South Riding Church Sermons

Addiction Affliction

2009-10-12T04:43:00.001-07:00

Sermon for October 11, 2009

Proper 23

Text: Mark 10:17-31

Title: "Addiction Affliction"

A. Have you heard the story of the jeweler who happened to be seated on an airplane beside a woman wearing an enormous and brilliant diamond ring? After starring at it for a while, his curiosity got the better of him. He said to her, "I couldn't help but notice your beautiful diamond. I am an expert in precious stones. Please tell me about that stone." She replied, "This is the famous Klopman diamond, one of the largest in the world. But there is a strange curse that comes with it." Now the man was hooked. He asked, "What is the curse?" The woman frowned as she said, "Mr. Klopman."

So it is with possessions. They can sparkle in the eyes of the possessor like a brilliant diamond. But one can discover that they just might come with a curse. Acquiring possessions can become a kind of addiction that can take a person's life over. Have you ever watched the show "Celebrity Rehab?" It's the story of 8 to 10 celebrities who have had their life taken over by one or more addictions: booze, drugs, whatever. They are under the care of Dr. Drew, a clinical psychiatrist and now TV star who runs a drug addiction center in Pasadena, California. It's easy to get addicted to the program; over a number of weeks, the viewer is drawn into the lives of these people like they were best friends, as they struggle to overcome the particular addiction that possesses them. It is horribly difficult for them, and some never make it.

Well, a desire to have can be an addiction affliction itself. Possession obsession can cause us to live life in a way that places us at the center and God on the outskirts of existence. Case in point: the Rich Young Man, whom we meet in this morning's passage of Scripture.

B. As the passage begins, Jesus and His disciples are continuing the long trip to Jerusalem, where the Master will acquire both the Cross and the Crown. But before they had even gotten started, an apparently very eager man places himself in Jesus' path.. Kneeling before Jesus in a humble position of respect, this man clearly recognizes both His goodness and wisdom. He addresses Jesus as "Good Teacher," showing that this man both respects and admires the Master.

The young man asks Jesus what he must do to "inherit" the eternal life he desires. Here, eternal life is a synonym for being saved and part of the Kingdom of God. But instead of directly answering this man's question, Jesus first hones in on the man's reference to goodness: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Jesus is not saying that He isn't good, but with these words He focuses the man's attention on the One who is the source of all goodness, His Heavenly Father. To find eternal life, one must look to the Father, and to the indescribable grace He offers to all humanity. The commandments quoted in verse 19 include, in order, numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 5. Although this story appears also in both Luke and Matthew, Mark is the only one who quotes Jesus as saying, "Do not defraud." This unique addition is believed by some Biblical scholars to be a restatement of commandment number 10 ("You shall not covet"), while others see it as an extension of number 8 ("You shall not steal"). Who knows? But this discussion is off the point of the story.

After Jesus recites these commandments to the man, he swiftly insists, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Now, Jesus' eyes tell the whole story here. In verse 21, Jesus' eyes focus on this man with true compassion, and we get a sense of Jesus' regard for this man whose questions seem so sincere.. Later on in the story, in verse 23, Jesus' eyes become steely as He looks around to summon the other disciples to listen to Him with a single glance. And finally, in verse 27, Jesus once again looks at the disciples with both strength and compassion as He acknowledges that all things are possible with God. We can see by watching the eyes of the Master that He is filled with both compassion and a desire to help everyone grow spiritually.

In light of Jesus' feelings of compassion for the young man, He states that the man lacks "one thing." But he actually gives him two commands. First, the man is to go, sell what he has and give it all to the poor. Second, he is to come and follow Jesus - a path that will lead him to the eternal life he seeks. Now everything comes crashing down. This man is no longer enthusiastic but "shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions." Now, in Jesus' day, riches were generally assumed to be a sign of God's favor. To actually give up what God had blessed him with to find eternal life with God was illogical and incomprehensible, at least to the mindset of the day. The rich young man judged the cost of eternal life too high and sadly left. Once he had departed from the scene, Jesus and his disciples were left alone to discuss the matter further. Being saved and possessing an abundance of riches are in disturbing tension with each other.

Author and historian Clovis Chappel wrote that when the Roman city of Pompeii was being excavated, the body of a woman was found mummified by the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. As you may know, this very famous volcanic eruption occurred in the 1^st century, taking the resort city of Pompeii, built precariously on the side of the volcano, completely by surprise. Excavations have revealed much about Roman culture, because destruction came so fast that everything was preserved by the storm of volcanic ash that engulfed the city. This woman's position told a tragic story. Her feet pointed toward the city gate, but her outstretched arms and fingers were straining for something that lay behind her. The treasure for which she was grasping was a bag of pearls. Chappel said, "Though death was hard at her heels, and life was beckoning to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off their spell...But it was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life. It only froze her in this attitude of desire."

The rich young man was possessed by possessions. There was no room left for the grace of God in his life. He trusted in his own resources, and not the resources of the Almighty. But it wasn't just the young man who was puzzled; the disciples were "perplexed" at what Jesus was saying too. Jesus reiterates how difficult it is to enter the Kingdom. He offers the mind-sticking image of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Such a statement has fascinating church scholars for generations, who find this saying hard to swallow, coming from the lips of the man who loves us enough to die for us. Some scholars have speculated that Jesus was referring to a certain gate near the outer wall of Jerusalem that was very narrow. This gate, known as the "Needle's Eye" in Jesus' day, would certainly have been hard for a camel to get through it. But Jesus' point is more radical than that. He is clear -- it is impossible for men and women to save themselves, whatever their financial state. Only through God is it possible to be saved.

This section concludes with Mark's casting the disciples in an uncharacteristically positive light. Peter reminds Jesus that the disciples have already done exactly what Jesus had asked of the rich man - given up everything they had and followed him. In effect, Jesus agrees with Peter by promising that for all the things his disciples have given up for his sake, they will receive back "a hundredfold."

C. Now what are we 21^st century believers to make of this story? As always is true in Biblical study, there are certain contextual clues we should take note of before we apply what Jesus said to our own situations. First of all, we should notice that everything that occurs here occurs within the shadow of the Cross. Notice how the passage starts out: "After Jesus was setting out on a journey…" The journey was taking the Master to Jerusalem, and to His death and Resurrection. Mark wants us to keep the Cross on the front burner of our minds here, and interpret everything Jesus says in the light of this event..

The second clue we should notice is that the rich man asks what He must DO to inherit eternal life. Jesus immediately directs the man's attention to God, by whose grace salvation is available and only available. The man didn't have to do anything to gain salvation. Or perhaps more specifically, what He had done had not earned him eternal life. He had performed the Jewish Law to the best of his considerable ability, and had successfully kept all of the law. But he still knew something was missing; he still sought eternal life. What he never realized was that he could do all that is within his power to do and never improve his relationship with God. No one can earn his or her way into Heaven. The more one tries, the more one focuses on the self and the less one focuses on God. What the man had to do – and what we have to do – was to surrender something; namely, the riches that were keeping him from having a spiritual relationship with God

Our last clue is a word clue. When Jesus addresses the disciples, He calls them "children." The astute reader remembers that a couple of chapters back, Jesus used a child as a sermon illustration, telling His followers that they must trust their Heavenly Father as a child trusts his or her earthly parents. By calling His disciples children, Jesus is reminding them (and us) that the childlike trust in God is pivotal in understanding what He is trying to teach.

Now, about this young man; Jesus' eyes tell us that He loved this seeker. Jesus knew the fellow was sincere in his quest for eternal life. He was a model citizen, a promise keeper and a truth seeker. He didn't use his wealth to oppress the poor. He didn't go on a phony TV show and pick a wife out of a lineup of gold-diggers. He didn't squander his money on worldly trinkets or immoral pursuits. But Jesus knew that the man still had a problem. The Master tried to diagnose and treat that problem with His challenge: "Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me". Don't make the mistake that just because this fellow had to give up his wealth, that all Christians have to do the same. It's not the wealth that got in the way. It was the addiction.. Money, in and of itself, is not necessarily destructive, - in fact, a steady cash flow is essential for the work of the Church throughout the world. So it's hard to pinpoint money as a necessarily dangerous addictive substance. But clearly, there was something here that had the rich man hooked. The problem is not that he had wealth, it's that he trusted his wealth more than He trusted His Lord.

Remember the context: Jesus is on the way to the Cross. God gave us His only Son so we might know eternal life. The man sought the Law to give him such eternal life, but it was a fruitless struggle. Salvation is only available by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And we must trust the Lord as children trust their parents to know the saving and life-giving grace of God. The rich man had to give up the possessions that defined his life. Jesus challenged the man to make an exchange, to drop what limited him in exchange for what freed him so as to open up to a wider and more meaningful life.

And so it is with us. What must we root out of our lives that may hinder us from following Jesus? Maybe it's an addiction to work. Maybe it's an attitude that says 'I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps.' Maybe it's an addiction to a bad attitude that never really loves others. The only addiction affliction we can have is addiction to God. That must be our first priority.

In her book A Practical Guide to Prayer, Dorothy Haskins tells about a noted concert violinist who was asked the secret of her mastery of the instrument. The woman answered the question with two words: "Planned neglect." Then she explained. "There were many things that used to demand my time. When I went to my room after breakfast, I made my bed, straightened the room, dusted, and did whatever seemed necessary. When I finished my work, I turned to my violin practice. That system prevented me from accomplishing what I should on the violin. So I reversed things. I deliberately planned to neglect everything else until my practice period was complete. And that program of planned neglect is the secret of my success."

May we begin the process today of defining what has us in chains, and releasing them to the Lord, so we might know His freedom and His peace. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Men and From God, But So Are Women

2009-10-05T17:29:00.001-07:00

Sermon for October 4, 2009

Proper 22

Text: Genesis 2:18-24

Title: Men are From God, But So Are Women!

A. Gutzam Borglun liked to think big. He was the man responsible for designing and sculpting Mt. Rushmore, to honor the four presidents depicted there in solid granite. But he also sculpted on a much smaller scale. The lifelike head of Lincoln that prominently presides over the Capitol Rotunda in DC is also one of his creations. Borglun cut this particular work from a large, square block of stone in his studio. One day, when the face of Lincoln was just becoming recognizable out of the stone, a young girl was visiting the studio with her parents. She looked at the half-done face of Lincoln and her eyes registered wonder and astonishment. She stared at the piece for a moment then ran to the sculptor. "Is that Abraham Lincoln?" she asked. "Yes" he responded, kneeling over to talk to the girl. "Well," she answered, "How in the world did you know he was inside there?"

The opening 2 chapters of the Book of Genesis present a theological view of what is inside us. Or, to be more precise, these chapters tell a story of how people are defined and shaped by their relationships -- the relationship between God and creation, humanity and nature, men and women, and husbands and wives. The careful reader will notice that chapter 1 relates an account of Creation from one perspective; chapter 2 relates the Creation story from quite a different perspective. Technically speaking, they represent different strands of tradition, each of them telling a different but related truth about God's sculpting of something-ness out of nothingness. We should read each chapter from the perspective of what they have to tell us about God's relationship with both nature and people.

Chapter one teaches us that God creates and sustains all existence by His Creative Word. It teaches us that God chooses not to be alone, but wants to be intimately involved with the welfare of humanity. We learn from chapter 1 that God has created the Universe to be orderly (it was made in six days, or cycles), to be life-sustaining, to follow natural laws, and that this orderliness witnesses to a Creating and Sustaining God. And finally, God made humanity to be the pinnacle of Creation (the rest of Creation is "good", man is "very good"). God made man to be in His image, to be in relationship with all the rest of Creation. When the Gospel of John opens by declaring that Jesus is the Word of God, he is harkening back to Genesis 1, and is in effect saying that through the atoning death and Resurrection of the Lord, our proper created relationship with God, distorted by sin, lost through Adam and Eve, is restored.

Chapter two tells us about ourselves. We are sculpted by a personal God out of the dust of the earth. But we are differentiated from the rest of Creation because we have the very Spirit of God breathed into us. We are able to relate to the Almighty Creator in a unique way. God created man to be in joyous, fulfilling relationship with His Father God. Such a relationship is like Paradise, and is allegorically called Eden. God desires us to have an intimate and satisfying relationship with Him. But then there is a problem.

B. It is God who recognizes and defines the problem. "It is not good that the man should be alone." We should notice that in the first creation story, every time God finishes another day creating order out of chaos, He describes the creation by saying "it was good," When God finishes Creation, complete with man who is made in the image of God, the divine describes it all as being "very good." But here God says that something is "not good." The problem with this paradise is its emptiness - the man God created needs companionship. In verse 19 God seeks to remedy this through the outpouring of a series of new creative energies. God once again uses the "ground," as the raw material for creation. While these new creatures share with the human a basic commonness of being, these late arrivals do not receive the additional gift of God's "breath of life." Nevertheless, they all do receive the gift of life from God's own hand.

As all these living things come together after their creation, God's first act is to establish them in relationship with the man. The man names each of the creatures brought to him, giving them both their character and their identity. In the OT, the name of a person or thing identifies a characteristic of the person or thing. For example, the name "Jacob", (he was quite a character whose story will come up later on in Genesis), means "cheater", and that is exactly what he did. He cheated his brother out of both his birthright and his father's blessing, both of which were his by tradition to have. In the Book of Exodus, we find out that God's name means "I Will Be With You!" The name tells you the character of the named. When a person names something, it also shows that this person has dominion over that thing. Man names all the animals, signifying that he is in charge over God's creation. But none of them fulfill the requirement of a "helper" or "partner" to the man. Now the use of "helper" is not meant to reflect any kind of subordinate role on the part of the woman. The word implies both equality and complimentarity in relationship. We should notice that since naming gives the man power and makes the other creatures subordinate to his will, his partner could never be named by the man, since to do so means they couldn't be in partnership.

So rather than molding yet another separate creature out of the dust, God establishes that the man and this new creature will share a commonality of being. The woman is not created separately or given a separate name that would place her on a lower rung in the hierarchical ladder of creation. Physically she and the man are composed of the same stuff - they share the common elements of earthly dust and divine breath. The man is placed into a deep sleep before God removes the rib. This is not God hiding a mystery from the man; rather, it is to demonstrate that God is truly and creatively doing a new thing. The man himself reveals the equality of their relationship in verse 23. The integrally connected partnership of the man (Hebrew "ish") and the woman (Hebrew "ishshah") are reflected in their shared name.

Little wonder the man exclaims "At last!" when God reveals the woman's presence to him. Adam exclaims, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," a phrase which indicates kinship of character. The emphasis is, once again, on the "one flesh" concept - the basic sameness, the equality of these beings which were both divinely separated in order to be divinely joined as one in covenant with each other. The last verse, "Therefore, a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh," says in its own way that the relationship between husband and wife creates a new family identity, separate from that which they enjoyed as part of their former relationship as children with mom and dad.

C. This passage makes three points that we should pay careful attention to:

1. First of all, we should notice that God bends over backwards for the sake of human fulfillment. Now if you have ever heard the notion that the OT is a testament of God's wrath and the NT is a testament of God's grace, then I am about to blow a hole in your theory! The simple fact of the matter is that God's grace and love towards people is painted large all over the pages of the OT. Did you notice how God related to the man in these verses: "God said, 'It is not that the man should be alone." (verse 18); "The Lord God formed every animal…and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was it's name." (verse 19); "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to come upon the man, and He took one of his ribs…and He made a woman (as a partner)" (verse 21). The tone of these verses is not that of a wrathful, vengeful, fear-inducing God. Our God cares about each one of us. He didn't want Adam to be lonely. And our God loves us so much that he shares with us His dominion over the earth. God allowed man to name and therefore define the character of each animal, even though Adam had nothing to do with their creation. And God wanted humanity to live in joy and harmony. That is why He created woman as a partner for man. God cares about us. He isn't distant and removed from us. He is as close as our very breathing, and He wants us to know joy and peace in relationship with Him and with His creation.

There's a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read: "Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you.. Your Father." On Saturday, no less than 800 children named Paco showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.

Isn't it good to know that our Lord is there waiting for us like a loving Father, when we repent of our sin and come home, like the prodigal child? Isn't it good to know that God is on our side, and that nothing can change that? The Lord is in charge, even if it doesn't seem like it. And He wants the best for His children. He grieves when we grieve, and longs for relationship with each of us so He can bless us.

2. Secondly, this passage teaches us that marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman. Scripture is very clear on this. We don't condone same sex marriages or holy unions. The Anglican Church is a refuge for believers of every denominational stripe who believe that the Bible rejects the notion of blessing same sex relationships. My former church is still struggling with this notion. Now I don't have time today to open this can of worms. But I do want to be clear that it is important that we combine this point with the previous point, to be clear about who we must be as Church. We reject sinful behavior of any kind, whether it be in the context of same sex relationships or in the context of heterosexual relationships. We also reject the sinful behavior of lying, stealing, gossiping, defrauding, or otherwise hurting another person in violation of Scripture. But we never reject the sinner. Because all of us sin and fall short of the glory of God. And all of us are saved and transformed by the blood of Jesus. God loves even the sinner, and good thing, because that includes us all!! The church must never reject the sinner; we must only be clear about what is sinful. And we always must be clear that the grace of God can heal and transform.

3. And lastly, this passage teaches us that men and women are to relate as co-equal and complimentary partners within that covenant relationship. This has been made obvious in this morning's Scripture passage. It is a sad commentary to note that over the years, the Genesis account of the creation of woman has been used to put women down. But nothing could be a more inaccurate interpretation of the Scripture. Man and woman are created by God to be complimentary partners. Complimentary means we don't have to have the same gifts, but your strengths fill the gap left by my weaknesses, and vice versa. And partners mean we walk together through life, not one behind or ahead of the other.

Actually, the Genesis passage gives pretty good advice for married couples. It makes clear that marriage is a covenant, where two partners join together because the whole is greater than the sum of the two. Being in covenant doesn't mean we don't have disagreements. But we do have an understanding of how we choose to relate to each other for the good of the relationship. And perhaps most importantly, a good marriage is one that has God in the middle. God created us to be in covenant together, and God will help us bind and nurture this marriage covenant for the sake of the spiritual growth of the couple.

I can't think of the marriage covenant without thinking of marriage counseling. I remember on one occasion when the couple's conversation with me turned to a review of the marriage vows. I stressed to them that we enter into marriage of our own free will, and promise to love and to cherish one another. I asked them if they were entering into marriage of their own free will. The husband-to-be looked over at his fiancé, and she responded, "Go ahead and say 'yes'".

God calls us to live in fulfilling relationship with Him and with each other. When things go wrong, God is there to bring healing and wholeness through the community of believers called the Church. When things go right, we find the "peace that passes understanding in Christ Jesus." Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Singposts of the Christian Life

2009-09-30T05:36:00.001-07:00

Sermon for September 27, 2009

Proper 21

Text: James 4:7-5:6

Title: Signposts of the Christian Life

A. In the days before the advent GPS systems, William Barclay, a British theologian, liked to tell the story about a young boy who thought it might be fun to change directional signs on the road. That is, at an intersection of the road where one sign pointed in the direction of the city of Seattle and another sign pointed in the direction of the city of Tacoma, he'd switch them around. The boy wondered how many people could he send down the wrong road with the switched around signs?

The Book of James is also about switching signposts, only for James, they are the signposts of the Christian life. James was written to counterbalance certain misunderstandings that had arisen in the lives of some believers who had read Paul's Letter to the Romans. Paul makes it clear in Romans that we are saved by faith. Paul was well aware that no matter how hard one tried to live faithfully to the letter of the Law as expressed in the 10 Commandments and in the 613 additional religious laws that were laid upon the faithful of the 1^st century, somewhere along the line, we're going to slip. We can't earn our way to Heaven. We are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for us and who lives forever so we might have new life.

Now some believers took this theological reality to the extreme, saying that if I am saved by faith, then it doesn't matter how I behave, as long as I believe in Jesus. Indeed, my faith doesn't necessarily have any influence whatsoever on how I interact with other people. This way of thinking happens all too often even today.

I was in a small rural church one time that had a major dispute about where the pies should be placed in the kitchen prior to serving them for the annual turkey supper. One woman actually left the church community because several new comers to the church had convinced the rest of the women working in the kitchen that it would be more efficient to put the pies on the counter beside the sink instead of the counter next to the refrigerator. "It's not the right way to do it", she said. "We've never done it that way before, and I am not going to be part of doing it that way now. Those new people are going to ruin this church." I hardly think the ultimate fate of the Kingdom of God rested on the positioning of a cooling pie, but she was deadly serious.

