While Noah is off in la-la land, the middle son Ham comes into the tent and sees the despicable, sordid condition of his father: stone drunk, stark naked. In the ancient world it was a terrible social taboo to see your parent naked, and so when Noah finally wakes up and finds out that Ham saw him naked, Noah curses Canaan, the son of Ham. This curious detail perplexes scholars. Why does Noah curse his grandson? His grandson didn't see him naked, so why curse the grandson instead of the son? Be that as it may, the fact remains that Noah is responsible for disrobing and getting drunk, not Ham, and not Canaan.

At one level this story surely illustrates the dangers of alcohol. Drunkenness can pull us into nasty situations that we later regret. On a more profound level, however, this story illustrates the burden of success. Noah succeeded beyond compare, and it nearly did him in. While success may not drive you and I to Noah's kind of desperation, the weight of success might get so heavy that we do not know what to do with ourselves.

For example, what do you do after you retire from two terms as president of the United States? After you have succeeded in landing the most powerful and prestigious job in the world, not just once but twice, what do you do next? Fortunately for him, perhaps, Ronald Reagan was well advanced in years when he retired from the presidency, and soon slipped into Alzheimer's disease. He never had to worry much about what he'd do after the success of the presidency. But Bill Clinton is a different case altogether. He was still a relatively young man when he retired from the success of the presidency. What is Bill Clinton going to do with himself for the next thirty or forty years? Twirl his thumbs in endless circles? Success sucks some of the purpose right out of life.

Or another example: what do you do after the financial success of winning $10 million in the lottery? Pay the tax on it, first of all. Then pay off your mortgage, I suppose, and maybe replace your aging car with a new one. But what then? If you invest it wisely, you don't need to earn any more income. So do you continue to work, or not? What do you do now?

Consider more ordinary examples. What do you do after the success of winning the employee of the year award? After the success of graduating from college with straight As? After the success of trouncing the competition in business?

To counteract the spiritual dangers of success, maybe what you do next is engage in acts of service. After winning the success being president of the United States, that's what Jimmy Carter did. Knowing he probably had a lot of years left to live, Carter re-invented himself, and by most yardsticks has done a better job of navigating the post-presidency years than any other president in recent memory. How did he do it? By engaging in acts of service: building houses for the under-privileged, negotiating conflicts between warring factions, offering himself as a resource for justice and peace.

That's what Jesus did too. In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul records the text of a hymn from the very earliest years of the Christian church. We don't have the music to this hymn, but at least Paul gave us the words. The words say that Jesus, successful beyond compare because he was equal with God, nevertheless gave it up in order to serve humanity, offering himself as a resource for new and life-giving connections with God. After his success, Jesus engaged in acts of service, catching himself up in holy passion and purpose for the sake of others. Imitate him, says Paul. Look not only to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

So what will you do after your success?
Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:02:22 GMT The Command to Abide May 18 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Command to Abide May 18 2003.rtf@CB1
The Invitation to Abide
 John 15:1-8
Sermon by Dan Schrock
May 18, 2003

 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.'' (NRSV)
When I was in high school my family had a vineyard. Maybe that word ``vineyard'' is a little too high and mighty for the humble row of Concord grape vines which my great-grandfather and great-grandmother had planted around 1900. There were only 6-8 plants in that vineyard, laid out in a straight row, supported by wires and posts.

Nearly every time I looked at those grape plants I noticed I couldn't tell where the vine ended and the branches began. To my eyes the vine and branches were so interwoven as to be indistinguishable from each other. From the hard wood base just above the ground to the tender shoots curled around the supporting wire, those plants were all of a piece, one continuous whole. Even in winter after all the leaves had fallen off, I still couldn't tell the difference between vine and branch. The plants looked to me like a unit, so interconnected that vines were abiding in the branches and branches were abiding in the vines.

``I am the vine and you are the branches,'' observes Jesus, so ``abide in me as I abide in you.'' If in vineyards vine and branches are indistinguishable from each other, then we are intended to be indistinguishable from Jesus. He the vine and we the branchesso alike, so intertwined, so interconnected, so much all of one piece, that the world cannot tell us apart.

Perhaps Jesus means us to understand this metaphor as a process. Just as a vineyard does not grow overnight, so we do not become completely interconnected with Jesus overnight. Last Sunday some of you were baptized into Jesus. You have now officially begun living in Christ. However, you will soon discover if you haven't already that the old nature continues to hang around.

Becoming indistinguishable from Christ takes a while and does not happen overnight. Very few if any of us are indistinguishable from Jesus when we first become Christians. Even though in baptism Jesus busts up the power that evil and sin formerly had in our life, the old nature keeps slipping back in, sometimes when we least expect it. But if we stick with Christ, we will become more like him over the course of our lives. I have known some older people who by the end of their lives have clearly been graced with a spirit that can only come from Christ. They and Christ have spent a long time living together, sharing thoughts and feelings and experiences and ideas. Eastern Orthodox Christians speak of this as a process of divinization. That's not a word we Protestants use very often, but I think it's a very good word. It simply means that over the course of our Christian lives, in fits and starts, we slowly become more like Christ, taking on some of the qualities of his divinity.

How can such a thing happen? How do we participate with Jesus in this lifelong process of divinization? Jesus himself gives us the answer. Abide in me, he says. At least that's the translation offered in the New Revised Standard Version . The New International Version translates it as ``remain in me.'' Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase called The Message , translates it as ``Live in me; make your home in me.'' However we choose to translate it, it's the one and only command Jesus gives us in this passage: abide in him, remain in him, make our home in him.

Notice that Jesus does not command us to grow grapes. Growing grapes is the whole purpose of having a vineyard; yet Jesus oddly does not command us to grow grapes. Even though he speaks of bearing fruit in verse 2, he does not turn it into a command. We Mennonites have a long theological history of discipleship, of saying we will follow Christ and serve our neighbor no matter what the cost to ourselves. I'm glad to be part of this theological history because the call to discipleship is indeed one of God's loudest voices in the Bible. Yet we sometimes misunderstand how to go about being disciples. We have sometimes thought we are the ones who have to change our lives; we are the ones who have to transform our will; we are the ones who have to bear the fruit; we are the ones who have to make ourselves like Jesus.

No. That is simply not correct. It's God's task to change us, to transform us, to see to it that we bear grapes. Immediately before this passage, Jesus promises that God will send us the Holy Spirit (he calls it ``the Advocate'') who is God's fertilizer, water, and sunlight for producing grapes at the edges of our lives. Jesus knows God will do this in us, and so does not command us to bear fruit. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul agrees with Jesus. In chapter 5:15 and following, Paul's words sounds very much like Jesus': he tells us to ``live by the Spirit.'' In verse 22, Paul observes that ``the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . .'' etc. Not ``the fruit of the Christian is love, joy, peace,'' but ``the fruit of the Spirit is.'' Our job is to abide in Jesus, to live in Jesus, to stay connected with Jesus, and to let the job of bearing fruit up to the Spirit. If we stay connected, the Spirit will grow fruit in us and around us as a natural and inevitable consequence.

What's it like to abide in Jesus? A few months ago I checked a book out of the Goshen Public Library on twins. I was so fascinated by these stories of identical twins, fraternal twins, and conjoined twins that I read the whole book that same evening. It felt to me that in their stories I was walking on holy ground. Most of these twins, regardless of their specific life circumstances, felt oddly connected with each other.

One set of identical twin sisters, Claudia Jefferson Beckman and Colleen Jefferson Hisdahl, invented their own language when they were toddlers. They used this special language to talk with each other before they finally began to speak English at the age of four. Claudia and Colleen are now married adults, and long ago forgot this special language they had used as toddlers to communicate with each other. One time, much later in life when they were adults, both twin sisters returned home to visit their parents, and that night slept in the same room. In the middle of the night, their mother got up and heard her daughters talking to each other in their sleep. She stuck her head in the bedroom and realized they were talking in the special language they had invented as toddlers. 1

Or consider Ralph and Robert Mendez, identical twin brothers who work as kidney transplant surgeons in Los Angeles. ``When we operate together, it's sort of automatic. We can go through a whole surgery and not say a word,'' observes Ralph. ``It's just like four hands out of the same brain. We can operate in about half the time of somebody else.'' Robert agrees. ``There is a lot of synergy working together,'' he says. 2

The connection between some twins is so strong and peculiar that when one of them is injured, the other twin immediately knows what has happened without being told. On July 5, 1949, identical twins Raymond and Robert Brandt, then twenty years old, were working as electrical linemen on top of separate utility poles five miles from each other. ``All of a sudden,'' says Raymond, ``I experienced this tremendous electrical jolt in my body, and I was mystified because I wasn't working [on] energized conductorsbut my twin was. And I felt . . . I felt Robert's spirit separate from mine. I said [out loud] `Take me with you . . . take me with you. . . .' My supervisor told me to come down [from my pole], but I already knew what he was going to say. I knew it the very moment it happened. `You don't have to tell me,' I told him. `My twin's dead. I felt his shock.'''

Raymond, the surviving twin, has spent most of his life since then trying to adjust to the loss of Robert. ``We were inseparable [as boys]. We were in complete union,'' he says. ``We had the other one for comfort. . . [we] worked as a team.'' 3 By many measurements Raymond has had a rather successful life, including earning two doctorates in human engineering. But these worldly accomplishments don't mean much to him in comparison to having had a twin brother. ``Even though we had only twenty years togetherand I've now had 47 years of separateness from himI would not trade those 20 years for those 47. Never. One moment of twinship is worth a lifetime.'' 4

I think the kind of life described by twins like these evokes the odd connection between us and Jesus. Through the miracle of baptism, we and he share the same spiritual DNA. We and he speak to each other in the peculiar language of faith that non-Christian outsiders do not understand. We and he work together through the same mind of God, animated by a synergy beyond ourselves. The relationship is so interconnected that if something happens to one of us, the other knows with a sixth sense beyond words. If we and Christ were cut off from each other, it would undo us, just as a branch dies when it falls away from the vine and lands on the ground.

Abiding in Jesus is not actually that difficult. Twins don't have to work very hard at abiding in each other. Once the zygote divides, twins simply live in each other's company. By using ultrasounds and sonograms, doctors have documented twins holding each other's hands, kissing, and hugging each other in the womb. 5 After birth they continue living together, eating, playing, talking, sharing together all that life has for them.
Christian discipleship is not a gigantic, burdensome task that we do all by ourselves. It is, in fact, more about being and less about doing. Disciples simply live with Christ, day in and day out, from the moment of our baptism, through the rest of eternity. So, just live in Christ, and let the Holy Spirit grow grapes at the fingertips of your life: grapes for a famished world.

 Notes
 1.       Ruth and Rachel Sandweiss, Twins (Philadelphia and London: Running Press, 1998), p. 136.
 2.       Twins, p. 108.
3.       Twins, p. 85.
4.       Twins, p. 88.
5.       Twins, p. 88.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Connected<style type="text/css i.c14 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} span.c13 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} b.c12 {font-size: 80%} span.c11 {font-family: Century Schoolbook; font-size: 80%} i.c10 {fo Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:02:22 GMT The Command to Love May 25 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Command to Love May 25 2003.rtf@CB1
The Command to Love
 John 15:12-17
Sermon by Dan Schrock
May 25, 2003

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (NRSV)
One morning in the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a mother named Kimberly was driving her three children home after running an errand. A thick fog covered the road, and although Kimberly was familiar with the road since it was only a few blocks from her home, she had trouble seeing where she was going. At 10:25 AM, her 1986 Ford Tempo went off the road and landed in the nearby river, which was running high from recent rains. The car quickly sank to the bottom of the river.

When the police arrived at the scene sometime later, they found Kimberly's three children, ages 4, 6, and 8, stretched out on the riverbank, suffering from water inhalation but still alive. When the police pulled the car out of the water, they found the mother still inside, draped over the top of the front seat, dead. After the car sank in the river, she had apparently saved her three children, but at the cost of her own life.

For the gospel of John, there is only one command for Christians, and that is the command to love each other. Careful readers of the gospels noticed a long time ago that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus issues lots of commands to his followers. Things like: be generous to the poor. Do not swear by anything in heaven or earth. Do not worry about the future. Persevere in prayer, even when things look hopeless. Forgive seventy times seven, and if you lose count somewhere in the 470s or 480s, feel free to keep right on forgiving past 490. However, the gospel of John is different than the other gospels. In John the only thing Jesus ever explicitly commands his followers to do is to love each other. It's not a command to love our enemies, as in Matthew 5 and Luke 6; it's not a command to love God first and then love our neighbor as our self, as in Mark 12; but it's a command to love one another as Jesus has loved us.

Jesus actually issues this command twice. The first time is in chapter 13, immediately after he washes the feet of the disciples. Do you want to know what love is? Look at what Jesus did there during that Passover meal. He took off his robe, tied a towel around his waist, and began to wash dry Palestinian dirt off of 24 feet. He not only washed the feet of Peter and James and John, the disciples with whom he was perhaps the most intimate, but he also the feet of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed him to the temple police just a few hours later. For any lord in the Greco-Roman world this was outrageous behavior. Lords in the ancient world, whether the lord of a household or the lord of a city or the lord of an empire, whether the Lord Pilate or the Lord Caesar, did not ever wash the feet of anyone. And they most certainly did not wash callused feet belonging to a rag-tag assortment of Galilean fisherman, tax collectors, and day laborers. No, washing feet was the work of slaves, of people who did it only because their masters ordered them do it. But here for them all to see, was their own Lord Jesus, crawling around on the wooden floor on his hands and his knees, scrubbing off the dirt from between their toes, drying them with a towel that got increasingly damp and dirty with each additional person. After he had finished and was sitting back up at the table with them, the soiled towel slung to dry over a stool in the corner, Jesus looked at all of them intensely, boring into them with that peculiar look of his, penetrating through their eyes down into their souls, and said, ``You want to know what love is? I just showed you. Loving each other is the distinguishing characteristic of my followers. Your love for each other is how the world knows you are mine'' (vs. 34-35).

This sort of love doesn't have much of the sappiness you sometimes read on greeting cards. ``You are my sunshine, my all.'' Or ``I couldn't live without you. I'm so glad you're in my life.'' We might sometimes feel those sentiments for someone we're dating, or someone we've been married to for 29 years, but that's not what Jesus is talking about in John.
The sort of love Jesus has in mind is a somewhat difficult love. By the time we get to the letters of 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, it becomes obvious that people in this church, or cluster of churches, are having a very hard time loving each other. 1 John 2:9 infers that some of the brothers and sisters in this Christian community actually hate each other. 2 John 7 warns against deceivers who are probably fellow church members. 3 John 10 hints that one of the brothers in the church, a man named Diotrephes, is spreading false charges, and therefore should not be trusted. If you have ever tried to love a fellow church member who flat out hates you, or a fellow church member who's deceived you, or a fellow church member who spreads lies about you, then you know that loving those kind of folks is not even in the same ball league as the sentiments on some drug store cards.

Once Jesus has cleaned everyone's feet and is sitting back up at the table with his disciples, their Passover meal now finished, he launches into a long after-dinner speech that lasts four chapters. About a third of the way through this speech, in the passage read for us earlier, Jesus commands them once again to love each other. But this time Jesus gets a little more dramatic when he says, ``No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends'' (15:13).

A few minutes after finishing his speech, to illustrate the love that lays down one's life for friends, Jesus will lead them all across the Kidron valley into a garden. Soon after that, a detachment of temple police will arrive in the garden, led by none other than Judas Iscariot. The police will arrest Jesus, bind him with ropes, and take him to Caiaphas the high priest for questioning. The day after, they will take him to Pilate, the Roman procurator, who will also question him. Eventually Jesus will be flogged, mocked, and finally crucified at the Place of the Skull.

No one has greater love than to die for his or her friends. Oh yes, this command to love may take rather extreme forms. Now Jesus does not say that every Christian who loves other Christians will have to go out and get crucified; but he does say that the greatest flowering of love is to relinquish one's life for someone else.

You and I know that the church of Jesus is not perfect. It wasn't perfect in the first century, and it's still not perfect in the twenty-first century, even after all these years of practice. Yet in spite of all our moral and relational failures, I have nevertheless seen followers of Jesus relinquish their life again and again for the sake of someone else.

I have watched a young mother, so full of vitality in her early years, slowly lose that vitality after having child number 3, then 5, then 8, then finally child number 9. Before even the ninth one came along, she was chronically and inexpressibly tired, shuffling from task to task, collapsing into a chair at the end of the day, the joints of her fingers slightly out of line, her face wrinkled, her eyes expressionless when she was alone but kind when looking at one of her children. She was fond of all of them, mind you, but still tired from giving each of them most of what she had plus a little more. To them she relinquished major parts of herself, lavishing time, energy, and creative focus so they might grow to be strong women and men.

I have observed a father, pushed to exasperation by a son who had a radically different personality, still remain mostly patient with that son. If you talked to the father in private, he would admit his son pushed almost all his buttons. After realizing just how wildly different his son was, the father adapted his style of parenting, setting new boundaries on his own internal anger and pushing himself to become a different but better kind of parent for his son. Why did the father do it, difficult though it was? He did it for the sake of love.

I've seen church members publicly argue with each other and publicly make up with each other. On the Sunday before the 1992 presidential election, a Democrat stood up during the sharing and fervently urged everyone in the congregation to vote for peace and justice. Knowing this particular brother in the church as we did, we knew very well he meant Bill Clinton, even though he never mentioned the name. Eight minutes later during the announcements, a Republican stood up greatly agitated, and in trembling voice urged us to vote for people who would respect the life of unborn children. Knowing that particular sister as we did, we knew very well she meant George Herbert Walker Bush, even though she never spoke his name. But that's not the end of the story. As soon as I finished speaking the benediction, that Democratic brother and that Republican sister, both Mennonites who were loyal to Jesus Christ above all else, made their way to each other through the press of people in the aisles, met in a corner of the sanctuary, and checked to make sure their relationship with each other was still on firm footing. When they were done talking, they hugged as a sign of their continuing esteem for each other.

``This is my commandment,'' says Jesus, ``that you love one another as I have loved you.'' So when, and how, have you obeyed?
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The Conversion of Cornelius
Acts 10:1-8, 44-48
Sermon by Dan Schrock
July 13, 2003

In Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, as it was called. He was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. One afternoon at about three o'clock he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, "Cornelius." He stared at him in terror and said, "What is it, Lord?" He answered, "Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside." When the angel who spoke to him had left, he called two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the ranks of those who served him, and after telling them everything, he sent them to Joppa.

While Peter was still speaking [later, in Cornelius' house] , the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days. (NRSV)
Up to this point in Luke's story of the early church, we've read about the conversion of 3,000 Jews at Pentecost, the conversion of one black court official from the far away country of Ethiopia, and the conversion of the early church's most powerful, virulent enemy, Saul the Pharisee. This is an astonishing array of converts. Is there anyone this Holy Spirit cannot convert? Readers of Acts are about to be surprised again when they turn to chapter 10 and find out about the conversion of Cornelius, a Roman army officer.

Of course the most important detail about Cornelius is that he's an uncircumcised Gentile. Peter struggles mightily over the status of Cornelius' foreskin, because as a good Jew, Peter is not supposed to fellowship with uncircumcised people like Cornelius.

However, there are other details about Cornelius that are just as importantdetails that a lot of people miss when they read this story. Cornelius is a Roman centurion stationed in the Roman capital of Caesarea. Let's start first with the city of Caesarea itself. Back before the birth of Jesus, the Roman emperor Augustus owned this city, which was then called Strato's Tower. As a reward for faithful service to the empire, Augustus gave the city to Herod the Great, the same man who tried to assassinate the infant Jesus but only ended up killing the little kids in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1-18). In gratitude for this magnificent gift of a whole city from the emperor, Herod the Great renamed it Caesarea, meaning ``the city of Caesar (Augustus).'' Eventually people began to call it Caesarea Maritima, to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi, which was a very different city to the northeast.

During the first twelve years he owned it, Herod the Great drastically remodeled and rebuilt Caesarea Maritima, turning it into a thoroughly Roman city. When he was done, Caesarea had a theater, an amphitheater with an arena larger than the Coliseum in Rome, a hippodrome that seated 30,000 people, colonnaded streets, two aqueducts for fresh water, an underground sewer system automatically flushed out by the surging of the Mediterranean Sea, and most significantly of all, an impressive temple for the worship of Caesar as a god. 1
At the time of the events in Acts 10, in the mid to late 30s, people in the Roman empire were just beginning to worship the emperors. Even though it was still a relatively new thing, it rapidly caught on. At first some of the emperors, particularly Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, were reluctant to encourage any worship of themselves, mostly because the old patrician families in Rome opposed emperor worship. But eventually the emperors realized that when people all over the empire worshipped them as gods, people became more submissive and obedient, and therefore easier to control. Once the emperors caught on to this fact, they quietly began to encourage worship of themselves, despite some continuing opposition from the patricians in Rome. As time went on some emperors publicly and brazenly demanded that people all over the empire worship them as gods. One such emperor was that infamous egomaniac, Caligula (37-41), who built two temples to himself in Rome. From the viewpoint of powerful Romans, emperor worship was a terribly convenient way to make people loyal all over the empire by mixing politics and religion. By turning the emperor into a god, he became the focus of both civic obedience and religious worship. Send ordinary people to temples where they worshipped Caesar as a god, and they would simultaneously become more compliant to Roman rule. 2
By the time Luke wrote the book of Acts sometime in the early 80s, the worship of emperors as gods was firmly established practice in the Roman empire, especially in the eastern half where Palestine is located. Jews and Christians, of course, adamantly refused to participate in worshipping any emperor, dead or alive. But other people in the empire were rarely so opposed. Most people willingly worshipped the emperor as they were told to do. They prayed to the emperor, sacrificed to the emperor, and pledged their political and religious loyalty to the emperor.

Among those who were required to be loyal servants of the emperor were centurions. Again and again, centurions had proved their value in winning wars against Rome's enemies. The reigning emperor, who was also the army's commander-in-chief, knew very well that the army had essentially created the Roman empire and was now instrumental in maintaining the empire. Without its army, Rome would quickly fall. Modern historians have often called centurions ``the backbone of the Roman army.'' As mid-level officers who each commanded a century of 100 soldiers, centurions were absolutely critical to the success of Rome's armies. They were the most important tactical officers on the battlefield. All soldiers in the army, including centurions, were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the emperor every year; but in addition, the centurions also had to be Roman citizens, which was supposed to further ensure their loyalty to Rome. By pointing out that Cornelius belonged to the Italian Cohort (10:1), Luke probably means to suggest that Cornelius is a native Roman from Italy.

So Cornelius is one of these crucially important centurions, and apparently a native Roman to boot. As if that were not enough, he is also stationed in the Roman capital of Palestine. The seat of Roman power in Palestine was not located in Jerusalem, as you might suppose. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish power in Palestine, but not of Roman power. Jerusalem was far too Jewish for Roman tastes. The Roman prefects and procurators like Pontius Pilate and Felix (Acts 24) and Festus (Acts 25) spent as little time in Jerusalem as they possibly could. They much preferred to live in Caesarea Maritima because it more closely resembled the architecture, people, and civic and religious life they had been familiar with in Rome. Besides, since Caesarea Maritima was located on the seacoast, and since ships were the fastest means of communication, the procurators could more rapidly contact Rome in the event of trouble.

The point of this long exploration into Roman political, religious, and military life is that Cornelius stands in the very center of what made the Roman empire work. As a centurion, a citizen of Rome, and a native of Italy who lives in the seat of Roman power in Palestine, Cornelius' highest loyalties are supposed to be pledged to the emperor who is his commander-in-chief, political leader, and god.

The first clue that Cornelius is not your typical Roman centurion is that Luke calls him ``a devout man who feared God'' (10:2). Somewhere along the wayLuke does not say howCornelius learned about Jewish faith in one God. Cornelius was intrigued enough by Judaism to start praying to this God and giving alms to the poor in the name of this God. But he stopped at circumcision. Like most Romans, Cornelius probably thought circumcision was gross and disgusting, not to mention excruciatingly painful, which is likely why he never took the radical step of completely converting to Judaism and getting a rabbi to circumcise him. 3 In most things Cornelius is still Roman, even though he sympathizes with Judaism.

 Until the Holy Spirit arranges a meeting between Peter and Cornelius. Peter, in a remarkable conversion of his own that we will explore next Sunday, tells Cornelius that God now welcomes everyone into the church upon their acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord, whether they are circumcised or not. While Peter speaks, the Holy Spirit enters Cornelius and the members of his household, so they speak in tongues and praise God. A few minutes later, the whole bunch of them are baptized with water.

 I propose to you that with the conversion of Cornelius, the Holy Spirit strikes at the very heart of the Roman empire. As a Christian, Cornelius' highest loyalties are now to the Lord Jesus Christ, not to the lord Caesar. Cornelius now worships the God of heaven and earth, not the supposed god Caesar. Cornelius' connections with Rome are now called into question, up for reassessment and re-evaluation. The Holy Spirit has penetrated the political, military, and religious core of what made the Roman empire work, and symbolically crippled it from the inside out. If centurions were the backbone of the Roman army, then this army has just slipped a disk.

As you know, Luke wrote both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. From the very beginning of his two-volume work, Luke himself invites us to interpret his writings politically. In the second chapter of his gospel, Luke sets up a contrast between the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus and this newly born infant Jesus. There in the story of the angels and shepherds, Luke shows how Caesar Augustus, hailed by Romans as a ``lord'' and a ``savior,'' is not the real lord and savior who brings peace to the world. 4 The real lord and savior is Jesus, the son of the living God, whose kingdom is without end and whose peace passes all understanding. The Roman empire, with its emperors, armies, and religion, has long ago disappeared from the earth. But Christ has prevailed and his people continue. So praise the Holy Spirit, for while lesser and temporary rulers have gone, the real ruler reigns still.

 Notes
 1.       ``Caesarea,'' The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible , Supplementary Volume (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 120.
 2.       For more on emperor worship, see Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 154-165.
3.       Ferguson, 436.
4.       Richard A. Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas: The Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), 25-33.
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The Conversion of Paul
Acts 26:4-18
By Dan Schrock
June 29, 2003

"All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem. They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?
"Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities.

"With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles--to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.''' (NRSV)
I heard hundreds of conversion stories during my childhood. Some of these conversion stories I heard at the Roselawn Mennonite Church in Elkhart, where my family attended for 15 years. Roselawn was a mission church started for the purpose of evangelizing poor whites on the north side of Elkhart. Pastors, Sunday school teachers, and visiting evangelists often told us conversion stories about people who left a life sin and found Jesus.

Our family life was also saturated with conversion stories. Every weekend my parents turned on the radio for the weekly broadcast of ``Unshackled,'' a 30-minute evangelistic program produced by the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Using a broadcast style from the Golden Age of radio, each program dramatized the story of some woman or man who had been mired in sin and then somehow came to Jesus. As a child I was enchanted by these stories. I usually lay on the sofa to listen, my imagination caught up in the story's tale of drugs and alcohol and obnoxious behavior.

I recently rediscovered ``Unshackled'' on the web. By accident I found the website of Pacific Garden Mission and saw their radio programs are online in your choice of Real Player, Windows Media Player, and MP3 Player formats. I listened to several of them, and they sounded just the way I remembered them from my childhood: the same electric organ music; the same first person narrative; the same stories of how bad things were before Christ and how wonderful after Christ; and the same evangelistic ending, inviting you to pray the sinner's prayer with the announcer and to call or write the Pacific Garden Mission for free literature.

The typical conversion story I heard as a child had three parts. Let us suppose the person's name is Jane. The first part of the typical conversion story detailed how awful Jane's life used to be. She grew up in a home where her parents fought and didn't go to church. At age 12, Jane started to run around with the wrong crowd of people. She began drinking, smoking marijuana, and having sex. Eventually she got pregnant, and when neither she nor her boyfriend wanted the child, she had an abortion. She started stealing, was arrested, and went to court where the judge sentenced her to jail. During this whole time she paid no attention to God. She made fun of Christians. Even though alcohol, drugs, and sex supposedly made life fun, inside Jane was miserable and depressed. Her life had no meaning, no direction, no happiness.

That's the first part of the story. The second part of this typical conversion story happens when Jane finds Christ. Maybe in jail she starts going to a Bible study. Maybe she meets a fine Christian man just before she is arrested. Maybe he sticks by her, visits her in prison, and eventually leads her to the Lord. Maybe after she gets out of jail, Jane meets a girlfriend from elementary school whom she has not seen in years. The girlfriend invites her to come along to church to hear a special speaker. Jane agrees to go, and during the altar call she gets convicted of sin, goes to the front in tears, and prays the sinner's prayer, which changes her life.

The third and final part of this typical conversion story describes what a wonderful life Jane has now that she's found Jesus. She is happy and fulfilled. Maybe she marries a fine Christian man and has well-behaved children. Maybe she goes off to Bible college. Whatever she ends up doing, we the listeners are left with the impression that thanks to Jesus, Jane now lives happily ever after, fulfilled and content.

