A teenager whose name is Robin wrote a letter to her youth pastor.

Let me read the letter:

During the sermon, I started this letter on the back of the church bulletin. Mom caught me and tore up the bulletin, so I’ll have to start over. Writing letters helps me stay awake during pastor Gooch’s sermons….

Anyway, I’ve been wondering: Do you think it’s possible to be a Christian without knowing much about God? I know I’m supposed to be a good Christian, but I’m not sure I’d recognize God if God walked into the room right now. How do you know what God is like? Some people call God Father; but I don’t like to think of God as Father, because my dad and I never got along, and he’s not even around anymore. If God is like my father, I’d rather not get acquainted…

Do you ever wonder about God? What is God like for you? I don’t even know what to call God. What do you think?

Mom says I ask too many questions. But I think it’s OK to ask you. I look forward to hearing from you.
Love, Lobin.

PS: After Mom tore up the bulletin, I stayed awake by counting the number of bricks in the wall in back of the pulpit. I counted 134.

Well, I am sorry we don’t have bricks for you to count here in our sanctuary while I am preaching. I will have to check the back of your bulletin later.

What is God like for you?

Why was Moses so eager to know God’s name?

In the biblical tradition a name told about the person. Thus, to know God’s name would be to know what God was like; how God acted; how God communicated; who God was, is and will be.

In Exodus 3:14, God reveals the name. The name is what God wants the covenant people to know about God. The name is I AM. In Hebrew, it is YAHWEH. What does this name, YAHWEH, I AM, tell us about God? The Biblical scholars suggest that the name YAHWEH is kin to the Hebrew verb to be. In Hebrew, the verb to be carried the power of both the present and the future tense; so the divine name not only points to what God is doing but also to what God Will do. I AM WHO I AM is one translation; I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE is also an appropriate translation.

So, God is not a temporary God. God will keep on keeping on; God will be tomorrow as well as today.
The name of God also underlines God’s freedom. God is defined only by God, so God acts as God chooses to act; I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE. According to some Biblical Scholars, YAHWEH is a way of saying, I cause. God has freedom to be and do and act and create and cause. Now, let us think about some biblical names and images for God. The Bible is filled with names for God.

In the Old Testament, common names for God are Yahweh (I AM), El Shaddai (God of the mountains, God Almighty), Adonai (Lord), and Elohim (it could be translated as God ‘above’ qods).

In Mark 14:36, Jesus used the Aramaic word abba when he prayed “remove this cup from me.” Abba is a term of familiarity much like the English word daddy. While the names Jehovah (Lord) and King imply a quality of awe or distance; abba implies that God is approachable or close. Jesus was willing to establish a non-typical name for God in order to express his own relationship with the divine. As Jesus did, developing your own images and names for God is very important because, they do make a difference in how you feel about God and what you expect of God.

What is God like for you? What would you draw if I ask you to draw your own image of God on the paper?

What is God like for you?

Today, I would like to share with you one of my personal images of God. Does anyone like bike-ride? You know, this coming Saturday, some of you are going to bike riding. This reminded me of one summer afternoon. Ed Nelson, one of my previous church members of Mendham, took some of us to bike ride to a beautiful mountain near Delaware river on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Poor Ed could not enjoy the bike ride for I was not on everyone’s level. So many times, he needed to stop and wait for me. I even fell down with my bike on a rough path because, often times, I forgot about what I was supposed to be doing because the beautiful nature got my heart. I was busy looking around the beauty. Ed was very patient. He did not rush me to catch up with the group or try to teach me how to ride better. He would just wait when I struggled or when I needed some time to stop to look around and fall into a deep thought. And I saw God there.

When I was in the senior high, I saw God as my observer, my judge: keeping track of the things that I did wrong so as to know whether I merited heaven or hell when I die. I recognized while I was wrestling with my bike that day, it seemed as though life was rather like a bike ride. But it was a tandem bike, and I noticed that God was in the back helping me pedal.

I don’t know just when it was that He, my God, suggested we change places, but life has not been the same since—life with my Higher Power. God makes life exciting! But when He took the lead, all I could do was to hang on! He knew delightful paths, up mountains and through rocky places and at breakneck speeds. Even though it looked like madness, He said, “Pedal!” I worried and was anxious and asked, “Where are you taking me?” He laughed and didn’t answer, and I started to learn to trust. I forgot my boring life and entered into adventure.

When I’d say, “I’m scared,” He’d lean back and touch my hand. He took me to people with gifts that I needed, gifts of healing, acceptance, love and joy. They gave me their gifts to take on my journey, our journey, God’s and mine. And we were off again. He said, “Give the gifts away; they’re extra baggage, too much weight.” So I did to the people we met, I found that in giving I received, and our burden became light.

At first I did not trust Him in control of my life. I thought He’d wreck it. But He knows bike secrets—knows how to make it lean to take sharp corners, dodge large rocks, and speed through scary passages. And I am learning to close my mouth up and pedal in the strangest places. I’m beginning to enjoy the view and the cool breeze on my face with my delightful constant Companion. And when I’m sure I just can’t do any more, He just smiles and says, “Pedal!” “Go on, I’m with you!”

For me, God is dearly beloved Companion who is my source of true love and joy, my hope and strength, who gives me the light of life, enlightening the darkness of my heart, who laughs and, sometimes, cries with me, who comforts me like a Mother, guides me like a Father, helps and supports me like a Friend.

What is God like for you?

God can use your pain
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13

In our Hebrew lesson this morning, the writer begins by quoting Proverbs 3:11 12,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”

When Lydia, my daughter was 6 years old, she told me that she wanted to take a piano lesson. She said that she wanted to play the piano like a concert pianist, and she pretended to play like a concert pianist before me. So I arranged the piano lessons for her. Exactly after two lessons, this cute little Lydia, in a very disappointed and upset voice, told me that she would like to quit the lesson. I asked her why.
She said,
“Mom! I took “two” lessons already. Two!!
How come I cannot play as well as those concert pianists??”

There is a young man who is worse than Lydia. This young man decided he wanted to be a boxer. After the first lesson of being sore and swollen, scratching his head, the battered youth asked to his coach. “Well, sir, I was wondering if I could take the other twenty-five lessons by correspondence?”

One of the lessons of life you and I have probably learned is that you can’t take the course of hard knocks by correspondence.
You’ve got to hang in there and learn your lessons the hard way.

Today’s text from Hebrews is about discipline.
It’s an important lesson for many reasons.

FOR ONE THING, DISCIPLINE IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE.

Some of us rebel against the idea of discipline.

In the children’s book Frog and Toad Together, Frog bakes a batch of cookies.
“We ought to stop eating,” he and Toad say, as they keep eating.
“We must stop,” they resolve, as they eat some more.
“We need willpower,” Frog finally says, grabbing another cookie.
“What is willpower?” asks Toad, swallowing another mouthful.
“Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much,” Frog says.

Frog discusses a variety of ways to help with willpower–for example, putting the cookies in a box, tying the box shut, putting it high up in a tree–but Toad points out (in between bites) that this won’t work. They could still climb the tree and untie the box. In desperation, Frog finally dumps the remaining cookies outside on the ground: “Hey, birds!” he calls. “Here’s cookies!”
“Now we have no more cookies,” says Toad sadly.
“Yes,” says Frog, “but we have lots and lots of willpower.”
“You may keep it all,” Toad replies. “I’m going home to bake a cake.” (1)

Most of us can relate. Willpower is tough.
We know we ought to be more disciplined, but our hearts are not in it.
Personal discipline is one of the keys to success in life.