James addresses this issue by turning the signposts of the Christian life so they point the way to living faithful lives as disciples of the Lord. Being saved by faith is supposed to make a difference in the way we live. We are Christians in every aspect of life, not just on Sunday mornings. James expresses this theme most succinctly in chapter 1, verse 21, where he says. "Be doers of the Word, and not merely hearers." Live the life of Christ. Don't give being a Christian mere lip service, but mean it!

B. James invites us to recognize that if we want to live as faithful servants of Jesus Christ, we have to live humbly before the Lord. Now be careful here. Humility is not self-deprecation, and it does not allowing people to run all over you. Rather, living humbly recognizes that God is ultimately in charge of my existence. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. He has given me specific gifts. He has placed opportunities before me to use my gifts. I am a wonderful and unique creation of God. God has shaped the circumstances of my life such that I am where I am and who I am at this moment. Now of course I have free will, but somehow God can work within my free will to shape events so they come out as a blessing, for us and for others.

Now I don't need to tell you that living humbly doesn't come naturally. Indeed, it is a complete reversal of the way we tend to live. The opposite of living humbly is living arrogantly. Arrogant living says that I am in complete and ultimate charge of my life. What I have I earned by my own efforts. Arrogant living doesn't even put God in the daily equation of life. It is self-centered, rather than God-centered or other-centered. Now I don't have any problems with persons who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But to say God has nothing to do with our lives at all is to deny that Christ is the Lord, and is ultimately in charge of both the world and our world. James starts out our passage by saying "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands…purify your hearts…lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection." Now believers are not being called to a sad-sack existence here. Rather, if we are living life arrogantly, without the Lord, then we are ensnared by the Devil. We have to recognize this, turn to God, repent of our sin by cleansing our hands, purifying our hearts, and mourning our loss of joy, life, and peace in living humbly with the Lord. "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you."

Now as we have already mentioned, James will have nothing to do with private religion. To James, if you call yourself a Christian, you have to act like one. Faith and works are not opposites, but rather are intimately connected. Real faith leads to real conversion, and real conversion makes a difference in the way we treat others. In the rest of this morning's passage, James identifies three areas of arrogant, of which I want to look at just two of them.

1. First of all, in verses 11 and 12, he warns against judging or slandering another person. Slander always seeks to gain advantage at the expense of another. It is always an inner judging of another, because it reflects personal hatred and animosity. We judge others when we size up a person by his or her appearance; we judge others when we speak disparagingly against an ethnic group. Judging and slandering involves simultaneously lowering the neighbor and elevating the self. Therefore, when we judge, we forget the most basic commandment Jesus preached, namely, to love others as we love ourselves. James calls us to remember that, as the Psalmist says, only God can judge, and that we should only worry about doing the Will of God ourselves.

Author H.A. Ironside relates an interesting incident in the life of a man named Bishop Potter. "He was sailing for Europe, and after he found his stateroom, he noticed that another passenger was to share the cabin with him. He chatted for a moment with his roommate, then after a while went to the purser's desk and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the ship's safe. He explained that ordinarily he never availed himself of that privilege, but he had been to his cabin and had met the man who shared the other berth. Mr. Potter didn't think he looked like a very trustworthy person. The purser accepted the responsibility for the valuables and remarked, 'It's all right, sir, I'll be very glad to take care of them for you. Your roommate has already been up here and left his valuables for the same reason!'"

2. Don't boast about our control over tomorrow. The form of arrogance, described in verses 13-17, is not subtle. "Come now, you who say 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money. Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring." In other words, with little or no notice, our life can completely change. We could have a car accident; we could get diagnosed with a terrible illness. We could lose a loved one. Many things happen outside our control.

Now James is not saying never plan. But he does say that planning the future without God is a confidence falsely placed. It is the quality of the braggart, the boaster, or the foolish loudmouth. Again, such an attitude pushes God to the side. It assumes that nothing is outside our control, when in point of fact, many, many things are out of our control. We can rely fully and completely on our good fortune, or our business acumen. But James points out that such an attitude is eventually going to run into a brick wall. We can't even guarantee that tragedy won't happen tomorrow, much less a year from now. At its core, this attitude views the world as being run solely by us. But such is not the case. It is God who miraculously maneuvers life in such a way that His ultimate Will is done. He is in charge. We are not. To recognize that fact is to live humbly. To ignore that fact is to live arrogantly.

In 1969, in Pass Christian, Mississippi, a number of folks were preparing to have a "hurricane party" in the face of a storm named Camille. The wind was howling outside the posh Richelieu Apartments when Police Chief Jerry Peralta pulled up sometime after dark. Facing the Beach less than 250 feet from the surf, the apartments were directly in the line of danger. Peralta yelled, "You all need to clear out of here as quickly as you can. The storm's getting worse." But they all just laughed at Peralta's order to leave. "This is my land," one of them yelled back. "If you want me off, you'll have to arrest me." Peralta didn't arrest anyone, but he wasn't able to persuade them to leave either. He wrote down the names of the next of kin of the twenty or so people who gathered there to party through the storm. They laughed as he took their names. They had been warned, but they had no intention of leaving. Well, you know what happened. Camille was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever seen. At 10:15 p.m., scientists clocked Camille's wind speed at more than 205 mph. Raindrops hit with the force of bullets, and waves off the Gulf Coast crested between twenty-two and twenty-eight feet high. News reports later showed that the worst damage came at the little settlement of motels, go-go bars, and gambling houses known as Pass Christian, Mississippi. Nothing was left of that three-story structure but the foundation;

C. Now we need to point out that James is not just giving us good advice, though he is certainly doing that. He is also giving us a recipe for successful Christian living. Here's the thing – not a single one of us has lived a perfect life. On one occasion when I was an Associate Pastor at a large church, I sat in on a Staff-Parish Relations Committee meeting (this is the Methodist equivalent of the Search Committee) when they were drawing up a description of what they wanted in a Senior Pastor. Some of the qualities included being a magnificent administrator, a powerful preacher, a skillful counselor, and a constant home visitor. Finally, after 20 or more qualities where written down, one of the committee members said "Shall we just say, 'Walks on water,' and ask the Bishop to send Jesus?"

No one is perfect. There isn't a one of us who hasn't been kicked around by life. Some of us come out of an abusive childhood. Some of us come out of a history of drug or alcohol abuse. Some of us might never have gotten the breaks on our job that we thought we disserved. Some of us might be in trouble now. All of us need healing from some hurt. And living the way James spells out is the way to healing and wholeness in the Lord. Living humbly before God is far from being a dishrag. It is a way of being in fellowship with the Almighty, of acknowledging that sure, we can live without God, but not forever and not very well. Living humbly before God is living a life that admits it isn't perfect, but also admits that God doesn't care. He takes us as we are, forgives us, and brings us healing. It doesn't happen overnight. But over time we can know the peace that passes understanding through faith in Christ. And Church, we need to know that perfect people don't enter into our worship space each Sunday morning. But broken people do. Needy people do. Lonely people do. And we need to love them and accept them the way Christ loves and accepts us.

In Chicago a few years ago a little boy attended a certain Sunday school. When his parents moved to another part of the city the little fellow still attended the same Sunday school, although it meant a long, tiresome walk each way.. A friend asked him why he went so far, and told him that there were plenty of others just as good nearer his home. "They may be as good for others, but not for me," was his reply. "Why not?" she asked. "Because they love a fellow over there," he replied.

Jesus said "Come, all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That is a promise we can take to the bank. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

True Status

2009-09-20T10:30:00.001-07:00

Sermon for September 20, 2009

Proper 20

Text: Mark 9:30-37

Title: True Status

A. Humorist Dave Barry, in his book Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, writes: "When I got to Washington, I discovered that even among young people, being a good guy was not the key thing: The key thing was your position on the great Washington totem pole of status. Way up at the top of this pole is the president; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public". (I have a feeling that may be changing, especially since the march Saturday before last, but that's not his point anyway!) "In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping. For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is 'Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary' is more or less important than a person whose title is 'Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary,' or 'Principal Deputy to Deputy Assistant Secretary,' or 'Deputy to the Deputy Secretary,' or 'Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary,' or 'Chief of Staff to the Assistant Assistant Secretary.' (By the way, all of these are real federal job titles!) "Everybody in Washington always seems to know exactly how much status everybody else has."

Status is not only important in government jobs; it's important in other aspects of life. Most private businesses are status driven. I know of one business where your status determines which floor of a 10-story building you work on; the higher the rank, the higher off the ground you work. Position in the company can often be determined by physical position in the office – we all know the importance of the "corner office". Status is even a factor in the church. We preachers judge other preachers by the size of the church, the number of worshippers on Sunday morning, and the enormity of the budget.

Now as long as it doesn't get out of hand, status seeking can be a great motivator for excellence in the workplace. A little healthy competition is always a good thing. But the problem is, for some of us, the drive to succeed can be a kind of drug. It can take over our lives. It becomes the focus of everything we do. When we are caught up in the addiction of success above everything else, when we would do anything to succeed, and it doesn't matter how many lives are trampled over and ruined, then we are in trouble. Status seeking in its ultimate form is true idol worship. It is a false god who promises much but delivers little.

Perhaps that is why Jesus redefines status in the Kingdom of God. In the God's Kingdom, "whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all". Let's be honest – this goes against the grain. Certainly it baffled those first disciples, who also sought after status, defined as power and position. In understanding Jesus' definition of status, we have to first understand the primary reason behind Jesus' definition, namely, that God is in charge and we are not'; therefore, what we do and accomplish in this life is by His Divine Will. But perhaps I am getting a little ahead of myself.

B. The passage begins with Jesus and his disciples traveling through Galilee. Galilee is familiar country. It is symbolic of God's call on their life, since this is the place where they all heard the summons from the Master to "Follow Me." This is the second time Jesus had taught them about His death and Resurrection. On this occasion, however, Jesus puts pastoral care of His small flock above mission to the masses. In this passage He shuns the crowds, preferring to help His disciples understand the journey, namely, that "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." All humanity is both implicated and redeemed by this one act. As is often the case, the disciples don't get it. All this talk of death and resurrection doesn't fit into their idea of what Messiah-ship is all about. They just can't get over the notion that the Messiah must be a military leader, conquering the Romans and taking back the Kingdom of David from Latin hands. What Jesus is telling them is way over their heads, and they're afraid to ask him to clarify. After all, they don't want to look stupid! But that's exactly how they look in the next verses.

It's important to remember that this chapter of Mark begins with the transfiguration, that glorious mountaintop experience in which Jesus' clothes become "dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them". There He enters into a conversation with Elijah and Moses, the two superstars of the Old Testament, and God's voice booms out of a cloud, "This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to Him!" Pretty heady stuff. Peter, James and John are shocked, terrified and totally impressed by this display of divine power. When Jesus and the disciples come down from the mountain, they run into an adoring crowd with a great need that the other disciples couldn't fix. Then Jesus strongly rebukes an unclean spirit causing the spirit to leave the boy, "crying out and convulsing him terribly." The boy seems dead at first, but Jesus lifts him up, and he is able to stand. Again, this had to have made an enormous impression on the twelve disciples.

So given that religious tradition has taught them all their lives that the Messiah would one day come and set up God's Kingdom on earth, and given all the amazing things they had seen, I guess we can't blame them too much for their confusion. Nonetheless, Jesus still had to take pains to re-educate His followers on God's real plans for the salvation not just of the Jewish people, but all people. He predicts that His death is imminent, but it is also part of God's greater plan.

Along the way, Jesus overhears a disturbing conversation between some of His disciples. Privately, inside the house, He asks them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" They were silent because they had been sparring with one another about who was the greatest in the coming Kingdom. Jesus' unexpected question catches them red-handed, and by shaming them, He exposes their pettiness and self-centeredness. The disparity couldn't be greater. Jesus is "the Son of Man" who comes "not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many." In contrast, the disciples are small-minded, self-interested souls whose primary concern is status. They want a seat next to the power or an honored place in the kingdom.

When Jesus sits down, He is assuming the familiar posture of a Rabbi who is about to teach His followers. He calls the 12 disciples, and says to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." To be first you must be last, he insists; to be a star you must be a servant. To have status in God's Kingdom you have to give up status in the eyes of the world. And to illustrate this counter-cultural career advice more clearly, Jesus takes a little child in his arms and says, "Whoever welcomes one such child in My name welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes not Me but the One who sent me." The jaws of the disciples really hit the floor at this point, because in the first century a child is a non-person, a non-entity, a nobody, better seen than heard, if you have to see them at all! There is no reason for a little child to be close to a great teacher such as Jesus, or in the middle of a group of men. Children are to stay with the women and keep themselves out of the way, until they grow up and can start exercising some adult responsibilities. Jesus is saying in effect, "When you welcome a nobody, you welcome me. And when you welcome me, you welcome God. So if you want to be first in the kingdom of God, then you had better get used to being a child-welcoming servant of all people."

This is a really different way of looking at status. But when you get right down to it, fame as we all conceive it is a fleeting thing anyway. Today's hero is tomorrow's goat, and vice versa. The public approval polls seem to go up and down on a whim.

Recognize any of these names: Owen D. Young, Hugh S. Johnson, James F. Byrnes, Harlow Curtis? You should; according to Time magazine, these are all people who have been designated as "Man of the Year" by Time, indicating they had the greatest impact in that year of all persons living on Earth. The celebrity of today is all but forgotten tomorrow.

C. So what's the bottom line? Well, give me a minute. There's just one more thing we have to notice. In the very next story, the disciple John tells Jesus that on another occasion, they had chastised a Jewish exorcist who was not one of them, but who was casting out demons in Jesus' Name. Jesus tells them, "Don't stop him. No one who does a deed of power in My Name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me." In other words, just because this man is not like them doesn't mean he isn't a follower. Notice that the same phrase "In My Name," is used, connecting it with the story where Jesus uses the little child as a sermon illustration. Jesus follows this up by telling His disciples, "whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward." And finally, in verse 42, Jesus says, "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea." This is hyperbolic, not literal, but that is typical of ancient Near Eastern teaching. Here too, the phrase "little one" is used, the same phrase Jesus used when He embraced the child before His disciples.

What I am trying to say is that when Jesus says "Whoever welcomes one such child in My Name welcomes Me," He is not simply talking about the physically young, even though they have to be treated with special care in the Church. Jesus also includes those who are new in the faith, namely, spiritual children in the Lord. And He is telling us to welcome believers who don't look like us, or who don't have cultural traditions like us. He is inviting us to give a cup of water to the underprivileged. In short, Jesus is calling us to unity in the Spirit, patience with those who may not be as spiritually mature as we are, and service to those who need aid. Jesus is calling us to be on the side of the underprivileged, for that is the mark of true greatness.

Jesus is calling us to flip our usual attitudes toward greatness and honor and fame completely upside down. Our normal perspective is to look at life from the top down, giving our greatest attention to the people who have competed with one another and come out on top. But Jesus is saying, "No — change your perspective." Instead, he says, look at life from the bottom up and give your greatest attention to the people who have no fame. Focus on children, on single mothers, on cab drivers, on dishwashers, on chambermaids, on the working poor, on the homeless. "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me," He tells us.

Christians are to live lives that are radically different from the way the world lives. Our priorities have to be different. Our attitudes have to be different. We focus on the welfare of others, not the welfare of ourselves. We don't rank people, because God sees us all as unique creations of His, and He has given us different gifts and different opportunities together to help bring in serve the Kingdom. We never look down on people; rather, we count people better than ourselves. In the final verses of this extended passage, Jesus says something that sounds very mysterious, but it really isn't, "Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?" Times will not be easy for believers. The world doesn't like people who don't conform to the ways of the culture. But Christians are supposed to be counter-culturalists. We are meant to have a salty edge, a sting, a sharpness like salt in a wound. We are called to be salty Christians! And with God's Spirit, we can be!

One New Year's Day, in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit. It was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas. The amusing thing was this float represented the Standard Oil Company. With its vast oil resources, its truck was out of gas. Sometimes, we Christians forget that we are "clothed with power", and when we forget the Spirit, we find themselves out of gas.

My friends, this is a call to saltiness. This is a call to service. This is a call to be great in God's Kingdom, by being the least of all and servant of all. Shall we answer?! Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

The Meaning of Messiah

2009-09-14T04:05:00.001-07:00

Sermon for September 13, 2009

Proper 19

Text: Mark 8:27-38

Title: The Meaning of a Messiah

A. You might remember comedian Yakov Smirnoff, who liked to joke that when he arrived in the US from Russia, he wasn't prepared for the incredible variety of instant products that he found in American grocery stores. "On my first shopping trip," he said, "I saw powdered milk; you just add water and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice. You just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder, and I thought, 'What a country!'"

He does have a point, though. We all love to have everything we need instantly. We love our fast food. When we buy something that has to be ordered, we get a little miffed because we can't have it yesterday. When we see the doctor, we want to see him or her right now! All this is human nature, and it is as old as humanity.

In Jesus' day, people wanted instant salvation. They wanted someone to come along, and free them from their Roman overlords. And they would follow just about anybody who seemed to be able to do that. Josephus, the 1^st century Jewish historian, records any number of so-called leaders – dare we say "Messiahs" – who led a group of followers in rebellion against the foreign occupiers. They always came to a bad end.

The people in those days believed Jesus was the instant salvation Messiah. They flocked around Him because they thought He was going to mount the white horse and knock the Romans off their high horse. For a time, His own disciples even thought they could be Cabinet members in His new regime. But as we shall see in today's passage of Scripture, this is not what true Messiah-ship is all about.

B. This morning's passage has a lot going on in it. I think, though, that we can squeeze the most meaning out of it by realizing that these few verses address and answer three very basic questions, in this order: 1) Who is Jesus, 2) What does being the Christ (i.e. the Messiah) really mean, and 3) What does being a disciple really mean. When you get right down to it, these are also three of the most basic questions people of faith ever ponder. The answers to the first two critically affects our own answer to the third.

It is obvious from the way Mark's Gospel is laid out that he thought this incident was a critical turning point in Jesus' ministry. Prior to this exchange, Jesus and His disciples were in ministry in and around the Sea of Galilee. After their visit to Caesaria Philipi, Jesus and His followers headed towards Jerusalem. Before the events of this passage transpired, Jesus concentrates on healing and teaching; He both proclaims and demonstrates that the Kingdom of God is coming in power through Him. But after these verses, Jesus starts to talk about His death and Resurrection. In addition, if you add up all the verses in Mark and divide by two, the exact center of the Gospel lands at this story. So what Mark is proclaiming here about Jesus is of critical importance.

Now we also should notice a few things about the geography of the region, because they are also helpful in understanding the passage. Caesaria Philipi is located in the area we call the Golan Heights. Damascus is a mere 50 miles to the northeast. The Golan Heights are beautiful rolling green hills that overlook the Sea of Galilee. From this vantage point, Jesus and the 12 could see all the sites of their previous ministry stretching out below them. Caesaria Philipi was at that time also home to a magnificent temple to the god Pan; tourists came from all over to visit the site. So given all this as a backdrop, Jesus asks his followers, "Who do people say that I am?" What's the word on the street? What are people twittering about me? They answer, "Some say John the Baptist" (by this time he was dead, killed by King Herod – maybe he had come back to life!); "others say Elijah" (tradition had it that he would return immediately prior to the coming of the Messiah); "still others say one (of the more ordinary) of the prophets". But then Jesus gets straight to the heart of the matter: "But, you, who do you say that I am?" Peter gives both an honest and straightforward answer: "You are the Messiah," a term which means "anointed one," the divinely chosen leader of the people. So in answer to the first of our three questions – Who is Jesus – we see that Peter answers correctly. He is God's anointed one, anointed to perform a divinely mandated plan.

But when we take up the second question – What does being the Messiah mean? – we find that Peter and the others are very confused. Over the course of the Galilean ministry, the disciples just hadn't gotten who Jesus was. When Jesus calms the storm in chapter 4, the disciples responded, "Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?" He had been called a teacher, and had called himself the Son of Man, who has the authority to forgive sins. In short, none of the disciples had shown any comprehension of Jesus' identity until this point in the narrative. By now they have correctly figured out that He is the Messiah, but in the very next verses we find that their knowledge of real Messiah-ship is sorely lacking. As we discovered last week, this is why Jesus tells them to remain silent about the whole matter. No one could understand what kind of Messiah Jesus was until they view His Messiah-ship through the lens of the Cross.

Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man "must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again". To be the true Messiah, Jesus has to undergo suffering, death and resurrection — there's just no way around it. It is the only way God can accomplish the salvation of the world! Then and only then will Jesus be seen clearly as a divinely chosen leader. So the position of Messiah requires a cross before a crown. Until he completes these duties, Jesus doesn't want people talking about him. But Jesus is keenly aware that many people are looking for a military Messiah — God's Commander in Chief — to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem and restore the kingdom to Israel. When Jesus talks openly about his suffering and death, Peter takes him aside and begins to rebuke him. It's inconceivable to Peter that God's anointed leader would have to suffer a humiliating death! But Jesus quickly turns the tables and rebukes Peter, saying, "Get behind me, Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things".

Peter began to "rebuke" Jesus, using the same verb Jesus used when he "sternly ordered them" to keep his identity as the Messiah a secret. The same word describes Jesus' actins to silence the demons he encountered or to describe His calming the wind and the waves of a violent storm at sea. It's a word that means to strongly correct a person's way of acting or thinking, much like a person might correct a naughty child. Peter's rebuke doesn't last long, however. He is rebuked, in turn, by Jesus, again using the same verb. When Jesus said, "Get behind me Satan!" to Peter, He wasn't actually calling Peter the Devil. But Satan can work through any of us if we don't understand the ways of the Lord, to resist those ways. The question is, who is in charge? If Satan is in charge, then Jesus doesn't have to suffer and die; Peter unknowingly reflected this when He rebuked Jesus about discussing His future death and Resurrection. Of course Satan, working through Peter, doesn't want God to effect a Crucifixion, because that is the only way Satan is finally and ultimately defeated. Satan is tempting Jesus to resist His God-necessitated death on the cross, much like the way He tempted Jesus in the Wilderness. Peter was deceived by the Master of Lies. But as we all know, God is in charge. Jesus rebuked Satan when He rebuked Peter. Now we know what being the Messiah really means. It means that Jesus/Messiah had to die, so all people might have eternal life. Jesus has to lead; His disciples have to follow after Him. He leads us to die on the cross, and to rise again in God's love. And like Him, we too have to journey right behind Him to the Cross.

When Poland was still under communist rule, the government ordered crucifixes removed from classroom walls, just as they had been banned in factories, hospitals, and other public institutions. Catholic bishops attacked the ban that had stirred waves of anger and resentment all across Poland. Ultimately the government relented, insisting that the law remain on the books, but agreeing not to press for removal of the crucifixes, particularly in the schoolrooms. But a certain zealous Communist school administrator decided that the law was the law. So one evening he had seven large crucifixes removed from lecture halls where they had hung since the school's founding in the 1920's. Days later, a group of parents entered the school and hung more crosses. The administrator promptly took these down as well. The next day two-thirds of the school's six hundred students staged a sit-in. When heavily armed riot police arrived to eject the students from the building, they went into the streets. Then they marched, crucifixes held high, to a nearby church where 2500 other students from nearby schools joined them for a time of prayer in support of the protest. Soldiers surrounded the church. But the pictures from inside of students holding crosses high above their heads flashed around the world. And the priest who led the prayer service told a watching world that one should never doubt the power of the Cross.

C. This leads us to the final question the passage addresses, the most important question of all: What does being a disciple mean? Here, my friends, is where the theological rubber hits the road of life. And with what has already been said, I bet you can figure out the answer. Jesus said to His disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." That's the key to being a disciple: one follows Jesus. But wait! But wait! I'm too young to die!, one might ask. Jesus doesn't ask us to literally climb up on the cross with Him. But what He does ask – indeed, He demands – is that we die to self. Jesus invites us to put Him on the throne of life, at the center, not out on the sidelines somewhere, only addressed when we have an emergency. Jesus invites us to kill our own self-will and self-love! And in its place, one puts love of God before all things in life. As He goes on to say in this morning's passage of Scripture, "Whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel's will save it!" In the original Greek, the word for "life" is better translated as "self". We die to self. We live for Christ.

Now dying to self is not the same as hating myself. Rather, it's that we find our most authentic way to live when we walk with the Lord and follow His Will for our lives. This is not always easy to do. It takes a lifetime of practice. We keep taking our self-will back after it is surrendered and placing it on the throne of our existences again. Losing one's life for Christ's sake and the sake of the Gospel is not always an easy way to live. It requires us to sometimes take a stand that may be very unpopular. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian whose faith led him to die at the hands of the Nazi's at the age of 39, expressed it this way: "When Christ calls a man, He bids Him come and die." In his case, it was a literal death. For all of us, it's a death of our old self-will and self-centeredness, and a life lived for the Lord.

Now here's the crux of the matter. When we answer the question Who is Jesus and we answer the question What does being a Messiah mean, then we can answer for ourselves what does being a disciple mean. Who is Jesus? He is the Son of God, God incarnate, who came to earth as a man to die for us so we might know forgiveness of sins and relationship with the Father. What does being a Messiah mean? It means dying so others might live. What does being a disciple mean? It means following behind the One who died for me, and dying to self while living for God. Or, as the apostle Paul puts the matter, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me." Being a disciple means dying daily to self, and living daily for Christ. It means learning about the Lord through being in Church and in Bible studies. It means praying throughout the day, talking to the Lord, and striving to follow His Will for our lives. And it means loving others as we love ourselves.

You may know about the annual Ididerod dogsled race in Alaska; it is a grueling 1000-mile race over snow and ice, run for prize money and prestige. You may not know that the race commemorates an original race run to save lives. Back in January of 1926, six-year-old Richard Stanley showed symptoms of diphtheria, signaling the possibility of an outbreak in the small town of Nome. When the boy passed away a day later, Dr. Curtis Welch began immunizing children and adults with an experimental but effective anti-diphtheria serum. But it wasn't long before Dr. Welch's supply ran out, and the nearest serum was 1000 miles of frozen wilderness away. Amazingly, a group of trappers and prospectors volunteered to cover the distance with their dog teams! Operating in relays from trading post to trapping station and beyond, one sled started out from Nome while another, carrying the serum, started from Nenana. Oblivious to frostbite, fatigue, and exhaustion, the teamsters mushed relentlessly until, after 144 hours in minus 50-degree winds, the serum was delivered to Nome. As a result, only one other life was lost to the potential epidemic. Their sacrifice had given an entire town the gift of life.

What kind of disciple are we? The question is answered by posing another question, namely, Who is Jesus Christ to me? A prophet. A good man. A remarkable teacher. Or is He the Son of God, who loved the likes of me so much that He died so we might live. This is the Jesus we need to follow. There is no other. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

What's the Big Secret?

2009-09-08T04:55:00.001-07:00

Sermon for September 6, 2009

Proper 18

Text: Mark 7:31-37

Title: What's the Big Secret?

A. The story is told of a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman whose sales technique was to get his foot in the door of a prospective home and then throw a bag of manure on the entryway before the resident had a chance to object. One day, however, his trick backfired, because the owner of the home had a secret. As the potential customer answered the door, the salesman threw a bag of manure into the home, as was his habit. Before the woman could object, however, the salesman explained: "Lady, this vacuum is so powerful, and I have so much confidence in its ability, that I believe it will pick up every speck of this manure or I will personally get on my hands and knees and pick up every speck by hand." To which the lady replied, "Well, come right on in, young man. We don't have any electricity." I told you she had a secret.

Secrets come in all shapes and sizes. There are big, classified government secrets, there are personal, embarrassing secrets, and there are secrets that we can't wait to share. When it comes to secrets, many of us might identify with Mrs. Thurston Howell III on the old Gilligan's Island series, who said, "Secrets are fun to hear and even more fun to tell!!"

Well, Jesus had a secret. Scholars call this big secret the "Messianic Secret". In a nutshell, that means that He told people over and over again not to tell folks that He was the Messiah. Typically, Jesus would work a great miracle, or He would shush an exorcised demon who knew who He was -- all proof that He was bringing in the Kingdom of God with power – and then He would tell people not to tell anyone what they had seen or heard. The passage this morning is typical, "Then Jesus ordered the people to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it." Herein lies the problem. Why would Jesus tell people not to proclaim Who He is?! He is the Savior of the world – why not spread this Good News?

Scholars have speculated endlessly about why Jesus wanted to keep His identity secret. Some scholars have said that Jesus was using reverse psychology – He really wanted the people to spread the news about what they had seen and heard concerning Him, so He told them not to tell it, knowing that human being's love to tell tales when told not to tell them. I don't know about you, but personally, I think this explanation is a little weak! Some scholars have proposed that Jesus had a secret because He couldn't handle all the crowds who would come around Him once they found out that He was the Messiah. There is some truth to that; He certainly was swamped by both the curious and the needy. But I suspect that there is something else going on here as well. Let's get into the passage a little more closely, to see if Jesus' secretive nature had a purpose.

B. Jesus has moved closer to the Sea of Galilee when this scene opens, but He is still in the non-Jewish region of the Decapolis (a word that means "Ten Cities"). He is easily accessible to the crowds that approach him. The crowd brings a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus for healing. Jesus immediately takes this man away from the crowd, to a private place, where the healing takes place. Now there are a couple of strange things going on here. First of all, the crowd asks the Master to lay His hands on the deaf man; instead, Jesus takes Him away from the crowd. He doesn't want the crowds to share in this healing, and He doesn't want them to tell about it once they find out what had happened. All this is part of the "Messianic Secret" we just discussed.

The second strange thing we notice is that Jesus uses hand motions along with the healing. Most of Jesus' healings are performed merely with a spoken word. But this healing mentions that Jesus puts His fingers in the deaf man's ears, and touches his tongue with spit. Jesus also looks to Heaven, sighs, and uses the Aramaic term "Ephphatha" which means, "Be opened," when doing the miracle. Some translators have been so squeamish at the thought of Jesus' poking his fingers into this man's deaf ears, spreading his saliva about and actually touching the mute tongue with it, that they have tried to finesse the text into something more acceptable. There are some translations that have the deaf man poking at his own ears -- ostensibly to demonstrate his deafness to Jesus. He supposedly spits before opening his own mouth to show Jesus his muted tongue. The sigh, in this translation, is the mute man's inarticulate way of expressing his plight.

But an honest rendering of these verses clearly makes Jesus the poker, the spitter, the toucher, the sigher, and the speaker. Why, we ask, if Jesus can exorcize demons long-distance with a simple word, does it take such extreme physical measures to cure this man's deafness and give him the gift of speech? Good questions, and I'm getting to the answer.

Well, the healing does indeed take place. "Immediately, the man's ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly." The crowds who witnessed this cure were moved to wonder and overcome with zeal. Even when Jesus told them to keep quiet, they were unable to contain their exuberance and eagerly proclaimed the news of this miracle all about. The crowd's ultimate conclusion is one that both recognizes Jesus' power and articulates their faith. Jesus "has done everything well".

Now we are still left with the mysterious way Jesus did this healing, and the whole big Messianic secret thing. A clue to solving these mysteries lies in the Greek word describing the man's condition. Some of your translations may use the English "deaf-mute", but actually the word means that the man had a speech impediment, due to his lack of hearing. He could still utter sounds. This word is used only twice in the entire Old and New Testaments: once is here, and the other is in Isaiah 35:6, which was the companion verse in this morning's lectionary reading. Here it says, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped," referring to the coming of God in power to save the people. So Jesus performed this miracle in this way to graphically demonstrate that God's Kingdom is coming into their midst in power! The Day of the Lord had arrived!!

You might have heard the story of the little girl who got separated from her mother in the busy department store. The man saw her crying and heard her mumbling something, but he couldn't quite make it out. "Don't cry. I'll help you find your mommy." He proceeded with her to the front of the store, to the customer service desk, and an announcement was made over the loudspeaker about the "found" child. While they were waiting for the girl's mom, she said to the man, "I knew you would come. I was waiting for you." "Waiting for me?" said the man. "What made you think I was coming?" "I was praying you would," she said. "Praying? When I first heard you, you were saying A-B-C-D-E-F-G. What was that for?" She looked up again and said, "I was praying all the letters of the alphabet and letting God put them together the way he wanted to. He knows how to put them together better than I do."

The people thought Jesus Messiah would come riding up on a white horse to knock the Romans in the head and put the Kingdom of David back together again in power. But that's not what God had in mind. God put the letters of our salvation together in a wholly different fashion than what everyone had in mind.

C. So why the big secret? Why does Jesus over and over again tell the people not to tell anybody what they had seen and heard? Well, to put it bluntly, it is because no one could possibly understand the secret fully at this stage of Jesus' ministry. The people got all caught up in the idea of a miracle-working Messiah; they were so excited they could hardly contain themselves: "The more Jesus ordered them (not to tell), the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure." These folks were like kids at Christmas. Kids just can't stand to stay in their room a moment longer. They just have to go into the living room to see what Santa has brought them, even if it is 5:00 in the morning!! These people who surrounded Jesus, watched His miracles in amazement, and turned into extreme blabbermouths, just couldn't believe their salvation – their political leader, their Messiah, their anointed one – had come. What a joyous day!

But they misunderstood that the miracles really meant that the Kingdom of God had come into the world to battle the Kingdom of Satan, not the Empire of Rome. They couldn't possibly understand at this point that the Messiah had to die, not conquer. His throne was a Cross; His throne room was Calvary. But this was the only way God could give people what they really needed -- salvation from sin. The Roman Empire would come and go. It has settled into the dust and memories of history. What people really need is a Savior!! What we really need is Jesus Christ the Risen and Living Lord. What we really need is a relationship with the Lord. What we really need is to be forgiven of our sins!!

Listen again to the words of Isaiah, and we can see why Jesus had to keep a Messianic secret until after His death and Resurrection. The words of Isaiah, seen through the shadow of the Cross, say it all. "Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water."

Another way to look at it is that God is in charge. That little girl in my previous story was right. We can trust God to put the letters of our lives together in the proper order. The most powerful prayer we can possibly say is "Lord, thy Will be done!" When we live as though we know that God will provide everything we need in the proper way and at the proper time – and by that, I mean God will provide money, job, health, hope, and all the rest when it is needed – then we live out that prayer with our lives. Paul called this walking by faith and not by sight. It's not living with blinders on. Rather, it's living knowing that God loves us and that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that God is in control. It's living knowing that ultimately, we can't be in control of life. Too much that is out of control can happen. But God is always in control.

A frazzled young mother locked her sick toddler in the car while she ran into the pharmacy to pick up an emergency prescription. While in the store she discovered that she had left the keys in the ignition. It was late at night, she didn't have a cell phone, and the pharmacy had locked its doors and pulled down its metal shutters by the time she realized what she'd done. She ran out to the car, and could hear the sound of her daughter crying. Tearfully, she prayed for help. A few moments later, a young man walked past and turned to look at her in curiosity. "Can you help me?" she begged him desperately. "I've locked my keys in the car and my daughter is in there!" He nodded, and looked around the empty parking lot until he found an old coat hanger that he straightened. She had never seen anything like it — it was simply amazing how easily he got into her car. A quick look at the door and window, a couple of twists of the coat hanger just like that, the door was open. When she saw the door open she thanked him profusely. "Oh," she said, "the Lord sent you! You're such a good man. You must be a Christian!" He stepped back and said, "No ma'am, I'm not a Christian, and I'm not a good man. I just got out of prison yesterday." She laughed and said, "Praise the Lord! He sent me a professional!"

My friends, do we trust Christ with our lives. Can we let God be God, and be in charge of our lives? Let's pray about it right now:

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

God's Body Armor

2009-09-01T05:10:00.001-07:00

Sermon for August 30, 2009

Proper 17

Text: Ephesians 6:10-20

Title: God's Body Armor

A. Have you ever noticed that when you are a parent of boys your museum fare goes from art and sculpture to something bigger and more hard-hitting? You know what I mean; now the museum tour consists of dinosaurs, of huge tombs and temples, of mummies and caskets of ancient Egypt. And of course, one has to meander through the mists of the medieval ages. This means rooms and rooms of ancient, awful-looking weaponry, as well as "awesome" armor. We have all seen the complete coats of heavy iron armor. We have looked in amazement at huge armored warhorses with metal encased soldiers mounted on their backs are holding up hundreds and hundreds of pounds of "protection." Medieval armory gradually grew to be a source of artistic expression. Metal workers took pride in the precision of their pieces and in the intricacy of their designs. Kings and noblemen commissioned fantastic suits of armor that were designed more for parade days than for the battlefields.

The Roman armor described in this week's epistle text was far different. It was lightweight, utilitarian, proved and improved on thousands of battlefields. The function of the Roman soldier's armor was defensive. It was designed to keep the soldier from dying so that he could go on fighting for the Empire. The function of the Christian's "armor" described in today's Ephesians text is quite different. The function of the "armor of God" is to keep the faithful alive — alive in Christ.

B. Paul had an insight into the Christian lifestyle that we sometimes forget about today, namely, that our ultimate struggle is against the forces of evil in the world. Now I'm not talking about a boogey-man, and I'm certainly not talking about some guy dressed in red and sporting horns, a tail, and a pick-fork!! Neither am I trying to minimize the reality of human sin and temptation, nor the reality of tragedy in the world in which we live as well as in our own lives. The Devil isn't behind every bad thing that happens to us, at least not directly. We can't slough off our own sinful nature by saying "The Devil Made Me Do It." Rather, the truth that Paul asserts and which we must keep in mind is that there is evil in the world. And that evil is intent upon thwarting the advancement of the Kingdom of God and is the enemy of every individual who calls himself or herself a disciple of Jesus Christ. Paul states the matter bluntly: "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."

There is both a positive and a negative here. The positive note being sounded here is that ultimately, there isn't a thing persecution, or illness, or tragedy, or anything else bad can do to us in this life. When I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, I have eternal life; my joy is in the now as well as in the hereafter. God is with us, and there isn't a thing in the entire world, not even death, that can change that.

But the negative note that is sounded here is ominous. Paul is also saying here that what we see with our eyes and experience with our senses is not all there is to reality. We also have a supernatural foe, and this foe is arrayed against the church. The language Paul uses reflects the mythology of the day. Our own culture might better envision what he is talking about by calling these supernatural forces "demonic." Now we don't like to talk about demonic forces; to most of us they conjure up images of the movie The Exorcist. But we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater either. I have seen a number of evil things over the years whose cause seems to go beyond the explainable. I remember shortly after arriving at my church in Leesburg, being told by a person who was sensitive in the realm of the spiritual that she sensed "dark figures" hovering over the sanctuary. There is no question that the hate and anger that permeated many of the congregants went far beyond normal behavior by civil people. We need to join with Paul to acknowledge, if not fully understand, that evil exists, and it resists God's people at every turn.

But the Good News is that Jesus is in charge. It's not even a fair fight!! Although the Devil has been given freedom to stir up things here on earth for a time, God has won the victory!! And the Lord has given His people all that they will ever need to resist the attack of the Evil One. The Biblical student should notice that in these few verses Paul uses power verbs over and over again; many of these words are rarely used elsewhere in the NT. Paul calls the disciple into action – "Resist", "Watch," "Pray," "Be Alert." We are obviously meant to be engaged in the battle against the Devil because the Devil will not hesitate to battle us! Also, we should notice that the word "stand" or "withstand" appears four times in these eleven verses, suggesting that we are to stand at the ready and dig in our heals when the Devil strikes. We can't let the Evil One get a foothold in our lives; we have to stand firm against him.

Paul uses the image of the fully armed Roman soldier to get his point across. We have to wear the full armor of God to hold off the attack of the Evil One. Perhaps this is suggested because Paul is in prison while writing this letter; the General has been removed from the field for a time, and he has become a bold martyr in chains, still guiding the troops into successful combat and unafraid of pain or harm to himself.

This reminds me of a much more recent struggle. The story is told that years ago, when the South African government canceled a political rally against apartheid, Desmond Tutu led a worship service in St. George's Cathedral. The walls were lined with soldiers and riot police carrying guns and bayonets, ready to close it down. Bishop Tutu began to speak of the evils of the apartheid system -- how the rulers and authorities that propped it up were doomed to fall. He pointed a finger at the police who were there to record his words: "You maybe powerful -- very powerful -- but you are not God. God cannot be mocked. You have already lost." Then the bishop seemed to soften. Coming out from behind the pulpit, he flashed a smile and began to bounce up and down with glee. "Therefore, since you have already lost, we are inviting you to join the winning side." The crowd roared, the police melted away and the people began to dance.