I suppose these conversion stories are accurately told and accurately describe what the people in them really experienced. Some people apparently do become Christian in just the way the stories sketch. But there's one problem: these typical conversion stories are not at all like the conversion stories in the book of Acts. Luke has approximately a dozen conversion stories in Acts, but none of them have the three-fold pattern of the typical North American conversion story. So far as I can tell, none of Luke's conversion stories begin by describing how ``miserable'' the person was before they met Christ; in none of them does the person ``find'' Christ; and none of them end by saying how ``happy'' the person was after accepting Jesus into their heart. Joyful and praising God, yes, but not ``happy.''

To illustrate, consider the story of Paul's conversion here in Acts 26. First, nowhere does this story say that before he met Christ, Paul was miserable. In fact it infers just the opposite. In verses 4 and 5 Paul tells how ``from my youth'' I ``belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee.'' (In this passage, the word ``Pharisee'' is a good, positive word, even though it isn't always in the gospels.) Before Christ, Paul never dabbled in alcohol, drugs, or sex, even though there were plenty of opportunities in the first century Roman empire to engage in all three. Paul stayed away from evil and was morally perfect in everything. In Philippians 3:5-6, Paul details just how religiously fervent and morally upright he really was before his conversion: he was ``circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.'' Before his conversion, Paul was the young man every parent dreams of havinghe went to synagogue every Sabbath, obeyed all the laws, never got into trouble. He was fervent about faith, zealous for God, and morally perfect.

There was one thing, and only one thing, about those years that Paul later came to regret. He persecuted fellow Jews who followed Christ. It was the only specific failure he had ever committed, and later, after Christ overwhelmed him on the road to Damascus, the only thing about his former life that he wished he had not done. But nowhere does Paul ever say that his former life made him miserable or sad or depressed. He never felt guilty about iteven the part about persecuting Christians. On the contrary, his life as a Jew had been good, very good, and even persecuting Christians had been good and holy by the standards of first century Pharisee faith.

Second, Paul did not ``find'' Jesus. Look carefully at the conversion stories in Acts and in none of them does anyone ``find'' Jesus. Instead, Jesus finds them. Big difference! In Paul's case, it was a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, and then a voice, the voice of Jesus himself. In no way could we say that Paul was searching for Jesus or meaning or truth or anything else. He was both confident and content with his life, in need of nothing, when Jesus suddenly interrupted it and in no uncertain terms forced a change in Paul's worldview. Paul found out that the person he considered to be a fraud is actually the ruler of the world. But even that was not a conclusion Paul came to on his own. It was a revelation foisted on him by Jesus himself. There is no language in this story, or in any other story in Acts about ``I found Jesus'' or ``I took Jesus into my life'' or ``I gave my life to Jesus.'' * In Acts the most anyone can say is that ``Jesus (or the Holy Spirit) interrupted me and turned me into a Christian.''

Third, Paul never claims to be ``happy'' after his conversion to Christianity. He felt some joy afterward, but happiness? Far from it. By most standards of measurement, Paul's life actually became miserable after his conversion. Consider what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:24-28 about all the misery he's had since Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus:

 Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one [notice that: from his fellow Jews, his own ethnic people!]. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.

 That's what Paul's life was like after his conversion.

 The trajectory of Paul' life is just the opposite of the typical American conversion story. Instead of a miserable life before Christ and a happy life afterward, Paul had a happy life before and a miserable life afterward, at least in a human sense. The man's body was covered with scars from all the torture he had received. Paul's description of his own Christian experience is a far cry from what we sometimes call the victorious, successful, and happy Christian life. His Christian life was full of physical suffering, physical pain, and mental anguish. And look at Paul's personal situation here in Acts 26. In this text he wears chains and stands as a prisoner in the courtroom of Festus, Roman procurator of the province of Judea, and Herod Agrippa, tetrarch of Galilee. Paul's life hangs delicately in the balance, with death a real possibility. One imagines that Paul's life might have been more pleasant if he had not become a Christian. If he had remained a Pharisee, he probably he could have avoided all those beatings, stonings, jailings, shipwrecks, and worries about the churches.

But you know what? Paul did not want it any other way. In Philippians 3:7-11, he declares that in spite of all the pain and suffering, he prefers his life now as a Christian. This is surely one of the most remarkable passages in all of scripture about what is truly important in life.

Yet whatever gains I had [in my former life], these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

 Why is Paul so convinced that knowing Christ is worth all the beatings and imprisonment and anguish that life threw at him? The answer, I think, is because the risen Jesus had personally appeared to Paul at least twice. The first time was on that road to Damascus, when the risen Jesus surrounded Paul with the light of heaven, spoke directly with him, and commissioned him as an apostle to the Gentiles. The risen Jesus also appeared to Paul a second time, as reported in 2 Corinthians 12. There Paul was caught up into the third heaven, whatever that is, and heard things from Christ that he, Paul, was not allowed to repeat. Both of these experiences have a mystical, visionary quality to them, revealing to Paul such glory and power and holy presence that his life could never be the same afterward.

 I don't know if you've ever met the risen Christ, but if you have, then you know why in comparison to that, everything else in your life is less important. Meeting the risen Jesus unshackles your spirit and sets you free.
Note
 * I am indebted to William Willimon's Acts (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988) for this insight.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> The Conversion of Paul<style type="text/css b.c9 {font-size: 80%} span.c8 {font-size: 13pt} i.c7 {font-size: 80%} span.c6 {font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c4 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c3 {font-size: 80%; font-w Thu, 25 Sep 2003 18:01:41 GMT The Conversion of Paul June 29 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Conversion of Paul June 29 2003.rtf@CB1
The Conversion of Paul
Acts 26:4-18
Sermon by Dan Schrock
June 29, 2003

"All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem. They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

"Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities.

"With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles--to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.''' (NRSV)
I heard hundreds of conversion stories during my childhood. Some of these conversion stories I heard at the Roselawn Mennonite Church in Elkhart, where my family attended for 15 years. Roselawn was a mission church started for the purpose of evangelizing poor whites on the north side of Elkhart. Pastors, Sunday school teachers, and visiting evangelists often told us conversion stories about people who left a life sin and found Jesus.

Our family life was also saturated with conversion stories. Every weekend my parents turned on the radio for the weekly broadcast of ``Unshackled,'' a 30-minute evangelistic program produced by the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Using a broadcast style from the Golden Age of radio, each program dramatized the story of some woman or man who had been mired in sin and then somehow came to Jesus. As a child I was enchanted by these stories. I usually lay on the sofa to listen, my imagination caught up in the story's tale of drugs and alcohol and obnoxious behavior.

I recently rediscovered ``Unshackled'' on the web. By accident I found the website of Pacific Garden Mission and saw their radio programs are online in your choice of Real Player, Windows Media Player, and MP3 Player formats. I listened to several of them, and they sounded just the way I remembered them from my childhood: the same electric organ music; the same first person narrative; the same stories of how bad things were before Christ and how wonderful after Christ; and the same evangelistic ending, inviting you to pray the sinner's prayer with the announcer and to call or write the Pacific Garden Mission for free literature.

The typical conversion story I heard as a child had three parts. Let us suppose the person's name is Jane. The first part of the typical conversion story detailed how awful Jane's life used to be. She grew up in a home where her parents fought and didn't go to church. At age 12, Jane started to run around with the wrong crowd of people. She began drinking, smoking marijuana, and having sex. Eventually she got pregnant, and when neither she nor her boyfriend wanted the child, she had an abortion. She started stealing, was arrested, and went to court where the judge sentenced her to jail. During this whole time she paid no attention to God. She made fun of Christians. Even though alcohol, drugs, and sex supposedly made life fun, inside Jane was miserable and depressed. Her life had no meaning, no direction, no happiness.

That's the first part of the story. The second part of this typical conversion story happens when Jane finds Christ. Maybe in jail she starts going to a Bible study. Maybe she meets a fine Christian man just before she is arrested. Maybe he sticks by her, visits her in prison, and eventually leads her to the Lord. Maybe after she gets out of jail, Jane meets a girlfriend from elementary school whom she has not seen in years. The girlfriend invites her to come along to church to hear a special speaker. Jane agrees to go, and during the altar call she gets convicted of sin, goes to the front in tears, and prays the sinner's prayer, which changes her life.

The third and final part of this typical conversion story describes what a wonderful life Jane has now that she's found Jesus. She is happy and fulfilled. Maybe she marries a fine Christian man and has well-behaved children. Maybe she goes off to Bible college. Whatever she ends up doing, we the listeners are left with the impression that thanks to Jesus, Jane now lives happily ever after, fulfilled and content.

I suppose these conversion stories are accurately told and accurately describe what the people in them really experienced. Some people apparently do become Christian in just the way the stories sketch. But there's one problem: these typical conversion stories are not at all like the conversion stories in the book of Acts. Luke has approximately a dozen conversion stories in Acts, but none of them have the three-fold pattern of the typical North American conversion story. So far as I can tell, none of Luke's conversion stories begin by describing how ``miserable'' the person was before they met Christ; in none of them does the person ``find'' Christ; and none of them end by saying how ``happy'' the person was after accepting Jesus into their heart. Joyful and praising God, yes, but not ``happy.''

To illustrate, consider the story of Paul's conversion here in Acts 26. First, nowhere does this story say that before he met Christ, Paul was miserable. In fact it infers just the opposite. In verses 4 and 5 Paul tells how ``from my youth'' I ``belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee.'' (In this passage, the word ``Pharisee'' is a good, positive word, even though it isn't always in the gospels.) Before Christ, Paul never dabbled in alcohol, drugs, or sex, even though there were plenty of opportunities in the first century Roman empire to engage in all three. Paul stayed away from evil and was morally perfect in everything. In Philippians 3:5-6, Paul details just how religiously fervent and morally upright he really was before his conversion: he was ``circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.'' Before his conversion, Paul was the young man every parent dreams of havinghe went to synagogue every Sabbath, obeyed all the laws, never got into trouble. He was fervent about faith, zealous for God, and morally perfect.

There was one thing, and only one thing, about those years that Paul later came to regret. He persecuted fellow Jews who followed Christ. It was the only specific failure he had ever committed, and later, after Christ overwhelmed him on the road to Damascus, the only thing about his former life that he wished he had not done. But nowhere does Paul ever say that his former life made him miserable or sad or depressed. He never felt guilty about iteven the part about persecuting Christians. On the contrary, his life as a Jew had been good, very good, and even persecuting Christians had been good and holy by the standards of first century Pharisee faith.

Second, Paul did not ``find'' Jesus. Look carefully at the conversion stories in Acts and in none of them does anyone ``find'' Jesus. Instead, Jesus finds them. Big difference! In Paul's case, it was a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, and then a voice, the voice of Jesus himself. In no way could we say that Paul was searching for Jesus or meaning or truth or anything else. He was both confident and content with his life, in need of nothing, when Jesus suddenly interrupted it and in no uncertain terms forced a change in Paul's worldview. Paul found out that the person he considered to be a fraud is actually the ruler of the world. But even that was not a conclusion Paul came to on his own. It was a revelation foisted on him by Jesus himself. There is no language in this story, or in any other story in Acts about ``I found Jesus'' or ``I took Jesus into my life'' or ``I gave my life to Jesus.'' * In Acts the most anyone can say is that ``Jesus (or the Holy Spirit) interrupted me and turned me into a Christian.''

Third, Paul never claims to be ``happy'' after his conversion to Christianity. He felt some joy afterward, but happiness? Far from it. By most standards of measurement, Paul's life actually became miserable after his conversion. Consider what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:24-28 about all the misery he's had since Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus:

 Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one [notice that: from his fellow Jews, his own ethnic people!]. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.

 That's what Paul's life was like after his conversion.

 The trajectory of Paul' life is just the opposite of the typical American conversion story. Instead of a miserable life before Christ and a happy life afterward, Paul had a happy life before and a miserable life afterward, at least in a human sense. The man's body was covered with scars from all the torture he had received. Paul's description of his own Christian experience is a far cry from what we sometimes call the victorious, successful, and happy Christian life. His Christian life was full of physical suffering, physical pain, and mental anguish. And look at Paul's personal situation here in Acts 26. In this text he wears chains and stands as a prisoner in the courtroom of Festus, Roman procurator of the province of Judea, and Herod Agrippa, tetrarch of Galilee. Paul's life hangs delicately in the balance, with death a real possibility. One imagines that Paul's life might have been more pleasant if he had not become a Christian. If he had remained a Pharisee, he probably he could have avoided all those beatings, stonings, jailings, shipwrecks, and worries about the churches.

But you know what? Paul did not want it any other way. In Philippians 3:7-11, he declares that in spite of all the pain and suffering, he prefers his life now as a Christian. This is surely one of the most remarkable passages in all of scripture about what is truly important in life.

Yet whatever gains I had [in my former life], these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

 Why is Paul so convinced that knowing Christ is worth all the beatings and imprisonment and anguish that life threw at him? The answer, I think, is because the risen Jesus had personally appeared to Paul at least twice. The first time was on that road to Damascus, when the risen Jesus surrounded Paul with the light of heaven, spoke directly with him, and commissioned him as an apostle to the Gentiles. The risen Jesus also appeared to Paul a second time, as reported in 2 Corinthians 12. There Paul was caught up into the third heaven, whatever that is, and heard things from Christ that he, Paul, was not allowed to repeat. Both of these experiences have a mystical, visionary quality to them, revealing to Paul such glory and power and holy presence that his life could never be the same afterward.

 I don't know if you've ever met the risen Christ, but if you have, then you know why in comparison to that, everything else in your life is less important. Meeting the risen Jesus unshackles your spirit and sets you free.
Note

* I am indebted to William Willimon's Acts (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988) for this insight.
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The Conversion of the Church
Acts 11:1-18
Sermon by Dan Schrock
July 20, 2003

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?" Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' But I replied, 'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.' And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." (NRSV)
For most of us, I suspect, prayer is an exercise in persuading God to do something. We pray for God to heal aunt Jane, to strengthen cousin John, or to make peace in the Middle East. In these prayers we ask the God to change other people and other situations. I don't know what kind of prayer Peter was praying up on the roof of that house in Joppa, but I do know the Holy Spirit did something unexpected to Peter during that prayer. During that prayer the Holy Spirit did not change other people and other situations. Instead, the Holy Spirit changed Peterchanged his understanding of Christian faith, changed his interpretation of scripture, changed his view of the world. The person whom the Spirit changed was person praying, not the persons being prayed for.

Most people call Acts 10 and 11 the ``conversion of Cornelius.'' It's true that in this story Cornelius and his household are baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As I proposed in last week's sermon, the Holy Spirit re-routes Cornelius' loyalties away from the Roman Empire and toward Jesus Christ. But an equally radical conversion happens to Peter and to the Jerusalem church. This story is about the conversion of the church.

It begins when the Holy Spirit intervenes in the life of Peter. At noon one day, Peter prays up on the roof of Simon the tanner's house. Since Peter hadn't eaten lunch yet, he is getting a little hungry and falls into a para-normal trance induced by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives him a vision of a sheet filled with unclean animals lowered from heaven. You know the story. A voice tells him to eat; but Peter will not; then the voice tells him to eat anyway because God has made these unclean things clean.

The reason Peter refuses to eat the animals on the sheet is that scripture expressly tells him not to eat those animals. It's all right there in Deuteronomy 14:1-20, a clear distinction between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, right and wrong:

 ``You are children of the Lord your God. . . . For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be . . . God's treasured possession. You shall not eat any abhorrent thing. These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the hart, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain-sheep. Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof cleft in two, and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cleft you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. And the pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses. Of all that live in water you may eat these: whatever has fins and scales you may eat. And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you. You may eat any clean birds. But these are the ones that you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, the buzzard, the kite, of any kind; every raven of any kind; the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk, of any kind; the little owl and the great owl, the water hen and the desert owl, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, the stork, the heron, of any kind; the hoopoe and the bat. And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten. You may eat any clean winged creature.''

 For Peter and other respectable Jewish Christians, this is straightforward morality. These words came directly from the mouth of God and you can't question them. But Peter is about to find out that praying is dangerous precisely because God might change us. During prayer the Holy Spirit might upend our lives by taking away something we believe is foundational and replacing it with another foundation closer to the true heart of God. In Peter's case, the Spirit communicates a new word, a new revelation, that what Peter and the church think is unclean has now in the wonderful providence of God been made clean. Not only can Peter and the church eat these animals; but now God actually commands them to do so.

When Peter's vision is over, the messengers from Cornelius arrive, and the Holy Spirit tells Peter to walk with them over to Caesarea Maritima. When they arrive at Cornelius' house the next day, the place is packed with the soldier's friends and family, all of them Gentiles. Peter is surrounded by Gentiles, the unclean people of the world. They wait expectantly to hear what Peter will say, wait eagerly to hear what message he will bring from God.

As far as anyone can tell, this is a completely new situation for Peter. Standing there in Cornelius' house, Peter has to think on his feet, and think fast. It dawns on him what his vision must mean: that God is now opening the church to Gentiles. God is welcoming essentially everyone into the church, not just Jews. Let us not underestimate how difficult this act of God is for Peter, and how difficult it was for the rest of the church when they find out about it afterward. Gentiles are now allowed into church membership without having to be circumcised?! You mean we good, morally upstanding Jews are supposed to worship with Gentiles, study scripture with them, eat with them, fellowship with them, and welcome them to the communion table? Very little in the early church's theology had prepared them for this vexing turn of events. The Holy Spirit has just rearranged a major portion of the church's morality, shifting some theological assumptions and pushing the church, very reluctantly, in a new and painful direction.

Standing there surrounded by eager Gentiles, waiting to hear what he will say, Peter scrambles to find scriptural and theological justification for what the Holy Spirit is doing. Sometime read Peter's speech in 10:34-43 and pay attention to the progression of his thought. It reads very much like a speech invented on the fly. Notice how the speech begins with an eye-opening argument: that God shows no partiality. Now how is Peter going to prove that, because after all, the entire structure of Jewish and early Jewish Christian faith depended on the idea that God does show partiality. Peter next comes out with a platitude everyone would agree with, that anybody who fears God and lives rightly is welcome into faith. Finally in verse 36 Peter seizes on the theological heart of the matter and utters something genuinely new and provocative: that Jesus Christ is Lord! The implication is that if Christ is Lord, then he is Lord of everyone and everything, which must mean Gentiles are also welcome in Christ's church. 1
For us sitting here in 2003, that's an old idea we would all agree with. But in Peter's day that was a new and radical thought, because nowhere does Peter's scripture, our Old Testament, say that Jesus is Lord. With the aid of the Holy Spirit, Peter is constructing a new theology to fit the situation he finds himself in. He's daring to imagine, and to justify, new theological possibilities. Proof that God approves of all this happens while Peter is still speaking: the Holy Spirit falls on the people in Cornelius's house. In the book of Acts, you need no more proof than that. The presence of the Spirit is the seal of approval no one in the church can argue against.

For Luke, this story is hugely significant. It's longer and more detailed than any other story in Acts, and if you compare what the early church did before this story and what it does after, you will see what a turning point this is. From here on out, the church will mainly offer itself to Gentiles rather than Jews. Gentiles will become the wave of the future. By the end of the first century, the church's membership was made up mostly of Gentiles, with relatively few Jews. And that's how the church has been ever since, with mostly Gentile membership, including most if not all of us in this room.

I'd like to point out four key features of this story.

One. The Holy Spirit directs these events from start to finish. The Spirit formulates all the advance planning, takes all the initiative, makes most of the key decisions, and does most of the work. The church did not sit down and develop a ten-year plan, deciding that in year four they will begin evangelizing army officers, in year seven they will plant a new church in Caesarea, and in year nine they will convert 10,000 people to Jesus. In this story strategic planning and scientific methods of the church growth are completely absent. 2 There are no tent revival meetings and no evangelistic campaigns, just ordinary people responding to the grand, startling, and irrepressible initiatives of the Spirit.

 Two. This is not a private, individual conversion of one or two people. Instead it's a corporate conversion. The whole church ends up changing its mind about what God is doing in the world. This story is not even about converting 25 or 100 or 1,000 individual people. More accurately, this is a conversion of the church as a whole group. To say it another way, this story is not about the simultaneous conversions of Sally and Tom and Jane and Al, but about the conversion of the Church of Christ, Palestine.

 Three. In Acts 11, conversion happens not to good clean pagans who know nothing about Jesus, but to people who are already followers of Jesus. These are people who already know Jesus pretty well and for some time have been earnestly been trying to do what Jesus wants. Throughout history some of the most important conversions have happened not to the world, but to the church. Think about the 16 th century Reformation, or the conviction that slavery is evil, or the agreement that women can also be called into ministry. All were conversions that happened primarily within the church.

Four. There is no language here about ``since I gave my life to Christ'' or ``since I took Jesus as my personal Savior.'' Such language, in fact, would not even accurately describe what happens in this story. If Peter and others in the early church were here this morning, what they might say is that ``God rushed in on us, took us by the seat of our pants, and swept us up in the mighty blowing of the Spirit. God converted us without consulting us. God dragged us into the future, re-arranging our lives and taking us places we did not intend to go.''

 So watch out when you pray. The Holy Spirit might just convert us all over again. It happened in Acts. It could happen again.
Notes
 1.       William Willimon, Acts (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988), 97-99.
2.       Willimon, 104.
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The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch
Acts 8:26-39
Sermon by Dan Schrock
June 22, 2003

 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. (NRSV)
I would like to continue today with the summer series on conversion stories in the book of Acts. Conversion stories are the most fun when we know a little bit about the person who converted; and in this case, we actually know more about the Ethiopian eunuch than we do about some of the people in other conversion stories of the Bible. There are three important facts about this man riding south on his chariot from Jerusalem to Gaza: first, he's Ethiopian; second, he's the treasurer for the Candace; and third, he's a eunuch. Let's take each of these three facts in turn.

First, he's Ethiopian, from the northeast side of Africa. Contrary to what some white folks think, Africans actually have a rather prominent presence in the Bible. After the Egyptians, who are nearly ubiquitous in the Old Testament, the next most prominent group of Africans are the Ethiopians. Unfortunately, some translations such as the New International Version tend to hide all the references to Ethiopians behind confusing terminology. The words ``Cush'' and ``Nubia,'' which appear in translations like the NIV, are more or less interchangeable with ``Ethiopia.'' All three terms refer to the same geographical region south of Egypt along the Blue Nile River and the White Nile River, in what today is the modern nation of Sudan.

I think it's also unfortunate that some of the maps in our study Bibles do not even include Ethiopia or Cush or Nubia. Far too many of the maps that publishers and Biblical scholars provide to us end at the southern border of Egypt. So when you look at a map, you sometimes have no idea where this place called Ethiopia was in Biblical times. It's as if the place and the people didn't even exist, or was so unimportant that it's not worthy of putting on a map. It looks like an instance of racism to me, whether intentional or unintentional.

We can be fairly confident that Ethiopians were black. The word ``Ethiopia'' was first used by the ancient Greeks, and in Greek it means ``burnt-faced'' people. To the white-skinned Greeks, it looked like black skin was burnt. But so far as we can tell, the Greeks and other people of the ancient near east did not look down on black skin. Instead they thought black skin was exotic and attractive. We find strong evidence for this in Song of Solomon 1:5, where the woman of the book is speaking. In the New Revised Standard Version, she says: ``I am black and beautiful.'' That's a terribly important detail for us to catchthat the female lover of the Song of Solomon is apparently a black woman, that she's glad to be black, that she finds herself beautiful, and that this relationship could well be an inter-racial one since nowhere in the book does it say the man is black. People in Biblical times liked black skin.

 Now days people often think of Africans as militarily weak, poor, and culturally backward. But just the opposite was true in the ancient world. During the long sweep of Biblical history, Ethiopians, who were one of the few Africans anyone in the Middle East and Europe knew about, were perceived to be a superior people. If you look up Genesis 10:8-9 and Jeremiah 46:9, you'll see that people thought Ethiopians were militarily powerful; and there's a good reason they that. In 751 B.C., the Ethiopians conquered Egypt and ruled that empire until 656 B.C., which means that in the latter part of the Old Testament era, Ethiopians were one of the world's greatest political and military powerhouses. People also thought Ethiopians were rich. For references to this, see Job 28:19 and Isaiah 45:14 that talk about precious gems and wealth owned by Ethiopians.

 Our Ethiopian in Acts 8 is not the only important Ethiopian in the Bible. There are others too. Did you know that the wife of Moses was Ethiopian (Numbers 12:1)? Or that the palace official who rescued Jeremiah from the cistern, a man named Ebed-melech, was also Ethiopian (Jeremiah 38:7)? Or this: did you know that the father of the Old Testament author Zephaniah appears to have been an Ethiopian who married a Jewish woman, making Zephaniah half-Ethiopian (Zephaniah 1:1)?

So the first important fact about our man in Acts 8 is he's Ethiopian. And in the ancient world that was a highly respectable thing to be. Isaiah 18:2 captures well the way other people thought of Ethiopians: ``Ah, land of whirring wings beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, sending ambassadors by the Nile in vessels of papyrus on the waters! Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people feared near and far, [to] a nation mighty and conquering, whose land the rivers divide'' (NRSV). It was cool to be Ethiopian!

The second important fact about this man is that he's in charge of the queen's treasury, or if you will, the chief financial officer of the kingdom. Or we might say ``queendom,'' since the queen of the Ethiopians, or the Candace, was the ruler in charge, not whatever husband she may or may not have had. Probably the eunuch was a wealthy, powerful man, by any worldly standard you want to use, successful and satisfied. He had the queen's trust and the queen's ear. Access to the queen meant that he may have had some influence over how taxes were collected, what amount was assessed, and how the queen spent her money. He probably lived in her palace, with excellent food and wine, beds of ivory, fine fabrics, and plenty of servants. Life for this particular Ethiopian was very good. He was at the top of the social ladder.

The third important fact is that he was also a eunuch. That was a good thing and a not so good thing. The good part was that it allowed him to live in the palace. As a castrated man, he was no sexual threat to the queen or to any of her female servants. If you happened to attend the classes on Esther that I taught this past year, then you already know that eunuchs were common in the ancient world as trustworthy servants to kings and queens. What made them trustworthy was precisely their sexual impotence which allowed them to walk freely in and out of women's quarters, carrying messages and managing the king's harem if he had one.

But the downside to being a eunuch was his personal life. The book of Sirach, an intertestamental book found in the Apocrypha and written 150 years before the birth of Jesus, says this about eunuchs: ``A eunuch embraces a maiden and groans'' (Sirach 30:20). That may clue us about why this eunuch has traveled some 800 miles one-way in a bumpy chariot over terrible roads just to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. This man is barren, unable to marry, unable to have sexual intercourse, and unable to father children. It's not that he's never met anyone he might have wanted to marryworking in a palace around women he probably was attracted in some fashion to at least one of them. No, the problem was that he couldn't marry even if he wanted to. That privilege had been taken away from him surgically, perhaps without his consent when he was only a boy or even an infant. His biological barrenness was irreversible. And it could well be that his biological barrenness had created in him a kind of spiritual barrenness, making him feel distant and remote from God. Maybe he was feeling a little bored with his work. Maybe he was having a mid-life crisis and he was on some kind of a spiritual quest.

Whatever the reason, it was big deal for him to travel all the way from Ethiopia just to worship in Jerusalem. By chariot, that trip would have taken at least 6 weeks both ways. And when he got to Jerusalem, he wasn't even allowed to enter the Temple. He had to stand on the edge of the Temple. Why? Because he was a eunuch. He was ritually unclean. Deuteronomy 23:1 says, ``No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.'' Jewish rules defined eunuchs as permanently damaged goods, prohibited for life from entering the inner precincts of the temple, cut off from the community of God's people, always outsiders no matter how good and spiritual they were. Jews thought they were not really God's children.

I can only conclude that this man was spiritually desperate. Why else would he get special permission from his queen to be gone that long, spending a month and a half of his valuable time bumping up and down in a chariot without shock absorbers, just to stand on the outside of a holy place, and from that place outside to aim a few prayers at the God who supposedly lives inside that temple? I tell you, this man really wanted to connect with God. All his wealth and power, his social standing and political access, were not enough. He was looking for something, Someone, to fill the barrenness of this life.

Luke implies that whatever or Whomever the Ethiopian eunuch was looking for, he didn't find it at the temple in Jerusalem. On the trip back to Ethiopia he's still searching, squinting between bumps at his scroll of Isaiah, which when Philip arrives, is turned to 53:7-8. After the two men meet, Philip asks the eunuch if he understands what he's reading.

``No, says the eunuch, I'm confused about this reference to a sheep led to the slaughter. Who's that supposed to refer to?''

``That would be Jesus,'' replies Philip. ``Let me tell you about him.''