But that’s not the kind of discipline the writer of Hebrews is talking about. He is using the word discipline much as we might when we say “we discipline our children.”

How were you disciplined as a child?

Some of us had harsh discipline; some of us had less.
And, of course, each generation thinks the other was a little misguided in their discipline. Older members of our congregation will relate to one person’s observation of the modern family, “A modern home is one where everything but the kids can be controlled by a switch.”

Some of you perhaps grew up in homes where a switch did control you and your siblings. I wonder if some of us were more lenient in the way we raised our kids than we were raised ourselves. I know those of you who have grandkids are probably more lenient with them than you were with your children.
Some people, when they think of discipline, immediately think of punishment. Maybe this is why we resist discipline so much–we associate it with another proverb, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

If you focus on discipline as punishment, you will miss what the writer is saying. What is the aim of discipline?

The aim of discipline is to help us grow into mature responsible adults. Our goal is to help our child develop the strength and discipline needed to be a successful adult.
Keep this goal in mind as we read this passage from Hebrews.

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”

That’s a mouthful right there.
“The Lord disciplines those he loves.”

Here is where the difference between punishment and discipline is important. You may punish a child you do not love, but you will not discipline a child you do not love. Do you see the difference?
It’s too much work, too much stress, to seek to discipline a child you do not love. You may spank them, out of anger. But that’s not discipline. That’s a way of venting your frustration; it has no real goal of helping the child learn and grow. It’s a lot easier to ignore a child than it is to lovingly help that child grow into a responsible human being.

Discipline is a means of helping a child be all he or she can be.

The writer continues:
“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

THE WRITER IS FOCUSING ON ENDURING HARDSHIP.
He is dealing with the question why bad things sometimes happen to good people. He is helping us see that not all hardship is bad. The writer is not saying that hard times come directly from God. So many people have been damaged by the notion that God plays havoc with our lives, rewarding us when we are good and punishing us when we are naughty. That’s not what the writer is saying.
This is a hard world. But that does not mean that God has picked us out specifically to endure pain and suffering. Some of our problems we bring on ourselves through undisciplined living.
But there are many tragedies in life that just happen.

We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Perhaps we inherited a defective gene, and all the clean living in the world would not have kept it from causing us problems.
Perhaps someone else acted irresponsibly and we suffered because of it. But God has not picked us out to punish us. Jesus ended that controversy for all time when he said,
“God sends his rain on the just and the unjust.”

WHAT THE WRITER IS SAYING IS THAT, WITH GOD’S HELP WE CAN LEARN FROM OUR HARDSHIP.
The writer is helping us re-frame our painful experiences.
Look at hardship not as something sent to destroy you.
Rather look at it as a means of becoming a stronger person.

Could God remove hardship from us?
Yes, in the same way He could have taken the cup of suffering from Jesus on the night he was betrayed.
The truth of the matter is that all of us learn things best the hard way./

Nancy Guthrie begins her book HOLDING ON TO HOPE with these words:

“Two weeks after the neighbor’s house burned down, I gave birth to a daughter we named Hope . . .”
Hope was born with a fatal genetic disorder.
She lived slightly more than six months.

The experience was devastating for Nancy and her husband. Guthrie writes,

“Early on in my journey, I said to God, ‘Okay, if I have to go through this, then give me everything. Teach me everything you want to teach me through this. Don’t let this incredible pain be wasted in my life!’”
She continues, “God allows good and bad into our lives and we can trust him with both. Trusting God when the miracle does not come, when the urgent prayer gets no answer, when there is only darkness–this is the kind of faith God values most of all.” (2)

She’s right.
This is the kind of experience that produces spiritual giants.
Be careful when you thank God for never giving you a burden to bear.
Sometimes those burdens produce blessings.

If you’re battling with a terrible hardship right now, whatever it might be, here’s what I want you to pray.
“Lord I know you’re with me, and that you won’t leave me. If possible, I would like this cup taken from me, but, if not, then help me learn from it. Make me a stronger person because of it.
Help it ultimately to make me more like Jesus,
in whose name I pray. Amen.”
Remember, God didn’t cause your pain,
but God can use your pain.

If you let Him, God will help you be all God has called you to be.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time,” says our scripture for the day, “but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

That is the goal.
Then our hardship will not have been in vain.

——————————————————————
1. Ortberg, John, The Life You’ve Always Wanted ( Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002).
2. Holding On to Hope, Tyndale, 2002.

DISCIPLINE
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13

Object: a strainer or a sieve

Good morning, boys and girls. I raided the kitchen again this week and brought something that’s pretty handy. Do you know what it is? It’s a strainer. A strainer is used to separate the good food from the stuff you don’t want to eat. For instance, how many of you like spaghetti? To cook spaghetti noodles, you boil them in water. But you don’t keep the water, do you? You pour it out. You put the spaghetti noodles in the strainer and let the water flow down the drain. You can also use a strainer when you wash fruits and vegetables. You put the fruits and vegetables in the strainer and pour water over them. The water and the dirt wash right down the drain, while the fruits and vegetables stay in the strainer. See, the strainer helps us to separate the good food from the stuff we don’t want to eat, like noodle water or dirt.
Did you know that tough times, sad times, are like God’s strainer? When we put fruits and vegetables in the strainer to wash them, what gets washed away? The dirt, right? When we go through tough times and sad times, it washes away the “dirt” from our character—our selfishness, our fear, our meanness. God made us to learn and grow from our tough times. We can grow to become the people God wants us to be. Remember the next time you go through a tough time that this is a chance for God to wash the “dirt” out of your life. God will give you the strength and the hope to make it through.

THE FEAR FACTOR
John 20:19-31

Today we will be talking about The Fear.

One of the most popular programs on television is a show on which contestants do really disgusting things in order to face their deepest fears.

It’s called simply, “The Fear Factor.” I don’t understand why people subject themselves to on Fear Factor. It’s funny, though, how people do not share the same fears.

Lydia, my daughter, loved snake when she was little unlike her mother. Somehow the snake fascinated her and she could even touch them. But then she would run screaming for a moth that flying a mile away from her. Different strokes for different folks, as we sometimes say.

I guess we are all afraid of something.

The disciples of Jesus knew about fear.

It was Easter Sunday night and there they were, cowering behind locked doors. We have to wonder why. The writer of the Gospel says it was out of fear of the Jews. But there’s nothing in the record to indicate that after Jesus’ crucifixion the Jewish authorities had any intention of doing harm to his followers.

Maybe it was the Romans they really feared. But that’s doubtful as well. The Roman authorities gave every indication that they could have cared less about these disciples. They seemed reluctant to prosecute Jesus; why go after his followers?

So why the locked doors?
One author suggests that it was Jesus himself that the disciples were afraid of. “Just hours before His death,” says this author, “they had all professed that they would never leave Him, even be willing to be killed along with Him. If Jesus were now alive, what would He say to them? What would He do to them?

Would He say, ‘So, you were going to stand by your Man, huh?’ ‘Going to fight for me, eh?’ ‘Where were you, James and John? You always wanted to be one on my right hand and the other on my left.

Where were you when I was being beaten, when I was stumbling my way up Golgotha, when I was strung up to die?’