Don't go away, Paul says. Put on your armor and dance. I am inviting you to join the winning side. And here is how we do it:

The belt of truth: This belt for Roman soldiers was so wide and thick that it protected the stomach and lower abdomen and prevented them from being disemboweled. For the church, the truth is our belt. The truth is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and only through faith in Him and Him alone does one achieve salvation. The truth is that life is best lived not for self, but for God and for others. The truth is that the Church is the community of believers. Satan doesn't mind slipping under this belt with the sword of untruth. But through Scripture study, prayer, and mutual discussion, God sends His Spirit to lead us into all truth. Such truth prevents the community from being eviscerated by untruths. Rumors and gossip can easily divide a church, thus Paul begins by promoting protection of the community's soft underbelly.

The "breastplate of righteousness" and the "helmet of salvation": These two items protected the heart and the head — emblematic of the seat of the emotions and the center of reason, both of which need constant monitoring and protection. In any array of armor, the head and the heart are the most important organs to protect, for death is sure if these organs are seriously injured. Righteousness is never our own righteousness; it is the righteousness of Christ. We have to protect our heart by recognizing that we are all sinners, and we are all saved by the grace of Christ. We are never good enough to earn our own salvation, but by grace we are saved through faith. The helmet of salvation – the realization that we are only worthy because Christ is worthy – guards our thinking from getting arrogant, puffed up, or judgmental of others. Knowledge of this protects the heart and enables the believer to think and do the right things. Paul's comments remind the community that their eternal safety is bound up in God's mighty act of grace in Christ.

The Roman half boot: This standard military footwear enabled not only solid footing on the battlefield but also enabled the legions to move quickly over Roman roads so they could keep the peace. Paul's image of feet made "ready to proclaim the gospel of peace" indicates that the community of faith, too, must be able to move quickly and broadly in order to deliver the good news of Christ. The more we are moving about and sharing Christ, the less idleness and doubt can creep into the community. And the more the Prince of Peace can be proclaimed throughout a hungry and hurting world.

The shield of faith: The shield is critical to the Christian individual and community, just as it was to the Roman legions. One of the standard battle tactics of the ancient world was to fire flaming arrows into the ranks of the enemy, a move designed to get individual soldiers to drop their shields long enough to put out the fire, thus exposing them to attack. Roman shields were full-length, made of heavy wood with a leather covering that could be soaked in water before battle to extinguish these flaming projectiles. Paul's image of faith being such a shield conveys again the idea of cohesion between members of the community in the face of spiritual attack. When the flaming arrows of the enemy hit the shield soaked in faith, the arrows sputter out and the Christian "soldier" is saved. These arrows may have represented the evil speech aimed at the Christians in Paul's day, since arrows appear often in the OT as symbolic for poisonous speech aimed at the Godly. Our faith in the fact that God doesn't make mistakes, but that we are all precious children of the Lord, extinguishes the fiery darts of hateful words and malicious speech.

The sword: The last image is of Scripture as a "sword", a familiar New Testament metaphor. The Roman sword was short -- 20 to 24 inches long -- and used for close-in fighting once the javelin had been deployed. The sword is the only weapon in this arsenal that can be considered an offensive weapon. So, in Paul's thinking, the only way we can get offensive is with Scripture or the Word of God, the good news. With the absolute authority of the Word of God, we can attach the temptations and lies of the Devil, especially when locked in close combat with Him. Thus we are implored to wear the full armor of God. Such security gives us the strength to stand against the unholy.

C. Finally, we need to engage in prayer. Believers must hear sermons, read Scripture, talk with other Christians, engage in regular prayer, sing the praises of God, and so on. Paul puts it this way, "Pray in the Spirit at all times, in every prayer and supplication. Keep alert and always persevere. And pray for me…pray that I might proclaim the Gospel boldly." Prayer is the umbrella that provides cover for the faithful. Satan cannot withstand a prayer attack. What Paul is talking about here is to live in an attitude of prayer; to live in fellowship with the Lord, thanking Him for the many little gifts He provides on a daily basis, offering prayers of intercession when needed, and, of course, setting aside a time of prayer during each day. Praying in the Spirit means praying in the manner Jesus might pray; attuned to His Spirit, we sense how we must pray. Perhaps many of you have woke up in the middle of the night and sensed the need of prayer. Recently that happened to me. I had no idea why I had to pray, but the next day I found out, when a friend of mine was involved in a terrible accident. Prayer has power. It kept the Great Apostle going while an "ambassador in chains." And is it our surest spiritual defense.

Recently National Geographic ran an article about the Alaskan Bull Moose. The males of the species battle for dominance during the fall breeding season, literally going head-to-head with antlers crunching together as they collide. The heftiest moose, with the largest and strongest antlers, triumphs. Therefore, the battle fought in the fall is really won during the summer, when the moose eats continually. The one that consumes the best diet for growing antlers and gaining weight will be the heavyweight in the fall fight. Those that eat inadequately sport weaker antlers and less bulk.

I think there's a lesson here. Satan will choose a season to attack; of this we can be sure. Will we be victorious, or will we fall? Much depends on what we do now--before the war begins. And much of that depends upon how well and how often we pray. Paul isn't inviting us to live life joylessly, but simply to be aware that the Enemy is there. And there will be times when the Enemy will catch us with our guard down, and we will fall. Praise the Lord that He can pick us up, dust us off, and help us move forward again during such times. So what times are these? Seasons of attack? Or seasons of victory? Reliance on the Lord will make all the difference. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

The Joshua Election

2009-08-25T05:08:00.001-07:00

Sermon for August 23, 2009

Proper 16

Text: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-25

Title: "The Joshua Election"

A. The names may not be familiar: Samuel Hill, John Nicholson and William Knights. But what they did certainly is. Together they formed The Gideons International in 1908, placing their first Bible in a hotel room in Colorado. The three men were all traveling businessmen with the shared vision of reaching other traveling businessmen with the Gospel. That first Bible placement has since expanded to include more than 180 countries with more than 1.3 billion Bibles placed in hotels to date. Research from the hotel industry itself reports that approximately 25 percent of all travelers read the Bibles in their hotel rooms. Lonely people in cities from Vegas to Venice can reach for one book that brings inspiration, guidance, admonition and encouragement. The stories of how Scripture has interacted with the lives of people are numerous, often starting with horrible life situations and ending with people following Jesus. "Elliot," for example, checked into a hotel to commit suicide, stumbled upon the Gideon Bible, and met Christ that night. Today he's a pastor. "Kevin" was a staunch evangelist for atheism who, to his shock, met Jesus through a Gideon Bible that he keeps with him to this day.

There is no question about it. Scripture has a way of confronting us. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that God through Scripture has a way of confronting us. Confrontation is precisely what Joshua does in our text for this morning. Here we find a Joshua who was able to bring magnificent clarity to the issues that lie before us when he says, "Choose this day whom you will serve".

Before going forward with this, we need to take a moment to go backwards. Earlier, Moses passes the mantle of national leadership on to Joshua. The amazing life of Moses is summed up in Deuteronomy 34:10: "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." Obviously, these are not easy sandals to step into! But God had selected the right man in Joshua for the next phase of Israel's life in the Promised Land. Moses, as great a leader as he was, wasn't a general. Joshua was. And military prowess would be what was needed as the people of God entered into the land already populated with a wide variety of people.

When Moses died, God started speaking to Joshua in the same way He spoke to Moses. In the first chapter of the Book of Joshua, we find God telling him "Josh, you da man!" (OK, so the translation is a little too modern, but you get the picture!) "Be strong and courageous because I go out with you!" God had always led Moses. Now He would do the same for Joshua. For his part, Joshua needed to forsake fear and embrace courage. He would not only extend the blessing that had been given to Moses but achieve it in an even more spectacular fashion. Moses got the Israelites through 40 years of wandering in a desert; Joshua would take them to the Promised Land and possess it. Now in Joshua 24, this conquest is all over, for the time being. The land has been possessed. Chapter 24 is Joshua's deathbed speech. He points a bony finger at the Israelites and offers them perhaps the most important challenge they would ever hear. It is a challenge for us as well – in one word: "Choose!"

B. So after the conquest, before the Israelites settle by tribes into their newly acquired home-places, Joshua assembles them at Shechem, to renew the covenant first made at Mount Sinai. Shechem holds great significance. It was at Shechem that God first addressed Abraham in the new land (Gen. 12). Perhaps most importantly, as I mentioned earlier this week in my e-mailed sermon teaser, Shechem was where Jacob led his family in an idol-burying ceremony (Gen. 35). So it was a place loaded with symbolism and memories of dedicating oneself to the one true God. In verses 2-13 (not a part of the lectionary reading today, but vitally important to the meaning of the whole chapter), Joshua reminds the people about the Lord God's relationship not only with their ancestors, but with them as well. He stands clearly in the place of Moses, the mediator between God and the people. He is forthright in saying that their ancestors indeed did serve other gods. Nonetheless God called them and delivered them from oppression, as well as leading them in the successful conquest of the land they were now occupying.

The option is not between serving the Lord and serving no god at all. We can easily read between the lines and see that the various local deities had an attraction for the Israelites. No doubt they had intermarried, and adapted the spouses religious practices. They thought they could worship both the one true God and the local deity of convenience. But they were sorely mistaken. The entire chapter should be seen as a contract, between God and God's people, outlining how God had stayed with them through their slavery in Egypt, their Exile in the Wilderness, and their conquest of the Promised Land. Verses 2-13 are overwhelming in the number of statements of what God did for His people: "I gave", "I sent", "I brought out", "I handed over" "I rescued". The Lord had delivered on His part of the bargain. He had been faithful. Now it was the peoples' turn to swear to their part of the bargain, namely, to serve the Lord with all their hearts, soul, mind, and strength, to borrow the words of Jesus centuries later.

Joshua sets the example: "As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." It may seem strange to our modern ears of individualism, but Joshua spoke for his entire household. It's not that others in his household had no mind or tongue of their own, but frequently in the cultures of the ancient near east, the head of the household represents and decides for the family. The people respond by declaring that they would indeed serve the Lord and Him alone, who had delivered not only their ancestors but who had brought them to this place at this time. "Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God."

Joshua's response is a shock: "You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins." This is not simply "reverse psychology," but a reminder of the seriousness of their commitment. To go back on their word would be far more disastrous than never to have made the commitment in the first place. Although calling God jealous might seem a little strange, it has great meaning in the cultural context of the ancient Near East. There, it was assumed that one would worship a lot of gods, depending upon the particular favor one needed from the appropriate deity. God is holy, and we are to be holy — completely set apart for God's worship and use. God is jealous and will not accept any disloyalty. One cannot serve the Lord God and another god. God demands an extreme quality and depth of the spiritual relationship we enjoy with Him. He demands that we reflect His purity, nature, and holiness in every aspect of our lives. We remember Jesus' statements about not being able to serve both God and mammon. We as disciples are called to "fear" the Lord, that is, to have respect for our Creator, Redeemer God. And we are to "serve" the Lord, namely, to be devoted to Him alone with both our words and our deeds.

And obviously, no one can do this perfectly all the time. That is why Joshua told the people "You cannot serve the Lord." And of course he was right. The pages of the Old Testament are full of the stories of Israel's failure to follow God. On our own, it is impossible. We can only be acceptable to the Lord when we accept Christ as Lord and Savior, and God sees us through the blood of the Lamb. So perhaps naively, even with the warning, the people affirm their intention to serve the Lord. And in the full zeal of the moment, they celebrated a ritual of putting away their idols, burying them along with the temptations they brought. At least for the moment.

I once heard a story from Haiti on total commitment to the Lord. A certain man wanted to sell his house. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but couldn't afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one stipulation: He would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So the first owner went out, found the carcass of a dead dog, and hung it from the single nail he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable, and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail. The conclusion is simple: If we leave the Devil with even one small peg in our life, he will return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ's habitation.

C. I guess you could say the implications of this passage for us are obvious. In point of fact, we have to make choices everyday. Many, many choices have no more than immediate consequences: what shirt should I wear today, what do I want for breakfast, which route do I want to take to work, and so on. But then there are choices that can have life-changing consequences: should I take this job, should I marry this person, should I move to this locale.

The reason Joshua, at the end of his life and career, posed the question to the people the way he did is because the answer to the question would affect any other choice they might make in the future. When he said, "Choose the Lord your God, or choose to follow some other god", what Joshua is really trying to say is that we all have to choose where to ground our core principles. What is our life's priority? If our life's priority is ourselves, then all our decisions will be based on what's best for me. Our god is me. I can do it all! A lot of life's trauma results from the fact that so many of us put self-interest ahead of everything else in life. And then when we run into something that is not in our control, we learn that the god of self is not a very good god after all, and our whole worldview collapses. If we choose to follow the Lord, then our decision-making is grounded in the fact that God is in charge of our lives. We want to live by an ethic that centers around loving God and loving neighbor around loving ourselves. If our god is anything else other than the Lord our God – if it is money or fame or career or power or whatever -- then although it may be attractive for a time, but eventually it will be proven to be just a wooden idol. And we are left with nothing.

Fortunately, when we choose wrongly, when we fail to follow Jesus, when we place God on the sidelines of existence, there is still hope. Jesus came to die for us, and He rose again from the dead to demonstrate that not even death is the final word in the argument of life. The final word is grace. And the Lord is always ready to forgive us when we mess up, when we choose wrongly, and when we fail to follow Him. Commitment to Christ begins with decision, but commitment is never a once-in-a-lifetime decision. Christ will forgive us of our sins, and restore us to newness of life. No sin or wrong choice is ever too big for God. The Lord is in charge.

Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman told of a distinguished minister, Dr. Howard, from Australia who preached very strongly on the subject of sin. After the service, one of the church officers came to counsel with him in the study. "Dr. Howard," he said, "we don't want you to talk as openly as you do about man's guilt and corruption, because if our boys and girls hear you discussing that subject they will more easily become sinners. Call it a mistake if you will, but do not speak so plainly about sin." "The minister took down a small bottle and showing it to the visitor said, "You see that label? It says strychnine -- and underneath in bold, red letters the word 'Poison!' Do you know, man, what you are asking me to do? You are suggesting that I change the label. Suppose I do, and paste over it the words, 'Essence of Peppermint'; don't you see what might happen? Someone would use it, not knowing the danger involved, and would certainly die. So it is, too, with the matter of sin. The milder you make your label, the more dangerous you make your poison!"

So who do we choose? Christ is waiting for us when we choose Him. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Hummingbirds or Vultures?

2009-08-18T05:16:00.001-07:00

Sermon for August 16, 2009

Proper 15

Text: Ephesians 5:15-20

Title: Hummingbirds or Vultures?

A. There is a tremendous amount of life in the dry, arid Arizona desert, but two very different species deserve special mention. One is the hummingbird and the other is the vulture. The vultures find the rotting meat of the desert, because that is what they eat. The good Lord has created a wonderful means through these birds to clean up dead carcasses and help prevent the spread of disease. Vultures thrive on this diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. They eat the nectar that is found there, and again, demonstrating the wisdom of our Creator God, in this way help pollinate and thereby perpetuate the precious plants of the arid desert.

But now let's compare these two birds a bit further. The vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. And so do we.

That is the essence of Paul's teaching in this passage from Ephesians we just read: In life, there are two very different kinds of people, just like in the desert there are two very different kinds of birds. The one, according to Paul, looks for foolishness, the other looks for wisdom. The one follows the ways of the world. The other follows a lifestyle that imitates Christ. Or to put the matter another way, the Christian life is both a challenge and a rebuke of modern society. Paul makes it clear that it is possible to live a fully Christian life in a secular world, but it's not easy. God's will for us is to live fully in the Light of Christ, and to enjoy fellowship with our Creator, not being distracted by but rather witnessing to the evil in the world.

B. All that is quite a mouthful, and now I want to unpack it all to make it a little clearer. The best way to do this is to notice that Paul uses a very cut and dried comparison to make his point. Simply put, the believer can choose to live either by the way of wisdom, or the way of foolishness. It's our choice.

Wisdom figures prominently in the later books of the Old Testament, such as Job and Proverbs. Living wisely means living a way of life that knows God and lives according to His Will for our lives. We don't wonder through life aimlessly. We have purpose and direction in living. Wisdom enables the believer to face life head-on, to make sense of its enigmas, and to surmount its problems. To not live that way, according to the OT Wisdom literature, is to live foolishly. For example, in the Book of Proverbs, we find this saying: "Wisdom is a fountain of life to the one who has it, but folly is the punishment of fools." (Proverbs 16:22) The contrast is obvious, and it is this contrast that Paul is trying to capture, because to him, the Christian must live wisely, up against the secular culture, where life is lived foolishly.

The portion of Paul's letter we are considering this morning begins with a word of caution: "Be careful then how you live." In the preceding verses, the Apostle offers a gloomy description of how the pagans live, and now he seeks to give positive instruction for the Christian life. If the Christian community is to differentiate themselves from the secular, they are to practice living as wise people — those who live understanding "what the will of the Lord is".

The command to live as wise people is made more urgent by verse 16. Paul encourages the Ephesian Christians to make "the most of the time." The Greek verb he uses here means to "purchase" or "buy back," or "redeem" something. Paul borrows it from the language of commerce, and it literally means to snatch up a bargain. Kairos, the Greek word we translate as "time" is better translated as a moment in time (in contrast to the word "chronos", which means a season of time); we are to do this "because the days are evil." Perhaps we would say "challenging" but I think we get Paul's drift here. The community is called to make the most of the time available, to snatch up the opportunities that are present, because time is a precious commodity. We are surrounded by sin and darkness, and the Devil is prowling around, always ready to take advantage of us in a weak moment. It's so easy to let the ways of the world crowd into the ways of Christ practiced in our lives. But we are also reminded that the Light of Christ has invaded and overcome these evil days. Therefore, we are summoned to live life wisely in the light of the Lord.

The contrast between wise and foolish living is painted in its most strident colors in verse 17, where Paul says, "So do not be foolish." To be "foolish" in the Jewish tradition means to throw away the chance for salvation. The writer is calling the community to avoid the foolishness of pagan unbelief and living and to resolve instead to "understand what the will of the Lord is". Christian wisdom, therefore, is a way of behaving oriented toward the will of God in the midst of a world that has separated itself from God by its own foolishness.

Verse 18 contains two more commands for the community of believers, one negative and one positive. Paul warns them against one form of intoxication and encourages them to pursue another; they are not to be drunk with wine, but are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul is not telling us to be teetotalers, only not to drink to excess. Christians, he says, are not to live like pagans who get drunk to induce a religious experience; rather they are to enjoy the ecstasy provided by the Spirit of God. The Christian is to "be filled with the Spirit." This affects congregational worship. They are to be Spirit-filled, joyous events, full of song. The Christian should live in a constant state of thanksgiving, giving praise to God for what God has done in the life of the believer, and this is reflected in grateful, heartfelt, and joyful worship.

C. Now let me propose this morning that there are three "open" conditions that will enable us to more effectively live the Christian life:

1. Be open-minded (but not too open!). What I mean by that is that we should open our mind up to the presence and power of the Spirit of God. Today's text counsels "Be careful then how you live ... because the days are evil". Many people around those early Christians believed that if they could "get drunk with wine", and drink themselves into a wild stupor then they were opening up their minds and their spirits to messages from the gods outside themselves. Obviously, we don't believe this today. But oftentimes we do open up our minds to the wrong things, and it can pollute our entire being. I don't need to make a list; we are more than familiar with what these things can be. But the right kind of open mind invites God's Spirit in. We open up our minds by studying Scripture, by prayer, by attending Church services, by participating in Bible studies, and the like. These are all channels of God's grace. When we do these things, we open up our minds to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist of the 19^th century, was to have a revival in England. An elderly pastor protested, "Why do we need this 'Mr. Moody'? He's uneducated and inexperienced. Who does he think he is anyway? Does he think he has a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?" His colleague responded, "No, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly on Mr. Moody."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if people said the same thing about you and me?

2. Be open-hearted. Paul urges the Ephesians to let God's Spirit pour into their opened hearts, filling them with the music of God's songs: "Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs"-- that is, all kinds of music that praise God and constantly declare our thankfulness to God. This is the outward expression of the kind of lifestyle being open-hearted calls us to. Being open-hearted like this means being open to the possibility that nothing is impossible to God. It means living life knowing that God is fully in charge, and not sitting on the sidelines of existence. It means living joyfully because we know that God loves us, that God is with us, and that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord (even when they don't seem to be working together for good!). Singing God's songs is a joyful eruption of God's grace in our lives.