So side by side in the chariot they sit, Philip explaining and the eunuch listening. When they ride by a pond, the eunuch wants to know if he could be baptized. Sure!, says Philip. Down in the water they both go, the eunuch to swim for a while in the amniotic waters of God's own womb. Up out of the water they both come, Philip to be whisked away by the Spirit for his next assignment, and the eunuch to begin new life as a true and beloved child of God.

Luke doesn't tell us whether or not the Ethiopian eunuch ever received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Maybe the eunuch did, maybe he didn't. Luke also doesn't say if there was a community of Christians waiting for the eunuch back in Ethiopia. Maybe there was, but probably not. Possibly the eunuch turned into a palace evangelist when he got back to Ethiopia, but Luke doesn't say. Maybe Luke never knew what happened to the eunuch.

However, you and I know, thanks to the perspective of history, that the Christian church in Africa soon grew strong and vibrant. For the next 600 years, northern Africa, from Ethiopia to Egypt to Libya, became one of the most important centers of the church, producing major leaders like Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and Augustine, the greatest Christian theologian between Paul and Thomas Aquinas. We also know that northern Africa was not just a major theological center, but also a great spiritual center, nurturing a deeper life with Christ through the practice of contemplative prayer. That interest in contemplative prayer eventually helped to shape monasticism, which in turn, many centuries later, would profoundly influence the development of Anabaptism through the leadership of Michael Sattler.

And we know that on that day as the Ethiopian eunuch continued his bumpy road home, his spirit jumped for joy, his memory of God's holy womb still fresh and strong and wet.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch<style type="text/css span.c6 {font-size: 13pt} span.c5 {font-size: 80%} span.c4 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c3 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c2 {font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c1 {font Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:02:23 GMT The Conversion of the Jailer August 17 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=The Conversion of the Jailer August 17 2003.rtf@CB1
The Conversion of the Jailer
Acts 16:25-34
Sermon by Dan Schrock
August 17, 2003

 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God. (NRSV)
Have you ever wondered how to convert someone? You know, persuade someone else to accept Jesus as their Lord? How do you get a genuine pagan, who knows nothing about Jesus and has never had any contact with the church, to say yes to Christ?

The first answer is that you don't. I don't. You and I are not the ones who persuade other people to accept Jesus. That's the responsibility of the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts emphasizes again and yet again, in story after story, in a dozen different ways, that the Holy Spirit guides people to Jesus. Acts tells how the Holy Spirit blows at Pentecost, and thousands convert. The Spirit whisks Philip to a lonely Ethiopian eunuch whom the Spirit has already prepared to receive Jesus. The Spirit changes that Jesus-hater, Paul, into a Jesus-lover. The Spirit appears to Cornelius and converts him to Jesus. At nearly the same time, the Spirit gives a vision to Peter, knocking down a pillar of his old faith and replacing it with a new one. It's the Holy Spirit, not us, who primarily converts people to Christ. Can we help the Holy Spirit convert people? Yes, but only after the Spirit takes initiative.

That means we help the Holy Spirit most effectively by responding to its moves. The Spirit leads and we follow. But in order for us to follow, we have to pay attention. If you've ever done ballroom dancing, then you know that one partner leads the moves while the other partner follows the moves. That's how it is here. We follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. We notice what the Spirit is doing around us and in us. We pay attention, watching, listening, observing. Then when we learn the Spirit's moves, we respond.

The second answer to the question of how you get a pagan to convert is that you wait until the pagan asks you about salvation. When he or she asks, then you talk about Jesus. You don't barge in and force them to hear about Jesus; you wait until they ask. That, at least, is what happens in Acts 16.

The Philippian jailer is the first pagan who ever converted to Christian faith. All the other people in Acts who convert before this story are God-fearers. In the New Testament, God-fearers are people who already know quite a bit about God. They believe in God, respect and honor God, worship God. But they're not yet fully practicing church members. They've gone part way to God, but not all the way. The people in the crowd at Pentecost are God-fearers, as are the Ethiopian eunuch, Paul, Cornelius, and Lydia. They are all well-acquainted with Judaism. But none of them fully converted until after the Spirit nudges them toward Jesus.

Here in chapter 16, Luke introduces us to the first real pagan. This man has no knowledge of God, no familiarity with Judaism, has never even heard of Jesus. Philippi, located in northern Greece, was a thoroughly Greek and Roman city, with virtually no Jews so far as we can tell from biblical and archaeological evidenceall of which means that the jailer was a pagan, pure and simple. He probably believes in a smattering of Greek and Roman and Egyptian godsgods like Zeus, Jupiter, and Isisbut in all the ancient pagan religions, the gods were fickle. You simply could not trust them to be there for you always. The pagan gods were never very loyal to you, so how were you supposed to be loyal to them? They demanded a lot from yousacrifices and all the restbut they didn't give you much in return. No, the pagan gods were quite unsatisfactory.

The jailer's conversion to Christ begins when Paul gets ``very much annoyed'' (16:18) during a little incident that has nothing to do with the jailer. Paul hadn't met the jailer yet, didn't even know the jailer existed. But one day Paul gets annoyed. Ticked off. Angry. He and Silas go down to the river to pray, and as they go, a slave girl with psychic powers follows them. As she traipses after them, she calls out to any passerby on the street who will listen, ``See those two men? They are slaves of the Most High God! Listen to them because they know the way to salvation!'' Now this isn't the first time she has done this. She has been doing it every day for the last several days, trailing them around the city saying, ``See those two men? They are slaves of the Most High God! Listen to them because they know the way to salvation!''

On this particular day, Paul gets mad. Just plain mad. It isn't that the slave girl is lying. She's telling the truth, and Paul knows it. He is a slave of God; and he does know the way of salvation. Luke doesn't say why Paul gets mad, but we can guess some possibilities. Maybe Paul is in a quiet, prayerful mood (he is hoping to pray down by the river, after all), and maybe he gets irritated that this girl interrupts his spiritual preparations. Or maybe he's mad that this poor girl is an unwilling slave, trapped against her will in a rotten situation, owned by a group of people not at all interested in her as a person, but only interested in the profit they could make off her psychic powers. Maybe Paul is mad that this teenager is held in the grip of an evil spirit, doubly imprisoned by the evil of slavery and the evil of demon possession. Whatever the reason, something inside Paul suddenly snaps. He wheels around on his sandal and says, ``Get out! In the name of Jesus Christ, get out of that poor girl!'' And it goes.

When that poor girl's owners see her psychic powers scurry back into the hole they had crawled out of, they, the owners, are furious. They won't be able to make any more money off her. Their economic investment has just been flushed down the sewer. So they grab Paul and Silas and drag them off to the city leaders. When they get to city hall, the owners play the race cardthey announce that Paul and Silas are Jews, which in first century Philippi is enough to stir up virulent anti-Semitism. The crowd in city hall starts physically attacking Paul and Silas, and in order to restore order city leaders tell the police to beat up Paul and Silas with rods. That's how Paul and Silas end up in jail, in excruciating pain, their shoulders and backs cut wide open with rods, their togas bloody. That's how they meet the jailer. That's how the conversion of the jailer starts: with Paul's anger.

Pay attention to your anger, because it might be the Holy Spirit trying to get your attention. For most of my adult life I've been plagued with anger against a certain group of people. It wasn't a righteous anger against injustice or anything else that you and I would agree it's ok to be angry about. This was mean, cantankerous, nasty anger. I'm not proud of it, the way I'd be proud about anger at child abuse, for example. I'm just telling you how it was. I've kept this anger fairly well hidden from most people, although Jenny, for one, has known about it for a long time. This anger surfaced inside me almost every week, especially in the last decade, and while I know very well who was making me mad, I was clueless about the source of this anger. Where was it coming from? Why couldn't I seem to get rid of it? Why did it keep growing?

One Saturday near the end of June, I was writing in my journal about a series of recent experiences in which my anger had snapped. Suddenly some oddly shaped pieces of my life that I never thought were related came together in my mind and arranged themselves neatly into place. I can only attribute it to the action of the Spirit. In a flash of insight I saw where this anger originated: in a particular period of my life a long time ago. I saw what was feeding this anger and why it continued to fester.

 A few days later, I told the whole thing to Jenny, who is a wonderful listener. She pointed out some additional pieces I had not considered but that also fell neatly into place. Within minutes after our conversation was over, I felt some of the anger draining away. It hasn't all left yet. But I do think it's a major turning point in my spiritual life, a kind of conversion. I'm not sure most other people can tell, but God can, and I can. So pay attention to your anger, whether it's positive or negative, because the Spirit might use your anger to tell you something important. In the due course of time, anger could take you to conversion, either your own or someone else's.

 Paul's anger takes him and Silas to jail, and turns their backs into a bloody pulp, but the Spirit uses this whole sequence of events to convert the jailer. Paul and Silas made no three-year plan to reach northern Greece for Christ. They hadn't planned to get into prison ministry. They were just going down to pray at the river, not bothering anybody, when Paul's anger at evil unexpectedly puts them in jail. The Holy Spirit, of course, is behind the whole thing, in odd, unforeseen ways. The Spirit is finding a way to get to that jailerbut neither Paul nor the jailer knows that yet.

By midnight, Paul and Silas are singing and praying. Oh yes, their feet are locked up in iron chains and their backs are caked in drying blood, but they've been working with the Holy Spirit long enough to know that this Spirit is getting ready, perhaps, to spring some kind of surprise which will birth new life. So they do what any of God's people would do in a similar situation: they pray and they sing. They celebrate the ability of Most High God. They trust Most High God to pull them through. With their words and music, they construct an alternative world of new possibility in the middle of a chained, imprisoned world that seems to provide no way out.

Then comes the earthquake. It is the earthquake that decisively catches the jailer's attention. Until that moment, this is just another day at the office for him. Until the earthquake, which makes this unlike any other day at the office. This one rattles the ground under the prison. It shakes the structure of the prison. It springs open the doors to the prison, freeing every person insideand in his heart of hearts, the jailer is scared spitless. Scared the prisoners will run away and the city leaders will hold him accountable, scared his honor and reputation will slide into the sewer, scared he will lose his job, scared the gods of the mountains outside Philippi are angry with him, scared that he is, from head to foot and fingertip to fingertip, a man undone. Better to die now than to suffer public shame. Better to take fate into his own hands. Better to end it now and go down honorably, quickly. So the jailer grabs his sword, points it at his own heart, and with both hands starts to pull.

``Stop!'' cries Paul from inside his prison. ``Don't do it! We're all still here! No one has escaped!''

Letting his sword clatter to the floor, the jailer grabs an oil lamp and rushes to the cell block. Sure enough, the prisoners are all still there, their faces shining in the light of his lamp, watching him, waiting to see what he will do.

He stands there a moment thinking, the lamp trembling in his hands. ``Come,'' he says, ``come outside, all of you. Follow me.'' Once outside, the jailer falls on his knees, suddenly feeling overwhelmed, the walls of his life crumbled. ``Sirs,'' he asks, ``what do I do to be saved?''

``Simple,'' replies Paul, ``believe in Jesus, you and the people who live with you, and you will be saved.''

``Tell me more,'' the jailer says. ``Who is Jesus, and why is he important?'' Asked so directly by a man in such need, Paul tells. Tells the jailer what hem, Paul, knows to be true. Tells what he has experienced to be power. Looks in the jailer's eyes and tells him about the Lord of heaven and earth.

As he listens, the jailer tenderly washes the wounds on Paul and Silas' backs. Gets warm water to loosen the dark red scabs. Dries them with a clean towel. Lightly rubs a little olive oil on to reduce infection. And then they switch. Paul and Silas wash the jailer and all the members of his household. Wash them in water that looks plain and ordinary, but is actually the water of Christ: a balm for fear, an ointment for joy, a passion for right.

So it comes to pass that Paul's anger leads to the jailer's conversion. In the middle of these events the Holy Spirit of Most High God nudges, entices, shakes, does things that even Luke does not know to name in telling the story. As these events unfold, Paul stays with the process, accepting arrest, unjust charges, beating, and imprisonment, trusting that somehow the Holy Spirit is shaping a new possibility, forging an alternative world. Paul responds when nudged and answers when asked, attending to the Spirit. And so conversion happens.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Reorganized<style type="text/css span.c7 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c6 {font-family: Times New Roman} span.c5 {font-size: 80%} div.c4 {font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c3 {font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; text-align: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:04:32 GMT On the Move December 30 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=On the Move December 30 2003.rtf@CB1
On the Move
 Luke 21:25-33
Sermon by Dan Schrock
November 30, 2003
1 st Sunday of Advent

``There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.''

 Then he told them a parable: ``Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.'' (NRSV)
Our God is on the move. Our God does not sit still high up in heaven, passively watching all the stuff that happens on earth. No! Our God is here, active, engaging, ceaselessly awake, never sleeping, never on vacation, never off the job. Our God is on the move!

Why is God on the move? Because evil is also on the move. A burglar enters a store during the night and steals $10,000 of merchandise. That's evil on the move. A man beats his wife and hits his children blue and purple. That's evil on the move. A person with AIDS, knowing full well that the human immunodeficiency virus swims in his or her blood, deliberately has sex with someone else, gives them the virus, and passes on to them a sentence of death. That's evil on the move. As we speak, Israelis plot to kill Palestinians and Palestinians plot to kill Israelis. That's evil on the move.

Maybe some of these things sound like sin to you. Maybe you think we should really call robbery, spouse and child abuse, illicit sex, and war, sin. Human begins deliberately, willfully, do these nasty things, and those acts should be called sin. True enough, theft and abuse, murder and war are sin. But sin is only one kind of evil. To say it another way, the word ``evil'' includes a lot of different kinds of nastiness, and sin is only one of them. Sin is powerful and pervasive, but evil is a much larger category. It's like subsets in math: sin is a subset of evil.

Think, for example, of a five-year-old girl who cries herself to sleep because she ate only crackers and peanut butter for lunch, and one mushy apple for supper, because there isn't any other food in the house. We would not necessarily call hunger a sin, but we'd definitely call it evil on the move. Or think of a high velocity wind and rain storm sweeping through Goshen, breaking off limbs, snapping power lines, felling trees. We don't call those storms sin, but they're certainly evil on the move. Think of an infestation of beetles in your raspberry patch. That's not sin, but it might well be evil on the move. Think of the collapse of the Soviet Union and all the social, political, and economic chaos which that unleashed in the former Soviet republics and in satellite nations of Eastern Europe. That chaos wasn't exactly sin, but it was clearly evil on the move.

Our God hates evil. God's number one enemy is evil, whether in the form of sin or chaos, suffering or pain. God's first enemy is chaos, at least according to the opening verses of Genesis. In the beginning the earth was without form and void, and chaos was upon the face of the deep. Chaos pulsed and throbbed, without shape or texture, without purpose of design. Chaos, where nothing was because nothing could live there. Chaos, aimless, wandering evil, doing whatever it wished without boundaries or limits.

God is the foe of chaos. So God went on the move. The reason God created was to put boundaries on chaos. God created day and night, land and sea, plants and animals, man and woman, to limit chaos. God fights chaos by imposing order on it: thus far shall you go, chaos, but no farther. You, chaos, will now be shaped and molded, contained and bounded. No longer will you do as you please, for I am God, and I put limits on you for the sake of creation, for the sake of life. I, God, put boundaries on you, chaos, in order to create a place of shalom for humankind, a place of safety where life can flourish and grow.

To be sure, there is something we might choose to call ``creative'' chaos. Individuals and institutions sometimes pass through seasons of chaos that create new growth and energy. These times of chaos can yield tremendously important fruit. But we should understand this type of chaos as bounded by God, set by God, limited by God. This chaos cannot do whatever it wants, for God contains it so that it fosters creativity.

From the very beginning of creation, therefore, God has intended this world to be a place of safety and peace, of life and health. For every child, woman, and man, God has always wanted abundance in its many formsabundance of food and clean water, abundance of justice and wholeness, abundance of meaningful labor and fair play, an abundance of all the necessities that make life joyful. But even at the beginning of God's creating, evil was not completely eradicated. The presence of the serpent in the Garden symbolizes the presence of evil. Even in the Garden of Eden, sin was still possible, and sin is what soon happened. So evil as sin, evil as chaos, evil as suffering, have infected God's good creation from the beginning.

Our God does not like evil, and struggles mightily against it. Consider this: down in Egypt, with its vicious slave owners working under an authoritarian pharaoh, God heard the cries of the Hebrews praying for deliverance from the evil of slavery. So God went on the move, sending Moses and Aaron to confront that empire, informing pharaoh he was neither as powerful nor as important as he thought he was. Then God put action to speech, demonstrating in deed after might deed that no government, no economy, no military, can stop God from the holy task of liberating people from oppression.

Or consider this: Jesus himself, in the text we heard a bit ago, says in stark, apocalyptic terms that evil is on the move in this world. There will be signs on the horizon and distress among the nations. People will faint from fear and dread.

The people standing around listening to Jesus that day realized immediately that he was talking about the day of the Lord. In Hebrew thought, the day of the Lord was the end of this world as we know it, and the beginning of a new world made fresh by God's power and might. The Hebrews believed that just before the day of the Lord arrived, evil would have its last, final fling, throwing its full power against all that is good, trying in one last desperate act to defeat God and God's good creation. On that day, said the Hebrew theologians, there would be blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun will turn to darkness and the mood to blood (Joel 2:30-31). It will be a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry (Zephaniah 1:15-18).

In many countries of this world, people don't have to look very far to find things that remind them of the devastation leading up to the day of the Lord. Sit for a while in a place like Ethiopia or Congo, plagued with famine, and you will find it pretty easy to imagine the portents leading to the day of the Lord. Sit for a while in western Colombia as I have, where drug lords and paramilitary units and government troops funded by the U.S. government fight each other in a forty-year-old war, where church leaders are afraid they might be kidnapped or assassinated, and you will find it pretty easy to imagine that the day of the Lord may not be so far off.

For a long time, most people who live in this country had very little experience with the kind of evil that many in the world know all too well from personal experienceuntil September 11, 2001. If you were like me, on September 11, 2001, you watched TV in shock, your heart pounding, your mind reeling. On that day we saw images not so different from the images in Joel and Zephaniah, from the images Jesus uses in Luke 21: blood and fire and columns of smoke, the sun dark even though it was day. We were distressed and anguished, seeing ruin and devastation, hearing the battle cry of retaliation from national leaders.

I do not mean to suggest that the day of the Lord will come tomorrow, although of course we are one day closer to the end of time than we were yesterday. Instead I'm merely trying to connect an experience we've all had, the experience of watching the World Trade Center disasters, with a powerful biblical image, the day of the Lord.

However, the biblical authors knew that evil doesn't stand a chance against God. There is no way in heaven or earth that evil will ever do God in. God always has and always will be more powerful than evil. God defies evil, deters evil, threatens evil, menaces evil, intimidates evil. But maybe the most important word is frightens: God frightens evil. Evil is just plain scared of God, because evil knows, maybe even better than you and I know, that God is vastly stronger than evil, infinitely more inventive, much more wily. One of the best places to see this is in the first eight chapters of the gospel of Mark. When Jesus appears on the scene, evil in all its forms runs the other way. Look carefully at the stories of demon possession: the demons immediately recognize that this man is God's own son, and they know from a lot of prior experience that there's nothing they can do to stand up against either God or Jesus. So they flee. They're scared!

You and I also know that evil doesn't stand a chance against God. We know it partly because the Bible is full of stories about God triumphing over evil, and we trust the Bible, knowing it to be true about the way the world works. Maybe we also know God is more powerful than evil from our own experience. Many years ago I knew a woman in her fifties who had a heart condition. The doctors were frank with her, telling her she might die if they didn't operate and might die if they did, but that an operation gave her better odds. It turned out that she died in the operating room from a fluke that even the doctors hadn't quite anticipated. Yet before the surgery happened, those who knew her best said she was more calm and at peace than she had been in many years. Why? Because God was on the move in her life.

One of the most astonishing things Jesus ever said is found in verse 28 of our text for the morning: ``Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.'' Astonishing because Jesus asserts that when evil is on the move, God is also moving, to out-flank, out-fox, out-think, out-love, out-maneuver evil.

Our redemption is drawing near, people of God! Raise your heads, and stand up confidently, because our God is on the move.
 Thu, 4 Dec 2003 16:31:56 GMT Opened by God August 10 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Opened by God August 10 2003.rtf@CB1
Opened by God
Acts 16:11-15
Sermon by Dan Schrock
August 10, 2003

 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home." And she prevailed upon us. (NRSV)
When has God opened you up? When did God penetrate through to the very center of your life and revolutionize the way you live?

Do you remember the day when you were washing the floor or driving down the road or praying with sighs too deep for words, when you were talking with a friend or reading a book, and in a flash the Spirit of Christ penetrated you? Maybe the Holy Spirit wrapped you in peace, or maybe poured you full of joy, or awed you with wonder. Where were you the moment it happened? What were you doing? And how did it change you?

I can tell you where Lydia was on the day it happened to her. She was sitting with a group of women beside a river just outside the town of Philippi, in northern Greece. No doubt the Mediterranean sun had been warm and bright that day, although now it was dipping down over the horizon. Above the sound of water gurgling over rocks beside them, she and her friends could hear birds singing as they darted from bush to branch. It was the beginning of the Sabbath, and like all other Sabbaths she and her closest women friends had gathered by the river for their weekly prayers.

On this particular day, however, some strange men suddenly appeared from the main road leading out of Philippi. By the looks of them they appeared to be Jewish men. ``Greetings,'' one of them said, a short and not very attractive fellow who nonetheless seemed to be the leader. ``Some people in town gave us directions to this place. When we found out there was no synagogue in town, we asked several people if they knew of anyone who worshipped the God of the Jews. One of them told us about this place of prayer. He said we'd find a small group of women here. We like to join your prayers if we can. My name, by the way, is Paul. This fellow beside me is Silas, this is Timothy, and that is Luke. May we join you?''

The women nodded. When the men were seated and introduced, Lydia, the acknowledged leader of the women's group, explained the pattern of prayer they used each Sabbath. After opening prayers of praise, they thanked God, petitioned God, and interceded to God, closing with more prayers of praise. But surmising that these men seemed to be bright and well-educated, Lydia added, ``If you visitors want to talk to us after our prayers are done, we are willing to hear from you.''

So after the prayers were over, Paul spoke. And that's when it happened to Lydia.

But before I describe what happened to Lydia, maybe first you should know a thing or two about her. She grew up in Thyatira, a medium-sized town in western Asia Minor, where the local economy depended on small, family-owned businesses. Perhaps it was there in Thyatira that Lydia first learned the business skills of buying materials, adding her own entrepreneurial labor, and selling finished products at a profit. Now she was living here in Philippi, a coastal town ideally suited for the trade she now practiced: the trade of making and selling purple cloth.

Making purple cloth was a complicated process, partly because before you could dye a piece of cloth, you had to make the dye. In those days, purple dye came from the hypobranchial glands of mollusks that lived in the coastal waters of the Mediterranean Sea. First you had to catch the mollusks in water ranging from three to thirty or more feet deephundreds, even thousands of mollusks for a single batch of dye. The smaller mollusks you simply crushed and dumped into a kettle, while the larger ones you smashed at the neck to get at the hypobranchial gland, which contained a few drops of clear fluid that turned purple when it was properly processed. Once the fluid was all in the kettle, you added salt water and boiled it for nine days straight. By then the concoction had turned purple, and when you strained it, became the dye for soaking fabrics. By varying the species of mollusks, the exposure to sunlight, and the soaking times, you got different shades of dye, from red to something called Tyrian purple.

Cloth dyed in any shade of purple was extremely expensive, but Tyrian purple cloth was the most expensive of all. According to one ancient writer, woolen cloth dyed in Tyrian purple cost its own weight in gold. 1 If the cloth weighed one pound, for example, it cost one pound of gold. Only the wealthiest people could afford to buy such cloth.

From this we can infer some interesting things about Lydia. First, her business brought her into contact with ordinary people who had very little money, such as fishermen and day laborers, and also with extremely rich people who bought her finished cloth. Therefore in her own person she connected the breach between rich and poor. She stood in the gap between the upper class and the lower class, relating to both as she ran her business. Second, in order to make a profit, her business required her to invest huge sums of money into resources and equipment. Catching that many mollusks and processing them to get dye took a tremendous investment of capital. A lot of money passed through her hands. Third, since mollusks, dye, and finished cloth were so valuable, and so vulnerable to theft, security was almost certainly one of her main concerns in life. It's possible she even employed guards to protect her business; but at the very least she would have taken steps to discourage of her extremely costly materials. Fourth, she may very well have been a rich woman, one in a long procession of rich people whom Luke writes about in the books of Luke and Acts, from the rich ruler (Luke 18) to Zacchaeus (Luke 19) to Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) to Cornelius (Acts 10), and now, to Lydia herself. As in the other stories of wealthy people, Luke will show that the way Lydia uses her wealth testifies to her inner spirituality. If she's generous, then she has a healthy, God-centered spirituality. If she's stingy, then she has a self-centered spirituality.

Sitting there by the swirling river, Paul begins to speak about the God that Lydia and her female companions already know and worship, the God of Sarah and Abraham, the God of Rebekah and Isaac, the God of Miriam and Moses, Deborah and Samuel, Ruth and Boaz. Sensing that Lydia and the other women had never heard of Jesus, Paul gradually introduces them to him. Jesus, Paul explains, was born a few decades ago in Palestine, and grew up in a devout Jewish family. As an adult, Jesus turned out to be the deliverer whom God promised to send ages ago. Jesus was eventually crucified by the Roman empire for his obedience to God's way and God's purposes. However, God brought this same Jesus, so shamefully executed, back to life. Jesus is now exalted at the right hand of God and enthroned as the ruler of the universe. Jesus is lord, not Caesar. Jesus brings peace to you and me, not the army of Caesar. In Jesus, God deconstructs the dividing wall of hostility between enemies. In Jesus, God gives this corrupt world a chance to start all over again. In Jesus, God shows that by rejecting conventional political and military power, and listening to the Holy Spirit, the cloth of our lives is soaked in a new and eternal dye. In Jesus, God changes our color.

As Lydia listens to Paul, the Lord himself dives into her heart and mind and will so that she listens eagerly to all Paul says. It feels to her that the center of her life is being opened up, as if she had been walking until now in a dark, enclosed forest, but has now been brought out of that forest onto a well-lighted, open plain. She feels joyful, as if she could fly with the birds. Her mind leaps from possibility to possibility. She grins. Hope leaps up and dances within her.

That very day, Lydia and all the members of her household, sensing that nothing will ever be the same again, are baptized into Jesus, wading into the water, immersing themselves in God's silvery liquid, coming up and crossing over to the other side of belief.

Standing there on the riverbank, the water running off her like God's tears of laughter, Lydia responds. God has opened me, she says, so I open my home to you, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke. Stay with me and teach me more. I will feed you bread and olives and lamb at my table. I will give you rest on the extra beds in my house. I will even give you new cloth to make new clothes, if you need some. Stay a while here in Philippi and make my home your base. Talk to others as you have talked to me. Introduce my fellow Philippians to Jesus, that they too will be opened up.

So they did.

 Note
 1. Biblical Archaeologist , 57.1 (March 1994), 46.
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Our Choice of Kings
Matthew 2:1-16
Sermon by Dan Schrock
January 5, 2003
Epiphany

 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ``Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.'' When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ``In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: `And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'''

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ``Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.'' When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ``Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.'' Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ``Out of Egypt I have called my son.''

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. (NRSV)
When we think about this story, most of us imagine three wise kings from the east who load up their camels with treasure and cross hundreds of miles of desert to the land of Palestine, where they follow the star to Bethlehem and worship the baby Jesus. When they arrive at the stable, they give Jesus their presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then they mount up their camels and ride off into the dawn. This telling of the story, short and sweet, leaves us feeling that since the baby Jesus is now properly worshipped and adored, all is at peace in the world.

The problem with this popular scenario is that the gospel of Matthew contradicts some of the important details.

In the first place, the people who came visiting were not kings. They are more accurately called magi. We don't know as much about the magi as we'd like to; but we do know they were relatively well-educated people who spent a lot of time watching the stars and studying old manuscripts. The magi originally came from the Persian Empire, where they were priests of the Zoroastrian religion. Perhaps the most accurate word to use for them is ``astrologers.'' They were advisors to the Persian king; but they were not kings themselves.

In the second place, we can't be sure there were 3 of them. Since they gave 3 presentsthe gold, frankincense, and myrrhpeople have supposed there were 3 magi, one for each present. But maybe not. Since Matthew uses the plural form of the Greek word for magi, we know there were at least two of them. But there could have been 4 or 9 or 15. We don't know.

Third, Matthew never says the magi had camels. It may be reasonable to suppose they did, given their wealth, the distance they had to travel, and the ubiquitousness of camels in the ancient near east. But maybe they walked, or came part way by boat, or rode donkeys. Matthew doesn't say.