He could have told Peter, ‘I heard your denials, and I heard that rooster crow.’

They might have thought that Jesus was going to find them and take out his anger on them just like He chased the moneychangers out of the Temple. So they hid behind locked doors, not out of fear of the Jews, but out of fear of Jesus.” (1)

Maybe that was it.

Certainly, it would not be the first time the disciples were afraid of their Lord. There was something about him that was as intimidating as it was endearing. No one could do the things that he had done without having his friends be in awe. And now, to crown it all, he had overcome the final enemy–death. Who wouldn’t have been uncomfortable in his presence? What do you say, when you are a mere mortal, to the Son of God?

So they cowered and they waited, for what? They did not know.

How do you deal with reports that your closest friend has been raised from the dead? How do you process that? He hadn’t just been in a coma. He hadn’t just swooned. On Friday he was dead. On Saturday he was dead. Then comes Sunday and all of a sudden he’s alive. How do you cope with that?

This is the most dramatic moment in all of human history—and they’ve locked themselves up. This is why the stories of Christ ring so true. Nobody would have made this stuff up. His disciples were acting like girlie-men—to use the governor of California’s favorite expression. The most exciting week in all human experience and all they want to do is escape, hide, fade into the woodwork.

What were they afraid of? What are you and I afraid of?

Oh, we’re afraid, all right. The disciples were not the only ones who cowered behind locked doors. Psychologists tell us that we are also afraid. And sometimes those who are loudest in denying that they are afraid are the most fearful of all. I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand, but is there anyone in this room who is afraid of the future: future for yourself or your children?

Anyone afraid of failing health, afraid of ending up helpless in a nursing home?
Anyone afraid of death?

Anyone here afraid for your children, wondering how you could possibly go on if something happened to someone you love?

Anyone here fearful of losing a spouse?

We’re afraid.

Afraid of a changing society, afraid of a faltering economic climate,
afraid of terrorism, afraid of driving on the highway, afraid of changes in our appearance. Afraid of disappointing our parents, afraid over a troubled marriage. Afraid of failure, afraid of what people think of us.
Afraid that they don’t really think of us at all. Afraid of appearing like a fool.

What are we afraid of? What aren’t we afraid of?

Ironically we may be at the same time, the most secure generation that has ever lived, and the most fearful generation that has ever lived.
And so we live behind locked doors.
Afraid of commitment.
Afraid of joy.
Afraid to be all we can be.
Afraid to open ourselves to the power and the possibility of Christ’s love.

Why are we so afraid?

Here’s an interesting theory.
Psychiatrist and economist Juliet Schor has spent some time studying the advertising industry and its attempt to reach younger audiences with its message of “Buy, buy, buy!” Schor reports that children as young as eighteen months can identify McDonald’s Golden Arches, Disney’s Mickey Mouse, and the Nike swoosh symbol with ease. More and more, advertisers are aiming adult marketing at children, because studies show that children often influence billions of dollars worth of adult purchases.

In Schor’s surveys, she discovered that the more a child is exposed to advertising and materialism–the more anxious and depressed he or she is.
These kids have poor self-esteem, says Schor, because the messages they receive from the consumer culture tell them that they are not good enough, or they will never be happy enough, unless they look a certain way or buy certain products. Kids are learning at ever younger ages that happiness comes in a box, a bottle, a toy, or a piece of clothing. (2)

Do you get that? The whole emphasis of the advertising culture is to make us uncertain about ourselves so that we will go out and get what’s wrong with us fixed by buying certain products. They play on our fears, our uncertainties, our insecurities.

Living behind locked doors.
All of us have been there. And suddenly, from out of nowhere, Christ appears among us. The doors cannot keep him out. Nor can a lack of doors. It may happen in a worship service. The words of a hymn, or a lesson from scripture, or something that is said from the pulpit. It might happen somewhere far from church. Like on the way to Emmaus.

There are many people who run from Christ. Who head for the mountains or the lakes or simply stay in bed on the Lord’s day. They think they’re safe, away from his presence. Then they turn on the television or open a book or stare at a sunrise, or they are in conversation with a friend, and suddenly Christ says a word to them. And something begins to stir within them. Christ passes through locked doors, and he comes to each of us and he offers us . . . peace.

That is what he offered to those first disciples locked away in that room following his resurrection. Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
I wonder if they realized what a gift he was giving them?

Usually we think of peace as the absence of something. If I asked you to define peace, many of you would say it is the absence of war, it is the absence of conflict. Someone else might say, it is the absence of fear. But in Christ’s dictionary, peace is not the absence of some THING, but the presence of SOMEBODY.

Peace is the presence of Christ in a broken world.

It is the assurance that he has overcome the world, and that because he has overcome, so can we overcome as well.

On that first Easter Sunday evening, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear . . . Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

That’s what peace is. It’s knowing that in this world of uncertainty and strife Christ is alive. This is how the fear factor is removed from our lives. The writer of John’s Gospel says that Jesus “showed them his hands and side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” Suddenly they were no longer afraid. They knew he was alive. They knew that through his strength, not theirs alone, they could endure any trial, overcome any foe. This is how Christ helps us deal with our fears. Christ broke through the locked doors and made himself known when we were in fear.
Christ walked and conversed with us and made himself known when our eyes were filled with uncertainty.

He gave us himself. That is where our hope lies as well.
Our greatest problem is not our fear, but our lack of faith.

If Christ resides within, we can handle anything that comes without.
Do you know why it’s dark at night?
I have heard this answer from a little girl, named, Mary:
It’s dark because, “that’s when God puts the world into his pocket!” (3)

We don’t have to be afraid.
God has the world in his pocket.
Christ is alive.

He shows us his hand and his wounded side and he says, “Peace be with you.”

Have you discovered that peace, or do you still live with the “fear factor?”

———————————————————————-

1. This unattributed quote was found at http://desperatepreacher.org/texts/john20_19.htm
2. “Junk Culture” by Andrea Sachs, Time, October 2004, Bonus Section.
3. Bill Bouknight, “Just a Thought,” 2/10/04, Preaching Now, Vol. 3, No. 7 February 17, 2004.

Jesus’ Invitation
Matthew 4: 12-17

Someone once wrote a letter to the advice columnist DEAR ABBY that is both amusing and downright gross.

Here is that letter:

DEAR ABBY: I am employed at a very large nursing home. One of the elderly residents here lost her dentures, so with a pillow case in hand, she crept into the rooms of the other occupants while they were sleeping and picked up every pair of false teeth from the water glasses. She then returned to her room and tried each set until she found one that fit her. Then she sneakily returned the sets of teeth [without any regard for which set of dentures belonged to which glass].
The next morning, everyone was walking around the place with overbites and underslung jaws, complaining bitterly that their dentures didn’t fit!
How do we straighten out this mess?
Or must we buy new dentures for one hundred residents?

The writer signed her name, Dilemma.

Here’s what Dear Abby wrote back:

DEAR DILEMMA: Call in a dentist and ask him to examine the mouths of the patients and the dentures, in order to return them to their rightful owners.
(P. S., she adds, Denture-marking kits are available. Get one and use it, before another teeth thief gums up the works.)

Can you imagine how much grumbling there was that day as people tried to adjust to a set of teeth that were not their own?

It could be a parable of the way many of us live today.