To be openhearted to the joy of this singing-Spirit is not sappy sentimentality -- the Psalms confront God with genuine human fears, anger, loss, misery, joy, hope, love and dreams. The psalmists poured out their hearts to God in song, leaving them openhearted to welcome the healing, soothing Spirit into their lives. Paul insists that the Ephesians sing these songs, as well as "making melody" in their hearts -- making clear that there must be an unbroken connection between what the lips confess and what the heart feels. The heart which is genuinely opened to God's Spirit directs the words that escape our lips. No false confessions or flowery sounds of insincere piety may escape from a mouth that is controlled by an authentically open heart.

3. Be open-handed. The thankfulness we feel and proclaim for God's never-ending gifts must find an active outlet in our lives. Knowing that "God's in charge" means we don't have to worry about the bottom line, we don't have to hedge our bets, we don't have to ration our compassion. Once we quiet down our fears and frustrations, once we successfully squelch the illusion that we must be in control, God's Spirit will show us just how simple it is to open our hands to others in need. When we learn to "shut up" -- to "let [our] words be few" -- we can rediscover the old truism "deeds speak louder than words." An open hand speaks louder than an open mouth.

An open hand doesn't have to cost anything, although it can be as simple as a regular donation to a needy cause or a hungry family. Every day we run into people who don't have a lot of hope going on in their lives, and they are looking for an open hand, a gentle word, a warm smile, or a genuine gesture of compassion. It may be hard to do – some people are so encrusted with the barnacles of life that it may be very difficult to love them. But God calls us to be open handed. God calls us to be the physical embodiment of the Word, because you or I might be the only Bible an individual ever reads. God calls us to love the way Jesus loved, and in that way to heal the hurts that seem to surround us on every side. Such open handedness might be quite unexpected.

During the American Revolution a man in civilian clothes rode past a group of soldiers repairing a small defensive barrier. Their commander was shouting instructions, but making no attempt to help them. Asked by the rider why he wasn't joining in to help the tired soldiers, he retorted with great dignity, "Sir, I am a corporal!" The stranger apologized, dismounted, and proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers. The job done, he turned to the corporal and said, "Mr. Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to your commander-in-chief, and I will come and help you again." That man was none other than George Washington.

Paul concludes by telling both those 1^st century disciples and us to "give thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything." Not easy to do. But it is a winning strategy for successful Christian living. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

The Bread of Life

2009-08-11T05:00:00.001-07:00

Sermon for August 9, 2009

Proper 14

Text: John 6:35-51

Title: The Bread of Life

A. Not long ago I saw a bumper sticker that said, "If it's true that you are what you eat, then I must be fast, cheap and easy." We laugh at that, but I've got to tell you, it does hit a little close to home. I saw the results of a survey a few years back, reporting the answers to the question "What are the two biggest categories of nonfiction best sellers?" As it turned out, number one was cookbooks. We love to eat well. Number two was diet books. Evidently, we page through cookbooks, searching out the most tempting and succulent recipes. Then we race right over to the diet books to find out why we can't eat that stuff!

I hope I'm not making you hungry, between last week's discussion of grits and now this week beginning my message with fast food and cookbooks. Obviously eating is an important part of life. It's certainly an important part of life in the Bible. Eating together is the height of social acceptance in the Middle East. Even today, in the more rural parts of this country, if one is invited over to share a meal, it means you will be friends for life. Jesus got flack from the religious establishment because he ate with those that they considered to be the wrong kind of people, namely, tax collectors and sinners. But the Master was basically saying to the unacceptable by this action, 'You will be my friends for life. You are acceptable to Me!'

And the staple of life in First Century Palestine was bread. Bread was baked in clay ovens, removed from the family dwelling to prevent any danger from fire. As I said in my mid-week meditation, baking bread was a family affair. The kids gathered wood to stoke the fire, while mom prepared the dough. And after the wonderfully smelling, bubbling concoction was cooled, it was eaten throughout the day. Bread was essential for life! So both they, and we, can appreciate what He means when He begins this morning's passage of Scripture with, "I am the Bread of Life."

B. Last week we looked at the passage in Exodus that talked about God's gift of manna to His people, wandering in the Wilderness. The word 'manna", as we noted, means, "What is it?" We still don't know what it was, but in the corporate and historic psyche of God's people, it quickly took on the characteristic of bread. Manna physically sustained the people in the Wilderness, just like bread. And it was God's good gift.

In the verses immediately preceding this morning's passage, the people hear Jesus talking about God giving bread from Heaven, and they confuse it with the manna their ancestors received. They asked of Jesus, "Sir, give us this bread always". They were poor and hungry, impoverished people living in an impoverished land. They were after ordinary food, food that perishes. It was all they could think about. But Jesus taught them to stretch their spirits to something even more important than physical bread. He was offering imperishable food, food that provides lasting sustenance regardless of who you are, where you've been, or what your circumstances might be. Because the crowds failed to understand immediately, He explicitly declares to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

It's no coincidence that Jesus uses the image of bread to describe the most basic element of spiritual health. Believing in Jesus, following Jesus and relying on Jesus form the foundation of a healthy, whole and eternal life, just like bread functioned as the foundation for a healthy physical life for the people to whom He was speaking. Jesus is life sustaining, like the manna of their ancestors in the wilderness. But while manna was the basis of their sustenance, it couldn't make them eternally healthy. "Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, and they died," said Jesus. Why? In part, it was because they didn't believe God's promise and chose to grumble rather than receive the manna with thanks. In like manner, whoever does not receive Jesus, the true bread of heaven, while living in the present age, will die. The Gospel of John is very clear, and I want to be just as clear: there is only one way to eternal life, and that way is through faith in Christ!! But if they (and we) believe in the one whom God sent, the one who "is the bread that comes down from heaven ... [they] may eat of it and not die. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever ...", because whoever listens to Jesus — that is, "eat[s] the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink[s] his blood" — that one will not die but will have eternal life, both now and hereafter.

This is not the prettiest of images. Throughout the history of the Christian Church, those who opposed or who didn't accept the faith thought this language referred to cannibalism. Frederick Nietsche, an incredibly influential philosopher of the 19^th century, used to refer to Christians as being a strange type of people, who ate flesh and drank blood. Now, we don't have time today to discuss all the theological nuances of Holy Communion (let's save that for another time), but suffice it to say that this language is sacramental, not literal. Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is a channel of God's forgiving grace. Bread and wine mysteriously become more than what they appear at the Table of the Lord. And this Table is a time of communion with the Risen Christ.

So it is obvious that Jesus was offering was the kind of nutrition that will fuel us spiritually, and which shall never run out or become ineffective. "I am the living bread that came down from heaven," He said. "Whoever eats of this bread will live forever". The foundational spiritual nutrition of Jesus' own life, death and resurrection is what sustains us in our own journey out of sin and death and into the promised land of God's kingdom.

We also see in these verses that crowds were skeptical about Jesus. Was He really what He claimed to be? "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus, however, is not deterred by their skepticism. Instead, he confronts it when he commands them, saying, "Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day". Not only does Jesus tell them to stop complaining, he also states emphatically once more that "the Father" — his Father — is actively at work in his ministry. It is by the Father's power that a person hears Jesus and believes in Him.

Those who hear and believe the Son's divine teaching receive an astonishing, amazing gift, for Jesus says, "Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life". In the past, God spoke through Moses and the Scriptures, but now he is speaking and working through his Son.

But Jesus' promise of life for those who believe in him demands an unprecedented, personal sacrifice on his part. Not only is he "the living bread that came down from heaven" — the one who can provide bread for the hungry — His own flesh is, in fact, "the bread that [he] will give for the life of the world". He is "the Word [that] became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth". Jesus had to die so we might know life. And His Resurrection proves that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.

C. It's not always easy to believe this. So much in life seems to argue against faith in a good God.

You may know the story of the man who fell off a cliff, but managed to grab a tree limb on the way down. The following conversation ensued: "Is anyone up there?" "I am here. I am the Lord. Do you believe me?" "Yes, Lord, I believe. I really believe, but I can't hang on much longer." "That's all right, if you really believe you have nothing to worry about. I will save you. Just let go of the branch." A moment of pause, then: "Is anyone else up there?"

You know, maybe it's me, but I think the hardest spiritual truth to swallow is that God could love me (substitute your own name here) enough to die for me. Oh, I'm not talking about intellectually believing it; I'm talking about believing it with our hearts, all the way down to the core of our beings, all the way down to where it makes a real difference in the foundations of who we are. When John talks about believing in Jesus, what He is actually saying is that we must trust Jesus with our lives. That can't happen if we don't think God loves us enough to do what is best for us. Circumstances in life oftentimes seem to go against us, and we wonder if God is really up there, and really on our side. We try to control everything and everyone around us, but that only leads to a realization of how out of control we really are.

At it's core, therefore, this passage is all about believing without seeing. That's what Jesus meant when He said, "I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven…Whoever eats of this bread will live forever." Nourishment by Jesus means having a strong and intimate faith in Jesus. Now I know, it's not always easy to trust the Lord like that. But not trusting Him doesn't make Him less in control of things. God can bring good out of evil.

Jesus invites us to "eat" of Him. To consume him. To devour Him. To feed on Him. In other words, to take His Words and His actions and really believe in Him, really make Him a part of our lives and who we are. Truth is, "consuming" Jesus is good for us. It's healthy for us. And when Jesus says this leads to eternal life, He means not only life to come but life right now. We are aligning our lives with that of the Creator and Sustainer of the entire world. To do so is to have joy, peace, and a real purpose in life.

Think about faith in terms of being like a bottle of medicine.

If someone takes a bottle of medicine from the medicine cabinet, and looking at the instructions on it, this person says, 'I'm sure they're correct. I have all confidence in the source of the medicine. I know who wrote these directions. I believe everything about it. I know this will relieve my headache, if I just take it,' but then takes the medicine bottle and puts it back on the shelf, this is not real faith. The person who needs the medicine doesn't lose the headache. It continues on. Yet even though the person says that he or she believes in that medicine, and still won't take it, then it's not of much use.

Real faith takes in the object of faith. Like bread. Like medicine. Are we hungry? Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

True Manna

2009-08-03T05:24:00.001-07:00

Sermon for August 2, 2009

Proper 13

Text: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Title: True Manna

A. As a southern boy, I love grits. Not the instant, imitation kinds, though I will eat those in a pinch. I mean the real kind, made from fresh corn, cooked and buttered to perfection. For that matter, I like hominy's too; you know, that delicious concoction which is a kind of grits grown up, made from the whole kernel. But now my children don't like grits, and I can't quite figure that out. Maybe it's the fact that their mother is from north of the Mason/Dixon line!

Every time I see grits I am reminded of the story of the little girl who ate grits for years without knowing what they were. She ate cheese grits, buttered grits, grits with pieces of crisp bacon stirred in — all sorts of grits. When she was about 12 she asked a friend if he knew what grits were. "The truth?" he said grinning. "You really want to know the truth?" And naively she responded: "Of course!" "Grits," he said, "are small bugs that live in colonies on the surface of fresh-water lakes, like algae, and at the end of every summer they are harvested, shelled, and dried in the sun so that you couldn't tell that they had ever had legs. Mm-mmmm," I'm not sure she ever ate grits again!

B. This morning's passage of Scripture is not about grits, but it is about food, or more specifically, the lack thereof. The Israelites had experienced their first real freedom after leaving Egypt. They were journeying in the Wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, even today a hot, hostile, dangerous, and fearsome place. Almost immediately some complained to Moses about the food situation. The rations they had brought with them were running out, and they didn't know what to do. The text calls the ones who were complaining by a Hebrew noun that we translates as "the whole congregation of the Israelites," indicating that the complaint lodged against Moses and Aaron comes not from malcontents or rabble-rousers, but from the entire spectrum of the people, including its responsible leaders. This is the third complaint against Moses and Aaron recorded in the Book of Exodus. The first complaint expresses the fear of the Israelites of being overtaken and slaughtered by the pursuing Egyptians immediately after the miraculous parting of the Red Sea. The second complaint, found in chapter 15, is that of thirst, for which God instructs Moses to throw a piece of wood into bitter water to make it sweet, that is, fresh. It is obvious that each complaint demonstrates a lack of faith in God's providential care on the part of the people. But God has 40 years to whip them into shape!

As we have seen, this third complaint is about the lack of food that resulted from their rushed departure from Egypt. The complaint expresses a perhaps all-too-familiar sentiment: "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots," (not houses of ill repute but rather large communal cooking pots in which meat was boiled and from which groups of people — two or more families — were fed.!) "and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." Give me a break! Do you think slaves under the absolute totalitarian rule of an Egyptian Pharaoh ate their fill of tender morsels? This group could perhaps be called the "Back to Egypt" Committee. This is the committee of people who look back upon the past as being the "Good Ole' Days", even when they weren't all that good. They have a selective memory for what has gone on before, minimizing the struggles and stressing the blessings. It's a natural reaction to change. No one really wants a lot of change and if people are scared of what the future may hold they will cling tenaciously to the past. This happens not only in secular culture, but also in churches, and smart leaders have to keep in mind that the Back to Egypt Committee is always motivated by fear of a future that they may neither understand nor desire.

A number of years ago I was speaking before a church governing body of a church located in the inner city of a large metropolitan area. I was there to discuss the possibility of bringing in a church revitalization team, to pull alongside them and help plan new ministry directions that might help equip the church to begin growing again. While waiting for my turn to speak, I overheard two elderly white ladies talking about the future of the church. "Our Sunday School class is really dwindling down to nothing," she said. "Everyone has just passed on!" "Yeh," said the other lady, "But that Philipino class seems to grow every Sunday." What a gold mine of a conversation! In fifteen seconds the entire problem with the church had come into clear focus!! God was calling the congregation to reach out to people who didn't look like them! Unfortunately, it was too big of a change to contemplate. They voted against doing anything that made much of a difference.

Obviously Moses and Aaron didn't lead the people into the wilderness only to die, but the complainer's exaggeration points to the desperation and fear the people were feeling. This depiction of a well-fed workforce is the result of convenient amnesia on the part of those complaining, as a reaction to fear of a future that may not be to their liking. And this reflected a lack of faith in a God who has already been where He is leading us to go.

In response, God tells Moses that he is going to "rain bread from heaven" upon the people and cause quails to land among them. "At twilight you shall eat meat," says God, "and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God." That statement sums up the deeper meaning behind the provisions the Lord was supplying. The food was not only to meet their dietary needs, but also to feed them spiritually. God proved that in spite of anything they might encounter, the Lord would provide.

Now, we should notice that the bread comes with strict instructions. The Israelites are to gather the "fine flaky substance" for six days only, and to refrain from gathering on the seventh, which is the Sabbath. It is called "Manna", a word that means "What is it?" Even today, no one knows what it was – theories range from bug excrement to plant sap. But what manna was doesn't matter. What matters is that manna demonstrated that the welfare of the Israelites was not coincidental or accidental, but was due to the deliberate care of God.

As the rest of the story makes clear, some of the Israelites failed their test. Unable to obey the instruction to refrain from harvesting manna on the seventh day, some Israelites sought to gather food on the Sabbath and found none, and provoked an angry reaction from God. That pattern — divine protection, divine instruction, human disobedience, divine punishment — will become the pattern of God's relationship with His people throughout the Old Testament.

C. I'm sorry to say that we all seem to follow this same pattern so many times in our lives. Maybe the problem is that we can't treat our spirituality like a roller coaster, going up and down, and then up again. The Israelites' complaints reflect a deeper spiritual need alongside their need for food. When things were going fine, they were happy with God. But when things weren't going so well, then they started to grumble at a God whom they saw as being unfaithful or fickle. They didn't seem to be interested in a steady, ongoing, covenantal relationship with God. Their faith lives seemed to be much shallower than that. And again, I'm sorry to say that all of us, at some time or other, fall into much the same way of living before God.

For we Christians, it doesn't start with manna. It starts with Jesus. Remember the Gospel passage we just read, paired in the lectionary with this passage from Exodus, "Very truly I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven…Jesus said to them, 'I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Food for spiritual hunger is abundantly supplied through faith in Christ. We can trust Jesus with our lives, through thick and thin. He is there in good times or in bad. Indeed, the times when we are at the end of our own rope means that there are less of our own resources to rely on, leaving more room for Him.

And God has provisioned us with sources of divine nourishment — prayer, meditation, Bible reading, church attendance, communion, fasting, tithing, et cetera. We should remember that we can't assume a take-it-or-leave-it mindset when it comes to our faith life. Many of us, despite the sincerity of our Christian commitment and the purposefulness of our intentions, find that our enjoyment of prayer, communion, Bible study and so forth varies according to our energy levels, our life pressures, our schedules, our current excitements and enthusiasms, and the other ups and downs typical of our existence. This is normal, but we have to make sure we don't "get out of the habit" of seeking the presence of God in our lives. Perhaps, therefore, it would be helpful to remind ourselves of some good practices that can be helpful for spiritual growth.

1) We can make use of the power of regimen. Just as athletes benefit from a habitual routine of exercise, which surely does not excite them to the same degree every day, so, too, we can rely on the power of an ongoing devotional procedure. Some of us will find that the regularity of it makes room for the Holy Spirit to enhance the flavor of each day. We should have a time of daily devotion, reading, prayer, and study. In this way we "get in the habit", strengthening our spiritual muscles. It is also helpful to find a spiritual counselor or join a devotional group. By joining with others, we can hold each other accountable in our dealings with our neighbors, the Lord, and ourselves.

2) We can examine our lives to see what else is going on that blocks our enjoyment of the things of God. When we are committed to Christ but struggling nonetheless with the practice of prayer, study, and attendance in church, it may be a sign that something else is out of balance in our lives. That awareness can give us an opportunity to make some changes. Perhaps seek out your spouse or a trusted friend and ask them what might be blocking fellowship with the Lord.

3) We can reduce the distractions that pull us away from our spiritual life. For example, many of us find that we have difficulty focusing our prayer time. Whenever we try to pray, all sorts of unbidden thoughts come into our minds —, a thought about a nagging problem, a worry about some task we must do later, and so forth. We might want to find a quiet spot for quiet time, and use that place exclusively each day. I like to use my rocking chair by my light, usually early in the morning each day. Distractions are an inevitable drain on prayer time, but we can minimize them by practicing putting them to the side when they pop into our heads.

The bottom line is that God will deal with us abundantly if we but seek Him out. God wants relationship with us, and will draw close to us if we make any effort at all to draw close to Him.

I knew a fellow who was driving with his family from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, Florida. As far as the eye could see, orange trees were loaded with fruit. When they stopped for breakfast, my friend ordered orange juice with his eggs. "I'm sorry," the waitress said. "I can't bring you orange juice. Our machine is broken." My friend confessed that he was dumbfounded. They were surrounded by millions of oranges, and he knew the restaurant had oranges in the kitchen--orange slices garnished their food plates. They were surrounded by thousands of gallons of juice. The problem was that the staff had become dependent on a machine to get the juice.

We could have the same problem in our spiritual lives. Bibles might surround us in our homes, but if we don't use them, we'll never get the sweet spiritual juice from them. An hour or so on Sunday, as good as that is, isn't enough. We need to seek the Bread of Life, and invite Him into our lives. God is willing to pour out manna to sustain us, if we are just willing to ask. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Does God Pass Us By?

2009-07-27T04:44:00.001-07:00

Sermon for July 26, 2009

Proper 12

Text: Mark 6:45-52

Title: Does God Pass Us By?

A. There is an old story about a devout abbot who decided to take a spiritual retreat in a cabin located on a remote island in the middle of a large lake. For six months he remained on the island with no other person seeing him or hearing from him. But then one day, as two monks were standing near the shore soaking up some sunshine, they could see in the distance a figure moving toward them. It was the abbot, walking on water, and coming toward shore. After the abbot passed by the two monks and continued on to the monastery, one of the monks turned to the other and said, "All these months in prayer and the abbot is still as stingy as ever. After all, the ferry costs only 25 cents!"

Well, my friends, unless one knows where the rocks are located, none of us can walk on water! Jesus doing just that, however, seems to be what most catches our attention in this morning's passage of Scripture. However, let's not overlook everything else that is going on here, because a number of other details are just as important as the Master striding atop the waves. I don't know about you, but I tend to identify with the disciples in this story, who see Jesus intending to pass them by, and cry out, not knowing who He is, thinking He is a ghost, and scared out of their wits! How many of us have been faced with the storms of life, and in the midst of guilt and pain, feel like Jesus is passing us by? God can walk on the waves, but I have to stay in the boat, straining to keep my equilibrium in the tumult of life! As the disciples say in another related story, "Lord, don't you care if we perish?" Have we ever felt this way?