Fourth, the magi did not visit the baby Jesus; they visited the toddler Jesus. According to verse 16, the magi tell Herod that the star had first appeared in the sky two years before their arrival in Jerusalem, making Jesus two years of age when the events of Matthew 2 take place. The magi opened their treasure chests to no sleepy infant, but to a vigorous two-year old who ran around Bethlehem on his own two feet, and who was thinking seriously about potty training.

Fifth, the world of Matthew 2 was not a world of peace, serenity, and security. It was rather a world of violence, deep anxiety, and nerve-racking uncertainty. A mere five miles from Bethlehem where Jesus was running barefoot on the village streets, sat the king of Palestine, the aged but still terrible Herod the Great. Many years before, during his youth, Herod had come to political power through his success on the battlefield, particularly his success in hunting down bandits in the Judean hills and chopping off their heads. If ordinary people crossed him, Herod simply rounded them up and ran them through with a sword. Rome rewarded Herod's violence by making him a client king; and for as long as he lived, Herod kept right on killing his political enemies, both real and imagined, even when they were members of his own family. When Herod thought that his wife, Mariamme, was plotting against him, he murdered her and married a new woman. When Herod suspected that some of his in-laws were not being loyal enough, he murdered them. And when Herod feared treachery in some of his own sons, he murdered them too. Herod's reputation for murdering people he didn't like was so notorious that Emperor Augustus, who lived thousands of miles west in the city of Rome, once quipped that he'd rather be Herod's pig than Herod's son, because as a pig he would have a better chance of escaping Herod's sword than if he was one of Herod's sons.

The ordinary people who had to live under Herod's rule were therefore terrified of what he might do next whenever he got angry or jealous or spiteful. Would he kill palace officials or peasant farmers? Would he kill one or two people, or scores of people? Would he slip a little poison into your wine goblet while you were looking the other way, or would he order the soldiers to arrest you and torture you in one of his prisons?

Which means that the magi were neither wise or smart when they marched into Jerusalem and started asking around about a child had recently been born king of the Jews. In fact, the magi committed a huge and very stupid political blunder by being so public about the purpose of their trip. Surely they had heard of Herod's reputation for killing anyone who threatened his rule. Surely they should have known a thing or two about politics from their experience in the Persian court. Surely they should have realized that a man like Herod would not tolerate another king in his realm. Couldn't they have guessed that Herod would try to assassinate this child-king? Couldn't they have been more prudent? How dumb could these magi have been?

Picture it. The magi walk through the city gates into Jerusalem, tired from their long journey. First, perhaps, they ask about food and lodging. ``Uh, excuse us,'' they ask a man on the street corner who has a load of firewood on this shoulders, ``we're from out of town. Can you give us directions to an inn where we can stay the night and get a hot meal?'' After hearing that the closest inn is only three blocks away, the magi thank the man with the firewood and then add, ``By the way, we came here to pay homage to the new king of the Jews, born about two years ago. Can you tell us where he is?'' The man's eyes widen, his jaw drops, and fear flashes across his face. ``I . . . I . . . I don't know anything about a new king. Sorry, I have to take this firewood someplace,'' replies the man as he rushes down a side street.

On the way over to the inn, the magi stop another man who looks as if he might be more knowledgeable, this one dressed in clean clothes with phylacteries tied around his forehead and left arm, and a papyrus scroll tucked under the other arm. ``We're sorry to bother you,'' they say, ``but do you know where this new Jewish king is? Born two years ago at the end of the month? We want to give him our allegiance and present kingly gifts.'' The man cocks an eyebrow and gazes at them with astonishment, as if they have just dropped out of the sky. ``Gentlemen,'' he says lowering his voice, ``the only king around here is Herod, and he's no child. If I were you, I'd be careful what I say and how I said it.''

Later that evening at the inn, after they've soaked in a warm bath and devoured hot lentil stew with fresh bread and sheep's milk cheese on the side, followed by figs for dessert, they try again with the innkeeper. ``Tell us about this new Jewish king. Should be two by now. Where is he? We asked around in the city before we got here, but no one knows anything about him. And they look a little scared when we start talking. What do you know about him? What's going on?'' Glancing furtively to all corners of the room, the innkeeper comes close and whispers, ``Look, sirs, you are welcome to stay in my inn, but please don't talk about that. I've got a business to run.''

Over the next few days, the magi wander around the city, asking and asking again, now a little more cautiously. By the end of the week, one of Herod's many informers, we'll call him Julius Andronicus, slips into the palace and tells him in private chambers about these foreigners who say a new king has been born.

Herod acts immediately, the old fear of losing his kingdom clenching his heart. ``Tell that chief priest and those religious toadies of his to get themselves over here to the palace in 20 minutes,'' he orders the centurion standing nearby. ``I don't care if he's in the Holy of Holies. Drag him out and bring him here immediately.''

Twenty minutes later when the high priest, sub-priests, and various scribes stand before him wringing their hands, Herod gets right to the point: ``My spies tell me some new Jewish king has been born. I want to know where, and I want to know now!''

The chief priest motions for his associates to huddle. ``Where?'' he demands. ``Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?'' A brainy young scribe pipes up. ``I think maybe in Bethlehem,'' he blurts, ``at least that's what the prophet Micah said.'' The others nod their heads in agreement; that is what Micah said. Turning around to face Herod again, the chief priest bows and says, ``Your majesty, one of our prophets from long ago said a king would be born in the village of Bethlehem, five miles from here.''

``Get out of here, I have work to do!'' stormed Herod.

When the religious leaders scurried out, Herod motioned to his centurion. ``Somewhere in the city are magi from the east. Julius Andronicus, who has a leather shop just off Main Street, knows where these magi are. Go talk to him, find them, and bring them here. But do it quietly.''

During the next hour, Herod slumped into his chair and brooded, his hooded eyelids slunk low over his eyes, his sallow skin stretched taut over his fingertips, his mind racing through a dozen scenarios every ten minutes. Finally the magi arrived, their faces hopeful that at last they might find out where this boy king was.

``Get out,'' Herod snapped at his advisors and attendants. ``I want to talk to these magi alone.''

When the last door to the throne room clanged shut, Herod grinned at the magi, his crooked yellowed teeth showing. ``Gentlemen,'' he began, pulling aside his outer robe to reveal the dagger he always wore around his waist, ``I understand that you are searching for a boy king. I am sorry to inform you that no boy king has been born in this palace for many years. You say he would have been born about two years ago?'' Seeing them nod, he continued. ``Very well, then. I have consulted with the local high priest, who says that you should look in Bethlehem, a small village five miles south. I would very much like to pay homage to this king too,'' he said as the hand nearest his dagger twitched. ``After you find him, why don't you come back here and tell me all about him? That way I can go to Bethlehem too.''

You already know how the magi followed the star to Bethlehem; how they found the boy king with his mother, Mary; and how they knelt on their knees, bowing until their foreheads rested in the dirt, and gave their sumptuous gifts; so I don't need to tell that part of the story.

But I will say that while the magi were doing their thing in Bethlehem, Herod sat back in his palace and brooded. And brooded. And brooded until he could endure it no longer.

``Centurion!'' he barked. ``Mount a century of soldiers on horses and ride to Bethlehem tonight. Go to every hut in the village and within a two mile radius surrounding the village. Gather up every boy two years of age and younger. While you're at it you might as well get all the girls too. Our national security is at stake, so make sure you find all of them! Take them to a field outside the village, kill them, and leave their bodies for the wild dogs. Go!''

But you already know that while Herod was giving his orders, the boy king Jesus and his parents were fleeing Bethlehem and heading to Egypt, where they would live for several years as refugees. You know too, if you read the papers and watch the news, that the Herods of this world still send their armed forces on personal vendettas thinly cloaked as matters of urgent national security.

So you and I are left with a choice about whom we will pay homage to: will we pay homage to the men who use their soldiers to bully the rest of the world; or will we pay homage to the man who had no soldiers, who accepted death on a cross, and who now reigns as King of the universe? It's your choice.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> The Foolish Magi<style type="text/css span.c6 {font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c4 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c3 {font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c2 {font-size: 150%; font-style: it Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:00:26 GMT Renewal November 10 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Renewal November 10 2003.rtf@CB1
Renewal
Hosea 2:16-20
Sermon by Dan Schrock
November 10, 2002

 On that day, says the L ORD , you will call me,``My husband,'' and no longer will you call me, ``My Baal.'' For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more.

I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.

And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the L ORD . (NRSV)
God is going to renew our marriage. We have to want it. We have to work hard at it. But God is the one who renews it, with a little help from us.

A certain couple had been married for many years. So long, in fact, that they grew a little tired of each other. Memories of their wedding day had grown dim, when they had stood before God, family, friends, and congregation, making a covenant to have and to hold from that day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish each other for as long as they both would live. It was the cherishing part that had diminished.

Although he never would have admitted it, she noticed that he was far more excited by college and NFL football than he was about her. He watched as many of the televised games as he could, flipping back and forth from one channel to another, wishing out loud that they owned three televisions so he could watch more games at once. When the newspaper arrived, he buried his head in the sports section to read about all the games he missed. She complained about all the football, but he went right on watching the games.

She had her own passion: china dolls. Nearly every mail order company in America that made or sold dolls sent her their catalogues, which she read in bed each night from cover to cover. For hours she designed doll clothes, cut out doll clothes, and sewed doll clothes, dressing and undressing them in the outfits she had made, displaying them in her walnut cabinet with the locking glass doors. She visited the local frabric stores so often they knew her first name. Her husband wondered if she liked dolls more than him.

Then one day their daughter came home to visit. She said, ``Next month is your anniversary. I've made arrangements with an acquaintance of mine for you to spend three days at a log cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. The cabin has no electricity and no running water, but it does have a well, an outhouse, and a fireplace. I've arranged for an outfitter in Gatlinburg, Tennessee to deliver you all your meals while you're there. All you have to do is go.''

So they went. For three days he watched no TV and received no newspapers. For three days she read no catalogues and sewed no doll clothes. Three times a day they ate those sumptuous meals delivered from Gatlinburg. And the Spirit of God entered that place. They took long walks, during which they found each other's hands. They sat on the front porch, during which they looked into each other's eyes. In the day they talked with each other. In the night they became re-acquainted with desire.

On the trip home, they talked about what had happened to them. He said, ``I want to limit the number of hours I watch football each week to three; and I want to continue talking walks with you.'' She said, ``I was thinking the same. I want to buy no more than one new doll a year, since I have so many already. And I want to sit out on the deck with you often.''

That's what they did. And in heaven, God smiled.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Fidelity<style type="text/css span.c8 {font-size: 80%} span.c7 {font-family: Century Schoolbook} i.c6 {font-family: Century Schoolbook; font-size: 70%} i.c5 {font-family: Century Schoolbook} span.c4 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} d Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:00:27 GMT Scarred Jesus April 27 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Scarred Jesus April 27 2003.rtf@CB1
Scarred Jesus
John 20:19-28
Sermon by Dan Schrock
April 27, 2003
(Healing Service)

 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" (NRSV)
One afternoon twelve years ago I was cutting a piece of oak wood on my table saw. When I was about 2/3 of the way through the board, I noticed that some red dots suddenly appeared on the surface of the board. ``That's odd,'' I thought to myself, ``why would there be red dots on this piece of wood? It didn't have red dots when I bought it in the store. How could red dots suddenly appear out of nowhere?''

Then I realized those dots could be blood--my blood. I lifted the board off the table saw, looked at my hands, and saw a mangled mess of red on the tip of my left thumb. Five seconds later it started to hurt, and within half a hour I was in serious pain. After looking at the x-ray, the doctor told me I had sawed into the tip of the bone.

That night as I lay in bed, the pain came in waves. For a while it would ebb into dullness, then suddenly it would spike as if someone had just stabbed my thumb with a knife. I was exhausted from pain, but pain would not let me sleep.

Eventually the pain went away and the wound healed. But I still have a scar running diagonally across the tip of my left thumb, half of an inch long, reminding me of those red dots and a long sleepless night. I am much more careful now when I use a table saw.

Maybe you have a scar somewhere on your body, or somewhere on your psyche, or somewhere in the depths of your soul. It runs diagonally across the grain of your life, reminding you of some painful event in the past. The initial wound has healed, perhaps, but the scar remains, evoking memories of what happened, where it happened, and how it affected the development of your life.

Thomas Didymus knew about pain, if not his own pain, then surely the pain of the world. In the gospels' scattered references to Thomas, we are never told about pain or scars that he himself may have had. But the gospels do tell us that Thomas was one of the disciples who walked with Jesus nearly everywhere he went. We know, therefore, that Thomas watched when Jesus stopped the flow of blood in a woman whose life had been slowly bleeding away for twelve years (Mark 5:21-34). We know Thomas was there by the Bethzatha pool when Jesus met a man who had been lying on a mat for 38 years, his life so defined by paralysis, so fixed by paralysis, that Jesus had to ask him if he really wanted to be well and begin living a different kind of life (John 5:2-9). Again and again, Thomas had seen Jesus heal the wounds of the world: the wound of not having enough to eat (John 6:1-14), the wound of having too much money (Luke 19:1-10), the wound of believing that you have finally achieved blessedness (Luke 12:16-21, 18:9-14). Thomas had seen plenty of wounds in the world, and had watched Jesus touch those wounds in wonderful ways. For Thomas, the authentic Jesus was the One in touch with the wounds of the world.

So when Thomas hears the impossible tale that Jesus is alive, he wants proof. He wants to touch the proof. ``Unless I put my finger on the mark of the nails, and put my hand on his side where the spear entered, I will not believe.'' Show me the scars, says Thomas. I want to finger the evidence. I want to touch the wounds Jesus received on the cross. I want to make sure this risen Jesus is somehow still connected to the wounds of the world. If Jesus is not still connected to the wounds of the world, then I will not believe it's him. My Lord can only be authentic if he still bears the scars of woundedness.

One week after Easter, Thomas and some of the other disciples were huddled in a house, fearful about the future. Jesus came through their closed doors with a greeting of peace. And turning to Thomas, Jesus gently offers himself, opening his hands, spreading his arms wide. ``Here I am, Thomas. Touch my scars. Feel the places where I was wounded, my hands and my rib cage. Believe it's me. Believe I'm still connected to the wounds of the world. Believe that I, who overcame death, now have infinite power to heal.''

And Thomas--his eyes wide, his heart pounding, his soul suddenly burning with fire from heaven--says the only thing any of us could say in the circumstances: ``My Lord and my God!''
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Connecting with the Risen Christ<style type="text/css span.c5 {font-size: 80%} span.c4 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c3 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c2 {font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center} div.c1 {font-size: 150%; Sun, 26 Oct 2003 05:00:28 GMT Seeing October 12 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Seeing October 12 2003.rtf@CB1
Seeing
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Sermon by Anita Kehr
October 12, 2003

The LORD said to Samuel, "How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons." Samuel said, "How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me." And the LORD said, "Take a heifer with you, and say, 'I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.' Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you." Samuel did what the LORD commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, "Do you come peaceably?" He said, "Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice." And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, "Surely the LORD's anointed is now before the LORD." But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, "Neither has the LORD chosen this one." Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, "Neither has the LORD chosen this one." Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, "The LORD has not chosen any of these." Samuel said to Jesse, "Are all your sons here?" And he said, "There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep." And Samuel said to Jesse, "Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here." He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The LORD said, "Rise and anoint him; for this is the one." Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Yesterday was a beautiful day, wasn't it? There was that peculiarly hazy deep-blue sky of the fall. The trees in various stages of autumn glory, some leaves still green, some midway in their transformation, some in full blazing glory, but most still hanging on the tree, the nakedness of limbs still a week or a good rainstorm away, whichever comes first. The air warm enough to caress the skin, such a relief from last week's premature cold. The sound of crickets and locusts and mowers cutting grass for one of the last timeshopefully?this season.

I was halfway to the church yesterday before I saw any of it. My thoughts were going a mile a minute, and they were really not on my surroundings nor on my driving, although I think I was careful enough. Quite suddenly, though, as I was tooling along, I became aware of the beauty of the morning. I began to look at it and enjoy it and revel in it… and pretty soon I started thinking about how I was preaching on seeing today and before long, I was almost at the church and couldn't recall anything that I had passed in the last three miles.

Seeing requires the discipline of paying attention. Some of you find it easier than others of us. You are seers first; you look, observe, soak in your environment. You are attentive to the visual stimuli that surround you, and you understand it. Some of us have to work harder at understanding what we see. I walk into a setting, and I say, ``This is beautiful,'' but I don't know what makes it beautiful or how to look at the way the elements come together to create beauty. I have to discipline myself to look for the details of my environment before I can really see what's there. And as for creating beauty in my own environment? Hah. Only by replicating what I see others do, and then it's often an exercise in frustration. But, whether or not you have the gift of ``really seeing,'' seeing still requires attention, especially when we're talking about seeing other people.

Our Bible story today talks a lot about seeing and paying attention. In this story, we have Samuel who's a seerthat's what he's called earlier in 1 Samuelwho doesn't see so well. God obviously is seeing differently than the human beings are. The unseen and absent one becomes the chosen one, the anointed king. This story tells about God rousing Samuel from his grief over Saul's disobedience and sending him on an undercover mission to find the new king whom God has seen among the sons of Jesse. We see the fear of the elders as Samuel approaches Bethlehem; they don't want to incur Saul's wrath. We see Jesse, grandson of Ruth the Moabitess and Boaz whose ancestors included two Canaanite women, one of whom was Rahab the prostitute. Jesse's lineage may not have been very distinguished, but he evidently had a passel of beautiful boys. But does God do the expected and choose the eldest to be the next king, Eliab who is tall and handsome… and oldest !? No, but God still has to stop Samuel from anointing him because Samuel quit listening the moment he saw Eliab because he simply assumed that this guy had the complete package needed for being king. So send in the next son. Is it Abinadab? Or Shammah? Or any of the other four brothers? No, not any of them. And why not? Because, God says, ``The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.''

Finally the youngest son is called in from the sheep fields where he's been tending his flock, as he'll later tend the people of Israel. As soon as Samuel lays eyes on that boy, God confirms that this is the one. Samuel anoints him and the Spirit rushes in upon him, never to leave David from that day forward. For it is David who is called in from the fields, in whose heart God has seen beauty and kingliness, who becomes the greatest king in the history of Israel. God surprises everybody again.

Because in the story in chapter 15 right before this one, God rejects Saul as king, after not very much time, in a tale of disobedience and swift consequences. Saul's disobedience comes from not listening. Over and over again in Saul's story, the connection between anointing for kingship and listening to God is emphasized. And when Saul quit listening, God quite talking. Now in this chapter we have a story about seeing. Maybe both of these emphaseson listening and now on seeinghave something to do with paying attention to God in ways that force us into new perceptions.

``The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'' So says God to Samuel in our story. So, what does it mean to look at the heart rather than at external trappings? How did Samuel finally figure out what God was trying to say? Can we regular mortals even begin to think about learning to look at the heart like God does, to get a new perception by paying attention to what we see? Let's apply a little New Testament here.

We're not going to be able to see as clearly as God does, at least not until the veil is finally lifted! But we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that gift enables us to pay attention to God in new ways and to pay attention to others in new ways because of first having met God. Perhaps most important, though, is that we understand that God sees us, looks into our heartsas described here in 1 Samuelbut loves us still, even if we're not worthy like David was somehow worthy. And we're not. If we're honest, most of us would say that God's gaze into our hearts likely finds a tangled mess of sincerity, sin, good impulse and weak follow-through, insecurity, pride, belief and unbelief. And yet, we know that even so, God won't reject us. God keeps arms outstretched and eyes open, ready to embrace us with love and mercy and grace and to see us as we are and as we might become.

It seems to me, then, that the first thing about seeing others the way God sees has something to do with recognizing how much we share with everyone around us, both our weakness and our potential. We are each unique but we are also just like everyone else. We share a human condition, part of which is frailty and part of which is being beloved by God. I wonder, then, if we let the Spirit see along with us, whether we can recognize our shared condition in new ways, outside the circles where we're used to looking.

Remember, God picked a kind of obscure family out of which to raise up a great king. Jesse's family didn't emerge out of an unadulterated line straight from Abraham. There were those Canaanite women involved, and the Moabitess. And God didn't pick the son that would have been the traditional recipient of recognition and honorthat would have been Eliab, the oldest one. God turned things upside down and saw in truth, that the youngest one was the one meant to be king. Jesse's family, the youngest son: both would have likely been overlooked by any good, hard-working search committee because they weren't even within the circle of consciousness.

So, I wonder, if we were to try to see with the help of the Spirit outside of our circles of consciousness, what would we see? Who would we see?

Five years ago, between graduation from seminary and beginning here, I worked at the Meijer's meat department, where I learned something about invisibility. Unless I did something wrong or was taking too long, there were folks who simply did not see the person in front of them with a red Meijer's ball cap on her head and a white butcher's coat buttoned up over her clothes. Sometimes, quite honestly, being invisible was a relief, like the time a woman who was at Goshen College at the same time as I and whom I had not seen for years and years materialized at the counter. Most times, though, being invisible was somewhat painful. I was working hard at honest labor, but I was simply outside the circle of consciousness for a whole set of people. What would it mean to see the stockers and restaurant bussers and cashiers and telemarketers AND the rich and famous and powerfuleveryonewith a recognition that we're alike much more than we're different… and that God's love and mercy and grace is as much for them as it is for us.

And so, if I keep on wondering, if we were to try to see with the help of the Spirit what surprises might God reveal in unexpected people?

In the last session of our membership exploration classes, we ask participants to reflect on what they might offer to Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship if they decide to become members here. Several years agoand I apologize in advance because I think I've told this story before but it's important so I'm going to tell it againseveral years ago, one of the participants in this class said that what he could offer would be to learn the name of each child in the congregation. That's a gift! It's an offering that is also an act of seeing well. For an adult to look at a child in all uniqueness rather than as an extension of parents or grandparentsto be able to name her or himis to give a gift of recognition which is also a blessing. In the seeing and the naming, though, there is also surprise and discovery. Many of you, as you watch and learn to know the children of this congregation, make discoveries and are surprised. You learn that this one has a caring heart. You learn that that one has a quick sense of humor. You say, keep an eye on this one, because she or he is going to be a pastor. You say, woo! that one has a lot energy! You learn that one is a great helper and another has a depth of patience. You see and then you discover a rainbow of giftedness. What wonderful surprises emerge!

Children are not the only folks who are blessed by being seen.

And so, if I keep on wondering, if we were to try to see with the help of the Spirit what revelations might God make to us?

Look back at the story of David's anointing. God says, ``The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'' But then, when the shepherd boy appears on the scene, the first descriptors of him are about his appearance, ``[He] was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.'' Doesn't that take you aback a little bit? Frankly, it's a little irritating to me. Don't you think it would have been a better story if the one who appeared looked completely unlike a king, maybe even quite unlovely! But then that wouldn't have been David. So, because of my irritation, I've begun to wonder whether having an outward appearance that is all very well put together, both physically and in attitude, doesn't build another kind of barrier that makes seeing difficult? That kind of all-put-togetheredness can be as hard to see through as seeing outside of the circles in which we usually look. How in the world do we share anything with those folks who are so… perfect when we know how imperfect we ourselves are. Except that we're alike much more than we're different… and God's love and mercy and grace is as much for them as it is for us.

There's a person whom I've known for a very long time now. She is amazingly intelligent, committed in faith, attractive and slender, energetic and creative. And yet. And yet, she appears to be arrogant and has put off plenty of folks who believe that they've been slighted. Her all-togetheredness just underscores that apparent difference between her and others. However, two times in these past decades, I've been given a glimpseI've had a chance to seethat her heart is, like mine, also a tangled mess of sincerity, sin, good impulse and weak follow-through, pride, belief and unbelief, but with a big old glob of fear and insecurity in the middle of it. What a surprise! What an opportunity to change the way I look at her! What a lesson in learning that we're not so different from each other! Knowing her has taught me to tone down my assumptions about those who strike me as being all put together and arrogant yet to boot. I've learned that sometimes those appearances are cultivated for protection.

Now I understand that several children's Sunday School classes studied this story last week. Renae's class came up with this way of putting it's message: ``You can't tell a book by it's cover'' and I would add, ``no matter how wondrous the cover art is!''

Lord, with the help of your Spirit, help me to look beyond the outward appearance and into the heart.

But even if I pray that prayer, or if we all pray that prayer, remember that seeing is also a discipline of paying attentionpaying attention to what or whom we're seeing and then paying attention to the interpretations of the Spirit. Seeing well is an act of will and of spiritual discernment. It's a committed awareness rather than a mindless tooling along. And it offers blessing.

I want to close with a poem by Carmen Susana Horst, who grew up in Argentina in a Mennonite missionary family; she's also studied at the seminary and some of you likely know her. This poem has just been published in a collection of poetry by Mennonite authors entitled, A Capella, and edited by Ann Hostetler of Goshen College. Listen at the end of the poem to what Grandma Susie sees and how she interprets what she sees for her son.
Everything I Know

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Sheep and Shepherds
John 10:1-18
Sermon by Anita Yoder Kehr
May 11, 2003 (Pentecost)

"Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away--and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father." (NRSV)
Sheep and shepherds; robbers, thieves, and hired hands; gatekeepers and flocks: These are not things that I know a lot about. But they are things that were very common in the world of Jesus. So when Jesus wanted to make a point about who he was as opposed to who the Pharisees were he used the language of the countryside and of daily life. And Jesus really did want to make a point here in John 10.

In the story right before this chapter, Jesus healed a blind man by spitting into mud, smearing that mud onto those sightless eyes, and then instructing the man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. When the man obeyed, cupping the cool water into his hands and pouring it over his face, he found that he could see. For the first time in his life, he saw the sky reflected in the water before him. He could match faces to the voices of his parents. He could negotiate the streets without help and with a new confidence and freedom. The formerly blind man was overjoyed… right before he got into trouble.

Now the trouble he got into had more to do with how he was healed than that he was healed. When the people discovered that the guy who used to beg by the roadside was now seeing, they wanted to know just how it happened that his eyes were all of a sudden working right. The formerly blind man explained that Jesus had put mud on his eyes and then told him to go wash in the pool, but the people quit listening just as soon as they heard the name of Jesusthe same Jesus who was creating growing controversy within the religious circles of Jerusalem.

So, right away the people took this man to the heart of those religious circles, to the Pharisees, and the Pharisees heard the story all over again. Some of them were really upset when they heard that this healing happened on Sabbath, and they said it was proof that Jesus was a sinner and a heretic. Others said, ``That doesn't make sense. No one who is a sinner can perform that kind of a miracle!'' So the Pharisees were divided, and they argued. They asked the man what he thought, and in response they heard, ``He's a prophet.'' They called in the man's parents just to make sure that this particular person who stood before them had really been blind all of his former lifetime. The parents said, ``We know he's our son, we know he was born blind, we see that he now sees, but we don't know how it happened. Ask him. He's of age.'' And when the Pharisees did question their son again, he finally blew up: ``I've told you everything already! Why do you want to hear it again? I watch you, and I'm astonished. You can't figure out where Jesus comes from, and he opened my eyessomething that has not been done since the world began!? If this man weren't from God, he could do nothing! '' The Pharisees, of course, were then provoked to rage, and they drove the formerly blind man out of the temple, where Jesus found him and introduced himself in a roundabout sort of way. Remember, the man was blind when he met Jesus the first time. But now he could seein all sorts of wonderful waysand he quickly staked his claim of faith and began to worship his Savior.

That's the backdrop, then, for this whole speech that Jesus makes about sheep and shepherds. Jesus is contrasting himself with the Pharisees, and he's talking about what is true and what is counterfeit. About the unity of purpose between the Father and the Son. About relationships. About discernment and choice. And today, as we gather to celebrate the baptisms of Brandon, Daniel, Jeff, and Maya, we will also think about these things.

In the world that we live in, there aren't many thieves and robbers masquerading as shepherds. But there is a clamor of competing voices, many of which masquerade as truth. Part of our task as humans is to learn to discern between what is true and what is false. The competing voices that vie for our attention are often very subtle. Their disguise makes them appear as if they are offering things that are valuable, desirable, important, and even truthful.

Remember, the Pharisees who were so upset about blind man's healing seemed to be trying, after all, to be faithful to their covenant with God and obedient to the laws of the Sabbath. As we learn to discern between what is true and what is false, we must let Jesus be our guide for that discernment.

Jesus, as the good shepherd, offers us protection, comfort, constancy, and freedom. ``My sheep,'' Jesus says, ``the ones who enter through me, I who am both the gate and the shepherd, my sheep will be able to come in and go out in safety, and they will find sustenance. I will lead them; I will care for them; I will protect them; I will never desert them. In fact,'' Jesus said, ``I will die for them so that they will never perish.'' Which is not at all true of the robbers, thieves, and pretenders who are also calling out for our attention. The things that those voices offer to us may sound goodfor a momentbut they aren't lasting; they're gilded emptiness. Sodiscern well what is truth.