I see people all the time who are disgruntled, out of sorts, unhappy–not because of the fit of their teeth, but because of the fit of their theology.
They’ve never grown beyond the simple Sunday School faith of their childhood. They’ve never appropriated an understanding of God appropriate for living in the adult world.
A man, a life-long church member, stood up to explain his philosophy of life. “I feel closer to the Eastern religions than I do Christianity,” he said. “I’m not interested in what happens to me when I die. I want to experience heaven in the here and now. I see salvation as a process, not a final reward. I guess that puts me closer to being a Buddhist than a Christian.”

What would you say to such a witness? Here’s someone who has been brought up in the faith, but he’s having some very fundamental questions about the meaning of life. Is Christianity about buying a ticket for the sweet by-and-by–or is there something more? What does it all mean? Should the answers found in Eastern religions be more valid than the answers we find in Christ? What would you say to this seeker?

Here’s what I would say.
I would ask this man a question, “Have you ever really read the teachings of Jesus?” Actually that is a pretty safe question. Few people in the church have really read the teachings of Jesus. They’ve heard about those teachings from preachers and teachers. But, as far as sitting down with reading what Jesus actually said about life, few people in our time have actually made that effort.

It’s like the result that Tonight Show host Jay Leno got when he conducted “man-on-the-street” interviews, questioned some young people about the Bible.

“Can you name one of the Ten Commandments?” he asked two college-age women. One replied, “Freedom of speech?” Leno then turned to a young man and asked, “Who, according to the Bible, was eaten by a whale?” The young man’s confident answer was, “Pinocchio.” (1)

If you have ever read the synoptic Gospels–that is Matthew, Mark and Luke–you surely realize that the life Jesus taught actually had very little to do with the sweet by-and-by.

It had everything to do with life here and now.
The Kingdom of God is not some far off event which has yet to be realized.
The Kingdom of God is anywhere God reigns.

Jesus said on one occasion, “The Kingdom is within you.”
On another he said, “You are not far from the Kingdom.”

The Kingdom is alive.
The kingdom is here.
The kingdom is now.
As it is often said, he didn’t come just to get us into heaven,
but to get heaven into us.

Now what would it take to get heaven into us?

Jesus said in our lesson for today, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
What does repentance mean?
Have you been there done that?

Repentance is more than getting rid of your vices.
Repent means quite literally “turn around.”

Repeat after me: Turn around!

Think about that for a minute and it makes sense.
If you are going to live the kingdom life, you need to reorient your life.
You’ve been living for yourself. The kingdom is about living for God.

Turn around.

You’ve been concerned about satisfying your short-term physical and emotional needs. The kingdom is about your long-term spiritual needs.
Turn around.

You’ve let your life get out of control. What shall you do?
Turn around.

All of us have a little dirt inside. That dirt is robbing us of our joy.
Turn around.

Kingdom living is also about healthy relationships—

relationships with your neighbor and with God.
The Gospels are all about relationships.
The reason Christ came is to draw us to God and to one another.
One good test to discover whether we are living in the kingdom is to ask,
are you able to love not only God, but also are you able to love all people?

People are ornery creatures.
Some people have let their lives get out of control.
Some people cheat–they cheat on their taxes, the cheat on their spouses, they take advantage of their employer or the welfare system.
Some people do the most grotesque things to their bodies.
Some don’t have very tidy sanitary habits.

I didn’t ask whether you approve of everybody, but can you love them?

Because most church people are such responsible people, it is sometimes difficult for us to accept and to love the very people for whom Christ gave his life.

Don Bakely pastored a church in Camden, New Jersey. A great challenge in the Camden church was creating unity among the middle-class, proper members of the church and the hard-living families of the surrounding community. Bakely was just starting to earn the trust of some of the local teens, members of a gang. They hung out around the church because they felt accepted there. But they were a rough group of kids who didn’t always fit in with the other church members.
One day, a teen called Big Mart had a confrontation with the church’s matriarch, a very proper woman named Ella. He called her a name that she had probably never heard before. She was furious, and she wanted Pastor Bakely to kick Big Mart and his friends out of the church. Pastor Bakely asked if she would listen first to a true story. Then, after she had thought about the story, she could decide on an appropriate way to deal with Big Mart. When Big Mart was just a child, his father had come home angry one night. He gathered up all the children, herded them into the living room, and forced them to watch as he murdered, and then dismembered their mother.
Can you imagine in your wildest dream anything more traumatic than that–witnessing the murder and dismemberment of your mother?
Was it any wonder that Big Mart was rough around the edges?
Was it any wonder that he called nice old church ladies vulgar names?
The future ministry of the church hinged on this woman’s influence.
How would she respond?

She looked the pastor in the eye, and announced, “I guess I am going to have to learn how to get cussed out.” (2)
My friends, Ella was learning what it is to live in the kingdom of God.

Jesus gives you an invitation:

Turn around, said Jesus.
Love God;
love your neighbor.
Repent.
Relate.

————————————————–
1. Christina Hoff Summers, “Are We Living in a Moral Stone Age?” Imprimi’s 27, no. 3, (March 1988), p. 1. Cited in Michael G. Moriarty, The Perfect 10: The Blessings of Following God’s Commandments in a Postmodern World (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1999).
2. Tex Sample, Hard Living People & Mainstream Christians (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), pp. 161-162.

Begging Bowls

For most of my Day-timer, life I began each day making a list – I list, therefore I am – and then spent the rest of the day checking it off, counting it twice, seeing if I’d been naughty or nice. After decades of trying to govern my life by lists, it finally hit me one day that if I can’t get even one day according to plan, what am I doing trying to get months and years and even decades to go “according to plan”?

Think about it. Has there ever been even one day when your schedule has gone exactly the way you planned it? My life has not gone in straight paths. Has yours? My path has often been in circles.
I now begin my day with a different image than that of a list.
I now begin it with this image… a begging bowl. I borrowed this idea from Sue Bender, who reminds us of the monastic tradition of the begging bowl (Everyday Sacred [1996]).
Each day, a monk goes out with a begging bowl. Whatever is placed in the bowl will be his food and drink for the day. Bender quotes the French playwright, Jean Genet, who said he wanted to roam the countryside like a monk holding a begging bowl, trusting life to fill it with what nourishment he needed.
A begging bowl is a very different way to go through each day. A begging bowl invites us to be open like never before to what each day offers and open to a God of infinite surprise.
What am I not seeing that I should see? What have I taken for granted? What are people placing in my bowl? How can each item placed there be a teacher for me in my own spiritual life?
Actually, even if you do not go through life with a begging bowl image, you do go through life as a begging bowl.
Physicists tell us that the universe is shaped like a bowl (those Hebrews were right). And each one of us is a bowl, a crusty clump of clay God scooped out of the earth and breathed into with the breath of life. Each one of us “holds these treasures in earthen vessels.”
So the real question is: How will your bowl be positioned in your life?
There are four ways your begging bowl can be positioned.
The first position is upside-down. There are people who are simply not open to new possibilities and surprises of the Spirit. For these people their bowl is more like an umbrella that keeps life and the Spirit away from them.
The second bowl position is right-side-up, open to the heavens, but already full. Many of us are so full of our own agendas, so fixated on our own productivity and creativity, that we have little space to receive gifts from God.
The third bowl position is up, open, but riddled with stains, cracks and debris. Whatever gets put into it gets polluted and colored by our pain, bitterness and anger. Or it simply seeps out through the cracks that have not been filled or healed.
The fourth bowl position is up, empty, clear, clean and censed. There may be all sorts of cracks in it. But those broken places are actually where we are the strongest, as God’s grace and forgiveness have healed our lives of its fissures and fragmentation.
In today’s scripture, the purpose Matthew seems to suggest for Jesus’ walk on the wild side has more to do with building up the disciples’ life of faith than bailing out their swamped boat. At Peter’s request, Jesus commands Peter to join him on the water. The disciple leaps out of the boat, anxious to test his abilities as one of Jesus’ chosen ones. But once he is in the midst of his discipleship experience, and beyond the safety of the boat, Peter begins to panic. Instead of seeing Jesus, he suddenly sees only the tumult of water, wind and waves that are all around him.
Peter’s own fears and doubts begin to pull him down, and he starts to sink.
The miracle story from this week’s gospel text descries how Jesus appeared to his disciples in a totally unexpected place and time. The disciples had suffered through a long night of wild waves. Yet, they are still struggling to get beyond the midpoint of their journey. Land is yet a long way off. Certainly this was no time to expect visitors-especially someone without a boat. When they least expected it, suddenly, … there was Jesus, striding right up to them in the morning light.
Jesus’ appearance in that place is so unexpected that the disciples don’t even recognize him. Their first reaction in the face of this utterly unpredictable encounter is one of fear. Fright closes their eyes and hearts to the true identity of their visitor. Because they don’t expect to see Jesus out walking on the water, they jump to a conclusion and decide they are seeing a ghost. Their fear sees only a terrifying ghost instead of their beloved teacher and master.
Like the disciples in today’s lesson, how many times have we been given the opportunity to experience a living personal encounter with Jesus—and yet have failed to recognize his presence before us?
In what position is your begging bowl?