Of course we have. Maybe we feel that way now. But rather than being an intended slight by an arrogant God, Jesus intending to pass the disciples by is proof positive that God is always strong enough to save. Let me explain.

B. Our story this morning is set immediately after Jesus' miraculous feeding of the 5,000. He dismisses the crowd, filled to the brim in both body and soul, and immediately sends His disciples across the Sea of Galilee ahead of Him. The text is clear that Jesus desires to seek quiet prayer and fellowship with His Father. For Jesus, prayer was always rocket fuel for His public ministry. Jesus never failed to consult with the Father through prayer before He proceeded with God's ministry plan.

We should notice Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go across the Lake. He knew what was going to happen to them. These guys had spent a lot of time with Jesus engaged in discipleship 101, On-The-Job-Training. They had watched Jesus feeding the 5,000, specifically to see that nothing is impossible for God. He was getting them ready for their ministry to evangelize the world after His Resurrection, Ascension, and gift of the Holy Spirit. This means He had to strengthen their faith in a God who would be with them always again and again, even in the face of hardship. So Jesus knew exactly what He was doing when He sent them across the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee; He knew He was sending them into a dangerous situation that would test their faith. Unfortunately, they didn't pass the test; fortunately, this would not be their last test. God's got all the time in the world to train us up spiritually for the tasks He has before us. We can learn our lessons now or learn them later. But we will learn them!

Now to glean as much meaning as we can out of these Spirit-inspired words, we need a brief lesson in Biblical interpretation. Biblical scholars frequently use a technique known as "form criticism," when doing the vital work of interpreting Scripture. When I use the word "criticism" in this context I don't mean that we are going to nitpick every word with the intent of disproving the clear meaning of the text. Rather, when we talk of using form criticism, the word "criticism" is synonymous with the word "analysis." Form criticism is a way of analyzing the text.

In a nutshell, it was discovered long ago that the various types of stories in the Gospels follow very specific patterns, called "forms". This comes from the fact that in Jesus' day, everything He did and said were first communicated orally. People used certain mental templates to help them remember the events of the story as best as they could. These templates were retained when the stories were written down as a whole Gospel narrative.

For example, a very common template, or form, is one called "miracle story". Miracles all follow the same general pattern: statement of the situation or problem, Jesus' miraculous intervention, and the reaction to the miracle by the witnesses. Consider the Feeding of the 5,000. The situation or problem here was that there were a lot of very hungry people; Jesus intervened by miraculously feeding everyone out of very little; and the crowd's reaction to the miracle was that they were able to eat their fill, and there was still 12 baskets of food left over, more than when they started.

Where form criticism is useful for Biblical analysis is that whenever something special is added to the template, it is like the Gospel writer sending up a signal flare and saying, "This is of special importance!" In the story of the Feeding of the 5,000, Mark adds the statement of Jesus to the disciples (You feed them!) and their incredulous response (Even 200 denarii couldn't buy enough food!). Then Jesus breaks and blesses the bread, reminding the Jewish listeners of the day of God providing manna for His people in the Wilderness, and reminding Christians of Holy Communion, where our spirits are fed by the Spirit of God present with us. Taken all together, we clearly see that whenever we disciples engage the world with the Gospel, which is food for the hungry soul, we are empowered by Christ, who will bless and multiply our efforts. That's how form criticism works, and it has been an invaluable tool to Biblical scholars for generations.

This morning's passage of Scripture finds the disciples once again in the middle of the Lake during a violent windstorm. It is obvious that they don't believe Jesus knows of their dire situation, even though He has been watching it from the shore all along. It's the wee hours of the morning. Jesus sees their plight, and heads towards them, walking across the surface of the Lake. Shockingly, Mark tells us that Jesus "intended to pass them by!" The disciples think He is a ghost, and cry out in panic. Jesus hears their cry, steps into the boat, and immediately the storm ceases. The disciples, incredulous, don't know what to think. Mark says that, "their hearts were hardened." As I said, they had flunked the test, but the final exam was still coming. They still had too much of themselves and their preconceived notions about who God is and how He acts on our behalf getting in the way to be the kind of disciples Jesus needed. But that would come.

Now this story seems at first glance to be a miracle story. After all, walking across the waves is pretty miraculous! But upon closer examination, we find that this story has all the characteristics of another form, namely, an Epiphany story. An Epiphany story always describes a time that the Divine is revealed in all His glory to human beings.

Here are the clues: 1) Jesus uses the phrase, "It is I", which in both the OT and the NT refers back to the divine name Yahweh, or "I Am Who I Am." 2) The awesome appearance of God in Jesus, who is at first unrecognized, and which invites fear and astonishment on the part of the person involved. Think of Moses before the burning bush. He couldn't understand what was going on at first, He didn't know it was God, and he was terrified by what was going on, 3) Jesus' phrase "Fear Not," is common when people are confronted with the presence of God. Remember the angel who appeared before Mary to tell her about her role in the birth of the Messiah. 4) Lastly, the use of the verb "pass by" is common in epiphany stories; for example, when God revealed Himself to Elijah on Mt Sinai after the prophet fled from Jezebel, God commanded Elijah to come out of his cave and "behold the Lord passed by." So Jesus wasn't being callous at all when He started to pass the disciples by in their distress. He knew they couldn't behold or comprehend His full divinity at that time. And he was right. At the end of the story they don't have a clue about who this Jesus is!

So if we consider this story to be an Epiphany story, our interpretation is put in an entirely different light. This is not a story about a miracle, although it is certainly miraculous. Rather, this is a story about a human encounter with God. In the midst of danger, God was still large and in charge!! Like in the Book of Job, where we find mention of God astride the waves of the sea, Jesus is proving beyond a shadow of doubt that He and the Father are one! With Jesus, the impossible becomes possible!

A minister was making a home visit to one of the families in his parish. A five-year-old boy answered the front door and told the minister his mother would be there shortly. To make some conversation, the minister asked the little guy what he would like to be when he grows up. The boy immediately answered, "I'd like to be possible." "What do you mean by that?" the puzzled minister asked. "Well, you see," the boy replied, "just about every day my mom tells me I'm impossible!"

C. Friends, these are times when the impossible all too often seems to be all there is before us. All too often we seem to catch ourselves saying, "I can't", or "God won't". We can communicate huge amounts of information across the planet, but we can't seem to talk to our spouse or to our children in a meaningful way. We have tremendous expertise to do most any job, but we can't seem to find a job in these recessionary times. Life seems to be filled with myriad impossibilities. But the thing we should glean from this passage is that even though those first disciples just didn't seem to get it, and even though their faith was at times very weak, God through Christ was not going to let them go. And Jesus is no more willing to let us go than He was with these all-too-human early Church leaders. Jesus is with us every step of the way. Jesus sees and knows our troubles, and can and will intervene in our lives. We should be aware that God might come along in unexpected or even surprising ways -- through others, or through something we read or hear, or through a situation that can only be described as miraculous. It is all too easy to put God in a box, to say that God can't or won't act in such and such a way. I remember watching trained fleas once in a circus. They did the same thing the same way as if they were in lockstep. I asked how one could ever train a flea, and I was told that the fleas are first put into a glass jar. As they try and jump in the jar, they bump their heads on the lid. Over time, they forget they can jump and, for fear of bumping their heads, never go beyond the limits of the jar, even though the lids have been removed. We get into similar ruts. It is easy to say 'I can't do this', or 'God won't do that'. And then God strides across the Lake, appearing where we didn't think He would ever appear, and suddenly stills the storm that rages around us.

Am I saying that God will take away the difficult times in life? Of course not! Remember, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat, knowing that the storm would come. They had learned much wisdom from the Master. Now He had to place them in a situation where their faith would be stretched. In like manner, God doesn't cause difficult life situations, but God doesn't insulate us from them either. Through these times God shows us that we can ground our faith in Him, and not be disappointed. God never lets us down, nor does He ever let us go. I'm not belittling such a crisis time in our lives, if now is such a time, or if such a time has left us scarred, emotionally and maybe even physically. I know of such times too. No, I'm simply stating that God can walk on water; He is still in charge. And He won't let us down. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Walking Stick Faith

2009-07-13T04:20:00.001-07:00

Sermon for July 13, 2009

Proper 10

Text: Mark 6:7-13

Title: Walking Stick Faith

A. During WWII General McArthur asked an engineer how long it would take to build a bridge across a certain river. "About three days," was the response. The engineer was told to go ahead and draw up the plans. Three days later McArthur asked for the plans. The engineer seemed surprised. "Oh, the bridge is ready. You can cross it now. If you wants plans, you'll have to wait a little longer, we haven't finished those yet."

Leadership development has been an important part of my ministry for a long time. For a number of years, I consulted with congregations, laity, and church pastors on the value of having a plan for ministry. I helped local churches draw up one-year, three-year, and five-year plans. I preached the old adage that you'll never get where you want to go unless you know where you want to get. I analyzed demographic surveys, identified spiritual gifts, and formed focus groups, all with the goal of developing a plan.

Now don't get me wrong – there's nothing wrong with all this! Indeed, it's still essential! But at least in the passage of Scripture we just read, Jesus was not nearly into strategic planning as much as He was into go and do!! Rather than a plan, He gave them a walking stick!

B. Let's take a look at it. It's safe to say that Jesus channeled his ministry in two different directions. One direction led away from his disciples, towards the crowds, where he performed all manner of healings, feedings, parable-tellings, and other miracles. His other avenue of ministry traveled inward, focusing on those faithful few whom he had chosen. For them Jesus held special seminars on the meaning of discipleship, where he revealed glimpses of His true nature. In this week's Gospel text, these two roads merge into one path as Jesus sent his frail contingent of followers out to minister to the villages of the land. Nowhere do we see him sitting down with the twelve and a map, or a snakebite kit, or a store of provisions, or a feasibility study, or a specific set of goals, strategies, and objectives. Jesus gave the disciples only what they needed most: a job and the authority to carry it out. The preparation He gave them before sending them out was not secret knowledge nor a strategic plan. He didn't give them the promise of divine protection. What Jesus gave them was "authority", specifically, power over any unclean spirits they may encounter. Armed with His authority, Jesus' small community was sufficiently well prepared to face the outside world.

That Jesus chooses this particular moment to usher his disciples forth into their first solo missions is somewhat surprising. They had evidenced no great new insight into Jesus and his mission. They were still stumbling along, bumbling about two steps behind each punch line in his parables, about three steps behind in recognizing the meaning of his miracles. Indeed, the disciples don't really seem to get who Jesus was and what He was about until after the Crucifixion, when they could see the true meaning of His life through the lens of the Cross. Yet, flawed as they were, Jesus sent them out, trusting them to spread his work. In fact, Jesus spent more time stripping the disciples of presumed traveling necessities than he did outfitting them for their expedition. His instructions appear foolhardy: take "no bread, no bag, no money," not even an extra tunic for warmth or sturdy shoes "just in case." The only equipment Jesus advised them to take along is a staff, an item designed to facilitate movement, not slow them down.

Jesus' additional instructions further focus his emissaries' energies on the task at hand, the active aspect of their mission. They are to go out "two by two", demonstrating that they are part of a community of faith. He told them to travel light, in view of the urgency of the mission and as a sign of their reliance on God. Instead of wasting time looking for comforting accommodations, Jesus urged the disciples to accept the first offer of hospitality they receive. With the Kingdom of God at hand there simply was no time to squander their attentions on social niceties. If, instead of an open door, the disciples got the door slammed in their faces, Jesus advised His missionaries to cajole and convince reluctant listeners, but to shake the dust of a rejecting household off their feet as they leave (an image Jesus knew would be burned in the brains of those inhospitable households). In Jesus' day, when faithful Jews had to visit non-Jewish territory, for whatever reason, they "shook the dust off their feet," before coming back home, to symbolically disassociate themselves from anything worldly. This practice had a powerful connotation of rejection of anything ungodly, and would stick in the minds of all who saw it practiced. It was also a warning that decisions have consequences, and by rejecting God's disciples one might be incurring the wrath of God.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, we are not treated to a long argument from the disciples. For once they apparently took Jesus at his word and obeyed His instructions to the letter. Until now it has not been made clear what the disciples were to do out on their missions. Claiming only the authority of Jesus' name, the disciples boldly preach the same message of repentance that the Master did. The mission of those first disciples gives us a glimpse of what the Church can and should be doing today: preaching, teaching, leading others to Christ, anointing with oil and healing the infirm simply through the power of Jesus' name. And those first disciples were successful: "So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them."

C. There are at least a couple of things that should catch our attention in this passage:

1. God can use us despite ourselves! It is an amazing concept that the Creator and Sustainer of the whole Universe has decided to use us to help bring in the Kingdom!! God loves us so much that not only is He as close as our very breathing, but He has given real meaning to our lives by giving us a job to do! God has given each one of us gifts and abilities. He has made each one of us unique and special. He matches our talents with the need He has for us to fill. And He places us in just the right place where we can be most useful. The disciples who followed Jesus misunderstood Him, didn't understand Him, and failed to get what He was trying to say and what God was doing through Him. It was only through the lens of the Cross and the Resurrection that they were fully able to understand. Still, Jesus sent them out, and they accomplished great things. We have that lens firmly in place; imagine what we can accomplish. God magnifies our small efforts into big results!

In 1972, NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. The space craft's primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to earth about Jupiter's magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at that time no space ship had ever gone beyond Mars, and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy the satellite before it could reach its target. But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much, much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Jupiter's immense gravity hurled Pioneer 10 at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At one billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn. At some two billion miles, it hurtled past Uranus; Neptune at nearly three billion miles; Pluto at almost four billion miles. By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than six billion miles from the sun. And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 continued to beam back radio signals to scientists on Earth from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and takes more than nine hours to reach Earth.

So it is when we offer ourselves to serve the Lord. God can work through us even when we think we have just 8-watt abilities.

2. The second thing we should notice in this passage goes along closely with the first: When God uses us, and we put our trust in Him to fill the gap between our efforts and final success, He will, because He's in charge. We agree that the disciples were hardly doctors of theology or accomplished orators. They were ordinary people, who sometimes succeeded and sometimes didn't, just like you and me. But they went out with the Authority that Jesus had given them, and that was all that was required. They trusted God with the results, and they witnessed amazing healings and miracles because they did. There were times when their faith was not so firm, and the results of their efforts were less than sterling. But in this passage, they believed the authority of God, and the Kingdom entered the world wherever they traveled with transformational power.

Rabbi Kushner, Jewish scholar and author, once wrote: "Atlas was condemned to carry the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. That was as harsh a punishment as the ancient Greek mind could conjure up. Today, it seems, we have volunteered to play the role of Atlas. We have not offended God, we have dismissed him, told him we were grown up enough not to need his help any more, and offered to carry the weight of the entire world on our shoulders. The question is, when it gets too heavy for us, when there are questions too hard for human knowledge to answer and problems that take more time to solve than any of us have, will we be too proud to admit that we have made a mistake in wanting to carry this world alone? "

When we trust God, amazing things can happy. Mountains can be moved, miracles can happen, and the unexpected can become the routine. This Church has a mission to carry out, and we can if we trust in the Authority of God to empower our efforts. And in our everyday lives, when we trust the results of our particular situation to God, even the painful, the desperate, and the tragic can work out in the end. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Power in Weakness?

2009-07-06T05:08:00.001-07:00

Sermon for July 5, 2009

Proper 9

Text: II Corinthians 12:2-10

Title: Power in Weakness?

A. Recently I read a news story about a woman who set a world record for continuous play on an arcade pinball game. After standing in front of the game for fourteen hours and scoring an unprecedented seven and a half million points, the woman noticed a TV crew arriving to record her efforts for posterity. She continued to play while the crew, alerted by her fiancé (how she had time for a fiancé I don't know!), prepared their cameras for the shoot. Suddenly, the arcade game went out – no power! While setting up their lights, the camera team had accidentally unplugged the game, thus bringing her bid for ten million points to an untimely end! The effort to publicize her achievement became the agent of her ultimate failure.

Sometimes, as my grandfather liked to say, you can't win for losing! Sometimes, our best efforts are simply not enough. We have all faced extreme circumstances, and probably more than a few of us have wondered why in the world God would let us go through such trials and tribulations. There is no good explanation as to why a person has to deal with a chronic illness, or the loss of a job, or a terrible home situation, or a sudden death. To use the title of an old book that tries to deal with the matter, there is no good explanation as to "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People?" Sometimes the bad things are of our own making. The really tragic situations are when the bad things are thrust upon us by life circumstances that we can't control. Sometimes we say that the tribulation is the judgment of God, put upon us because of some past-unforgiven sin. Sometimes we think God has forgotten about us, or perhaps doesn't exist at all.

This is not good theology, but that fact is little comfort if we are hurting. It really all comes down to faith. Can we believe in a good God even in the face of trial and tribulation? Can we trust that God is as close as our very breathing when He seems to be so far away? Can we continue to go on through life powered solely by faith when we really don't know how we can?

In this morning's passage of Scripture, the Apostle Paul makes an astonishing statement that begins to address these questions. But to get the answers to some of these questions, we need to unpack what Paul means when he says, "Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." What's up with this?

B. Paul's experience with the Corinthian Christians was long and checkered. The Book of Acts tells us that Paul founded this Church on one of his missionary journeys, and for 18 months he stayed with them, nurturing and teaching them in the Christian faith before he left. Evidently the Church continued to grow under several different leaders after Paul left. But the church had a lot of problems – disunity, dissention, sexual immorality, and theological confusion. Perhaps the worst problem the Church experienced was the advent of a group of Jewish Christian teachers who came in after Paul and taught the congregation that they must become Jewish before they could become Christian. They dismissed Paul's prior teaching, cutting him down in a somewhat snooty fashion as being a person who didn't have the proper Christian credentials. I'm sure you've never known such "perfect" people who look down their noses at folks who they think are not as good a Christian as they are!! Anyway, they confused a number of folks, and Paul anguished over them as the spiritual father he was. Many scholars believe that Paul wrote as many as four letters to the Corinthian Christians. Indeed, according to this theory fragments of three of these letters are in II Corinthians. It is a fact that portions of II Corinthians read as though they were "stuck" together by a later editor. But fortunately, whether Paul wrote 2 or more letters doesn't diminish the power of what he says in this passage.

In Paul's day, great leaders were expected to have had amazing visions and revelations. This was seen as a sign of God's favor. The so-called "super-apostles" as Paul calls them later on in chapter 12 belittled Paul because they said he had had no such vision. Although we don't know exactly who these opponents of Paul were, they were swaying many of Corinthian Christians who began to wonder what Paul's true status and worth was. Again and again, Paul felt the need to defend his own calling and status as an apostle. He rhetorically holds his own against his opponents by comparing both his exaltations and his hardships to theirs, and his exasperation at the necessity of this contest of credentials is thinly veiled. Boasting was a rhetorical device common in literature of the day — credentials were important. One's social status and one's moral virtue were linked. Exceptional persons had exceptional things happen to them. So Paul was pulled into this "credentials game" much to his own dismay.

This is why Paul begins this morning's passage of Scripture with a rather odd way of describing himself: "I know a person in Christ who..," We know Paul is talking about himself, because later on he writes, "So to keep me from being elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelation, a thorn was given me in the flesh…" But he doesn't want to get into this boasting game, even though he is forced into proving his own credentials in the eyes of many of the Corinthians who had been hoodwinked by slick-talking but false apostles. To show that Paul is truly a man of God (in contrast to the super-apostles who were happy to tell people they were men of God), he puts this whole credential thing in the proper context. What Paul relates is intensely personal, something he had kept to himself for 14 years. This was almost certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event. Most scholars agree that this "revelation" is not to be identified with his conversion experience. Throughout his ministry Paul was concerned about preaching Christ crucified and building up the church, and he only spoke of his own personal spiritual journey insofar as it advanced his mission. Paul's conversion was one such public conversation of his private life. Obviously, it was painful for Paul to speak of these personal/spiritual things. Paul's description of the experience is vague. He merely says that he was "caught up to the third Heaven," in a kind of rapture. He cannot describe how it happened or even in what form: "…whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows." The "Third Heaven" is the phrase used in Paul's day to mean that part of existence that is in the presence of God. The pre-scientific view of the world in Paul's day considered the First Heaven to be the atmosphere above our heads and all that is in it. The Second Heaven is the part of existence beyond that, where the stars, etc. are located. So Paul got translated into the very presence of God. Quite a trip!!