Next, we see that Jesus calls the sheep, and while that call is ever insistent, the sheep can choose whether or not to come. When Jesus calls us, he is inviting. Jesus does not ever force us to come. What kind of a relationship is built upon coercion and contrivance? Certainly not the kind that God desires to have with us. So, Jesus invites us, and we have to decide what we're going to do. Now in our sheep story, we assume that lambs usually did whatever their mamas did, but at some point, when they were old enough, each sheep needed to decide whether they'd follow the shepherd they knew or be lured away by someone or something else. Nowfrom what I know about the intelligence of sheepthey probably didn't do a lot of agonizing about this nor were they really aware of their choices. But humans are different than sheep. We are aware of our choices, and at some point, we each have to decide whom we will follow and where we will go. And this choice must be made freely so that it can give freedom. Today we are celebrating the choices that Daniel, Jeff, Maya, and Brandon have madeand have made freelyto come to Jesus and receive his salvation.

Jesus says something interesting about his sheep. He says, ``I know my own and my own know me.'' When we make the choice to follow Jesus, there is reciprocity involved. There is relationship . There's the relationship from God's side: God knows us and knows us completely. But there's also the human side. Many of you have heard Hans Denck'she was an early Anabaptistyou've heard Hans Denck's musing on this subject: ``No one can truly know Christ unless he or she follows him in life, and no one may follow Christ unless she or he has first known him.'' (paraphrased , Anabaptism in Outline , p. 87) There's the mystery: we choose to follow because we are drawn to the beauty and grace of Christ, but as we follow, we learn to see and understand and experience that beauty and grace in greater and greater depth. Our relationship with the God of the universe grows. We see more than we ever first imagined that we might see. Yesterday, as Jeff, Maya, Brandon, Daniel, Dan, and I sat together around a table to eat a delicious breakfast that Dan had prepared, we talked about one of the marks of growing spiritual maturity: As we experience relationship with God, we increasingly discover that God is bigger and beyond anything that we can easily grasp or understand. And yet, we can know God through Jesus Christ. It's a gift!

Finally, when those sheep respond to the voice of Jesus, they come together with other sheep to form a flock. Following Jesus is not a solitary journey. Rather, it is an exercise in communion: communion with the Shepherd and with other sheep, communion with God and with others who have also said ``yes'' to listening to and obeying the voice of the One who calls with infinite love and longing. So, this morning, we are not only recognizing the commitment that Maya, Brandon, Daniel, and Jeff are making, we are also making a commitment. We are committing ourselves to them: to support them on their way, to listen to their counsel, to care for them when they are weak, to receive their care when we are weak, to honor their sense of the Spirit's leading, to share in discernment, to become true brothers and sisters in faith.

Eighteen years ago today, Brandon Wengerd was born. Today is his birthdaywhich is a cause for celebration. But, in a real and truthful way, this is also a birthday for each one of you who will be baptized this morning. Baptism is a declaration of intent: that from this day forward you will seek to hear and follow the voice of the Good Shepherd, that you will discern between truth and falseness, that you will nurture your relationship with the one who already knows you wholly and completely, that you will share your lives with others who share these same commitments. Today is a different kind of birthday for each of youperhaps a new-birth-daywhich is also a cause for great celebration, both here and in heaven. So, my fellow Sheep, let's celebrate.
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Eternity Sunday 2003
Sermon by Anita Kehr
November 2, 2003

 1.       10 or 11 years ago, a woman asked me about raising children well. Follow your instincts. ``But what if you don't trust your instincts because you don't want to raise your children like you were raised?'' I was startled to realize that I had simply overlooked the very real truth of that possibility. Many, many experience fear and distrust and uncertainty in their childhood. But I hadn't, and I hadn't even thought about the possibility. Now, my parents were not perfect, and their children are not perfect, but they did provide for us a very firm foundation built with love for us, with love for God, love for the church, with love for learning and love for others.
2.       My dad, Vernon D. Yoder, died 4 ½ years ago, on the Thursday after my Sunday installation service as pastor here. He died from brain tumors which likely metastasized from prostate cancer for which he had received treatment over the eight years prior to his death. We did not do a very good job of helping him die well. Although we should have known that death was imminent, we neither realized it consciously nor talked about until Dr. Kay said it out loud one week before Dad died.
3.       My dad would have enjoyed living longer. He was curious about everything; he loved to think about things and then chew over them in discussions with other people. Sometimes those discussions sounded a lot like arguments. During the last presidential election, I kept thinking how much fun my dad would have had watching all of those machinations; he loved politics.
4.       My dad was a seeker in a lot of ways. He grew up in the Amish church, but didn't join it. He eventually became a member at Yoder Mennonite Church near Hutchinson, Kansas. He wasn't really content to let things be. I saw him explore the idea of the charismatic movement (more than really participate in it), and I also saw him read widely and well about a number of faith topics. He had a real and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
5.       He also loved the church. He was worried about the way that the question of homosexuality seemed to be so divisive. He kept trying to think up ways that would be conciliatory to both sides. However, he also said quite often that he never quite felt all the way ``in'' anywhere; he was always a little bit on the outside.
6.       My dad loved to travel, and he went all over the place, beginning when he was 18: Oklahoma, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, and back to Indiana. He never made it to Europe, though, where he would have loved to go. We figured out one time that he attended seven different colleges for varying lengths of time to get his bachelor's degree. He trained to be a teacher, but in reality, he was a much better learner than an instructor. He never could get the classroom management piece down very well, although it worked better in elementary than in high school. He ended his work career at the Goshen Milk Plant, where he could think and discuss all he wanted, and he didn't need to manage the behavior of 30 students.
7.       My dad gave me a number of gifts. He thought I could do anything, and he was so pleased to know that I had a place for ministry at Berkey Avenue. I knew that there was nothing I could do that would stop him from loving me. He and my mom treated each of us children as individuals; for instance, our grades in school spanned the range from barely passing to very good, but my parents expected only that we'd do our best. Not that we'd be the same as the others. He taught me open-mindedness; you don't ever toss out an idea without at least considering it. He was accepting of most people, although pridefulness and arrogance were probably the qualities that were most likely to put him off. He taught me that faith and Christian community are importantvital evento well being.
8.       This summer, at my dad's family reunion which my mom, Elias and I attended, one of my cousins spoke about the cloud of witnesses from Hebrews 12:1. In the context of imagining that cloud of witnesses surrounding and watching us, we remembered our aunts and uncles and grandparents who had gone before us and who, having died, were now safe in God's protection. After each memory, he looked skyward and said, ``Thank you, [Bertha/Dan/ Barbara].'' Now, that speaking-to-the-sky business really kind of bugged one of my uncles, who said that his concept of ``witness'' in Hebrews was the witness of the life that those people had lived on earth, their witness that gave us help in our own discipleship and faith. When it was my turn to speak, I told them that I could live with both their ways of thinking about ``witness.'' And so, I am grateful for the witness of my Dad's life while he was living, and I trust that he is now part of the cloud of witnesses that cheers me on to run with perseverance the race set before me. And, I say, ``Thank you, Dad.''
9.       It has been a blessing for me to be able to talk with you about my dad. In a few moments, you'll also have an opportunity to remember out loud the saints who have been part of your life, or you can remember them with a candle, or by writing their name in the memorial book, or by doing all three. These people have been given as gifts to us in our lives; they are those who help us along our way. Let us remember and be grateful. Amen.
 Tue, 18 Nov 2003 16:47:07 GMT Expecting the Unexpected December 14 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Expecting the Unexpected December 14 2003.rtf@CB1 Expecting the Unexpected
 Micah 5:2-5a
Sermon by Heidi Siemens-Rhodes
 December 14, 2003
But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace. (NRSV)
This book, the Holy Bible, is more than just a book. It is a library of books, a crowd of voices which live and interact and give us glimpses of who God is. There are stories in here and lists and instruction manuals and poems and songs and sermons and letters and prophecies, and much more. This is a book full of manna, that which we need for sustenance on our journey in this world.

It is a multi-layered, many-voiced book. How then, in listening to all these authors, do we hear God's voice? How do all these pieces combine into the one great message? Well, one way we figure this out is by paying attention to the great themes that run through the Bible, and it is these which give us an integrated picture of the Creator in relationship to Creation. These overarching themes pull the many voices together into harmonies which teach and inspire us. I wonder how many of you are familiar with The Rainbow Study Bible ? This is one approachthe entire text is color-coded by theme: yellow for family, maroon for discipleship, and so on. My question would be what happens with texts that could illuminate several themes? Still, as a study resource, this sort of visual system is very handy.

I'd like to give two other examples of specific thematic looks at the Bible:

A biblical example of a thematic reading of the scriptures is the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews, which we focused on in the SALT class during Nurture Hour last Sunday. Here the author of this New Testament book presents brief character sketches of people from the Old Testament who have demonstrated for us what it means to have faith. This retelling of the scriptures culminates in that gorgeous verse, Hebrews 12:1, which reminds us that we are still in communion with, and gain strength from, this cloud of witnesses, the faithful who have preceded us in death.

I am reminded of another example, a story which I first heard from Alan Kreider, who is a longtime Mennonite Mission Network employee and adjunct faculty at the seminary. He tells how Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, when he was a seminary student met regularly with friends to pray and to study the Bible. This was during the Vietnam War, and they sensed that something terribly wrong was going on, and they wanted to understand it biblically. As they read their Bibles they were astonished by how many references they found to God caring for the poor, God being a God of justice, etc.So Jim got an idea:he, helped by his friends, would go through his Bible, and every passage that dealt with the poor, with justice, riches, and so on, they would cut out.This became serious business, as they had to cut more and more out of Jim's Bible. Finally they were doneGenesis to Revelationand the Bible was in tatters.Jim and his friends were sobered, humbledand felt vindicated.In his preaching Jim would lift his hole-y Bible dramatically, and say, "Here O America, Here is your Bible!" 1

There are, of course, many other ways to follow the voice of God through the scriptures. During this Advent season at Berkey we have been hearing the voices of the prophets. They give us glorious visions of the time to come, when all will be right, when justice and peace will reign, when the lamb will snuggle in close to the lion with no need for fear. The prophets also call for our repentance and return to that path which leads to peace. This morning our prophetic voices called to God: ``Let your face shine, that we may be saved.'' Sometimes the wait seems long. But we also heard Mary's song of joy, spoken, you may have noticed, in the present perfect tense: God ``has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.'' As God becomes human, comes to be knit together in Mary's womb, the prophecies are fulfilled. Yes, there are still hungry people and wars, but God has come to be with us, Immanuel, and this Jesus will return again.

The scripture from the prophet Micah that you heard Tim read this morning speaks of the coming of a ruler of peace, the new kind of a king who we worship as Jesus. But where was this king to be born? Not in the seat of any great power, but in the ``little town of Bethlehem.'' Today, we are reminded that God's ways are not like our ways: God is a God of surprises. God sees potential where we just can't quite see it. God does the unexpected, and expects us to see, hear, understand what is going on.

I'd like to present to you this morning a thematic portrait gallery representing the unexpected ways God has brought life to God's people. Seven portraits of seven surprised or surprising people, people who didn't expect to be used in the way God had in mind, people who might not have stood out as the best candidate for the job. But as Anita reminded us in a sermon this fall, when the prophet Samuel set out to anoint a new king for Israel, God sees things differently than we do. David, the youngest and the smallest of his brothers, the shepherd, was God's choice.

In the spirit of expecting the unexpected, I'd like to ask for your participation as we walk through this portrait gallery together. Beneath each portrait is a quote which presents the surprise, the unexpected piece of that story. I'll read the quotes, some of which are slightly altered from their scriptural form, and you shout out the name of the character or characters. Can I hear a collective throat-clearing as you warm up those vocal cords? You never know what might happen when you walk into church Sunday morning!

 Portrait Number 1 : ``Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?'' (Gen. 17:17)

Abraham. When God promises that you are going to be the parent of a great people, believe it!!! Never mind your age! Never mind the unknown paths you will have to follow to reach the place God has prepared for you! Never mind the waitkeep persevering! God will do it, in God's own time. Rememberbefore anything else was, God is . Age, simple chronology, is not a barrier for our God.
Portrait Number 2 : ``But I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.'' (Exodus 4:10)

Moses. When God calls you to lead people from death into life, believe you me, God will provide the words, even if you've never seen yourself as a public speaker. Never mind your hesitancy, never mind your tendency to either not know what to say, or to get your foot stuck in your mouth. God will provide, God will surprise you into speech!

 Portrait Number 3 : ``But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.'' (Judges 6: 15)

Gideon. Gideon's story, in Judges 6, 7 and 8, may be less familiar, and it is a mixed bag in and of itself. In the time before the kings, Gideon agrees somewhat reluctantly to lead the Israelites, after asking a number of questions of God, and laying out the proverbial fleece as a test of God's word. He leads a small group of soldiers against the Midianites, because God says larger numbers would convince the Israelites that they themselves were the victors, not God. After the eventual victory, the people declare to Gideon, ``Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also.'' Gideon refuses, says, ``The Lord will rule over you,'' but proceeds to make from the spoils of battle a golden idol which leads them again away from God. In the end, the people forget even the good Gideon did for them. What do we learn from this portrait? God calls leaders from small, obscure tribes, from origins we wouldn't expect. God has no respect for birth order. God empowers the people God calls, and…even a great leader, called by God, is vulnerable to the temptations of the surrounding culture.

 Portrait Number 4 : ``I am a Moabite, but I will go with you, and your people will be my people.'' (Ruth 1:16)

Ruth, speaking to Naomi. In the book of Ruth, we don't see God speaking directly to her. But when she leaves her homeland of Moab, and returns with her widowed mother-in-law Naomi to Naomi's hometown of Bethlehem, she, like Abraham, is sojourning into the unknown. She gleans in the fields to support Naomi and herself, and there meets Boaz, whom she marries. Ruth the Midianite and Boaz of the little town of Bethlehemthe great-grandparents of King David. God calls Israel the chosen people, but into that people come courageous and admirable foreigners. Who remembers that David was only 7/8ths Israelite? We don't, but perhaps we should. Through Ruth's generous courage God works toward the saving of all of God's people, for Jesus the savior will also be called David's son, and will be born in Bethlehem.

 Portrait Number 5 : ``How will I know that this is so? (For I am an old man and my wife is getting on in years).'' (Luke 1:18)

Zechariah. Zechariah is speaking here on behalf of another elderly couple about to become parents for the first time, his wife Elizabeth and himself, and his disbelief is punished by nine months of silence. We might wonder why? Abraham questioned God, Gideon questioned GodZechariah is following another great historical theme by not quite being able to believe the announcing angel. But perhaps this silence wasn't the punishment we assume it to be. Perhaps Zechariah needed this time of forced reflection in order to grasp the marvel of these events, so that when his lips were unstopped he could sing the great hymn of Luke 1: 68-79, which begins: ``Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.'' When God calls, we may wonder at the feasibility of the project, and we may be struck dumb by our disbelief. But God is present in our silences, in our lack of words, and God teaches us to sing a new song.

 Portrait Number 6 : ``How can this be (for I am a virgin)?'' (Luke 1:34)

Mary responding to the angel Gabriel. Madeleine L'Engle has a poem about the annunciation, Gabriel's visit to Mary, that goes like this:
        
         This is the irrational season
         When love blooms bright and wild.
         Had Mary been filled with reason
         There'd have been no room for the child.

Which isn't to say that Mary acted in an irrational manner in her response to God. God's plan was what didn't fit into Mary's biological or cultural logic. How can this be? It is impossible for me to be pregnant, on a basic biological level, but culturally this makes no sense either. Joseph and I are not married, and the punishment for bearing a child outside of marriage is death, or if Joseph is gracious and merciful, social ostracism and inevitable banishment. How can this be? My life would be over!

We often think of Mary as a demure, lovely young thing, who submitted herself to God's request with a shy smile. I think not! Mary considered the consequences and chose to trust that God knew better than she what outcomes there might be. She looked at the angel, and with a shiver of holy fear she said ``Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.'' Mary should be for us a model of considered consent, of brave willingness to be part of God's unexpected and mysterious plan. Let it be with us, as well, according to God's word.

 Portrait Number 7 : ``Let no one despise your youth.'' 1 Tim. 4:12

Paul writing to Timothy. This is a portrait of two people, the apostle Paul, and his child in the faith, Timothy. As far as we know, Paul was never married, nor did he have any children. Timothy was his young mentee, the son of a Christian woman and Greek man in Lystra. It seems that Paul understood the Expecting the Unexpected Principle, that prophets and leaders come in all shapes and sizes and colors and ages. He himself had been the worst enemy of the Gospel before Christ surprised him on the road to Damascus. In another letter, this one to the church in Corinth, he expands on this idea, writing that ``God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God'' (1 Cor. 1:27-29). Timothy was a young man, but he had a mission, and Paul encouraged him to live out his calling despite what anyone might think of his youth.

So here we end our tour of this particular portrait gallery, but let me assure you that we have only seen a few of the many portraits of those whom God has surprised with a great task. Perhaps, no, without a doubt , your portrait also hangs on the walls with Abraham and Moses, Gideon and Ruth, Zechariah and Mary and Timothy. What has been the surprise God has dealt you? How are you being called, you 15-year-old, you 65-year-old, you married or unmarried person, you of unusual or troubled origins? How is God calling you? Because God is calling you! There is much work to be done for the kingdomexpect the call!

Some day our joy will be complete, and when the event we are waiting for during Advent happens, when Jesus Christ is born in the little town of Bethlehem Ephrathah, human history leaps closer to that day. But while we are still on the way to that full joy, searching for it over the horizon, remember to let God surprise you with glimpses of liberation and joy right here, right now. When God moves to bring forth peace and justice, faith and hope in the broken world in which we livebe there! Keep your eyes and ears open! Be ready to play your part, however unexpected, in bringing in the reign of God!

Amen

 Note
1. Slightly paraphrased f rom an email from Alan Kreider.
 Tue, 16 Dec 2003 14:19:57 GMT Fences for Freedom March 23 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Fences for Freedom March 23 2003.rtf@CB1
Fences for Freedom
Exodus 20:1-17
Sermon by Dan Schrock
March 23, 2003

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (NRSV)
This past December, The New York Times published a series of articles on the 10 commandments. In each article, the reporter wrote about how a particular Jew or a particular Christian struggled with the one of the 10 commandments. Only a few of the stories were about people who kept the commandments, while most were about people who broke them, or else about people who suffered because someone else broke one of the commandments.

For the article on bearing false witness against your neighbor, the reporter told the story of two rival chess stores in New York City, The Chess Shop at 230 Thompson Street, and the Chess Forum, located cattycornered across the way at 219 Thompson Street. For the uninitiated, a chess shop is a place where you go to play chess with someone else for a dollar an hour while music plays softly in the background, two chairs with table and chess board included. The owners of these two shops had once been friends and co-workers. But when they fell into a dispute with each other over wages and ownership of the original shop, Mr. Khachan stormed out in anger and started a rival shop across the street. He and his former colleague, Mr. Frohlinde, haven't spoken to each other since.

As a result, things in the neighborhood have gotten nasty. Mr. Khachan calls Mr. Frohlinde ``a Nazi'' because he's German. For his part, Mr. Frohlinde calls Mr. Khachan ``Yasir Arafat'' because he's Lebanese. Each owner accuses the other of trying to steal his customers. Each accuses the other of forcing customers to sign a loyalty oath which prevents those customers from ever playing chess in the rival shop. Each owner cut prices in a futile effort to attract more customers and drive the other shop out of business. Each accuses the other of spying. Each has sued the other. Back and forth the accusations fly.

The result, according to the reporter, is that both shops are unpleasant places to visit. The vitriol has made the human atmosphere in each shop tense and hateful. The economic war has impoverished both places of business, as evidenced by their dirty bathrooms, walls in need of paint, and bare neon lights hung next to fly paper strips stuck with dozens of dead bugs. Neighbors who are not directly involved in the spat say that it will probably not end until one of the shops goes out of business. But by that time, the surviving shop may itself be so far in debt that the ``victorious'' owner will not be able to savor his victory. 1
When you read these New York Times articles in one sitting, you see in a new way how breaking the ten commandments traps you, or someone near you, in a painful situation which is very difficult to get out of: the woman who for many years worshipped the jam rock band called Phish, and who is now trying with varying degrees of success to leave the Phish head subculture; the ex-soldier haunted by memories of killing about 450 people during the Vietnam War; the child of an adulterous affair who as a father now has no clue to be a dad; the woman who embezzled money from the city and now has to repay $84,000 which she doesn't have. These people and their families are now trapped in a kind of slavery.

Which takes us back to the original social context of the 10 commandments. If you dust off your Old Testament history, you will recall that God gave the 10 commandments to Israel three months after they had escaped from slavery in Egypt.

 Since you and I are so far removed from that time and place, maybe we cannot fully grasp the horror of what it was like to be a slave in Egypt. After all, most of us in this church probably have a better quality of life than the Pharaoh himself had. We live longer, are generally in better health, have more technological possessions, and are better educated than the Pharaoh. If in significant ways we are better off than the Pharaoh, then probably not many of us will be able to get inside the skin of a Hebrew slave. Can we even imagine what it was like to make bricks under the burning Egyptian sun for 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year? Can we understand what it was like to see other slaves being whipped? To feel the whip on our own backs? To know how an Egyptian overseer sounds when he yells a scornful command? To watch helplessly as an Egyptian drags our wife or our sister or our 14 year old daughter off screaming, to have his way with her behind the stack of straw?

 But the day came when these Hebrew slaves saw God blow those arrogant Egyptians away as if they were nothing more than dust in the wind. Talk about miracle and power! Ha! By the time God was done with those Egyptians, their fields were stripped, their economy was in tatters, their brains were in shock at the fearsome majesty of Yahweh.

Since then, the Hebrews have been free. O freedom! Freedom from fear. Freedom from the whip. Freedom from the ceaseless demand to produce and produce and produce some more. Oh, thanks be to God for freedom from the evils of empire!

Let us notice something about freedom. Whatever form freedom takes, it always begs a question: After you get your freedom, what are you going to do with it? How will you live and think, how will you feel and act? When you get your first driver's license, what are you going to do with your freedom? When you move into your first apartment and no longer live under the direct watchfulness of Mom and Dad, what are you going to do with your freedom? When you finally graduate with your bachelor's or your master's or your doctorate, what are you going to do with your freedom? When you are released from prison, what are you going to do with that freedom? When the last child finally leaves home, what are you going to do with the freedom of the empty nest? When you retire at age 67, what are you going to do with your freedom from a corporate job? In other words, what are you going to do after you leave Egypt? When God saves you, what are you going to do next? After you are baptized, what will you do with this freedom in Christ?

Freedom is a fragile thing, and to preserve it we need fences. During high school I lived on a dairy farm. Anyone who works with cows knows that things go a whole lot better if those cows stay inside the fence. Things turned to chaos on the rare occasions when our cows managed to get outside the fence. They would run in all directions as fast as their legs would carry them--through the front yard, across the road, into the woods, down to the neighbors. The truly dangerous part lay not so much in the damage cows might do to our property--to the flower beds, the buildings, the parked cars, and the like--but in the damage cows might do to themselves. If they got on the road, they could get smacked by a speeding car. If they got in the woods, they could trip over tree roots and snap a leg in two. If they ran at top speed, which they usually did, their udders full of milk could split or get torn. Life is better for cows if they stay inside their fences.

In this respect we humans are not so different from cows. We also function better with fences. Imagine what our highways and streets would be like without traffic rules. Think what our land and air and water would be like without laws to prevent people from dumping any kind of toxic junk they feel like dumping. Society works better for everyone if we agree where the fences are beyond which it is harmful to go. Fences keep chaos at bay and create space for us to live in peace and security.

That's why at Mt. Sinai, three months after liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt, God proposed ten fences. These ten fences are safeguards to keep us from slipping back into slavery, from slipping into chaos. These ten fences preserve our freedom, making it possible for us to live together with some degree of trust and safety. The first and second fences, in some ways the most important of all, are the fences of worship. These fences acknowledge that there are in fact other gods in the world whom we could worship. In our day those gods are not called Osiris or Amon or Baal, but perhaps they are called money or prestige or fame or national security. If we worship any of these other gods, we will become enslaved to them and lose the freedom we have in God through Christ.

Consider the fourth fence: to remember the Sabbath, and do no work for one day each week. Sabbath is a way for us to avoid getting trapped once again in the abusive production schedules of the empire. That was the essence of slavery in Egypt: to work, work, work on those pyramids until you dropped exhausted. The fence of Sabbath is mainly to give us a break from having to produce all the time. Some of us, even we who work for church institutions, might benefit from attending to this fence. Our pyramid could be something as benign as institutional mission, which can end up enslaving us when it demands everything we have to give.

But for some of the rest of us, living as we do in a consumer economy, the fence of Sabbath may speak more to the way we consume. Maybe we would do well to take a day to rest from the drive to consume, a day every week when we choose not to visit the mall, choose not to shop on-line, choose not to consume news or sports or television.

The fencing of the last five commandments is perhaps the most obvious of all. We refrain from murder so that we may be free of violence and war. We refrain from adultery so that we are free to form relationships of trust with our spouses and also with those who are not our spouses. We refrain from theft so that all of us are free to keep life's necessities without fear that someone will take them away from us. We refrain from telling lies so that we may enjoy fairness, truth, and justice in our court system. We refrain from coveting so that we are free of jealousy and the dissatisfaction that comes when we want something we cannot have and does not belong to us.

 In the context of slavery in Egypt, the 10 commandments make a lot of sense as ways to preserve freedom. But there is one more context that is equally important. Many years after God spoke these commands at Mt. Sinai, the Son of God placed them in a new context, the context of private desires and inner intentions. In Matthew 5, Jesus pushes the commandments about murder and adultery to deeper levels. Our freedom is maintained not just by refusing to kill, he says, but more profoundly by attending to the inner anger which leads to murder. Our freedom is maintained not just by avoiding adultery, but more profoundly by attending to the private desire that leads to adultery. Jesus therefore illustrates that freedom is sustained by both outward and inward fences.

 The ministry of Jesus was about giving people freedom. Which includes freedom from oppression. Freedom from the grip of evil. Freedom from poverty. Freedom from needing to have everything my neighbor has. Freedom from sin. But all his teaching and preaching and healing would have been pointless if Jesus not risen from the grave. To ensure the fullness of freedom, Jesus Christ blew away death, that final slavery, as if it were nothing more than dust in the wind. Thank God Almighty, that because of Jesus we are now free from all forms of slavery!

But a question remains, the same question which Israel faced after Mt Sinai. What are you and I going to do with our freedom?

 Note
1. ``Chess Rivalry Becomes a Blood Sport,'' by Chris Hedges, The New York Times, December 23, 2002. On the web at http://nytimes.com/2002/12/23/nyregion/23DECA.html.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Staying Out of Egypt<style type="text/css span.c10 b.c9 {font-size: 80%} span.c8 {font-family: Times New Roman} i.c7 {font-family: Times New Roman} span.c6 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} div.c5 {text-align: center} b.c4 {font- Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:51:24 GMT Hands and Feet May 4 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Hands and Feet May 4 2003.rtf@CB1
Hands and Feet
Luke 24:36-43
Sermon by Dan Schrock
May 4, 2003

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence . (NRSV)
My mother died ten years ago, but I still remember her hands. True to her biological heritage, her hands had relatively short fingers like the hands of many other people in the Ramer family. When I was in high school she took piano lessons for a while, and one of the main challenges she faced was making her short fingers stretch wide enough to play octaves. She managed to do it, just barely.

She kept her fingernails trimmed in a kind of flat V shape, and never allowed them to extend more than about 1/16 of an inch beyond the edge of the skin. They were plain hands, in a way, since she never visited a manicurist or painted her nails with polish. She wore no engagement ring or wedding ring, because when my parents were married in 1958 the Mennonite Church still strongly discouraged jewelry, even plain wedding bands.

 Even though I have not seen her hands in over ten years, I think I could still pick them out of a lineup. If there were a row of ten women sitting behind a curtain, totally hidden from view, with only their hands sticking out, I am quite sure I would know which were hers. As her hands lay flat in front of the curtain I think I would recognize the pattern of wrinkles in the folds in her knuckles. I couldn't draw that pattern on a piece of paper, mind you, but if I saw it I would recognize it, and know those hands were Mom's.

Those were the first hands, after all, that I got to know as an infant. Hands that fed me, washed me, changed my clothes, held me. I knew them even before I knew my own hands. Later, when I was older, I watched her hands pull weeds in the garden, push the vacuum cleaner back and forth, kneed bread dough on the kitchen counter, ladle chili into our bowls on the table. Those hands held the steering wheel when she drove me to see Dr. Abel at the Wakarusa Medical Clinic whenever I got sick. Oh yes, I got to know her hands quite well.