Lewis Smedes, in one of his many best-selling books, A Pretty Good Person (1990), he tells this story:
A few years ago, I spent a hot August day at the Los Angeles county jail, waiting for the wheels of the system to open jail doors for someone I was bailing out. It takes a long time to spring somebody from this mammoth prison, so I had to wait and watch. I watched the pimps in white suits bailing out their prostitutes; lawyers in black suits bailing out their clients; drug dealers bailing out their peddlers; girls bailing out their boyfriends; and drunks who disturbed the peace the night before slinking out on their own. As I took in the sleazy parade, I began to see everyone in it as a full-time, obsessive-compulsive, addictive, hopeless loser.
By noon, I lost any desire to know any more about them than that. At mid-afternoon, I decided to go out for a cold drink. As I walked out the door, I met a lanky black man wearing a black suit with a priest’s collar-a prison chaplain, I figured, on his way out at the end of a day’s work of grace. I introduced myself on our way to the parking lot. He gave me the feeling that he had time to talk a while, so I asked him to join me for a drink.
It turned out he wasn’t a priest; he was an insurance salesman. He devoted one day out of every week to bring a moment of grace to those locked up in the county jail. He wore the cloth so that everyone there knew what he was up to. I asked him the sort of questions any decent Pharisee would ask.
“Don’t you keep meeting the same people, coming in and going out? Recidivist, repeaters, losers?”

“Well,” he replied, “every person locked up in that jail has got somebody with a key to let him out. But I meet people in my business every day who are locked up in a cell inside their hearts and nobody on Earth has a key to let them out. So I don’t see an enormous difference between them.”
“Okay, true enough, but still, aren’t most of the men you meet inside this jail hard-core losers?”
“Well, maybe they are, but that’s just not the way I divide people up. The only two categories of people I really care about are the forgiven people and the unforgiven people.”
He had me.
“I met Jesus today,” I told Doris when I came home.
“Oh yeah? What did he say to you?”
“He told me, I was a Pharisee. Have eyes. Don’t see” (1)
What keeps you from seeing the unexpected Jesus?
Is it indifference that keeps your eyes unfocused so that nothing can affect your own life?
Is it bewilderment that keeps your eyes darting from one flashing image to the next, unable to sort out one from the other?
Is it bafflement that keeps your eyes wide but your mind cloaked in confusion?
Is it boredom that keeps your eyes closed because your heart allows nothing to stir it anymore?
Is it fear that keeps your eyes averted, afraid to open any part of yourself to new experiences or encounters?
Do you keep to the same paths every day, never varying your life patterns so that the unexpected or the out-of-the-ordinary can never find you?
Or do you keep moving all the time-new friends, new jobs, new loves, new lovers, -so that no one ever has a chance to really find your heart?
Just as the risen Jesus refused to stay in the tomb, so the Christ of faith refuses to live only in our church sanctuaries on Sunday mornings. Jesus was raised from death into life-and that life is everywhere and all the time.
When we least expect Christ to be present in our lives-there he is! Without power, without friends, without a chance, Christ appears.
Without a name, without parents, without healthy Christ appears.
Without fear, without self-concern, without guile, Christ appears.

Is your faith great enough to recognize Christ when he appears before you? Christ calls on our faith to recognize a presence in our lives, whatever the surprising, unexpected shape he may take.
By the way, I still make lists. But now I keep them small and put them in my begging bowl for the Spirit to do with them whatever.
*************
(1) Lewis B. Smedes, A Pretty Good Person: What It Takes to Live With Courage, Gratitude and Integrity [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990], 137-38.

Title: God is Good! All the Time!

How many of you came in on time today?
Never be late! Do you know why? I will tell you a story.

A priest was being honored at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician and member of the congregation were chosen to make the presentation and give a little speech at the dinner. He was delayed, so the priest decided to say his own few words while they waited. “I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen a television set and, when questioned by the police, was able to lie his way out of it. He stole money from his parents, embezzled from his employer, had an affair with his boss’s wife; taken illegal drugs. I was appalled. But as the days went on I knew that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of good and loving people.”

Just as the priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies for being late. He immediately began to make the presentation and gave his talk. “I’ll never forget the first day our parish priest arrived,” said the politician. “‘In fact, I had the honor of being the first one to go to him for confession.”

Moral: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER BE LATE!

In Romans, the 8th chapter, the 28th verse:

We know that in everything God works for good
with those who love him…

Do you really know that in everything God works for good with those who love him?
Is that mean those who love God will not get sick get into an accident or never get fired or go hungry?
How do we go about explaining, making sense out of those recurring headlines of catastrophe;
tornado, flood, oil spill, and accident,
that unforgettable scene at Virginia Tech and Columbine, those inconsolable parents, teachers, classmates, friends.
How do we, as Christians, begin to deal with the enormity of human anguish, the sheer magnitude of a Holocaust, a Hiroshima, or AIDS, or at the other end of the scale the microcosmic individual agony of one child, one friend, one family member, who dies of an incurable disease?
How do we explain why bad things happen to us, to me personally?
And how to reconcile all this with a loving Father/Mother-God?
There have been answers given in the past; answers many of us cling to as, maybe not perfect, but the best that we can find.