Paul's describes his experience, not only as being in the presence of God, but also in "Paradise," meaning, that which is like the Garden of Eden. He was passive during the experience (i.e. he was "caught up"), and it was nothing that he asked for. No drugs, meditation, or other ascetic practice caused the experience to happen. Evidently he was alone when it happened. Most significantly, what he heard during the experience he could not share, for "no mortal is permitted to repeat" it. All of this is pretty heady stuff, certainly something people of lesser character might consider worth boasting about, but not Paul. Indeed, God wouldn't even let him boast of these amazing credentials. To help him maintain perspective, Paul was given "a thorn" in the flesh.

Church scholars have speculated endlessly about the nature of this "thorn in the flesh", also referred to by the Apostle as a "messenger of Satan." Paul's audience may have known the identity of the "thorn in the flesh" but it is certainly unknown to us. Obviously it was something very painful. Many have tried to identify a certain physical ailment like epilepsy, migraine headaches, bad eyesight, malaria, or a speech impediment. Others have claimed that Paul might have struggled with depression. We can safely make the assumption that it was not a congenital illness, because Paul makes it clear that this condition came from God after his experience of the Third Heaven. Given that it is called a "thorn in the flesh", we are probably on safe ground to assume that it was a chronic illness, one that had lingered for 14 years.

Three times Paul begged the Lord to take this thorn away, but it never happened. Satan meant for it to hinder the spread of the Gospel. At first, Paul thought that was all it was meant to do. But although God answers prayer, He doesn't always answer prayer the way we think He should. Paul tells the Corinthians as well as us that in fact the spread of the Gospel wasn't hindered; it was enhanced. The thorn certainly gave him a depth of wisdom in his experience and helped him focus on the reality of the Lord's sufficient grace, which in turn made Paul a better disciple. Paul came to accept the problem, and then even be grateful for it: You see, experience taught him that when his own strength was just not enough, when he was pushed against the wall and couldn't do it on his own, God was fully capable of filling in the gap. When we stretch our abilities, and ourselves when we can't go any further, God takes over and miracles happen. This is like rocket fuel for our faith. God made it clear to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness." And that was why Paul was able to witness to the Corinthian Christians that "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong". There is therefore no reason to boast, because God provides the power and we give Him the glory. If Paul had claimed the experience of being transported into Heaven as being something that enhanced his own credentials, then he might have had a lot to boast about, but he wouldn't have a witness that glorified God. The amazing thing about God's grace is that the weaker we are, the more useful we are to God. The more we let go and let God, the more He can use us to advance the Kingdom. The less there is of us and the more there is of God, the greater are the things that are accomplished in the name of Christ!

Anyone who travels to Edinburgh, Scotland will find Edinburgh castle a tower of seemingly insurmountable strength. But the truth is that the castle was once actually captured. The fortress had an obvious weak spot that defenders guarded--but because another spot was apparently protected by its steepness and impregnability, no sentries were posted there. At an opportune time, an attacking army sent a small band up that unguarded slope and surprised the garrison into surrendering. Where the castle was strong, there the defense of the people was weak.

C. So now we can begin to get an answer to our question about the "why" behind trial and tribulation. Trials and tribulations tend to strengthen our faith. Now wait a minute; I know that sometimes trials and tribulations leave us embittered, mere shadows of the way God wants us to be. That is why we need to be in the Body of Christ called Church. When we have others to lean on, when we hear the testimony of others who have come through trials because of the strength imparted by faith, we are in turn strengthened. Whenever I am weak, Paul says, I am strong. The power belongs to God, not to human beings. And when we are weak and the impossible is accomplished, we know that it is God who did the accomplishing, and it is to God (not us!) to whom the glory is owed. Paul also explains this power in terms of its perfection. "My power," God says, "is made perfect in weakness". God's power through our weakness allows us to function as God designed us to function. God in effect tells us, "Although I will not give you the victory by lifting you out of suffering, I will give you victory by giving you sufficient grace and perfect power in your suffering." And when we see that God means what He says, our faith is strengthened. It is not that God causes suffering for His own ends. Remember, Paul called his thorn a "messenger of Satan". But God can take suffering, and bring spiritual growth out of it. It all depends on how much we decide to trust our lives to the Lord, in good times, or in bad.

A man who lived on Long Island was able one day to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing for himself a very fine barometer. When the instrument arrived at his home, he was extremely disappointed to find that the indicating needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked "HURRICANE." After shaking the barometer very vigorously several times, its new owner sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument. The following morning on the way to his office in New York, he mailed the letter. That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. The barometer's needle had been right--there was a hurricane!

As we leave this place today, let us remember that God is in control, that He desires the best for His children, and that if we trust Him, we will see that all things work out in God's time. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Hands of Fear/Hands of Faith

2009-06-29T04:51:00.001-07:00

Sermon for June 28, 2009

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 8

Text: Mark 5:21-24a; 35-43

Title: Hands of Fear/Hands of Faith

A. Hands are amazing creations of God!! The same hand that can lift a heavy weight or hammer a nail or ball up in a fist can also pick up a dime off the floor. Hands are engineering marvels!! Scientists and engineers are just now making prosthetic hands that can move in many of the directions that a real hand can move. But even now, this five-fingered miracle of God cannot be imitated.

You know, you can learn a lot from watching a person's hands. Besides being amazingly flexible, they are also amazingly expressive of our emotions:

You may know the story of a certain business executive who was overwhelmed with work stresses to the point of depression. Things were not going well for him, and he was bringing his problems home with him every night. Each evening he would eat his dinner in silence, shutting out his wife and five-year-old daughter. Then he would go into the den and read the paper, using the newspaper to wall his family out of his life. After several nights of this, his daughter walked up to him, and taking her little hand, she pushed the newspaper down. She then jumped into her father's lap, wrapped her hands around his neck and hugged him strongly. The father said abruptly, "Honey, you are hugging me to death!" "No, Daddy," the little girl said, "I'm hugging you to life!"

Hands are not only expressive of the emotions, but they are often the instrument of God's healing, for it is the human touch that can give life.

B. Case in point – this morning's passage of Scripture. Jesus is crossing back to the "other side" of the Sea of Galilee -- that is, he is returning to the western part of the Lake, a region that is more familiar territory than the land of Gad to the good Jewish citizen. As we saw last week, Gad was a place reputed to be full of evil and demons. Not a place people in the western region of Galilee wanted to go. But despite all this crossing back and forth Jesus was doing, the crowds were consistent. They swarmed Jesus like He was some kind of rock star!

If you watch the hands in this passage, you can get the Gospel message Mark is trying to convey. First, there are the outstretch hands of need. The crowds gathered around the Master with outstretched hands of need because they wanted healing in their own life circumstance. They begged Jesus for help!! But suddenly, out of that crowd there stepped a solitary, distinguished individual. Jairus was the ruler of the synagogue, and as such, he was a man of substance, rich, powerful and religiously prominent. In the life of the synagogue, he called the shots. He decided who would preach, what scripture would be read, and what hymns would be sung. He represented the elite of society, especially the religious world. But all this power was of no help to Jairus, because his 12-year-old daughter was dying. Jairus humbled himself before Jesus for the seriousness of her illness changed him from an important official to a desperate dad. Out of love and concern for his little girl, Jairus' posture of importance was punctured, collapsing him at Jesus' feet, hands raised up to implore the Master for help. The sickness ravaging his daughter's body infected the whole family with pain and worry. I suspect we all know how he felt. When my oldest son Matthew was 18 months old, he was severely burned by an overturned cup of boiling water. Following behind the ambulance on the way to the hospital, with Matt and his mother both in the ambulance, I begged God through never-ending tears to heal my son. Jesus responded quickly to Jairus' 9-1-1. They immediately headed for his house. And the large, cumbersome crowd tagged along to see what might happen.

Although it is not a part of the lectionary reading for today, Mark interrupts their journey to Jairus' house with the account of the woman with the bleeding problem. It is a technique that Biblical scholars call "insertion". He does this for two reasons. First of all, it adds a measure of drama to the story by forcing the reader to ask "Will they make it to Jairus' house in time?" But more importantly, this technique of putting a story in a story is commonly used by Mark to allow one story to help interpret the other, as will shortly become clear.

If ever there were a direct opposite to the respectable figure of Jairus, this woman was it. First of all, and forgive me for what I am about to say, she was a woman, which in Jesus' day made her a second-class citizen. But more than that, she appeared to be alone. Without the protection and position of a husband or family to support her, she was powerless in her society. Added to this lack of family is the unfortunate status this woman bore – her continual flow of blood has made her ritually unclean for the past 12 years, as defined by OT law. Or to put it another way, for 12 years this woman had been banned from sites of public worship or from any contact with other people. Verse 26 declares that a dozen years of physicians and treatments had relieved this woman of whatever resources she might have had -- but had never relieved her illness. A not uncommon situation today, I think we can agree. These two vastly different people, the down and out hemorrhaging woman and the upper-crust daughter of Jairus, are both loved into life by our Lord. And that is why Mark reports each of their stories together.

Since religious Law forbade this woman to touch anyone, it is little wonder that this poor, unclean, outcast woman decided that an anonymous, back-door approach was her best chance of obtaining a cure from Jesus. When we look at her hands, we see the hands of hesitancy and fear. So far we have moved from hands expressing need to hands expressing fear and hesitancy. Note that Mark says Jesus was in the midst of a great crowd that "pressed in on Him". Again, like some kind of rock star, they all wanted a piece of Him. Yet, when this woman managed to finger a bit of Jesus' cloak and is healed by its touch, Jesus demands, "Who touched my clothes?". Obviously in such a crush, many people touched, bumped, brushed and squashed against Jesus. It was the woman's faith- filled, expectant touch that was so distinct and unique that Jesus could distinguish it as being very different from all the others. Upon touching Jesus, not only did her blood flow stop but she "felt in her body" that she had been instantly and completely healed. She had been sick so long that when her condition vanished, she could not fail to feel its absence.

Although the healed woman might have been content to sneak away, never even bothering Jesus with her presence, Jesus would not let what had happened go unannounced. Though the disciples are befuddled by Jesus' demand ("Who touched me?"), the healed woman knew Jesus was speaking to her. Verse 33 recounts how the woman came in "fear and trembling" and told Him the "whole truth." According to the Law, she should never have touched the Man from Nazareth because of her uncleanness. But desperation drives us to do desperate things, and although she was afraid that the full punishment of the Law would fall upon her, she still had to grab hold of even the slightest chance to be healed. How wrong she was!! Jesus' reason for calling the woman out was not to grandstand for the crowd, rather, it was to complete the healing process. Her healing was finalized by the restorative words that Jesus spoke to her. So now watch the action of the hands: Jesus extended to her the hands of compassion. Jesus stopping His trip to Jairus' house long enough to heal a desperate woman because He loved her. And also by stopping it demonstrated that He was in charge all along, because it didn't matter what time Jesus arrived at Jairus' house to do the healing, or even if He arrived at all. God's time is always the right time. Jesus proclaimed this woman a "daughter" of Israel once again -- no longer an unclean outcast. In addition to wellness in body, she enjoyed a newfound wellness in her spirit. Jesus blessed her and told her to "go in peace" -- a peace that included physical health and a full, healthy relationship with her God and her people. But even as this healing is successfully completed, Jesus is challenged by what appears to be a failure. Messengers arrive from Jairus' house with the tragic news of his daughter's death. The Master isn't needed anymore, because surely no one can raise the dead. Jesus' response to these naysayers is to urge Jairus to "only believe." The very same words Jesus uses with us when we think we are confronted by an impossible to win circumstance. Only believe.

The public nature of this next healing is curtailed somewhat by Jesus. First he selects out only Peter, James and John to accompany him into Jairus' house. Once he reaches what is now a house of mourning, Jesus separated Jairus and his wife from the crowd of ritual death-mourners already gathered to weep and wail. As if to throw seeds of doubt into the crowd, Jesus suggested that the little girl was not dead, but only sleeping. To Jesus, who is the Master even over death, death is merely like sleeping. This suggestion allowed the crowd to doubt the miraculous event about to take. Jesus' limited selection of witnesses emphasizes the need for his disciples to "be with him" if they are to learn and understand His special messages to them. Just as only those gathered about Jesus learned the full meaning of his parables, so only those gathered about him at this moment of miraculous restoration knew Jairus' daughter was not awakened from sickness but was roused from death.

And finally, we watch the Master's hands of healing. The healing words Jesus spoke were repeated twice in this narrative, emphasizing their simplicity and yet their power when used by Jesus. Immediately restored to life, the little girl began to act like any normal 12-year-old. She was no spirit or angelic being but simply herself, and as such, Jesus reminded his "amazed" witnesses that they should give her something to eat. This proved to everyone that she was not a ghost, because ghosts don't eat, but was a real flesh and blood person, healed by the Master.

C. But what about today? Jesus is not physically with us. There is a hymn that starts out "heal me, hands of Jesus…." So how can the hands of Jesus heal us today? Like the unnamed woman with the bleeding condition, like Jairus, like his daughter, we reach up to the Master with hopeless hands, fearful hands, desperate hands. Today we seek out the Lord in the midst of the confusion, murkiness, and pain of life with 911 prayers, on our knees, at the dinner table, in our office, in our room. How can the hands of Jesus heal us today when we sometimes don't even know where to find Him or even if He desires to heal us?

Notice the story again. What did Jesus say to the woman with the bleeding problem? "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease." And to Jairus: "Do not fear. Only believe." You see, the genius of Mark is that by linking these two stories together, he demonstrates that Christ is there for any of us, from the least to the greatest (by human standards), from the mighty to the powerless, male and female. No matter who we are, we are equalized before God by our common need for Jesus, for His forgiving love, His saving grace, and His healing power.

You see, the real gestures in this passage were not the gestures of the hands at all. It was the gestures of faith. Faith was the power behind the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage. Faith on the part of the father was the force behind the healing of His daughter. Faith is the means for us to touch Jesus also. And by faith I mean trust. Trusting that Jesus loves us enough to be close to us, even when we don't acknowledge His love and presence through prayer and worship. Trusting that Jesus desires us to give us control of our lives so He can make something of them. Trusting that Jesus has the whole world in His hands, and that He is in charge of what is going on, no matter how much we think we are or others are.

And I don't know about you, but I can't trust Jesus for a lifetime. I can only trust Him one day at a time. Sometimes I fail to even to that. And sometimes that is the hardest thing in the world, because I'm weak and I forget that He is in charge. But He is. And He loves us. And He wants what is best for us. I understand that the Sequoia trees of California , known as Redwoods, tower as much as 300 feet above the ground. Strangely, these towering trees have unusually shallow root systems that spider out just under the surface of the ground to catch as much of the surface moisture as they can. And this is their vulnerability. Storms with heavy winds would almost always bring these giants crashing to the ground but for the fact that they grow in clusters and their intertwining roots provide support for one another against the storms.

And so it is with our Christian life. Christ is as close as our very breathing. The storm will not ultimately knock us down, because He is there. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Stilling the Storms of Life

2009-06-21T11:53:00.001-07:00

Sermon for Sunday, June 21, 2009

The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7

Text: Mark 4:35-41

Title: Stilling the Storms of Life

A. Welcome to Father's Day, 2009! You know, it's not easy being a Dad, just like it's not easy being a mom. You may have heard the story of the fellow who was in the living room one evening engrossed in the football game when his little daughter brought her Daddy a cup of make-believe 'tea.' It was only plain water, contained in a teeny, tiny toy cup. After several cups of this tea and lots of praise from Dad for making such a yummy concoction, the little girl's Mom came into the room. Dad got Mom to watch their eighteen-month-old bring him a cup of tea, because it was "just the cutest thing!" Well, Mom waited, and sure enough, here the girl came down the hall with a cup of tea for her Daddy. Mom watched Dad drink this special tea, and then smiled as she asked, "Did it ever occur to you that the only place that baby can reach to get water is the toilet?"

It's not easy being a Dad, but in this very challenging world in which our children grow up, it has never been more important to have good, Christian dads, as well as good Christian moms who can provide proper parenting. Not every biological father is a good Dad. Today there are step-dads who are facing the challenge of being a Dad to children who may or may not be ready to accept them. There are grandfathers who are filling the role of surrogate Dads. This is a new world, particularly with regard to the family. Today we sincerely salute all those men who are conscientiously seeking to provide a wholesome Christian environment to young people, in whatever role they may be, just as we saluted Christian women a few weeks ago.

B. You are probably wondering what Father's day has to do with this morning's Gospel passage. Well, I'm going to wait to discuss that connection until the end of this message, but suffice it to say there is a connection. Before we get to that, let's look at Mark's story of Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Last week we talked about Jesus' Kingdom of God parables, which in a nutshell say that God's rule in the world is absolute, but also subtle. The Kingdom grows slowly in the world, like planted seeds, empowered by God and outside the control of we disciples, but also shared with us as co-workers in the Kingdom. This flew in the face of popular opinion among Jews of the day – they wanted and waited for a Messiah who would raise up an army and establish the Kingdom of God by force. It was the evening of that same day; Jesus had given the disciples a special tutorial on the parables He had spoken to the crowds. It was now time for Jesus to connect His preaching with His actions. He proposed to His followers that they all cross the Sea of Galilee, so Jesus might be in ministry to the people on the other side.

A couple of things should be noted here. First of all, the Sea of Galilee is a pretty large body of water. One can see across it, but barely, and only on an especially clear day. The boat they used to cross the Sea was tiny, no more than 20 feet long. It was just a fishing vessel. Perhaps most important to notice is that the land to which they were headed was Gad. That means nothing to us today but everything to the folks in Jesus' day. Originally the territory of the Hebrew tribe by the same name, repeated foreign conquests had resulted in racial intermixing. In the process, much of Gad's Jewish heritage had been lost, and it had become pagan territory. It was rumored that this was a forbidden land, a land of strange and evil things. One notices that when Jesus and the disciples land on the other side of the Lake in chapter 5, they indeed do meet up with a man possessed by a legion of demons, living among the tombs. But Jesus needed to go there, to bring God's love and salvation even to this strange land.

Violent storms are common on the Sea of Galilee. The reason is meteorological. Warm, moist air, blowing in from the Mediterranean, hits the mountains surrounding the Sea, which sits in the valley like a bowl, and condenses into violent storms. I have been there when these storms have blown up, and they are quick to form, equally quick to dissipate, and tremendously destructive. A small vessel like a fishing boat would be swamped in no time during such weather conditions. And that is what happened to those hapless disciples, scaring them out of their wits!

Now remember that the people of the ancient near east knew nothing of weather patterns and how they produce violent storms. To them the stormy sea was much more than an uncontrollable, unpredictable action of nature. In the mindset of the day, storms such as these were the result of malevolent demonic powers. The disciples thought the forces of evil were out to get Jesus, and this storm demon wouldn't be happy until they were dead! So Jesus' sleepy indifference to the storm shows that the forces of evil didn't concern Him one bit – Jesus is in charge. Rudely awakened by his disciples with the sarcastic, "Do you not care that we are perishing?" Jesus addresses the violent wind and water: "Peace, be still!" Jesus speaks to the raging elements as though they were a personal demonic entity. The word for "storm" used here in the original Greek is also the word for "whirlwind" in the Book of Job. It carries overtones of supernatural power. So Jesus' command to the storm exorcises the demonic force behind it, leaving a "dead calm" where there had only moments before been a "great windstorm." Clearly Jesus demonstrates a creative power akin to that of the Lord, who in the 1^st chapter of Genesis creates order out of disorder. "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth." But Jesus' control over these destructive, life-threatening forces is an opportunity for His disciples to grow their faith.

The Master immediately confronts his companions with their fear, a fear that still clung to their soggy, salt-streaked faces. Notice that the disciples do not cheer and rejoice when Jesus calms the storm -- indeed they appear as silent and still as the waters that now surround them. They are in awe and amazement at what had just happened, as if they had been asleep through Jesus' ministry, miracles, and preaching. Jesus' words to them are thus both chastening and didactic. "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" In scolding the disciples for their fear and faithlessness, Jesus suggests to them what their appropriate response to witnessing this miracle should be -- confidence and utter faith in Jesus' abilities and powers. They are "filled with great awe," but not with faith. It is ironic that Jesus' power over the wind and sea seems to make more of an impression on the disciples than does anything else He has done up to this point. But according to Jewish tradition, the powers Jesus has just displayed decisively demonstrate His divine nature. The disciples' question, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" is key to this story. Who is this Man, who calms the storms of life? Who is this man who controls the sometimes-devastating events of life? Answering the second question – Who is this man? – will automatically answer the first – Do you not care if we perish?