I find it intriguing that when Jesus suddenly appears in the room with his followers that first Easter evening, he does not ask them to look at his face. You would think his face would be sure proof that this person standing in front of them was indeed Jesus. At one time or another, most of us have probably said, ``Oh, I'd recognize that face anywhere.'' Researchers have shown that we have a remarkable ability to recognize faces in a flash, to distinguish our neighbor two houses down the street from the neighbor who lives across the street, just from their faces. Even if we can't describe in words exactly how Aunt Millie's nose looks different than Aunt Sarah's, we know the difference when we see it.

A few months ago at Alvin Hostetler's funeral, a man walked up to me and said, ``Do you remember who I am?'' I glanced quickly at his face and listened to the timbre of his voice. In about two seconds I knew it was Paul Hoffman, my best friend from 5 th to 8 th grades who lived across the street from us in Elkhart. I had not seen him in perhaps 28 years, but I knew right away who he was, even though he (and I too!) had aged considerably since we were 15 years old.

So it seems odd, very odd, that when Jesus reappears to his followers after the resurrection, he does not tell them to look at his face and listen to the timbre of his voice. You'd think those would be the decisive clues. But those are not what Jesus tells them to look at. He says, ``Look at my hands and my feet, and see that it is I myself'' (v. 39), as if those were incontrovertible proof that this person was their Lord. Since he had only been dead 3 days, only come out of the stone tomb that morning, their memories of his hands and feet were still quite fresh.

So it helps me to realize that even after 10 long years, I'd still recognize my mother's hands. I admit that I almost certainly would not recognize her feet, however, since I didn't see them as often as her hands. Given the severe winters we have here in northern Indiana, we keep our feet inside socks and shoes most of the time. But even in the summer time, my mother rarely went barefooted. So no, if it would feet sticking out behind the curtain in a lineup, I don't think I'd recognize hers.

But it was different for the followers of Jesus in the balmy climate of Palestine. There everyone either went barefoot or wore sandals. You could see what people's feet looked like anytime you wanted to. And during their journeys with Jesus, they had seen plenty of his feet. Back and forth they had walked with him across Galilee, through the villages of Nain, Nazareth, Cana, Gennesaret, Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Gergesasometimes walking in front of those feet, but more often walking alongside or behind those feet. While eating lunch together on the hillsides, they saw those feet stretched out in front of him as he munched on dried fish and bread. In the evenings they watched him remove his sandals and wash the dust off his tired feet before he lied down to sleep. Oh yes, they knew those feet.

They knew his hands too. In synagogues, they observed the curve of his fingers as he unrolled scrolls from the law to read scripture in front of the assembly. They watched those hands stretch out, touch a leper, and make him clean (5:12-13). They sat next to him in the homes of tax collectors and sinners, subconsciously seeing his hands pass food to the next person around the table (5:29). They observed his hands dance and punctuate the air as he stood in an open field to tell them about the new kingdom that God was starting up in the world (6:17). Astonished, they observed those hands rest lightly on a dead boy's heart to bring him back to life (7:14). They witnessed those hands hold the hand of a girl lying dead in her bedroom, her mother and father standing by weeping, and suddenly give her again the spirit of life (8:54). They and 5,000 others watched those hands bless 5 loaves and 2 fish, stretching them to feed everyone present, with 12 baskets leftover (9:12-17). They saw those hands cuddle babies (18:15-17). They stared bug-eyed when those hands took bread with the words, ``this is my body,'' and took wine with the words, ``this is my blood'' (22:14-23). And then some of them could barely make themselves watch, horrified, as nails went through those hands and feet (23:26-49). Oh yes, don't doubt it: they knew those hands and feet.

Which is why, on Easter evening, Jesus tells them to look at his hands and feet rather than at his face, or rather than listen to his voice. The distinguishing features of Jesus, that prove it's him beyond any doubt, are his hands and feet. That's how you and I know it's him and not someone else. They give it all away.

That evening the followers of Jesus saw his distinctive hands and feet, and it changed their lives. From then on, they lived with a conviction they had never known before, pursued a passion they had never felt before, understood what is really real in a way they had never understood before.

And what about you? Have you ever seen Jesus' hands and feet?

Many years ago one evening a friend of mine was praying. This was not a prayer of words, but a prayer of images. She sat silently in a comfortable position, relinquished as much as possible the cares and events of the day, and opened herself up to whatever God wanted to do with her in that prayer. As often happens to people in this kind of prayer, at first it was difficult for her to genuinely release all the stuff that had happened to her that day. When we sit silently in the presence of God our minds often jump from one thing to another. We think about the bread we need to write down on the grocery list, the difficult staff meeting we had this afternoon, the crushing amount of work we really ought to get done tomorrow. So this prayer was at first difficult, but eventually she managed to release all that stuff and sit calmly in God's presence.

Next she opened herself to what God wanted to do with her in this prayer. She especially opened herself to seeing whatever images, whatever vision, God wanted to show her. That night she did in fact see several different images that seemed to have the Spirit in them and that seemed to have peculiar meaning for her.

The most astonishing thing God granted her to see that night, however, was the risen Jesus. Not the Jesus before the crucifixion, but the one after the resurrection. And not all of him, either, but only some of him. During that whole time, she never once saw his face . In some mysterious way, his face was hidden from her sight. But she did see his hands. Not only that, she held his hands, and as she held his hands, she could feel the marks where the nails had been pounded through. The experience rattled her, putting her in touch with the suffering of the world. It is not a light thing to come into the presence of the risen Christ, to see his hands, to touch the marks of the nails.

 Not a light thing, but it does change you. I think this experience in prayer subtly began to change my friend over the long term. She became wee bit wiser, a tad more compassionate, a tiny bit more grounded, a smidgen more firmly connected.

 I suppose not all of us will have experiences like that. But not all of us need to, either, because the body of the risen Christ is all around us. You and I, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, are the body of the risen Christ. You and I are his hands and feet, his representatives in the world. Look at each other, and see the body of Christ, broken, and now risen, for the world.
Note
This sermon is indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way (Cowley, 1999), pp. 119-123.
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Healed from Bitterness
 Ruth 1:19-21
Sermon by Dan Schrock
September 28, 2003
Healing Service

Naomi and Ruth went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them; and the women said, ``Is this Naomi?'' She said to them, ``Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?'' (Modified from the NRSV)
Call me bitter. That's what Naomi tells the neighborhood women when she returns to Bethlehem. Call me Mara, which is a Hebrew name meaning bitter. I am bitter because when I left this village of Bethlehem many years ago, I had a husband, Elimelech, whom I loved dearly, and two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, who were the pride and joy of my life. But now they are dead, all three of them dead and buried in the ground. When I left Bethlehem many years ago, I was fulfilled. Life was pleasant for me. But now my beloved ones are dead! So call me bitter.

From time to time other people feel bitter too. A farmer in western Oklahoma drives a mortgaged tractor burning diesel fuel purchased on credit, moving across rented land, rearranging the dust. 1 Call him bitter.*

Late one night, a recently-married couple breaks all speed limits on their way to the hospital, she bleeding on the seat and he frantically gripping the wheel. In the hospital room an hour later, their second miscarriage in a year now over, she lies on the bed while he sits on a chair beside her, holding each other's hands and weeping. Call them bitter.

 The owner of a small grocery store situated on the corner of Main and High stands looking out his shop window. He started this business fourteen years ago, hoping to earn enough profit not only to feed his family, but also to pay for his children's college education. It's now three o'clock in the afternoon, but so far he's sold only $57 worth of merchandise. As he stares out the window, his hands clenched in his pockets, he watches the heavy construction equipment working on the lot across the street, preparing to build a new supermarket. Call him bitter.

 It's moving day for a pastor in Kansas. She's been at this church for eight years, but hasn't received any pay increases for the past five, not even cost of living adjustments. Each year at budget time the chairman of the board of deacons rejects all pay raises, arguing that pastors are supposed to be servants. Last month the pastor accepted the call to another church in Pennsylvania, and today people from the Kansas church are helping her and her family load up the moving truck. The head deacon, the same one who rejected pay raises and is probably the wealthiest member of the congregation, stands now at the bedroom closet of the pastor's oldest child, staring at the half-dozen clothes hanging inside, all of them threadbare. ``Doesn't your son have any other clothes than these?'' the deacon asks the pastor. ``No,'' she replies, ``we couldn't afford to buy him any new clothes.'' The head deacon looks startled, then in a lowered voice says, ``I'm sorry; I didn't know.'' Call the pastor bitter.

When a dream smashes on the hard surface of life, bitterness may follow. Do you know what bitterness is like? Bitterness wounds the soul. Bitterness keeps us living in the past. It stifles our hope for the future. It makes us irritable. It spurts out as anger. In the case of Naomi, bitterness so depresses her that when she returns to Bethlehem, she broods in the shadows, refusing to act, refusing to take initiative. Hunger looms because she has no food and no money to buy food, yet Naomi does nothing, says nothing, her bitterness gluing her to despair.

Bitterness is a spiritual problem. So Naomi blames God. God did this to me, she insists. I didn't deserve to lose my husband and my sons! I committed no sin, failed on no obligation. I am not responsible for this! God is not just. God is not merciful. God gutted joy right out of me.

Bitterness may blind us to opportunities for healing, opportunities that may actually be so close to us that we can reach out and touch them. Although Naomi does not recognize it yet, her best opportunity for healing stands right beside her in the person of Ruth, her own daughter-in-law, who has vowed to go where Naomi goes, to stick with Naomi no matter what, even dying with Naomi if necessary. But Ruth has no intention of dying just yet. Ruth too has suffered, for she also lost a husband; but unlike Naomi, Ruth is not glued to bitterness. Ruth passionately chooses life. So she takes matters into her own hands. She decides to glean the local barley fields so the two of them will have something to eat. You know the rest of the story. In the barley fields, Ruth meets Boaz, a single, wealthy, compassionate man who is looking to marry a worthy woman. Ruth and Boaz court each other by day in the barley field and by night on the threshing floor; they marry; they have a son; and through these events God works deliberately, surprisingly, almost inscrutably, to heal a bitter Naomi.

Healing! O blessed healing! On the day of that baby's birth, Naomi shakes off the shadows to cradle this new grandson on her lap. Her bitterness drops away. A smile beams across her face. The women of the village watch, and rejoice in the mercy of God.

 Note
 *Adapted from Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories , ed. Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001), 25.
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Hope
1 Peter 1:3-9; 3:8-9, 13-16a
Sermon by Anita Yoder Kehr
January 12, 2003

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called--that you might inherit a blessing.

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. (NRSV)
How many of you have heard of the expression, ``pie in the sky''? Do any of you know what it means? It's an expression of a fruitless wishing, ``something you hope will happen but is unlikely to do so,'' according to the Cambridge Dictionary. And this is how that particular expression came to be:
Joe Hill was a labor organizer in the early 1900s. He crisscrossed the United States as a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, gathering and organizing laborers so that they could bargain for better, safer working conditions and for fair wages. The people that the IWW focused on were migratory and casual workers who would head to the cities to find whatever work there was. These folks were also the ones who gathered on street corners in their down times, becoming targets of itinerate preachers intent on saving their lost souls. Joe Hill became very adept at transforming the hymns that those preachers used into parodies of themselves. And so, the phrase, ``pie in the sky'' comes from a song written by Joe Hill to fit the tune of the gospel hymn, ``In the Sweet Bye and Bye.'' The first verse and the chorus of Joe Hill's version go like this:

Long-haired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;

But when asked how `bout something to eat,

They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You'll get pie in the sky when you die. Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, Songs of Work and Protest , New York, NY, 1973.

So, ``pie in the sky''this expression we use for fruitless wishingcame into our vernacular because of Joe Hill's desire to give a good poke and prod to Christians who focused on saving souls for heaven above to the neglect of meeting any other kind of need on earth below, including the need for nourishment, protection, and shelter.

It's been nearly a century since Joe Hill composed his parody. In that century we have seen the war to end all wars followed by another war to end all wars. We've seen the Korean ``Conflict''a deadly disagreement but never officiall y a warthe Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War. We've seen successive generations of people fighting one another in drawn-out civil wars in countries around the globe. We've seen genocide and ``ethnic cleansing'' attempted in Europe, Africa, and Central and South America. We've seen starvation and obscene wealth. We've seen the demise of small business in every area of the economy, and we've seen the rise of mega-corporations who successfully plant themselves around the world. We've seen the stock market climb to incredible heights and then tumble down to new lows; the first time it happened, that tumbling crash inaugurated a decade we now call the Great Depression. We've seen stark greed and desperate materialism and flamboyant hedonism. And in this past century, we, as a world culture, have turned our backs on hope, especially from hope that finds its foundation in the Christian understanding of the resurrection, in God's ultimate victory over sin and over death.

The 20 th century began with quite a bit of optimism. The 19 th century had seen the birth of social activism with the founding of cause-oriented groups; slavery in the US had finally been abolished; pacifism gained greater acceptance; human knowledge and understanding was expanding at a formidable rate. The belief was that if we would just think about things right, we'd be able to build a society of goodness. And then came World War I, with its bloodletting and worldwide repercussions. After a brief resurgence of hope and optimism after World War Iwith an accompanying upswing in the embrace of Christian pacifismWorld War II ushered in an era in which the human capacity for evil became very clear.

Several weeks ago, John Roth stood up here and held up this small booklet: Witnesses to Hope . John said then that sometime in the middle of the 20 th century, writers and novelists quit depicting utopias. They stopped creating visions of goodness andinsteadcreated darker and darker portraits of worlds where humans objectified or enslaved or destroyed one another. Evelyn Waugh, a satirist of the 20 th century, wrote: ``The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.'' Quoted in Context , January 1, 2003. Perhaps in the 20 th century, humans simply lost the capacity to imagine heaven. At all costs, we want to avoid the ``pie in the sky'' trap.

``Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time…. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you….'' (1 Peter 1:3-5; 3:15b)

First Peter is a letter of hope. And that living hope described here is birthed through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That living hope looks to an imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance kept for us in heaven ; in faith, we trust in the power of God for our protection until the last day when the triumph of salvation will be fully revealed. Peter implies that this living hope becomes so central to Christian identity that we may have to learn how to explain why we have the hope we have. Maybe the question for 21 st century Christians is whether we can live in hope without moving into the ``pie-in-the-sky'' mode.

Hope is ``trust in God and [God's] faithfulness.'' It is ``the expectation that all that God has promised will be fulfilled.'' Julca, Jorge L., ``Hope? Reflections from a Context of Hopelessness,'' paper given at the Global Nazarene Theology Conference, April 4-7, 2002.
 Hope is integrally connected to faith: it is an active response to the invitation and faithfulness of God. Hope is also the content of what we hope for: we hope for the work of the Spirit in our lives, transforming and shaping and encouraging us to be and do what we're called to be and do. We hope that God walks with us now and is present and at work in our world. We hope that God has indeed triumphed over sin and death and thatat the end of timewe will see God's reign inaugurated in its fullness. Our hope does not take us away from our world, but it enables us to live boldly, faithfully, and without fear .

Jesus ushered in the kingdom of God. If we are disciples of Jesus, then we are citizens of that kingdom now , even though it is not yet here in its fullness. The ethics of that kingdom include loving our enemies, extending justice to the oppressed, offering food for the hungry, liberating the imprisoned. The character of kingdom citizens is marked by hope and by faith and by generous, lavish love of one another and of the world. The hope born of Jesus Christ enables believers to live as salt and light in the world: neither to hide under a bushel nor to focus only on that sweet pie in the sky.

There is some tension here between the directions in which this hope draws us. The hope born through the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death is future-oriented, anticipating the eschatologicalthe end timesfulfillment of all that God has promised. But this hope also grounds us in the present, freeing us from our fear of death so that we can participate with God's current activity in this world. Only at our peril do we concentrate on one of these to the exclusion of the other.

Many of the ``witnesses to hope'' who wrote in this booklet caught sight of both the present and the future nature of hope. Valerie Weaver-Zuercherwriter, editor, and mother of a young childwrote in a recent issue of DreamSeeker Magazine Valerie Weaver-Zercher, DreamSeeker Magazine, Winter, 2002.
 about the laughter that struck her one night last year as she sat addressing envelopes to George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice. Those envelopes were going to hold petitions signed by people protesting the military strikes in Afghanistan. The week before, a group of some 300 people had gathered in a rally in front of the Pennsylvania capitol; they had proclaimed the ``political relevance of Christ's way of nonviolence.'' Ibid , page 27. Valerie and the other planners of the rally had been impressed with the coverage they'd received and were pleased that they might be making a difference. However, on the envelope-addressing night, Valerie was suddenly struck with the absurdity of what she was doing. Were any of these political leaders going to listen to anything the protesters had to say? Probably not. What difference could 300 people make? Probably very little. Why was she doing what she was doing? And then she began to laugh… and after that to despair.

Valerie's laughter and the subsequent despair set her off on a search for hope. And as she searched, she came to believe that a sense of humor may be one of the most vital of God's gifts to peacemakers and to any others who continue to act hopefully in a setting of hopelessness. It is absurdlaughableto live according to the way of the kingdom of God and to witness to the kingdom of this world. Valerie says, ``[It's] exactly in those moments of despair and hopelessness that laughter comes in again. Because the only way I have found to deal with those times… is to believe that eventually, in ways I cannot now fathom, the holy laughter of God wins…. I choose to believe that in God's eyes, the absurdity of these days lies not in our lame little peace rallies and our measly petitions but in the war-making machines that kill in response to killing. I choose to believe that in the end… God's healing laughter will cover us all.'' Ibid , page 31. Valerie discovered that hope in God's faithfulness in the future enables hope in God's faithfulness right now. And hope in God's faithfulness right now frees us to participate with whatever God is doing around us, including gathering at peace rallies and signing petitions.

 The Martyr's Mirror is a book of hope. In the midst of gruesome stories of torture and killing are testimonies of hope in God's faithfulness. The martyrs' confidencetheir hopethat God would be faithful to fulfill all of God's promises enabled them to stay faithful in their commitment to the way of Jesus Christ. The martyrs' testimonies clearly show the struggle and the pain they have in facing their own deaths, but they also claim an ultimate hope in their share in eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus. Maeyken Wens writes to her husband, ``O my dear friend, I should never have thought that parting should come so hard to me as it does. True, the imprisonment seemed hard to me… but now the parting is the hardest of all. Oh how easy it is to be a Christian, so long as the flesh is not put to the trial, or nothing has to be relinquished; then it is an easy thing to be a Christian. # Herewith I will conclude my letter and commend you and [our] children to the Lord that you may walk in wisdom, to the edification of your neighbor, and the salvation of your soul. I commend you to the Lord, and to the rich Word of His grace: this is the good greeting and [hope] of my heart.'' Thieleman J. Van Braght, The Martyr's Mirror , translator Joseph F. Sohm, originally published 1660; Scottdale: Herald Press, sixteenth printing, 1990. Maeyken was burned to death on October 6, 1573. As difficult as her struggle was, she did not renounce her faith but remained strong in hope of God's resurrection promises. She encouraged her husband to remain firm and strong in the faith. This is a story of hope.

Nowwe're not living in 1573. We're modern and educated people, taught to look at the world rationally. We want to be good disciples of Jesus Christ, butfranklysome of us are a little leery about caring too much about the resurrection part of our faith. We don't want to be accused of a pie-in-the-sky mentality. We don't want to be guilty of Karl Marx's charge of using religion as a drug to pacify those living under oppression or in poverty. We want to make a difference here and now in the name of Jesus! These are all good things! They offer a correction of a single-track focus on the end times. However, without an adequate theology of the resurrection, all of this emphasis on living and working in this world is as unbalanced as focusing only on the future. The temptation is to forget that God is involved at all and to trust primarily in human ingenuity and effort. My theory is that that's one reason that pacifism in the last two centuries experienced a resurgence in periods of relative peace and then a waning during times of war. Wartime shows us most clearly how awful humans can be to one another. If our hope lies in human effort and the ability of humans to act with goodness toward one another, then we will be disappointed. If our hope lies in the God of all history, in God's ultimate reign and our eternal participation in that reign as God's children, then our effectiveness as peacemakers and as disciples is assessed within an entirely different context: what appears to be foolishness today and in the here and now may appear to be wisdom in the context of all time. Our hope in the resurrected Jesus Christ empowers us to live as obedient disciples of the Jesus Christ who also lived among us, who taught us how to live, and who then was faithful even unto death on a cross.

I was at a conference this fall where Jim Amstutz presented some of the central ideas in this little book of his called, Threatened with Resurrection . His central idea is that believers are enabled and empowered to work for peace and justice and to love their enemies when they are freed from their drive for self-protection. They're freed by embracing the reality of the promise of resurrection through Jesus Christ. In the question-and-answer period that followed Jim's presentation, a young man stood up and said, ``Look. You and I both know that in this postmodern era, we don't really believe in the resurrection; at least we don't believe in it like our mothers and fathers and our uncles and aunts do. We don't believe that there will be a reunion of Kauffmans over here and a circle of Yoders over there. So, how do we make the resurrection relevant for us today?'' Without answering the question of whether there will be reunions in heaven, Jim looked at his questioner and said, ``All I know is that the longer I've been a pastor and have stood by people as they die their bodily deaths, the more I am sure of the reality of our resurrection through Jesus.'' Claim that hope. And then let it free you for your life here on earth.
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How God Repented
Genesis 9:8-17
Sermon by Dan Schrock
March 9, 2003

This is the story of how God repented. But to tell the story, we should really begin at the beginning, with Genesis 1.

 At the beginning of the book of Genesis, God hoped the relationship between divinity and humanity would be easy. God would make men and women, give them a wonderful place to live, and bless them with good things. In return for all this goodness, women and men would live in joyful obedience to God. God would do good things for them, and in return they would be good for God. Tit for tat.

But it didn't work out that way. God's hopes for a war, easy, intimate relationship began to disintegrate when Eve and Adam brazenly ate the fruit in the middle of the Garden of Eden--the very same fruit which God explicitly told them not to eat. They disobeyed; so God punished them. Tit for tat.

This disobedience continued among the sons of Adam and Eve. One day, first-born son Cain got jealous of second-born son Abel and murdered him. So God punished Cain. Tit for tat.

By chapter 6, God is deeply pained over the whole mess. These humans do not obey. These humans are not good. The violence that started when Cain murdered Abel has now spread throughout the whole human race. Not only are the actions of men and women evil, but their inclination and intent are also evil. Since everything about these humans is evil, God decides to end this experiment. Genesis 6:7 words it succinctly: so God said, "I shall wipe off the face of the earth this human race which I have created-yes, man and beast, creeping things and birds. I regret that I ever made them" (REB). I regret I ever created these people and this earth, so I shall destroy everything. Tit for tat.

You probably remember the next part of the story. There is one human being, a man named Noah, with whom God is not disappointed. Unlike everybody else, Noah obeys God; he alone, of all people on the earth, is righteous and blameless. So God preserves him, his family, and a select group of animals from the coming cataclysm. Tit for tat.

When Noah and company are safely aboard the ark, God releases the water. This God, who during creation had separated water from dry land, now permits this water to overwhelm dry land. This God, who during creation had set boundaries beyond which the watery chaos could not go, now opens those boundaries. This God, who during creation scooped up dust from the earth to fashion human beings, like a potter scoops up clay to fashion jars and vases and pots, this God now destroys human beings.

Let us understand the actual nature of this event. Let us not skip over this part of the story or try to make excuses for God. The rest of the Bible-everything that comes after this 9th chapter of Genesis--might have more meaning and power for us if we acknowledge what really happens here: God consciously and deliberately uses violence to destroy most of creation. This flood is not an accident. This flood is not a random happening. God made a choice to do this and then did it. Nor is there anything peaceful about this flood. This flood kills people, animals and plants. If you want, call this an act of war.

But let us also understand that God does NOT do this in anger. Please, please hear this: God is not angry, but anguished. The New International Version's translation of Genesis 6:6 comes very close to the Hebrew meaning. It says that God's "heart was filled with pain." God is indescribably sad about this, cut to the heart with grief. Inside, God is broken.

So let us look and see. Let this clay pot symbolize the pottery of God's creation. Let the water in this pot symbolize the flood. And let the breaking of this pot symbolize the brokenness of creation, and the brokenness of humanity--but most of all, let it symbolize the great and painful brokenness in God.

 [Smash the pot.]

 When the flood is over and God sees what has happened, God repents. The rest of the Bible makes more sense if you understand this great watershed in the person of God: God repents. Genesis 8:21: "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done" (NRSV). After the flood, God perceives that human beings are just as inclined toward evil as they were before the flood. Even though this flood achieved mass destruction, it did not achieve the one thing that mattered most to God: it did not destroy sin and evil.

So God repents. God decides never again to do such a thing, for as long as time shall last. God, in fact, rejects violence from this point on. This is the real meaning behind rainbows. The bow that we see in the sky is actually a symbol for the weapon of war, the bow that shoots arrows and kills people. Recall that when rainbows appear in the sky their curve always goes upward. In the ancient world, that is what a bow looked like when you hung it up on the wall. You hung the bow at the middle of the curve, approximately where you held it to shoot. The most significant thing about rainbows, however, is that they have no sinew strung between the two ends. As a weapon of war, bows are always strung with sinew, otherwise they are useless. The bows we see in the sky are all unstrung. Rainbows tell us that God has demilitarized the divine arsenal. God still has bows, but they are all hanging on the walls without strings. God has unilaterally disarmed. Appalled by the flood's vast destruction, God rejects violence against humanity from this time forth and forevermore. In Genesis 9, God repents and rejects violence.

Whenever rainbows appear in the sky, you and I can see them, of course, but they are not there primarily for our benefit--rainbows are there in the sky mainly for God's benefit. Genesis 9:16 makes this clear: "When the bow is in the clouds, I (God) will see it and remember" my covenant with you human beings never to destroy the earth again. Rainbows are there to help God remember this binding, life-long commitment to humanity and to creation.

So you see the flood did not change humanity; but it did change God. God is now vastly different than before. God now understands that you cannot change humanity by threatening them or by instilling fear in them. God now understands that you cannot defeat evil with violence, you cannot transform your enemies by killing them.

The rest of the Bible is the story of how God tries other means to save humanity from sin and evil. God forms a covenant with Abraham and Sarah. God gives laws. God calls prophets. None of these things quite does the trick, although each has benefits. So finally, God sends the Son, the only beloved, to this mess of evil and sinful humanity. This Son describes God's alternate reality, and shows what the alternate reality is like by healing the sick, confronting evil, forgiving sin, and standing up to all the powers that try to enslave creation. This Son, this Jesus, was a profound threat to the powers that be. The powers got scared of Jesus, so they got rid of him. They tortured him and suffocated him.

And there on that cross, my friends, hung the profound brokenness of God. There on the cross God received into the divine body all the sin and evil and violence anybody could throw at it. God refused to fight back against this evil and sin. So evil and sin broke God on the cross. Something major inside God broke on that day, and stayed broken for three days.

Brokenness, however, is not a problem for God to fix. God just came back to life again! And the tit for tat is now over. We are graced--forever.
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In Our Right Minds
Mark 5:1-20
Sermon by Dan Schrock
February 9, 2003

 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, ``What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.'' For he had said to him, ``Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!'' Then Jesus asked him, ``What is your name?'' He replied, ``My name is Legion; for we are many.'' He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, ``Send us into the swine; let us enter them.'' So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.

The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, ``Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.'' And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed. (NRSV)
The man in this story has gone crazy. He runs around the local cemetery stark naked, howling like some wild animal, his greasy, matted hair streaming behind him, his arms flailing the wind. Responsible, caring citizens from the town tried to restrain him, first with ropes which the man simply snapped like thread, and then with chains and shackles, which the man wrenched apart and broke to pieces on the rocks. So the responsible, caring citizens gave up. They left him alone to run around day and night in the land of the dead, his wrists and ankles bleeding where he had pried off the shackles. Now the man beat himself with stones, wild beyond restraint, crazy beyond hope. If you or I were in charge, we'd probably commit him to a mental health facility. By any usual definition, the man was insane.

People from the first century also would have said he was insane. A Jewish document written about that time lists four tests for insanity, all of which describe our wild man:

1.       A person is insane if he or she spends the night around tombs.
2.       A person is insane if he or she tears off the clothes she or he is wearing.
3.       A person is insane if he or she walks around at night.
4.       A person is insane if he or she destroys things received as gifts from others. 1

When thirteen mean land on the nearby beach and disembark from their fishing boat, the unexpected begins to happen. Our wild man briefly halts his frantic chasing after the wind and glances in their direction. Immediately he runs directly toward the thirteen men, sprinting like an Olympian in the 400 yard dash. When the wild man comes within earshot, one of the thirteen, apparently some sort of leader, says in a commanding voice, ``Unclean spirit, come out of that man!''