Woody Allen proposes one that has a certain
offbeat appeal when he suggests that maybe God is not malevolent after all, merely an underachiever.
This text of Paul’s:
We know that all things work together for good to
them that love God…

has been both used and misused in this context.
There is, you see, a dispute between ancient manuscripts here.
Some, reading as I have just done, would seem to suggest that everything is always OK:
…all things work together for good…that everything that happens really does reflect God’s will and therefore must turn out for the best.
So if you love God, just accept, submit, and murmur quietly:
Thy will be done. Lord, thy will be done.
Now while there is a certain strength, a certain shade of the truth in such a reading, I often find it impossible to accept.
I speak only personally here, but even to suggest that such things are God’s will, to propose that either hurricane or holocaust the massacre of children or the deterioration of an elderly mind into chaos or abusive relationship; to suggest that any or all of this is the will of God seems to me to verge upon blasphemy.
What kind of God would wish this hell upon his children – even as a form of punishment?
Whatever kind, and it’s not the God I learned about from Jesus; not the kind of God that l can call my heavenly father or mother, that I can trust with my immortal soul.

Now note with me the alternative reading of this verse:

We know that in everything… in everything God
works for good with those who love him…

Do you catch the difference?

Not that everything itself is necessarily good.
Not that there is no such thing as evil, tragedy, injustice.
But that in and through the evil, God is with us,
working at our side seeking with us the potential that is surely even there for good for hope, for truth and love and faith.

And if we love God, since we love God, we will recognize God there,
join our work to his, and bring forth hope even from the depths of what appears utterly hopeless.

Jesus – do you recall? – told a parable about this.

Two persons built two houses, one on rock, the other on sand.
One fell, one endured;
but, and this is the important part for us today- an observation we all too often miss –
they shared the same treatment.

Storm, wind and flood came equally upon those two houses.
They both were tested,
both pushed to the breaking point by all the buffeting this world affords.

The difference came,

not in the treatment they received from life,
but in where they had set their roots,
had placed their trust.

I have been telling you! There is evil in this world. The innocent do suffer unjustly. How can anyone deny it?

There are hurts and depths of pain that no one should ever, could ever deserve.

The message of the cross, of our gospel, of Paul, is not that we Christians are exempt, completely delivered from such pains, miraculously lifted out of them because we love the Lord.

If this were so, the crucifixion would be a mockery, a meaningless ugly episode on the face of human history.
The message rather is that in all this, in every hardship and agony,
we will never be abandoned,
we will not have to face it alone.
Our God is with us.

Our God Emmanuel which means
“God with us — God beside us.”

One thing more:
Paul says we are predestined:
We know that in everything God works for good
with those who love him, who are called according
to his purpose. For those whom God foreknew he
also predestined…

We hear this word today — predestination —we think of predestination nowadays and get all caught up in debate about whether he or she, or they, or even we, are going to end up in hell.

That is not, I am convinced, at all what Paul had in mind.

When Paul here writes “predestined,” he means precisely what it sounds like, that our destiny has been determined in advance;
that this God who spared not even his own Son, but freely gave him up for you and me, this God has his own plan, his own pre-destiny for his own creation,

and that destiny means redemption,
means renewal,
means deliverance and blessing,
means God’s amazing, almost unbelievable, and yes, all-sufficient grace.

You see, The future finally, lies in God’s hands, not ours.
Thank God for that!

And in everything that happens, whether good or evil,
God is working to bring forth his future through your life and mine.
That is what gave to Paul his supreme, amazing confidence.

That is how he could write that we are:
more than conquerors through him that loved
us… more than conquerors.

Do you realize, do you have any idea how absurd that must have sounded?

Paul, a wandering, Jewish tent maker.
One who had been lashed, stoned and shipwrecked — no, he didn’t write these words in a seminary library — Paul a homeless, unprepossessing prisoner of the Imperial Roman Justice System.
And here was this, this wretched Paul claiming to be more than all of them, “more than conquerors.”

The Good News that Paul bore with him.
The hunger that he bore it to.

Above all, he knew his Lord,
his Lord who died to show that he was trustworthy,
and then returned to give him strength,
power for the journey.
Paul’s living words ring in our ears today:

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life (and when you’ve conquered those two you can conquer anything!) neither death nor life, nor angels, principalities, powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now that’s what I call conquering!

Let us pray:

The pastor entered his donkey in a race and It won. The pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the Race again, and it won again.

The local paper read: PASTOR’S ASS OUT FRONT.

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of Publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.

The next day, the local paper headline Read:
BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR’S ASS.

This was too much for the bishop, so he Ordered the pastor to get rid of the donkey. The pastor decided to give it to a nun in a Nearby convent.

The local paper, hearing of the news, posted The following headline the next day: NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The bishop fainted. He informed the nun that she would have to Get rid of the donkey, so she sold it to a farmer for $10.

The next day the paper read: NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the bishop, so he Ordered the nun to buy back the Donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.

The next day the headlines read:
NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE.

The bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story is .. . . Being Concerned about public opinion can Bring you much grief and misery & even shorten your Life.

So be yourself and enjoy life. Who Cares!?

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, the fortieth chapter, the third verse:
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.”
And in Matthew’s Gospel, the twenty fifth chapter, the thirteenth verse: Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

I have found one classic scene to be noticeably absent lately and that is the prophet – beloved by cartoonists, perhaps especially in the New Yorker – the prophet with beard, flowing robe and a placard which reads, “FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME!” I’m not sure what this absence says about the times we live in; whether perhaps that whole concept of the end of time, the last judgment is now completely passé.
But I am reminded, whenever I open up this great book of books, the Bible, that this idea of judgment and redemption, this call to get ready for a great day a comin’, is very much part and parcel of the faith that is passed down to us.
That warning to those foolish maidens: Beware, for you know neither the day, nor the hour!
That old cry of Isaiah to prepare the way for God’s coming, has echoed and re-echoed across all the centuries of Christendom.
If we were, of course, to take with total seriousness that parable at the other end of this twenty fifth chapter of Matthew, the parable of the sheep and the goats, then we might realize that this “coming of the Lord” for which we are to prepare is not an event confined to the end of time. In that parable, Jesus tells those sheep and goats, and by extension he tells us that we meet him face to face, we confront the risen Christ, not simply at the judgment, but each day as we encounter the needs, hurts, fears of those about us. “Inasmuch…” was the way he put it:

Inasmuch as you have welcomed, fed, clothed and
cared for any of these my brothers and sisters…
you have done so unto me.
What then?
If Christ meets us, not only at the end of time,
but in the chance encounters of each day,

how will we be ready for such meetings,
just how do we prepare this way of the Lord?

Let me propose the way this church might go about preparing to meet the Christ.
The first commandment is this; (said Jesus)
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength…
and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The first is the love of God.
But how do you, how can you love God?
I mean, can we really develop an affection for such an abstract concept; should we try to cozy up to the ground of all being, creator of all that was and is and to be?
It’s all very well for Jesus – he did have special connections after all – but how do we go about loving some all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, omni-present force that we cannot even fully conceive of, let alone see, hear, touch, taste, smell? Just how does one set about this love of God?
One of the exciting things I did in Korea when I went there few years ago was visiting the college where I graduated from. It was nice to visit the professors whom I dearly respected, the old historic buildings, and those new faces on campus… There, I saw a huge building, where I used to take many classes, was damaged, so was closed just few days before I went there. Some of you may know about the political situation in Korea. The little country have been divided into two different nations. Unification between South and North has been the dearest prayer of my mother’s generation.
To make the long story short, thousand college kids gathered in the building to urge attention of government on unification. They fought, were hurt, arrested, and the building was all broken. I am not trying to talk about the political issue here. What I was awfully disappointed was the people’s heart. Majority of other kids did not care.
I don’t mind if unification is not their primary concern. It is not my most concern either. But thousands of their friends were hurt, the huge building they were supposed to be in and have classes was severely damaged. But rest of the students were just passing by the broken building not caring about it.
One of my nieces who was a college sophomore in Korea then had asked me to bring a pair of newest style of blue jeans from America. I bought a pair of Calvin Klein jeans for her. You know how expensive those are. I proudly presented the Calvin Klein blue jeans to her. And her response was, “Who wears Calvin Klein nowadays? No one wears Calvin Klein!” Calvin Klein was not the leading trend among her peers then. She would not even want to try them on. But those jeans were not even on sale.
No one wears Calvin Klein!
This one short phrase has been with me since.
“So? I don’t care! Who cares!” It was my niece’s response when I tried to share about the broken building.
Who cares!
Our faith teaches that God created this world and still sustains it, every blessed atom of it, in his creative love. This is our God’s world and we are charged with the care of it. We live in difficult, dangerous, despairing times; times when, the old scourges of hatred, hunger, inhumanity and random violence have renewed their deadly ways; times, indeed, when the cumulative impact of such problems is no longer to challenge people, but to bring them to despair, to give up that ancient dream of a better, more just and free world, and settle for survival.
That old question of George Bernard Shaw,
“Is there intelligent life in the universe?”
And his response, “If there is, then they are clearly using this planet as their insane asylum.”
Someone has reckoned that, for every word in this
treasured book, the Bible, twelve children died of hunger in the past year. That means our text alone – Prepare the way of the Lord – represents seventy two young lives.
Who cares?
Who cares for this earth anymore, its beauties, its tragedies?
Who cares about this church, this people of God, the Centenary United Methodist Church, about these faces, lives around us in the pews, their pains, joys, problems and vast potentials?
Who cares about the Lord, whose love surrounds and sustains us even when we take no time to acknowledge and rejoice?

Who cares?

I believe we care…
perhaps falteringly, perhaps all too occasionally, perhaps even carelessly, but we do care.
We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.

Now let us put our caring into living; building ways to open hearts, souls and lives to the Lord of life, to this community of life and to those out there who yearn for life in Christ. And in so doing we have a promise that in giving life we will find it, together.
What was that Isaiah said again?
For to those who truly will prepare the way of the Lord, those who make straight in the desert places a highway for our God, to them the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh, yes all flesh shall see it together.

Let us pray:

Don’t let them look up!

Luke 21:25-28

A story for today, before the sermon.
It seems a minister was saying goodbye, and having delivered his final sermon he was bidding his flock farewell at the church doors. There was much sad talk of how he would be missed, but all that was nothing compared to the outright tears and sobbing of one of the older members, who seemed possessed by grief. “Don’t be so upset,” the pastor murmured modestly, “I’m sure in his own good time the Lord will bring you a new minister every bit as good as I am.”
“Ah but that’s it,” sobbed the lady, “I’ve been a member here for almost 50 years and about a dozen ministers, and they just get worse and worse and worse!”
**************

In Luke’s Gospel, the twenty first chapter,
The twenty eighth verse:
Now when these things begin to take place,
look up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.

I was having late dinner with my mother and Lydia, my daughter, at the parsonage, having many unopened boxes around in the evening of the hottest day, opening all the windows and doors for air conditioner of the parsonage had some problem. It reminded me of the time when I had just moved in to the parsonage at Thiells, New York, three years ago.
In a very hot summer evening, I was having a late dinner in the kitchen with still unopened boxes around leaving the back door and the front door opened. It was pretty dark. Suddenly a bird flew in through the front door and flew out through the back door which made me freeze for a while. It happened just like that, I did not even get a chance to see what kind of bird it was. It was a dark colored small creature. I would like to think it as a sparrow, certainly not a bat. Do you have sparrows around here? Have you had such an experience?
Life, seems to me, like the swift flight of a bird flying in at one door and immediately out at another, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark from which he had emerged…

Life like the traverse of a bird, out of darkness, across a lighted room, and back into the darkness again.
This new church year into which we are entering is a questioning time; a time much given to thoughts, questions, images like these. It can be, for many, an unsettled difficult time, a time when we feel caught between the ordered the rigid but familiar routines and the easy, more relaxed and sunny days but perhaps do not know what to do with the kids being out of school and demanding all the attention. I love school…

There can be a haunting sense of in-between-ness;
a yearning for the recent past
a reluctance to face up to the demanding present
an uneasy change ahead.

Perhaps we cling to the past, going through the motions of work but snatching every opportunity to return: “What were we doing this time last week, last month, last year?”- picturing, cherishing in the mind scenes, celebrations which were so recently illuminating our days.

We can look back.
A second option is to look around, to survey the manifold diversions offered within this present moment, scanning the catalogues for some new toy, the concert, TV movie listings to ease the pain, distract us into numbness.
Or again we can look forward, take a mental giant stride ahead into the vacation or next time off, some future holiday and survive by counting days, making rosy colored plans.

The trouble with all this is that those questions still remain, the questions we began with, of meaning, purpose destiny.
“Are we, this race of humankind, beings of infinite spiritual worth; or merely the latest in a series of biological experiments, a rather messy way for DNA to perpetuate itself?
These can be personal questions of self value, self judgment.

What am I here for? Where am I going?
What happened to all those shining promises I made, goals I set not that long ago?
What hope is there left for me to know love, achievement, peace?”

Is our world, like this great country America, with all its culture, museums, hospitals, cathedrals doomed to decay and extinction because of the warfare in our streets our perverse inability to learn to live together? Is there honestly any hope, any purpose, any promise for the future?
Questions… questions…
And no matter how we twist, attempting to avoid them, how we try to push them out of sight and therefore out of mind, they remain, and will haunt us until the day we answer them, or the day we die.
“There comes a midnight hour…” wrote Soren Kierkegaard:
There comes a midnight hour when all men must unmask.
And so, from all our frantic looking: looking back, looking around, looking forward, we return to this old book and to our text which bids us to look up:
Now when these things begin to take place,
look up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.

That’s what we come to church for, don’t we?
Oh I know, I’ve heard a thousand times, the reasons cynics give for church attendance:
that we come here only to see and be seen,
that we seek within these walls an escape, a cozy little womb with soft and easy answers, to protect us from the hard, real world.
I’ve heard the accusations; and in part, at times, they may be almost true.
But at a deeper level, at a level of which you and I may often be unaware, we come here to look up.
I to the hills will lift mine eyes (sang the psalmist)
From whence shall come mine aid?My safety cometh from the Lord
Who heaven and earth hath made.
I stand at the front door of the parsonage and look in.
If I look around me, there is much that I can see. There is the ceiling that needs repairing. There is the walls need to be painted. There still are lots of boxes need to be opened, a host of chores that cry out for completion before the day is done.

But if I look out, lift my eyes beyond, if I look up, above the trees into distance; there are bright blue skies with birds and fresh air,and I pause, remember who I am, why I came here, and I know peace.