The wild man comes to a dead stop right in front of the leader, collapses on his knees and yells, ``Jesus, Son of the Most High God, what have you to do with me? In God's name, do not torment me!''

``What is your name?''

```Legion,' because we are many. Please do not send us away from here; please do not send us away. Send us to the pigs, please, O please, send us to the pigs over there!''

``Go,'' replied Jesus, ``you have my permission.''
At that the unclean spirits flee from the man to the pigs. The pigs roil. Their eyes bulge. Their bellies heave. Their hooves paw the dirt. Their lungs scream. And then they run at top speed directly to the cliff overlooking the Sea of Galilee, running and running even after the land comes to an end, until they drop, dozens at a time, screaming into the water below, pig bodies falling on top of pig bodies, legs thrashing, nostrils struggling for breath, finally falling silent, their soft underbellies turned to the sky, their legs limp, their bodies slowly bobbing on the surface of the sea.

If you had been a first century Galilean, and if you had been there by the sea watching all of this, you would have understood perfectly well what has just happened. You would have perceived the underlying meaning that many modern commentators fail to perceive. You would have realized with a shock that Jesus, Son of the Most High God, has just vanquished the armies of the Roman Empire.

What many commentators miss, but what you as a first century Galilean would not have missed, is the specific cultural meaning of that word ``legion.'' In that time and place, the word legion had only one meaning: it meant a division of Roman soldiers, armed from head to toe in helmets, breastplates, shields, kirts, greaves, daggers, spears, and swords. When at full fighting strength, a Roman legion had 6,000 foot soldiers, 120 cavalry, plus associated auxiliary support personnel. But in the first century, Roman legions were rarely at full fighting strength because of the casualties which came from constant fighting. Often legions numbered only a few thousand men. And so in popular conversation, the word legion also meant a battalion of 2,048 soldiers, a number virtually identical to the 2,000 pigs, give or take a few, that ran over the cliff into the sea.

Other clues in the story support this line of interpretation. Mark says this incident happened in Gerasa, which was located southeast of the Sea of Galilee. Ever since the year 6 AD, or about 20 years before the events in Mark 5, the Tenth Roman Legion had been permanently stationed in this area of Galilee. Anybody who lived in or around Gerasa would have been painfully aware of the presence of Roman military power because the Tenth Legion was always there.

There are more clues that this story is about Roman state violence. Each Roman legion not only had a number, as in the Third or Tenth, but it also a standard, which was an emblem affixed to the top of a tall pole. Officers used this standard in the heat of battle to rally and direct their troops. The standard was the legion's symbol of pride and camaraderie. The standard was so valuable to a legion that we even have stories of it going back into battle specifically for the purpose of recovering its standard which enemy troops had captured in the previous day's fighting. You get a flavor of this pride even in modern armies, where all the pilots of an air squadron, for example, might paint on the fuselage of their planes some symbol which unites them emotionally. Would you like to guess what emblem was at the top of the standard for the Roman Tenth Legion, stationed in Gerasa, Galilee? A pig. 2 If you, a first century Galilean, had seen Jesus send 2,000 pigs into the sea, you probably have thought immediately about the 2,000 soldiers of the Tenth Legion, drowning in the sea with their pig standard. And if you were a Jew, you very likely would have remembered the time that God destroyed the armies of Egypt by drowning them in the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 14).

Even the words Mark uses to describe the action are filled with military imagery. Verse 11 calls this group of pigs a ``herd,'' an odd choice of words because as you know, pigs don't normally travel in herds. However, the Greek word here, agelç , was often used to mean a band of military recruits. In that same verse, Jesus dismisses the herd of pigs, and the Greek verb there, epetrepsen , is the word normally used for a military command, such as a command that a Roman centurion might give to his troops. Finally, the pigs charge or rush into the lake. This Greek verb, ôrmçsen , was frequently used to describe soldiers charging into battle. 3
In other words, this is the story of a man possessed by the demon of violence. This is not just any old story of demon possession. It is very specifically a story about a man trapped in the oppression of state violence, possessed by the evil of military might. The government which ruled him relied on violent coercion to solve its problems. The world he lived in was full of violent actions. The violence around this man built to a point where it finally came to live inside his own heart. When this happens he no longer lives in his right mind. He goes insane.

This story illustrates in dramatic fashion how tightly violence can bind us and what a terrible effect it can have on our life. The whole point of the story is that we have no power to free ourselves of violence. We cannot simply sit down, rationally reject violence, and in the next moment be totally free of it. Violence is more subtle and insidious than that. Surely this man wanted to be clothed rather than naked, wanted to live in a house rather than the local cemetery, wanted to be whole rather than mad. But neither he nor his friends can make the change. They are trapped in violence and cannot experience true peace, until Jesus arrives. Real change does not happen in this story until Jesus comes, confronts the violence, and commands it to leave the man's life. Only then can the man be in his right mind.

The pig farmers are watching all of this too. They gaze over the edge of the cliff, slack jawed at how quickly their huge investment in hog futures has been destroyed. Then they turn and run toward town to tell others what has happened, as if anyone would believe them. Jesus, meanwhile, turns his attention to the formerly crazy man who is still stark naked, now stretched out on the ground exhausted. ``Peter,'' says Jesus, ``ask around among the other eleven guys and see if any of them happens to be wearing two tunics today. We have to get this man some clothes.''

As Peter ambles off for a spare tunic, Jesus crouches down and helps the man to his feet. ``Why don't you go wash yourself off on the beach,'' advises Jesus, ``and we'll get you something to wear. Then we'll talk a little, you and I.'' Ten minutes later the man, washed and dressed, sits next to Jesus on a rock They speak of love and hope, forgiveness and peace, Jesus gently massaging his soul to wholeness after its long ordeal steeped in evil.

In a little while the pig farmers come back with various townspeople who cannot believe what they heard and must see for themselves. Sure enough, the pigs are still bobbing in the sea, and the man who once ran crazy in the land of the dead now sat serene on a rock, washed, clothed, and in his right mind, a look of peace on his face.

You might think that the Gerasene townspeople would be grateful to Jesus for reforming this violent criminal. But they are not at all grateful. Mark says they were afraid , and beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood . Why would they be afraid? Why do they want Jesus to leave right away?

The answer, I think, is the pigs. Somebody has just lost an awful lot of money. Even though Jews neither raised nor ate pigs, nearly everybody else in the ancient near east did, including Roman soldiers. While speculative, it's logically possible that the farmers were raising these pigs to sell to the Tenth Legion as a source of food. But even if these specific farmers were not raising those pigs for the Tenth Legion, a lot of somebodies in the town were making money by supplying the Tenth Legion with food and other supplies. In modern terms, those pigs represent companies like General Electric, Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, and others that make huge profits by selling military hardware to the Pentagons of the world. Let's face it: violence is big business, and when you start challenging the power of violence, you will get a reaction. It's no wonder the Gerasenes fearfully plead with Jesus to leave. They have too much money invested in violence. If Jesus stays, the whole economy might have to change drastically.

Jesus gets back in the boat to leave, not because he heeds the townspeople's wishes, but because he has already accomplished what he came there to do. Rome's army is drowned in the sea, its power puny in comparison to the power of the Lord of peace. As Jesus climbs into the boat, the man once held captive by Legion begs to go along.

But Jesus won't let him. Instead Jesus asks the man to go home and declare how much God has done for him. Jesus doesn't ask the man to be a peacemaker, because Jesus has already created the profoundest kind of peace. Jesus doesn't ask him to fight violence all by himself, because Jesus already has, and won. Instead Jesus merely asks the man to start talking, to tell others they don't have to be possessed by violence, to say that God makes all things new, to announce that by the power of God we can all be free, and in our right minds.

 Notes

 1. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. 208.

2. Pheme Perkins, The Gospel of Mark: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections , in The New Interpreter's Bible , Volume VIII (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), p. 584.

3. Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), p. 191.
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Inseparable
Romans 8:35-39
Sermon by Dan Schrock
October 26, 2003

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NRSV)
When things are going well, it's easy to believe these words. When you gladly bounce from bed in the morning at the prospect of going to work, it's easy to believe that nothing will separate you from God. When you and your spouse are still very much in love with each other, it's easy to believe that you and God cannot be separated. When your faith is deep, your hope wide, and your relationships rich, then of course you believe nothing will separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But when things are not going well, it's like biting nails to believe these words from Romans. When you open a certified letter from the bank and read that they are going to foreclose on you, taking away your home or your business, then you might feel very far from God. When you drive into work at 8:00 AM Monday and by 9:30 AM find yourself driving home, your job terminated, your fists pounding the steering wheel, tears stinging your cheeks, then it might feel like God has abandoned you. When you suddenly lose the love of your life, then it might be tempting to believe you could indeed be separated from the love of God.

A time may come in your life, if it hasn't already, when you will not feel like praising God, when praise will become almost impossible. It might seem to you that God has done something God should not have done, or that God failed to do something God should have done. It might appear to you that God has not been the kind of loving, compassionate, merciful person God has promised to be. You might get furious with God, and all you want to do is berate God for messing things up.

If so, then you would be in good biblical company. Consider the book of Lamentations, not one of the Bible's more widely-read books, but nevertheless a book of great spiritual integrity. In 597 B.C., in 587 B.C., and again in 582 B.C., the Babylonians, then the biggest, baddest empire in the ancient near east, attacked the city of Jerusalem. Each time those Babylonians wrecked the place, hauled off the best citizens, and left behind hunger, flattened houses, ruptured families, and a lot of dead bodies.

That's when the book of Lamentations was written, in the wake of empire Babylonia's disastrous wreckage. ``How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!'' reads the opening line. ``How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal'' (1:1).

Lamentations is full of speech so heavy with pain its groans and cracks under the weight. Children beg their mothers for something to eat and something to drink, but their mothers have nothing to give them (2:12). Some women, normally compassionate, tender mothers, get so desperate for food they boil their own dead children (4:10). In Lamentations, people are truly wretched.

Maybemaybethe worst of it was the Temple. God allowed those Babylonians to destroy it. The Temple! The womb of God's own presence in the world, the location at which you offered sacrifices of repentance and praise, the place you received forgiveness of sin, the one spot in the whole wide world where you could always come and know God was there. But now what, since the Temple is destroyed? Where is God now? How are you supposed to worship God without a Temple? By what means were you supposed to request and receive forgiveness?

Remember, this was the God who had called their ancestors, Sarah and Abraham, into a special covenant. This was the God who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. This was the God who had led them, protected them, sometimes chastised them yes, but a God who had always in one way or another stood by them no matter what. And now God's own city, Jerusalem, shredded in the molars of Babylonia's mouth! Now God's own house, the Temple, swallowed in the Babylonian military's vast appetite for devastation!

Given this suffering, you might think the Israelites would be mad at the Babylonians, who are, after all, the ones responsible for destroying Jerusalem. But no, the Babylonians are hardly even mentioned. From beginning to end, the laments of Lamentations are flung at God, words turned into spears for the purpose of wounding God's heart to compassion. In metaphor after metaphor, in page upon page, the writer begs God to look at the plight of the people, to notice, to see, to pay attention. That, you must know, is the essence of lament: I want somebody to notice my suffering. I want somebody to truly understand what I'm going through. I want somebody to listen to me.

The author of Lamentations does not mince words. The prayers aimed at God are not always polite. To be sure, sometimes especially early in the book, the author admits that we Israelites sinned, and that we did deserve to be punished. But almost right away the author doubts the punishment matches the sin. God, punished to these extremes? God, you're not being fair with us! Our suffering is all out of proportion to whatever sin we might have committed. Why have you done this to us?

Nowhere in Lamentations does God ever reply. God is perfectly silent, doing nothing and saying nothing in response to these charges of infidelity and incompetence. ``Why have you forgotten us completely?'' laments the poet in the last verses of the book. ``Why have you forsaken us these many days? Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored; renew our days as of oldunless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure'' (5:20-22). And with those words the book ends, unanswered questions stuck in the air, God still silent, with a sense that maybe God has fled the world.

You and I know that Lamentations is not the end of the story. Yes, many people of Israel were killed, some were dragged off to captivity in Babylonia, and some remained behind to eke out sub-par life from the dry, rocky Palestinian soil. Yes, even Solomon's fabulous Temple was wrecked. But eventually, after the long passage of years, people found out that God is more places than just the Temple in Jerusalem. They found out, in fact, that God is everywhere.

Consider Psalm 139. The inscription at the beginning of Psalm 139 attributes this psalm to David, who of course lived before the Temple was ever built. In the course of his youth, David had spent long hours defending sheep from wild animals. As a young man he had spent long hours running from King Saul, who desperately wanted to kill him. As a mature man he had spent long hours in politics, sometimes getting it right and sometimes messing it up. Through these many experiences, David had learned that God is everywhere. ``Where can I go from your spirit?'' asks Psalm 139:7. ``Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your right hand shall hold me fast'' (139:7b-10).

So after the destruction by Babylonia, Israel found ways to recover to the pre-temple faith of David. They learned all over again that God is everywhere. God is in that dry, rocky Palestinian soil that yields barley and grapes stubbornly. God is on top of lonely Mount Horeb. God is in the valley of Jezreel. God is next to the human heart, adjoining the human brain. God is even in Babylonia. There is nowhere where God is not.

I once knew a good, strong Christian man who went to church every Sunday, taught Sunday school, and helped build homes with Habitat for Humanity. A fine Christian man. Suddenly he stopped going to church. His wife and children still went to church, yes, but not him. For a whole month, he stayed away, and that's when his wife suggested I call him. When I called, he was reluctant to meet, but agreed after I lured him with the promise of ribs. Some days later at the rib restaurant, I asked him what was going on.

``God,'' he said. ``I have a problem with God. God is good and God is powerful, right?'' I nodded my head. ``Then why,'' he snapped, ``didn't God make this world so there wouldn't be any evil? If God had the ability to make this world perfect, why didn't God do it? Why does God permit six-year-old children, children the age of my daughter, to die from hunger? Why does God let people kill each other? I don't feel like praising that kind of God. If God can stop little kids from dying, but won't, then I'm not coming to church.''

``Fine,'' I said, ``then don't come to church.''

``What?!'' he replied.

``If you really feel that way about God, then don't come to church.''

He raised his eyebrows at me. ``Oh?''

``But if you're not coming to church,'' I continued, ``then I want you to do one thing. I want you to stick it to God. I want you to let God have it. Tell God how you feel. Demand that God answer your question.'' I leaned across the table. ``Tom, as long as you keep talking to God, you will be ok. But if you ever stop talking to God, that's when you are going to get into deep spiritual trouble. Keep the communication open between you and God. Your salvation lies in maintaining the relationship with God, even if all you do is rail and argue against God.''

Tom stayed away from church for the next year and a half. It was hard on his wife and children, believe you me. But in his own way he refused to let God off the hook. His prayers, formerly polite, thin, and hollow, now used hard, direct speech, words as sharp as razors, words tumbling out from the core of his soul, words sometimes bitter, sometimes angry, sometimes shaping into curses, but honest words, full of integrity and full of life.

For about a year, God was silent, offering Tom no response, saying nothing, doing nothing. It seemed God was very far away. ``Keep at it,'' I told Tom. ``Don't let go of God. Especially not now.''

One day Tom called me up. ``I want to see you,'' he said, ``as soon as possible. God said something.''

``I'm free for lunch today,'' I replied. ``Ribs again?''

``Yes.''

A few hours later we sat, we ordered. I looked at him. ``Now. Tell me.''

Tom breathed deeply and looked me in the eyes. ``God said three words. God said: `I am here. I am here!'''

A smile spread across his face, and a little while later, Tom came back to church.
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Job Description for a Ruler
Psalm 72:1-3
Sermon by Dan Schrock
December 21, 2003

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king's son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor . (NRSV)
A first glance it seems that our Advent planning committee chose an odd text for today, the final Sunday before Christmas. Nowhere does this psalm talk about anyone's birth, let alone the birth of a Messiah. Where are the donkeys munching on hay, the sheep bleating in expectation, the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes? What in the world do these opening verses of Psalm 72 have to do with Christmas?

Since I did not sit on our Advent planning committee, I have no idea why they chose this odd text for today. They handed us a sheaf of papers and said, ``Here, this is what we want to do for Advent, and these are the scripture passages for each Sunday.'' So I don't know their reasoning, but I do think their choice of scripture for today was inspired. Psalm 72 has an awful lot to do with the birth of Jesus.

This psalm was written to celebrate the coronation of one of Israel's kings. While we don't know everything that happened when a new Israelite king was crowned, we can imagine what it may have looked like. For weeks leading up to the coronation, workers in Jerusalem busily prepared for the festivities. Top government officials sent out messengers to notify the rest of the country when the coronation would take place. Other officials laid out the route of the procession and choreographed what the new king would do when, and how he would do it. Cloth makers produced new cloth for the king's wardrobe, while tailors cut and sewed that cloth into fine new robes. Servants swept and dusted the palace. Chefs sent orders out to the surrounding countryside for loads of wheat, grapes, and figs; for baskets of leeks and garlic; for pots of extra virgin olive oil and jugs of last year's best wine. Musicians practiced their instruments and writers scratched out speeches on parchment. Priests gathered extra rams and bulls they would be sacrificing to God on behalf of the new king. On the last day or two before the big day arrived, barbers manicured the king, bakers baked bread, servants polished the throne, and butchers slaughtered sheep, goats, and bulls.

The day of the coronation finally arrived. That morning a lot of people got out of bed earlier than usual, some because of all the work they still had to do before this coronation could happen, and some, especially the children, because of sheer excitement. Today was the day! The king-to-be toddled off to take a bath and get combed, perfumed, and dressed in his new robes. Cooks built fires to roast all the meat and to heat vast kettles of water for boiling all the vegetables. Servants set the banqueting tables. Soldiers manned their positions. Grooms rubbed down the horses and charioteers hitched them to chariots. Musicians checked their instruments one last time. By mid-morning all the people who were marching in the coronation procession took their places. First, perhaps, came the high priest and his associates blowing shofars; then came musicians playing trumpets, lutes and harps, pipes and cymbals; then foot soldiers marching in disciplined formation; then stately royal chariots carrying the highest government officials; and finally, riding on a golden chair carried by swarthy servants and encrusted with jewels, came the new king himself, his head held high, his bearing regal, his gaze proud and dignified.

When the procession finished making its way through the city, the king had taken his place at the coronation site, and all the people gathered around to watch, sacrifices were made to God. Then came the decisive moment when the crown was lowered on the king's head, when this man, formerly a man like all other men even if of royal blood, became king of the land, with power to make laws, power to pass judgment, power to accomplish great good or to perform great evil.

What followed was a party like you or I have perhaps never seen. King and subject sat down to eat and drink at tables so heavy they bowed in the middle. Hot roasted meat, crisp vegetables, succulent fruit, soft bread, and enough wine to make a river. People danced, played music, told jokes, bounced small children on their knees. By the time all the laugher and merriment ended well into the evening, everyone was thoroughly exhausted yet also intensely exuberant: they had a new king! He would bless them with prosperity and food, give every household its own vine and fig tree, make the land flowing with milk and honey! Life was going to get better!

As far as anyone can tell, Psalm 72 was written specifically to be read as a part of these coronation festivities. We don't know exactly at what point in the day it was used, but a good guess is that the high priest may have read it out loud just after the crown was lowered onto the king's head, so that among the very first words uttered over the new king were these:

 Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king's son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor .
Clearly this psalm is a prayer to God, imploring God to give this man, this newly crowned and newly empowered king, the justice and righteousness of God, so that this king will rule in such a way as to benefit the poor, deliver the needy, and halt oppression. In essence, Psalm 72 is a job description expressed in the form of a prayer. All the hard work of preparing the coronation festivities comes down to this: how is this king going to rule? What kind of decisions will he make? When it comes to the legislative aspects of government, will he pass laws that favor the rich, or will he pass laws that favor the poor? When it comes to the executive aspects of government, will this king apply those laws to benefit the rich, or to benefit the poor? When it comes to the judicial aspects of government, will this king conduct fair trials and pass fair judgments, or will he cave in to cronyism for the elite? Will this king be selfish or selfless? Will this king honor Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth, or will this king worship the hollow gods of war, luxury, and self-aggrandizement?

Psalm 72 is a job description, and it says as clearly as black words on a white page that the king's job is to defend the poor by making just, righteous decisions. Period. There is no other responsibility stated for the king in this job description. Other parts of the psalm ask God to give justice and righteousness to the king, and to give the king long life and dominion over the kingdom. But those are God's tasks, not the king's. According to this psalm the king's task, pure and simple, is to do everything in his considerable power to improve life for the poor. It does not matter how wonderful the coronation was, or how handsome the king is, or how demurely the queen acts. The psalm annoyingly persists in only one criterion: how much will this king do to benefit the poor? The success or failure of his reign will be decided by that one thing.

The vast majority of Israel's kings failed this test. Even a surface reading of the Old Testament shows how often kings failed their duty. Shortly after I was baptized at the age of twelve, I decided to read through the books of 1 and 1 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Even then at a tender age, I got the point repeatedly expressed as a litany of lament throughout those books: ``King so and so [insert the name of almost any king you want to there] did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.'' That negative evaluation appears in the text for almost every king Israel and Judah ever had. Once in a great while, they got a king who passed the test: a King Hezekiah here, a King Josiah there. But the majority of kings, perhaps 90% or more, failed. Most kings worshipped other gods, and lived primarily for themselves and their rich cronies. By worshipping the god of luxury, or the god of war, those kings could never defend the poor, precisely because none of those other gods care about the poor. Only by worshipping Yahweh, the God who favors the poor, can rulers in any time or place adequately defend the poor. In fact, whether rulers defend the poor or not itself becomes a litmus test for deciding whether they are truly worshipping Yahweh. On the whole, Israel's monarchy failed abysmally again and again and yet again.

The truth is that from the very beginning God was opposed to kings. Way back in 1 Samuel 8 when the Israelites first asked God to give them a king, God replied in verses 11-18 that having a king was a profoundly bad idea. Once you have a king, said God, he will draft your sons to be soldiers. He will organize those soldiers into companies and battalions, and he will militarize the economy by ordering weapons to be manufactured. He will order your daughters to work as beauticians and cooks and bakers in the palace. He will tax your labor and the produce of your farms, not in order to benefit the poor, but in order to support high living for himself and his cronies in the capital city. God concludes this chilling summary of what a king will do by an even more chilling summary of what the effect will be: ``And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you on that day'' (verse 18). In other words, you are going to lament to God, wishing you had never asked for that kind of ruler, but God will remain silent and let you stew in your own juices for a while.

God's prediction quickly became reality. By the end of the reign of the third king, Solomon, people were sick of kings. Saul, David, and Solomon demanded sons and weapons for their military machines. Large numbers of daughters ended up in the palace not only as cooks, but also as concubines. First David, then especially Solomon, demanded taxes not for helping the poor, but for high living and expensive buildings that mostly served to inflate the glory of their human builders. God mostly stood aside and allowed events to get worse and worse. The northern kingdom of Israel stewed in the juices of the monarchy for about 270 years, and the southern kingdom of Judah for about 415 years, until God permitted each nation to be wiped out by other kings with scrappier armies, more dexterous weapons, and superior tactics.

This decisive failure of human government stirred up in the hearts of Yahweh's people a deep yearning for a new and different kind of ruler. You can see this yearning in the poetry of Isaiah, who dreamed of a servant so compassionate he would not even bruise a reed, a servant so in touch with human suffering that he himself became diseased, a servant so concerned for others that he willingly took upon himself the sins of the people (Isaiah 53).

The ruler described in Psalm 72 is the ruler God gave us in Jesus. Born among sweaty animals and pungent manure to under-privileged, no-account peasants, this Jesus grew up among the poor and spent most of his life among them. He displayed profound compassion to the lowest, the least, the lost. By the standards of Psalm 72, he was wildly successful. His success on behalf of the poor led to his coronation, nailed to a throne of rough wood in the shape of a ``t,'' wearing a crown of thorns.

And on Thursday, you and I will celebrate his birthday.
 Fri, 19 Dec 2003 16:53:29 GMT King Jesus November 23 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=King Jesus November 23 2003.rtf@CB1
``King Jesus?''
 John 18:33-38
Sermon by Heidi Siemens-Rhodes
November 23, 2003

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, "I find no case against him….'' (NRSV)
If you were to go to Bangkok, Thailand, right now, in late November, you'd first notice that the ``cool season'' there, which runs from November to February, is a far cry from anything we would really call winter. The average temperature in this coolest period of the year is a balmy 78 degrees Fahrenheit. So it would feel warm, to you, and as you walked down the busy streets perfumed with hot peppers and lotus flowers and exhaust fumes, you'd notice that many of the buildings were festooned with lights and bright decorations. Christmas lights? In a majority Buddhist country? You'd be half right, in that the lights are put up each year to celebrate the birth of a king, but not the King we are gathered here to worship today. December 5th is the King of Thailand's birthday, and the country goes all out to celebrate their beloved King Bumibol. He is currently the longest reigning living monarch in the worldhe'll be 76 this year, and will have reigned for 57 years.

I lived under the benevolent reign of King Bumibol for my last three years of high school, 1989 to 1992. My parents were country representatives for Mennonite Central Committee in Thailand for those three years and the next three as well, after I had come to Goshen College. There were so many differences between our lives in the U.S. and in Thailand that the fact that Thailand was a constitutional monarchy doesn't come to mind as one of the biggest adjustments we had to make. Yet, it was very clear living there that King Bumibol was well-loved by his people. The majority of businesses have a picture of the king on the wall (something I still look out for in Thai restaurants here, as a sign that the food will likely be authentic!). Thai money also carries the king's image, and we read in guide books that we were to be very careful not to step on a coin we had dropped to stop it from rolling awayto touch even the image of the king with one's foot was a desecration. But the place where my path intersected with King Bumibol's the most, as a high school student, was the movie theatre. Many theaters in Bangkok showed western, mostly American, movies with Thai subtitles. Before each movie, a song the king himself had written would be played, accompanying a series of photos of the King and Queen doing various humanitarian deeds, and everyone present in the movie theatre was expected to stand, and everyone did. The King of Thailand was, and is, not only much respected by his subjects, but much-loved.

Today the worldwide church celebrates Christ the King Sunday this is a king we are more familiar with. Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday of what is called Ordinary Time before the new church year starts on the first Sunday of Advent. It has only been relatively recently that Mennonites have begun to look to the seasons of the Christian Y
year, such as Advent and Lent, for patterns of thematic focus in worship. For that reason alone, I doubt that many of us have often celebrated Christ the King Sunday. Another reason this might be is that this is usually the Sunday just before Thanksgiving, and so in planning the theme of our worship we may have tended to focus on giving thanks on this Sunday.

At a different level, I also wonder what we really think of the kingly Jesus? Last Sunday Dan preached about Jesus' return in glory, and the children did a pre-enactment of welcoming Jesus as their king, but isn't this image of Jesus less common in our worship and storytelling than the baby in the manger or the dynamic young man traveling the dusty roads with his disciples? I wonder whether most of us don't more closely treasure other, less royal, images of Jesus. Jesus was a carpenter, a friend of children, an advocate of the poordo rich, kingly robes really fit the Jesus we serve?

I am reminded that President George Bush was the house guest of the Queen of England this past week, and I can only imagine the extravagance of such a visit. I heard that Bush refused the horse-drawn carriages, as a security risk, but was otherwise planning to enjoy the full royal treatment! In our world, as in the world of Jesus' day, royal equals extravagantly wealthy often equals blind to the needs of the poor and other concerns of peace and justice…could Jesus really be a king?

The kingship of Jesus is repeatedly at question in the entire passion drama in the Gospel of John. The section of John from which this morning's text comes chronicles the shenanigans the leaders of the temple had to go through to get rid of Jesus. In a book called The Dramatized Old Testament , the verses from John 18:28 to 19:16 are made into one unit, and the main action consists of Pilate, the Roman governor, running back and forth between the Jewish leaders outside his palace and Jesus inside his palace, trying to figure out what to do with Jesus. Pilate ultimately finds no case against him, as we heard read in our passage, but he ends up being pushed around by the temple leaders and the crowds, and does what they ask for in the end. He is not a role model for us in terms of kingly behavior or use of power. Then there are the Jewish leaders themselvesin the first scene, they refuse to even enter Pilate's palace, as this would mean ritual defilement. But despite this seeming rejection of the power of Rome in favor of God's reign, in the end, they shout, ``We have no king but Caesar!'' Clearly, they are not our role models here, either.

Of course, it is Jesus, the accused prisoner, whom we watch with bated breath to catch a clue of what it means to have power, to be a king. What can we learn from the interaction of Jesus and Pilate here? I think that there are three concepts which Jesus defines for us in this scene: power, truth, and discipleship.