We come here to look up to that radiant, blue sky, to spend at least one hour in focusing beyond the immediate and the urgent, to the eternal, the sublime.
And we do this, not as an escape, but rather as a necessary corrective, as the only way to gain perspective, to set all the daily hassles and hustles into their proper place, within the vision and the purpose of our God.
Now when these things begin to take place,
look up and raise your heads, because your
redemption draws near.
What do we see when we look up?
When we look up through the eyes of worship and faith we see the God of ages past and ages yet to be.
Again, when we look up we see a table, a table spread with simple bread and wine, a table at which grace is said, and then broken, poured and shared, all in the name of One who loved enough to die for us and rose from death to live for us forever;
a table around which all classes, clans, kindreds, all parties and persuasions are as one, made whole within the family of God;
a table at which you and I will find the strength, the power, the purpose to take up again the tasks we have been set to.
In C. S. Lewis’ miraculous little book,
The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape – a veteran in the legions of Satan – writes to his nephew Wormwood – a very junior devil – on techniques for trapping Christians and luring them to Hell.
“The church…” he counsels:
The church is a fertile field, if you just keep them bickering over details, structure, organization, money, property, personal hurts and misunderstandings…

One thing you must prevent. Don’t ever let them look up and see the banners flying, for if they ever see the banners flying you have lost them forever.

“Don’t ever let them look up…
and see the banners flying.”

The banner of a God of love and mercy.
The banner of a Church which, despite human faults and failings, is still the mightiest force for good in all this vast creation,
The banner of a Christ whose body and whose blood have given us new life, true life in love for Him and for each other.

Look up today with me, as we begin this new journey together,
look up beyond all the petty inconveniences and disagreements that irritate our life together, look up and see the banners flying.

Look up and see the message of God’s love for this charming city, Metuchen, the gospel of Christ’s cross for all who share his sufferings on our streets, in our hospitals and prisons, the promise of the kingdom for all who live in darkness and despair.

And in that promise, beneath those banners and grasped in God’s almighty hand let us go forth to live the destiny we were created for, let us go forth in joy to serve a weary waiting world.

In Christ we pray, and let us say, AMEN.

Text: Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other lan-guages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speak-ing Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phry-gia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs–in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” —Acts 2:1-21, NRSV

I confess: I have been a poor record-keeper. I really don’t know how many Confirmation classes I have received into membership in the six churches I have served as pastor over 43 years of ordained ministry. I do know that you are the fifth class to be received during my ten years at Centenary. And with the eight of you, I have been privileged to share in the Confirmation expe-rience with and receive into membership at Centenary 39 Confirmands since June 2001.

I am making a rough guess that I have worked with over 30 Confirmation classes during the years, and perhaps received into membership close to 200 young persons. I don’t know what has happened to all of them. I have remained close to a few. And one of those from my years in Teaneck actually wound up answering the call of God to ordained ministry and serves as an As-sistant General Secretary for Education and Leadership Development with our United Methodist Board of Church & Society in Washington, DC. It is always a joy to see Neal when he visits home and our Annual Conference…which I hope he will do in a couple of weeks.

So I have preached—or shared in preaching—on these occasions somewhere around 30 times. I’ve told stories. I have dispensed advice and (I hope) a little wisdom. I have told a joke or two. I have laid down a challenge or two. I have even sung on at least three occasions…once about “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” who went up the waterspout. That was here at Centenary back in June 2001…but I’ll spare you a repeat performance.

Nonetheless, when it comes right down to it, it is always a little challenging to know just what to say to you and to this congregation on an occasion such as this. Maybe that’s because there is so much that could be said. It is Pentecost, after all, and after 2 millennia, the Church of Jesus Christ certainly has a lot of stories to tell; a lot of joys to celebrate; a lot of blunders to con-fess; a lot of promises to keep; and, a lot of visions to fulfill. Then, maybe the difficulty in know-ing what to say is not because there is so much that could be said, as it is in finding just the right thing to say on this particular occasion. That, I believe, has been my challenge in the past few weeks and days.

As I have reminded the Confirmands throughout our journey over the past 8 months, our Baptism is the sign and seal of our call to ministry by God…whether that baptism occurred over a decade ago when you were just a little child, or will occur today. It is foundational to all that God gives to us and seeks from us as faithful disciples. And what we will do here today in this Service of Confirmation is to offer you the opportunity to affirm and claim that Baptismal Cove-nant as your own. In effect, you will be invited today to Claim Your Name!

The Confirmation curriculum that we have been using is called Claim the Name…and, of course, the Name that it seeks to have us claim is the name of Jesus Christ. To claim him, as your vows will affirm: “…as your Savior, [to] put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations and races.” But I want to contend this morning that when you claim the name of Jesus, you are also claiming your own name. It works something like this…

Back in the early years of my ministry, our baptismal liturgy had a piece in it which our newer liturgy has dropped. (That is clear evidence that new is not always better…at least in this pastor’s humble opinion.) Just before I was to apply the water to the head of the child who had been brought to the font for Baptism, I turned to the parents and asked, “What name is given to this child?” And upon receiving that child’s “Christian” name, I proceeded to baptize her or him using that name. It really was a mixture of traditions…the wonderful mystery of the Sacrament of Christian Baptism incorporating an ancient naming ritual. In a sense, it reminded us that this child now had a unique identity before God and the family of faith. I know traditions where that question is still asked…and I have even done it here on certain occasions when the Spirit moved me to do so.

Now flash forward a dozen years or so from that Baptismal/Christening/Naming moment at the font, and this young woman or man comes before the congregation to be Confirmed for-mally into the Christian faith. (By the way, I saw a picture this week of the 2010 Confirmation Class at Morrow Memorial United Methodist Church in Maplewood, where I was Senior Pastor for seven years before coming to Centenary. I baptized a few of the youth in that class when they were infants. Talk about additional gray hairs!) Anyway, Confirmation is now that young per-son’s opportunity to claim his or her name in Christ. The name with which they were bap-tized…the unique identity that they have borne before God and the family of faith during the years of Christian nurture and formation…is now the name with which they will accept for them-selves the blessings of full membership and ministry within the Church.

And, in so doing, they are also claiming the name of the Christ who has been with them throughout the beginning years of this journey…and who will continue to walk with them on the next steps that carry them forward into the rest of their lives. As we will sing in a few minutes:

“I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old.
“I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.”

As you prepare to claim your name, I hope you will take with you from our brief time to-gether a maturing awareness of the overwhelming love and presence of God in your lives. You have seen it clearly in those wonderful folk who walked with each of you over the past eight months as your Mentors; you have received it frequently from Mr. Mike and Pastor Keith during your class sessions together. And I hope that you might even have caught a glimpse of it from time to time in my ministry with you.

God’s love and presence with us is a mystery of grace, something most of us have yet to even come close to fully understanding. But the evidence is clear, God loves us in ways we can-not imagine. When the way is good, but also when it turns rough, God is there. From the begin-ning to the end, God is there. From birth to death…and beyond death, God is there. May your ever-opening eyes in the years ahead reveal that simple but profound reality. God is with you! Always! No matter what and no matter where.

Cameron, Carla, Becky, Emily, Laura, Brittany, Zachary & John: Though you have been an important part of the “family” of Christ for a long time, this morning we welcome you offi-cially as you confirm your faith and take your place among us—a place reserved for you since the day you first took breath. I pray through the water of your Baptism, and the nurturing the church has provided you over these years—and especially in these past eight months—you will be equipped with a fullness of faith, hope and love: necessary supplies for the next crucial steps in your journey. For all that has been in our journey together, and for all that is yet to be on the road ahead, we give thanks and praise to God.

And let the people of God say, Amen and Amen.
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