First, Powerfor the Jewish leaders, Jesus was a threat to power, to ritual and teaching as usual. So, with the help of his own disciple Judas, they captured him, though he came willingly, and delivered him to Pilate. Here Jesus sits, abandoned by his own people, a ritually unclean Jew in Pilate's extravagant gentile palace, but his attitude is anything but fearful. As he does with other people in the Gospel of John, Jesus answers Pilate's questions with questions of his own. Despite the appearance of power in Pilate's hand, we know that the gentle power of Jesus, never forcing, is more lasting and ultimately real. It is the power of God's love that will eventually, in the case of Jesus and in our own, outweigh the powers of force and death.

Second, TruthJesus says that he has been born to testify to the truth, and that all who know the truth listen to his voice. The high priests and people have obviously rejected his truth, and Pilate can only respond with what may be either irony or dead-end philosophizing. His question, ``What is truth?'' is not a real opening for dialogue but a throw-away line as he goes out to talk with the temple leaders again. Clearly, he does not hear the truth, does not truly hear Jesus' voice, or chooses to ignore the shepherd's call.

But Jesus does have some words in this passage about those who do hear his voice, who know his truth, which brings us to the third concept, discipleshipJesus defines himself here by his follower's actions. If he were like the kings of this world, he says, his disciples would be fighting to defend him. They are not doing so, and this defines both his kingship and his followers'status as disciples. There is a specific example of this in the earlier verses of chapter 18, when Peter took his sword and cut off the ear of one of Jesus' captors. As you recall, Jesus told him to put his sword back in its sheath. Jesus defines himself in various ways in the Gospel of JohnI am the way, the truth, the life, I am the true vine, and so on. Here he accepts Pilate's definition of him as a king, but turns the definition on its head. Yes, he is a leader, and a leader for whom his disciples would gladly fight, if called to do so. But he is a new kind of leader who doesn't desire such a forceful rule.

So Jesus' power and reign are not like those of this world. He is a witness for the truth, and he defines his new kind of power as a power that does not need force to back it up. So when I wondered earlier whether Jesus could really be a king I was on the wrong track, it seemsthe kingship of Jesus is exactly what we need to counteract the visions of power and truth that we see in the society around us. Jesus is a king without the glitz and glamour, without the arms and armieshe is a new kind of king, of an ``upside-down kingdom,'' as the saying goes, where everyone has free choice, which makes our discipleship authentic instead of being required by law, forced by violence, or bought with riches.

Jesus of Nazareth, in this scene, is transforming definitions of earthly political power. But we can also know Jesus the Christ, the resurrected Son of God, as King of our personal lives. As Christians, we try to use power as he did, to discern his truth, to hear his voice. And if we hope to share the Goods News as we have lived it, it must somehow become clear to those around us that we are subjects of Jesus' reign, as clear as it is that King Bumibol is loved and respected by the people of Thailand, his subjects.
I talked a bit about the practices of the Thai people in reverence for their kingputting up his picture, being careful with his image on money, standing while his song in played.
So, what are the practices that declare our allegiance to Christ the King? In the Practicing Our Faith , a book edited by Dorothy Bass, we read that Christian practices are ``very down-to-earth. When people engage in a practice, they don't just talk about it, though words often play an important part. People-at-practice do things''(8). The essays in this collection touch on a wide variety of practices: honoring the body, hospitality, household economics, saying yes and saying no, keeping Sabbath, testimony, discernment, shaping communities, forgiveness, healing, dying well, and singing. I also think of Richard Foster's classic book, Celebration of Discipline , which I was first introduced to by Dale Shenk when he taught the Young Adult Sunday School class here at Berkey. Foster lists three categoriesthe inward disciplines: meditation, prayer, fasting and study; the outward disciplines: simplicity, solitude, submission and service; and the corporate disciplines, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. Because Christ loved us, we are empowered to love him through the rhythms of our everyday lives, to invite his transforming power into our daily routines so that his love might flow through us to others.

If you thought for a moment, could you list five or ten things that you do in a day, or in a week, that you wouldn't do if you weren't a subject of Christ the King? Perhaps some of these would be more inward practices, ways you try to be, rather than things you do. How do you experience the upside-down-ness of being a follower of this new kind of king? If we took the time to reflect on this right now and shared the results in small groups, I'm sure it would be enlightening and inspiring and challenging to us all.

Today is Christ the King Sundaylet us renew our allegiance to this new kind of king.
Today is the last Sunday before Adventlet us anticipate his coming as a helpless baby, needing the care of his earthly mother and father.
Today is the Sunday before Thanksgivinglet us give thanks to God for Jesus' example of majesty in humility, and in giving thanks, turn more and more parts of ourselves over to the transforming reign of Christ the King.

Amen.
 Thu, 4 Dec 2003 16:26:37 GMT Living and Dying Well January 19 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Living and Dying Well January 19 2003.rtf@CB1
Living and Dying Well
Philippians 1:12-26
Sermon by Dan Schrock
January 19, 2003

I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear.

Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again . (NRSV)
I am going to die; and I am not sure how much longer I will live. Someday, you too will die.
 A number of people in my mother's extended family have died from cancer. My mother herself was diagnosed with cancer in her late 40s, and died from it at the age of 55. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was also diagnosed with cancer in his late 40s, and died from it at the age of 49. Others in my grandfather's family have also died from cancer. When my mother died 10 years ago, I saw a potential pattern developing and began to realize that I too may well die from cancer.

Some day a doctor might tell me that I have cancer. If it happens to me at the same age it happened to my mother and grandfather, then I, now 43 years old, may have approximately six or seven more years until I too would have to cope with the typical round of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and lurking threat of death with which most cancer patients live. Of course I know very well that I may not get cancer until much later in life, or that I may never get cancer at all and live to be 80 or 90. Yet hereditary history proposes the feasibility that I may have only a decade or so left to live. For all I know, even now cancerous cells may be slowly growing somewhere within me.

For the last decade, the possibility of dying in my early 50s has hovered in my mind, sometimes at the front and sometimes in the back. For a number of months after Mom died in 1992, I had a series of nasty colds, one about every 3 weeks. One day I complained to Jenny about it. ``Why am I getting all these colds?'' I asked. ``Normally I only get them every 3 months instead of every 3 weeks. What's going on?''

``Maybe you're grieving,'' she said. ``Maybe this is the way you are expressing your grief.''

Jenny was right, of course. Until then I did not realize the depth of my grief. I was grieving not only because I missed Mom, but also because I was afraid of dying of cancer at an early age. I grieved Mom's death and grieved my own death.

Within the next few years, 4 things happened which helped me to work with this grief about dying. The first event was a healing service while attending Pastors' Week at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries. The theme that year was on the ministry of healing in congregational life. During one of several services that week I chose not to go forward for anointing and prayer as many people were doing, but decided to stay in my seat. Even though I didn't go forward, I felt the Holy Spirit blow through me anyway. To this day I still don't fully understand what happened, but somehow the Spirit secretly altered that hard inner knot of grief. All I can say is that I left the seminary chapel feeling freer and lighter, and that soon afterward I stopped getting so many colds.

The second incident was a conversation which occurred a few months afterward when I went to visit my grandmother, the grandmother whose husband and daughter both died of cancer. I admitted to her that I felt like a sitting duck, with the gun of cancer directly aimed at me, ready to fire at any moment. Now Grandma normally speaks bluntly; but on this occasion she perceived that I not only needed wise advice but also compassion. So she modulated her voice and said kindly, ``Look, Dan, you can't live your life that way. You'll be all right. You probably have a lot of years left, so go ahead and continue living your life.'' It's possible that at that point in time I would have brushed off those words if they had come from anyone else. But somehow these words seemed to have a great deal of integrity because after all, they came from my Grandma, who herself knew an awful lot about going ahead and living your life after watching a husband and a daughter die of cancer.

The third event was hearing Lynn Miller speak at an adult winter retreat at our church, a year after Mom's death. In one of Lynn's presentations he spoke about the miracle of God raising Jesus from death. Everything Lynn said about the resurrection I already knew in my head, because after all I've been in the church all my life and studied a lot of Bible and theology. But his choice of words that day, and the tone with which he said them, went right into my heart. With a grin on his face, he looked right into our eyes and said, ``Death is not a problem for God. God gets around death just as easy as you please. It was no problem at all for God to raise Jesus from the tomb. And if God raised Jesus easily, God will raise you and me easily too. Death is just not a problem for God.'' I went home that day full of joy that our God so easily reverses death.

The fourth event happened during a hike I took one afternoon while we were vacationing at the Petit Jean State Park in Morrilton, Arkansas, 5 years after Mom's death. Although I didn't plan it this way, my hike that day down to a stream and then back up the ravine became an expression of prayer. I realized that whether I died from cancer the following year, in 15 years, or in 50 years, it didn't really matter all that much since I have already had a good and full life. Some examples:

 ·         I have had a meaningful, joyful spiritual lifenot perfect, and not all that it could have been or all that it might yet becomebut meaningful nonetheless. I've known great love from and for God, received great peace from God, and felt great intimacy with my Maker and Lord and Lover. I've been a member of some great Mennonite congregations.
·         I've also had a good intellectual life of collegiate and graduate education, of reading and writing and learning. God clearly did not make me brilliant; but God did give me enough intelligence to appreciate good books and great ideas.
·         My jobs have mostly been fun. Through those jobs I've served others in the name of Christ and for the sake of Christ. My work as a pastor has been particularly rewarding. Suppose that a doctor told me that I might have only few years left to live. Would I still be a pastor? Yes, I would. I want to continue being a pastor, even if time is short. Being a pastor is what I am called to do and what I like to do.
·         My social life has been rewarding, although again far from perfect. I've been granted fine friends, a good marriage to a splendid woman, and the gift of two marvelous boys.
·         I've had relaxing vacations at many places in the U.S. I've savored some of the world's best music and art and food, from the humble to the somewhat grand. I've drunk some truly exquisite cups of coffee.
In short, I've already been granted much if not most of the best of this life. By almost any yardstick, my life has been full.

I have been inspired by Paul's words in Philippians 1. At the time he wrote this letter, Paul was in prison, probably in Rome, waiting for his trial to begin. Paul knows that if the judge at his trial finds him guilty, he will almost certainly be executed. Paul therefore senses that his life hangs in the balance, and that he may not live much longer. Even though Paul knows he can't choose when he will die, he nonetheless anguishes over whether it would be better at this point in his life to live or to die. If I live, he says, then I can continue to be with all of you fine Christians in Philippi and in other cities around the empire. I can continue to go about the work Christ has given me of starting churches and helping people to develop relationships with Christ. But if I die, then I get to go and be with Christ in a way that is not possible in this life. So I admit that I'm torn between staying and going; but what I really want from you Philippians is your prayers. Pray that when my trial finally begins, God will help me to speak the truth with all the boldness and conviction I can muster. What I care about the most is not whether I die next month or live for another 30 years. What's most important is that I proclaim Christ authentically, both in my living and in my dying.

Perhaps we can all learn a little from Paul. By the grace of God and the transformative working of the Holy Spirit, perhaps all of us can eventually say with Paul that whether we die soon or live long, our chief desire is to proclaim Christ authentically in our living and in our dying.

I, Dan Schrock, am going to die, sometime. You too will die, sometime. In our living and our dying, may we proclaim Christ, whom we will one day enjoy in all of his splendor, and to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Dying Well<style type="text/css span.c8 {color: #000000; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 80%} b.c7 {color: #000000; font-size: 80%} span.c6 {font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c4 {font-family: Times New Roman} d Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:58:12 GMT Look and Live March 30 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Look and Live March 30 2003.rtf@CB1
Look and Live
Numbers 21:4-9
Sermon by Dan Schrock
March 30, 2003

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. (NRSV)
They had been traveling around in the Sinai for 40 years now, and they were sick and tired, mainly of 5 things.

First of all, sick and tired of the terrain. There wasn't much to look at in the Sinai except rocks and sand and mountains and waterless canyons. While a few interesting animals lived there, such as ibex and gazelles, sand foxes and jackals, hedgehogs and moles, falcons and eagles, you didn't see them very often because all the animals fled when they sensed several hundred thousand Hebrews approaching. 1 True, every so often the people found an oasis with palm trees, which was a delight to their eyes. But mostly it was just sand and rock no matter where they looked. 40 years of marching around in an area the size of West Virginia, seeing nothing but sand and rock. 2
Second, they were sick and tired of the weather, which could be summed up in the word dry . The wettest parts of the Sinai only had 5 inches of rain a year, while the driest parts had only a fraction of an inch. In July and August, daytime temperatures soared to 100º under a merciless sun; and in January, but only up in the mountains and only at night, they dropped to 35º. 3 It was hot and dry.

 Third, they were sick and tired of the food. The only food people 40 years old and under had ever eaten was manna and quail. Eating luxurious food like fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic (Num 11:5) had happened so long ago in Egypt that only the people who were 45 and older could dimly remember how such food tasted or what it even looked like. After 40 years of eating nothing but manna and quail, the Hebrew cooks had tried every conceivable way of cooking the stuff: they baked it, fried it, stewed it, sautéd it, roasted it, broiled it, casseroled it, boiled it, mashed it, even tried it raw if they were really desperate for something new; but no matter what they did it was still the same manna and the same quail. Think of eating chicken and plain white bread for 40 years with no vegetables or fruits, no salads or seasonings, and you can understand how sick and tired they were with the food.

 Fourth, they were sick and tired of camping. You and I tend to get sick of camping after only 2 or 3 weeks, when we are usually relieved to get back home again. These folks had been doing it for 2,080 weeks, in tents made of sheepskin and goatskin. Unload the tent. Unpack the tent. Put up the tent. Sit in the tent. Lie down in the tent. Daydream in the tent. Play with your children in the tent. Eat manna and quail in the tent. Leave the tent to go to the bathroom (preferably in the sand somewhere outside the camp). Sleep in the tent. Hear your neighbors arguing with each other over in the neighboring tents. Pack up the tent. Load up the tent. Walk all day long in the hot sun to a new campsite and then do it all over again. Unload the tent. Unpack the tent. Put up the tent. Live 14,600 days in that ragged, filthy, moth-eaten tent.

Fifth, these people were sick and tired of God. Yes, sick of God. Maybe especially sick of God. While everyone agreed that slavery in Egypt had been a terrible thing, was this hateful life in the wilderness any better? Why were they still living in this rotten place with boring scenery, boring weather, boring food, and boring people?

So they complained. They wept in their tents (Num 11:10). They got angry. They wallowed in self-pity. They moped. They sulked. They got into arguments with each other (Num 12, 16). They became bitter. They complained and complained some more. The book of Numbers got its name from all the numerical lists it contains; but it could just as easily been called the book of Complaints.

Now if you want the truth, God was sick and tired too. Sick and tired of these people. Several times God had threatened to kill them all in divine frustration, but each time Moses persuaded God to lay off and have mercy (Num 11:1-3, 14:1-23, 16:41-50). Still, God was sometimes angry enough to spit vinegar. For instance, take the time 2 years after leaving Egypt when the Hebrews complained they had no meat to eat. Let me quote what God instructed Moses to tell the people in response to this complaint for meat: ``Say to the people: . . . tomorrow . . . you shall eat meat; for you have wailed in the hearing of the Lord, saying, `If only we had meat to eat! Surely it was better for us in Egypt.' Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall eat not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but for a whole monthuntil it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to youbecause you have rejected the Lord who is among you, and have wailed before God, saying `Why did we ever leave Egypt?' (Num 11:18-20).

And that's just what happened. A wind blew up and dumped so many quails around the campsite that the poor birds were stacked 3 feet deep in a ring that stretched a day's journey on all sides (Num 11:31). Surrounded by a wall of quails. So many quails they stank. So many quails they rotted. So many quails that the Hebrews gagged on a sea of meat.

In other words, everyone involved in this enterprise was sick and tired of everybody and everything else. The people were angry at Moses and at God. Moses was angry at the people for being so cantankerous and angry at God for laying on him the burden of having to lead such ornery people (Num 11:10-15). God was angry at the people and on at least one occasion, even got angry at Moses (Num 20:1-13). Everyone was behaving badly, frustrated that life wasn't perfect and other people weren't perfect either.

Finally God had had enough.

One night snakes slithered into the campsite of Israel, poisonous snakes, not hundreds of them but tens of thousands of them. The snakes slid under the tent walls and bit whatever piece of human flesh was sticking out: fingers, arms, legs, toes. The people who were bit woke up crying in pain, the venom burning their skin. Soon hundreds of thousands of Hebrews were awake either from getting bitten or from hearing the wails of those who had been bit. When the sun crested the neighboring mountain, snakes were gliding across the sand between tents, hanging from tent roofs, worming their way into clay jars, watching you with emotionless eyes, threatening you with forked tongues. A collective wail arose from the camp to heaven, the wail of death and sorrow and repentance. ``Moses, Moses, we have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you! Pray to the Lord to take away these snakes!'' (Num 21:7).

So Moses prayed as he had prayed many times before, imploring God to save this people, appealing to God's mercy, reminding God that the nations would snicker at God if these people were all wiped out, reminding God that if only for the sake of divine integrity and divine reputation in the world, things would be far better if God saved these people (cf. Psalm 88).

God listened to Moses. And in the silence that followed Moses' supplications, God spoke to Moses. ``Sculpture a snake in bronze, just like the poisonous snakes swarming throughout the camp. Put this bronze snake on a pole, and tell everyone to look at it, because everyone who looks at it will live, even if they've been bitten.''

So that's what Moses did. The snake was not a great work of art, for Moses was no Michelangelo. But it worked. He attached the bronze snake to a pole 10 feet tall and planted the pole in the middle of the camp, and sent heralds throughout the tents telling people to look and live. Thus instruments of death became a symbol of life. Thus God took care of sin and saved the people.

One night about 1200 years after those events, two men were having a conversation. The first man, a fellow by the name of Nicodemus, was asking the second man, a fellow by the name of Jesus, about being born a second time. In this conversation Jesus suggests to Nicodemus that it is indeed possible to be born twice, the first time through biology and the second time through Spirit. Nicodemus is incredulous that such a thing could possibly happen, until Jesus reminds him of a story from his own religious tradition, the story of when Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness and saved the people from their sins. And by the way, continues Jesus, that story from the past will help you interpret an event that is going to happen soon: very soon now, the Son of Man will be lifted up just like that bronze snake was lifted up, and whoever looks on the Son of Man and believes will have eternal life (John 3:14).

That's just what happened. Soon afterward the Son of Man was attached to a pole 10 feet tall, experiencing in full measure what it's like to be bitten by the snakes of sin. You and I have also been bitten by the snakes of sin, destined for death. But if we look at the pole set up in the middle of our lives, Jesus attached to it, then we shall also live. Thus an instrument of death becomes the symbol of life. Thus God takes care of sin and saves the world.

 Notes
1.       ``Sinai Peninsula,'' Encyclopedia Britannica 2000. CD-ROM edition.

2.       Encyclopedia Britannica says the Sinai measures 12,500 square miles. The ___ Road Atlas lists West Virginia at ___ square miles.

3.       ``Sinai Peninsula.''
www.geocities.com/tuorfa =--> Look and Live<style type="text/css i.c8 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} span.c7 {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 80%} b.c6 {font-size: 80%} span.c5 {font-size: 80%} span.c4 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 04:58:13 GMT Standing and Walking in the Gospel of Peace August 24 2003.rtf http://www.berkeyavenue.org/Worship/Archives:=Standing and Walking in the Gospel of Peace August 24 2003.rtf@CB1
Standing and Walking in the Gospel of Peace
Ephesians 6:10-20
Sermon by Heidi Siemens-Rhodes
August 24, 2003

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak. (NRSV)

As a way of starting out this morning, I'd like us all to agree on something. I'm sure that all of us here in this room can and do agree on many things, but what I'd like to propose this morning is thisthat life is a series of choices, of lines drawn to separate one thing from another. We decide what to do in the present moment, and what to do next week, and how to respond in all of the specific situations of our days that continue to surprise us in their complexity and variety. Agreed? Good! I had a feeling that wouldn't be too tough!

An illustration of this principlethat life is made up of decisions and choicesis found in one of the rites of passage for first-year Masters of Divinity students at AMBS, where I'll soon be beginning my second of three years. All of us in the program took a battery of personality tests last year, in order to help us understand the personal strengths and weaknesses we would bring to a ministerial role. I'm sure many of us here today have taken personality tests, from something formal like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to the more informal magazine variety. These tests can be fun, (most people like to answer lots of questions about themselves!), but I've always been sort of frustrated by them, too, in that they tend to ask what you would do in this or that specific situation, completely out of context. For example, ``Yes or nothe more people you speak to, the better you feel?'' Well, who are these people I'm speaking to, and what have they said to me? Do I have somewhere else I need to be? Is it 6:30 a.m. or 11:30 p.m.? How can one answer such a context-less question? And yet, somehow, I have come out as the type ``INFJ'' each time I have taken the Myers-Briggs, the first time being almost 15 years ago. We do make choices daily, and we do base them on the bedrock of who we are and what we believe.

These choices that we make in our lives, these lines that we draw, add up to an affirmation and confirmation of our basic beliefs. Two examples from the realm of Christian ethics come to mindfirst, war tax resisters, people who feel unable to affirm pacifism on a personal and denominational level, while supporting the military with their earnings. Their choice to withhold, or donate portions of their taxes to humanitarian organizations, amounts to law-breaking or civil disobedience, and can have serious consequences for their freedom in our country (although from what I have heard, the IRS is fairly good at getting into private bank accounts to ``settle accounts'' without messing with the court system). Still, these individuals, our brothers and sisters, have drawn a line, and must be ready to face the consequences.

As a second example, a current hot-button issue in our denomination, and many others, as well as in our culture at large, is homosexuality. Now, many Christians read the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, to clearly state that same-sex union is abominable to God. If we affirm this line, we may pledge to ``Hate the sin and love the sinner,'' yet openly homosexual people who claim Christian faith will find in us, their brothers and sisters, opposition to their membership in the community of God that is the church. A line has been drawn, based on interpretation of scripture and life experience.

Ephesians 6: 10-20, which calls the Christian to put on the whole armor of God, confirms that we must make choices, that our choices matter, and that the battle between good and evil is real. Our post-modern culture says, ``You believe what you believe, I'll believe what I believe, and we'll both be happy.'' But Paul writes: ``Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.'' The battle, the necessity of making choices and taking stands , is real.

The word STAND comes up again and again in this passage: v. 11, ``so that you may stand against the wiles of the devil,'' v. 13, ``so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm,'' v. 14, ``Stand therefore,'' and here begins the litany of the armor God has given us: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. God equips us mightily in order to stand firm, to resist evil, to make choices, to draw firm lines and defend them.

So, we need the armor of God, we need it to stand firm and draw these ethical lines. But what happens when we armor-clad Christians do not agree among ourselves on those lines? When we wield the sword of the Spirit, that is the word of God , in ways which contradict the swordplay of our Christian brothers and sisters? Just as it is evident that our choices and our lines count, and that they form us, it is also evident that there is much variance in line-drawing even within any one small Mennonite congregation, let alone the broader Christian community or global Christian, multi-religious, and secular setting. What do we do, as God's warriors, when our weapons seem to be oriented in opposition to one another?

Here is where the heart of this passage comes in. You may have noted something I neglected in the list of armor I mentioned earlier. Let's look at verse 15: ``As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.'' Here is something new: a centerpiece of peace in this military image. But the shoes? Don't shoes seem like an afterthought in a pitched battle where flaming arrows are zinging here and there? We can see the necessity for a shield and helmet, but for shoes ?

In fact, appropriate shoes to support and protect the feet are a terribly important part of any outfit, especially in extreme circumstances such as those of battle. The dreaded WWI disease called trench foot was an infection caused by standing for days on end in the cold water that filled the trenches. It could lead to gangrene and amputation, after which a soldier's ability to serve was, needless to say, greatly impaired. By 1915, British soldiers were under orders to coat their feet with whale oil, and change socks at least twice a day in order to prevent trench foot. Proper footwear is a necessity, not just an afterthought. ( www.geocities.com/tuorfa =-->Heidi Siemens-Rhodes<style type="text/css u.c8 {font-family: Times New Roman} span.c7 {font-family: Courier New; font-size: 80%} i.c6 {font-family: Times New Roman} span.c5 {font-family: Times New Roman} div.c4 {font-family: Times New Roman; )

Another indication of the importance of this piece of God's armor, the footwear, is that it is the only one that implies outward motionshoes are made for walking. Christians are called to stand firm with defensive spiritual weapons, but we need shoes for walking, too, and these shoes are to be shoes of peace. I remember in high school drama class doing walking exercises: walk across the stage as a young girl, as an old man, as a clownhow we walk shows the world who we are. When I was in my senior year of high school, another girl and I won drama awards at a convention because when we walked on stage, the judges wondered how our director had convinced these middle-aged women to take part in a high school production. It was a dubious honor for 17-year olds to be told that we walked like middle-aged women, but our director had worked with us on that very thinghow you walk tells the audience who you are.

The Old and New Testaments both reflect this concept, that walking is a metaphor for identity, for a way of life. Micah 6:8: ``He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to WALK humbly with your God?'' Jesus, too, calls his disciples to follow him, and much of his ministry is journeying , walking from one place of need to the next, and often encountering people along the way.

So how we walk is very important, and this passage in Ephesians tells us that when we walk we are to proclaim the gospel of peace. PEACE is how we are to go out into the world, to live, to interact with each other. In other words, we need to cultivate the ability to draw ethical lines which we are able to defend in good conscience, but we are not to become bounded or blinded by them, and in doing so, harm or destroy relationship with others.

Certainly, our best example of such behavior is Jesus, who pushed those around him to make choices and follow them up with action, but who was able, even so, to be a friend of tax-collectors and prostitutes, and to continue to tolerate and teach the sometimes slow disciples. We read in Matthew 9 of Jesus having dinner at Matthew's house, with his disciples and many tax collectors and "sinners." Verse 11-13: When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." I imagine that if the (quote-unquote) ``sinners'' felt comfortable eating with Jesus and his followers, it was because Jesus felt comfortable with them. It is, ironically, the ``healthy'' ones, the Pharisees who presumed to draw lines which excluded some and included others, who are reprimanded by Jesus. Who are the righteous in this story, and who are the sinners? Where do the self-righteous Pharisees fit into Jesus' image of health and sickness? This, at least, is clearJesus was enjoying a meal, and presumably dialoguing, with people that his society considered sinners and outcasts.

Jesus knew how to ``Hate the sin and love the sinner.'' Now, this is a very hard thing to do. In college I spoke with a homosexual student about his experience in the Mennonite community, and he mentioned this phrase with bitterness. ``Hate the sin and love the sinner?'' he said. ``But I am the sin.'' As a community, we still have a lot of work to do on this, and other issues. This work will require of us both honest expression of our beliefs (even when we'd rather not do the work of putting things into words), and genuine listening to our sisters and brothers (even when it seems clear to us that they are in the wrong). Perhaps then we will demonstrate love for the other, not as a sinner, but as another child of God.

I am reminded of a Christian-Muslim dialogue I was involved in about 10 years ago while I did a year of studies in Strasbourg, France. We came together for a few evenings of discussion, and while I don't think there were any converts in either direction, we weren't keeping score that way. We came together to understand each other better. Some of the Muslim participants wondered how we could worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and still call ourselves monotheists, worshiping one God. We asked them questions about the place of women in Islam, and articulate, devout women and men answered us. I still have questions about some of their answers, but I also remember being moved by their concern about how Jesus himself treated his mother in the gospels, referring to passages such as Mark 3:31-35, where Jesus responds to his family members by asking, ``Who are my mother and brothers? Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.'' No devout Muslim would disrespect his or her mother that way, they said, and this gave me food for thought. I treasure the memory of this interaction.

Now, discussing our differences civilly with people of another faith is a far cry from working out issues of church discipline, for example, within a denomination or congregation, where we might feel surer that we should all be on the same page. It is especially in these close relationships that we must struggle to truly hear each other and value understanding over unanimity. It is within the church that our shoes of peace get one of their toughest workouts.

We must make choices, draw lines, and hold ourselves and others accountable, BUT we must also learn from Jesus, and Paul, that such lines can be permeable to learning and friendship and love. These lines must allow us to walk through them to embrace those on the opposite side, to hear why others have drawn their lines differentlyor else our lines themselves become fences between God's people, and our defense of them becomes idolatry.

Finally, in the last verses of this passage, what does Paul want us to do, clad in the whole armor of God? What is the brave action to which we are called? To pray! In all circumstances, for the saints, for Paul himself, as he seeks to ``make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.'' It is a mystery, isn't it? How can we make important choices, draw lines firmly and with integrity, and simultaneously love beyond these lines? But it is this mystery, the mystery of standing and walking in the gospel of peace, that we have been given life and breath to solve. In this we are to be protected by the whole armor of God, in fervent prayer, in humble reliance on the Holy Spirit's guidance, in humble remembrance of the welcoming and challenging way of Jesus, in humble standing and walking with our God. AMEN
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