C. These two key questions addressed to Jesus not only bracket this passage, but oftentimes bracket our lives as well. When the storm threatens to swamp the boat and end the lives of the disciples in one fell swoop, they rush to the Lord and implore Him, "Do you not care if we perish?" And at the end of this story, they wonder within their hearts and to themselves, "Who then is this, and even wind and waves obey Him?" One question expresses fear; the other faith. Fear and faith bracket the lives of all of us at some time or other, and every disciple of Jesus. Sudden illness can render us afraid of life, because we don't know what the future might bring. The death of a marriage can lead to a deep depression. The loss of a job can result in fear of an uncertain financial fate. A wrong decision can leave fearful scars in a loved one forever. Many, many situations in life threaten to take away the life we know, leaving us fearful. We can understand the disciples rushing to the Master and asking in both fear and anger, "Do you not care that we perish?" I've been there, and I suspect you have too. We wonder who this Jesus is, and if He can indeed still the raging storms of life. We wonder whether or not there is a God at all, and if so, is He aware of my problem and does He care about me. We wonder if He is on the boat with us, present with us and concerned for us even when we do not perceive His presence or His care.

The miracle Jesus wanted to show the disciples – and us, of course -- is not so much the miracle of calming the storm but the miracle of calming them in the storm. This story at its core is an appeal to the reader to trust in Jesus in every circumstance in life. Nothing can overcome God, nothing in life, not even death. The Resurrection reminds us that we need no longer fear anything, not even death itself, because God is in control.

It was 1818 in France, and Louis, a boy of 9, was sitting in his father's workshop. The father was a harness-maker and the boy loved to watch his father work the leather. "Someday Father," said Louis, "I want to be a harness-maker, just like you." "Why not start now?" said the father. He took a piece of leather and drew a design on it. "Now, my son," he said, "take the hole- puncher and a hammer and follow this design, but be careful that you don't hit your hand." Excited, the boy began to work, but when he hit the hole-puncher, it flew out of his hand and pierced his eye! He lost the sight of that eye immediately. Later, sight in the other eye failed. Louis was now totally blind. A few years later, Louis was sitting in the family garden when a friend handed him a pinecone. As he ran his sensitive fingers over the cone, an idea came to him. He became enthusiastic and began to create an alphabet of raised dots on paper so that the blind could feel and interpret what was written. Thus, Louis Braille opened up a whole new world for the blind--all because of an accident! Out of tragedy came good. God was indeed in control, not causing the evil, but working good from it.

The miracle story of Jesus' calming the storm at sea testifies to two truths. First, as the divine Son of God, there is nothing Jesus cannot do to keep us from ultimate harm. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians "All things work together for good for those who love Jesus." This is true because He is the ruler of all nature, and the ruler over everything in our lives. He even has ultimate power over the Devil and the demonic forces of life. He can say to them "Peace! Be Still". This is not easy to keep in mind when the storms of life are threatening to swamp the boats of everyday existence, sending us into oblivion. But always, every day, in every circumstance, He is as close as our very breathing. Jesus could sleep through a storm at sea because He knew He had ultimate power over that storm. The disciples had to learn that truth. Sometimes we have to learn how much Jesus loves us and how close He really is through those times when He seems to be asleep, or a million miles away!

The Second truth that this passage presents to us is related to the first. Notice that it was Jesus who suggested they all go over to the other side of the Lake at that time! He knew the storm was coming. But He also knew that the disciples had to go through the storm, so they could learn a very important life lesson. The storm doesn't blow around their boat just because Jesus is on board. It hits them full force. Nowhere does Jesus promise his followers anything different. A peaceful voyage is not the ticket Christians travel on. But a peace-filled journey, with Christ always present, is the type of journey that is promised. Jesus Christ's promise is not to sail us around every storm but is to bring us through all storms. This is the only way we strong-willed disciples are going to learn some things we have to learn to grow in the faith. Life is bracketed by fear and danger on one side, but by faith on the other side. We have to experience the bad to learn the good. We have to know fear before we can fully realize that peace, salvation, and spiritual growth come through faith. Our faith is strengthened only through tribulation. As Jesus' disciples living in a sinful, imperfect world, we are in for some rough times. But after we go through the rough times, we see that Jesus was there with us all along.

On December 29, 1987, a Soviet cosmonaut returned to the earth after 326 days in orbit. Amazingly he was in good health. Five years earlier, touching down after 211 days in space, two cosmonauts suffered from dizziness, high pulse rates, and heart palpitations. They couldn't walk for a week, and after 30 days, they were still undergoing therapy for atrophied muscles and weakened hearts. At zero gravity, the muscles of the body begin to waste away because there is no resistance. To counteract this, the Soviets prescribed a vigorous exercise program for the cosmonauts. They invented a running suit laced with elastic bands that resists every move the cosmonauts make, forcing them to exert their strength. Apparently the regimen is working. Despite the fact that we want an easy, stress-free life, the easier our life, the weaker our spiritual fiber becomes, for strength of any kind grows only by exertion.

So now how does this relate to Father's Day? Dads, the Bible says that our primary job in the family is to teach the faith to the children. There is probably no better story than this one to teach the essence of the faith. Today, we might get a cool Dad's Day gift, but the best gift is what we give back to our children, through instruction that asserts that the only true life is lived in faithful relationship to God. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

The Gospel in Story Form

2009-06-14T14:45:00.001-07:00

Sermon for June 14, 2009

The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6

Text: Mark 4:26-34

Title: "The Gospel in Story Form"

A. The Gospel passage this morning features two parables about the Kingdom of God. If you think parables are just confined to the Biblical narrative, think again. Charles Shultz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveys a Christian message in his comic strips. And if a parable is defined as a type of story that conveys a theological message using familiar language and situations, then Peanuts is modern day parable. In one comic strip, Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the backyard fence speaking to one another, and the conversation goes something like this: CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me. Lucy: Are you sure? CB: Of course I'm sure! Lucy: Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing? CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean! Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. [Now standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time] But you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, "I like you, Charlie Brown," and then you'll be happy? CB: And then I'll be happy! Lucy: [Lucy turns and walks away saying] I can't do it! Obviously, Shutlz is demonstrating the absurdity of drawing one's joy from other people, rather than drawing it from within, and in relationship with God.

Parables are stories, based on situations people can relate to, that convey a theological lesson by analogy. Parables are effective because we all remember stories better than we remember lectures. Jesus used parables to make memorable points in the minds of the listeners. Now, since Jesus' parables used images that might not be very common in today's culture, we might find his parables to be a bit hard to understand. We shouldn't feel bad about this; even in Jesus' day His parables were a bit cryptic to the general public; notice that Mark tells us, "Jesus explained everything in private to His disciples."

But now let me demonstrate why Jesus spoke in parables. Instead of the Parable of the Mustard Seed, what if Jesus had chosen to tell the following parables:

n The Parable of the Crabby Boss and the Christian Coworker.

n The Parable of the Kids Who Won't Clean Up Their Rooms and the Mother

Who Is Threatening to Ground Them for Life.

n The Parable of the Flat Tire and the New Suit.

n The Parable of the School That Doesn't Feel Safe and the Kids Who Must

Attend There.

n The Parable of the Parents Who Don't Have a Clue.

n The Parable of the Empty Cupboard and the Overflowing "Bills To Pay"

Slot.

These titles get our attention in a big hurry! That's the role of parables – to catch the attention of the audience and to make an impression that might just be life changing. By preaching in parables, Jesus let each listener make the Good News his own story or her own experience. There is nothing like a good story to connect us to one another, to our ancestors, to our world and to our God.

B. This passage consists of two parables, centering on the Kingdom of God. Both parables draw a comparison between the Kingdom and the behavior of seeds, something that would be very familiar to an agriculturally based culture such as in the 1^st century Middle East. In the first parable, the seed is scattered, it sprouts and it grows. It develops to full grain all by itself: "The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head." How it grows the farmer does not know. But a closer look at the seed's activity shows that it is still dependent on the farmer. The farmer sows the seed, waits for its growth, and finally, at the correct time, the crop is harvested. Within this text, the activities of the seed and the farmer are connected, yet their interrelationship is kept mysteriously incomplete. Although he does not understand why the sown seed grows as it does, the farmer has enough knowledge to plant the seed correctly, care for it adequately, and recognize when it comes to full fruit.

Now we should notice that the language of this parable echoes the language of the prophetic book of Joel. In the third chapter, Joel's harvest is clearly related to the image of the Lord's warriors, who are sent out to "harvest." Obviously, it is God who does the harvesting. The fact is the farmer (Jesus' disciples) is ignorant of the divine work that accomplishes harvest time, but the farmer is a co-worker in getting to that point. When we think none of our actions as Church are doing any good, harvest time is when the abundant effects of preaching, teaching, and disciple making are at last revealed.

Now here is the thing about parables that we need to remember: It's the part of the parable that startles the listener that Jesus wants us to remember.

In Jesus' day, people thought the Kingdom of God was coming in suddenly, with military might, brought in by a "Messiah", or "anointed one." This Kingdom would be like David's Kingdom, only it would endure forever. The point Jesus is trying to make in both these parables is that the reality is quite the opposite; the Kingdom grows in a hidden, mysterious way, aided by human effort but driven by God. We can take solace in the fact that when our best efforts in the Church seem to not be good enough, when we feel like we are beating our heads against the wall, God is fully capable of filling in the gaps!! Perhaps the greatest miracle of all is that God allows us the awesome responsibility of being His instruments by which God's Kingdom comes to earth. We preach and teach, we witness to what God has done in our lives, we support each other, we work to create a more just social order. And despite the fact that our efforts might sometimes seem to be in vain, in the end we shall marvel that growth and change has occurred while we slept!

The second parable in this morning's passage of Scripture is a very famous passage. Like the preceding parable, the mystery of growth pervades this text. Human understanding cannot fathom how, out of the tiniest of all seeds, the mysterious powers of generation bring about such astounding growth that the mustard shrub should be "the greatest of all." So phenomenal is this growth that the "birds of the air" find shelter and shade in its huge branches.

Now, here is the thing that would catch the ears of the listeners in this parable. Have you ever seen a mustard plant? They aren't very big; only about like this. Well, even in the Middle East, they aren't the largest of the shrubs! To be that large denotes miraculous, unheard of growth. Jesus is telling us that God has the ability to bring in the kingdom of heaven from tiny, apparently insignificant beginnings, such that in the end, we will all be surprised at how vast God's Kingdom is. The power behind this phenomenal growth, as in the first parable, is God. In the case of this mustard seed, there is not even any human attendant watching its growth. God will accomplish great results from small beginnings! We can count on the fact that when we think what we do is small and insignificant, God is fully capable of turning our efforts into unheard of, miraculous results. The birds nesting in the branches of this shrub imply that God invites all to join in the watchful protection of the Lord.

C. So what are the implications of these parables for our lives? I can discern at least two.

1. We can rest assured that God's hand is active in our lives, transforming us into the image of Christ by taking our decisions and our life situation and bringing good out of them. We are almost certainly not aware that this is going on, even though all this divine activity is obvious to the 20/20 vision of hindsight. And it takes time – a lifetime, to be precise. It is aided by our efforts and our conscious and constant surrender of our lives to Christ. As the Apostle Paul said to the Philippian Christians, "Therefore, my beloved…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." Just like the parables we are reading today, God is involved in our lives, but He isn't a puppet master. He's not going to pull our strings; we have free Will. God isn't going to tell us how He's doing it, just like we don't know how the seeds sprout and grow and we can't explain how a mustard plant becomes a huge shrub. But somehow, miraculously, all the while leaving us free to make choices, either for good or for ill, God works good out of evil. We participate in the act of Christian growth, by studying Scripture, praying, seeking out Christian support, attending worship, and receiving the Sacrament. But God is the power behind the process. God transforms us into the image of Christ, in and through the trials and tribulations of life, as well as through the victories of Christian hope.

Michelangelo, one of the world's great artists, was also a great sculptor. One day a visitor was looking at a statue that Michelangelo was making. The visitor remarked, "I can't see that you have made any progress since I was here last time." But Michelangelo answered, "Oh, yes, I have made much progress. Look carefully and you will see that I have retouched this part, and that I have polished that part. See, I have worked on this part of the statue, and have softened the lines here." "Yes," said the visitor, "but those are all trifles." "That may be," replied Michelangelo, "but trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle."

God is creating perfection out of imperfect lives. Day to day, the changes may seem like trifles. But they're not. Their cumulative effect is a disciple of Christ.

2. Life can have purpose and meaning in the light of God's love. If there is one thing these parables teach us, it is that Kingdom work is a joint project between God and us. God is the powerhouse, but we have our role to play as well. We are not in control of the growth. We are called to plant seeds and try to nurture them. God gives the growth. We must be very cautious about taking too much credit for apparent success in the spiritual area. But by keeping all this in mind, we find that this joint project is what we as disciples of Christ are meant to do. God gives us gifts, and challenges us to both develop them and use them. Together, we are the body of Christ. All of the body parts are not the same. We do different things in different settings. But together, we work as God present in the world. As I have already mentioned, God has set up the peculiar situation in that He needs us to join with Him in bringing in the Kingdom. And this is empowering.

When we are truly authentic, when we are living out of our Christ-refreshed hearts, we are doing Kingdom work. It may not be a big job. Or, by human standards, it might be. But it is still a necessary job because God gave it to us, and called us to do it. God places us in just the right place to use the specific and individual gifts He has given us. And when we do, our life has purpose and meaning.

God calls us to be a nurturing parent, to help introduce our kids to Christ. God calls us to be witnesses to the Kingdom. God calls us to use our hands for Kingdom work. God calls us to do a thousand and one things, all unique to us and unique to the circumstance we are in, because God needs us.

This is a pretty amazing thought. We are the unique and special Creations of God. No one is just like us. We are all loved and special to God. He won't let us go nor let us down. How, you might ask, do I find what God is calling me to do and be. It's not necessarily easy. Talk to people who love you and who know you. Ask them what God given gifts that they see we possess. Pray about it. There are also inventories one can take to measure spiritual gifts, which I would be happy to talk to you about offline. But despite the gift or the particular manifestation of the gift, the overall job is to enable God to bring in the Kingdom. We do this by showing God's light to a hungry and hurting world.

The story is told of a couple who took their two young children with them to tour a large public cave. As always, when the tour reached the deepest point in the cavern, the guide turned off all the lights to dramatize how completely dark and silent it is below the earth's surface. The little girl, suddenly enveloped in utter darkness, was frightened and began to cry. Immediately was heard the voice of her brother: "Don't cry. Somebody here knows how to turn on the lights."

We are called to light lights, plant seeds, work in God's garden, and prepare for harvest. As we go from this place today, may this be our work and our calling. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com

Don't let the fire go out!

2009-06-02T05:06:00.001-07:00

Sermon for May 31, 2009

Pentecost Sunday

Text: Acts 2:1-11

Title: Don't Let the Fire Go Out!

A. There are certain events that happen so suddenly and so dramatically that everyone remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing at the time. The destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 was such event. I bet there is not a person in this room who doesn't remember exactly what he or she was doing on that fateful day. I was senior pastor at a church in Virginia Beach, and one of the staff secretaries rushed into my office to tell me the news. I couldn't believe it! I thought it was a hoax! The entire staff sat glued to the TV that day, watching in a state of shock as the now all-too-familiar events unfolded. Some of our members had family who worked in or near the World Trade Center, and there was a rush of cell phone calls to try to learn if their loved ones where OK. One of our members was working on the side of the Pentagon where the airliner hit the building; he had walked down the hall for just a moment, and that walk saved his life. I remember our senior staff planning a worship service that night, not having any idea what we should do and how we should do it. In an instant, the history of that church (which had a sizable military population) was changed for months to come.

Sudden dramatic events can have life-changing consequences. Although that first Pentecost shares little in common with 9/11, they both were sudden, dramatic events that changed the lives of a lot of people forever!

B. Our Gospel reading this morning is John's version of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles. It differs in a lot of details from Luke's version, which is found in our reading from Acts, and which I want to concentrate upon. John actually has the Pentecost gift of the Spirit happening on Easter Sunday night. But as we have seen before, John is not so much interested in historical accuracy as he is with theological accuracy. In the original Greek, the word for "Spirit", "Wind," and "Breath" are all the same word, so when Jesus breathes on the disciples, He is actually giving them His Spirit. John wants us to know that the Spirit comes from Jesus, and is intimately connected with Him. The Holy Spirit is the presence of the living Lord in our lives 24/7.

By contrast, Luke is interested in historical accuracy. Luke tells us that the Resurrected Jesus appeared to His disciples on numerous occasions for a period of 40 days before His ascension into Heaven. He instructed the disciples at that time to wait for the gift of the Spirit. The disciples went back to Jerusalem, where they had shared a last meal with the Lord before His Crucifixion. They waited for a week and a half until that fateful first Pentecost. According to Acts 1:13-26, the gathering of the community numbering about 120 persons, consisting of the 11 remaining original apostles, the newly chosen Matthias and "certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers."

When this scene opens, the newly formed Christian community was gathered together for the feast of Pentecost. Pentecost was originally an agricultural festival marking the first harvest of the growing season. Called Shevuot in Hebrew, a name that means "Weeks," it is seven weeks from Passover, or roughly the 50th day after Passover. Pentecost, which literally means 50 days, marks the date 50 days after Easter.

Now according to this morning's Scripture reading, the Holy Spirit came in a mighty way upon the disciples of Jesus hunkered down in that upper room. The description of the sudden infilling of those disciples with the Spirit is dramatic: "Suddenly from Heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house…Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them, and all were filled with the Holy Spirit." The arrival of the Spirit is at first pretty noisy. It is a sound like a mighty wind from heaven. It is so loud it fills the house where the group is gathered. As we have already seen, since the word for "wind" and "Spirit" are identical, when we see wind, we should think Spirit. Remember that the people of the ancient Middle East were not immersed in a culture that saw the world in scientific terms, but they were nonetheless keen observers. They knew that the wind can't be seen, or controlled or predicted, but its effects can be felt, and so it is with the Spirit of God. Likewise, whenever we see the word "Fire" in the NT we should think Holy Spirit. Like a fire, the Spirit can consume that which is not desirable. When tongues as of fire settled upon each disciple, the fire burned away the ungodly things in their human lives, and the tongues empowered their speech for the spread of the Gospel.

At this point in the scene, it seems that we have shifted from a private setting (namely the house in which the community had gathered) to a public one (in the midst of the crowd which had come to town for the festival). We are also told that the Jews who had come to Jerusalem for the feast heard "the sound," and then heard the Christians speaking in various languages. It is unclear if they heard the earlier sound of the wind, or simply the sound of over 100 inspired people speaking in various languages that they then gradually began to sort out. Tongue speaking is mentioned by Paul as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Those first disciples demonstrated the presence of the Spirit by speaking in other languages. But further, all these languages also symbolically represent the nations of the world, and how the Gospel message is for everyone.

But with all this symbolism, one thing is certain. This gift of the Spirit transforms a person. It turned those disciples from scared individuals, hiding behind closed doors for fear of discovery and execution, into bold communicators of the Gospel. The tongues of fire set those disciples' tongues on fire, and the Gospel began to spread from Jerusalem outwards across the globe. Peter, one of the leaders of the first apostles, the one who had denied his Lord three times, preached a sermon and 3,000 were converted. Luke's point here is that it is God who has planned and who is now executing the salvation of the world through the preaching, teaching, and miracle working of his people. If you want a one-sentence summary of the message of Acts, it is 'God is in charge, and He's got a plan'. And it is God's Spirit whose infilling presence gives power to the actions of those who are yielded to the Lord. We simply have to get out of the way and give ourselves to the power of God!

Herbert Jackson told how, as a new missionary, he was assigned a car that would not start without a push. After pondering his problem, he devised a plan. As he made his rounds, he would either park on a hill or leave the engine running. He used this procedure for two years to get around. Eventually, ill health forced the Jackson family to leave that mission station, and a new missionary came to replace him. When Jackson proudly began to explain his arrangement for getting the car started, the new man began looking under the hood. Before the explanation was complete, the new missionary interrupted, "Why, Dr. Jackson, I believe the only trouble is this loose cable." He gave the cable a twist, stepped into the car, pushed the switch, and to Jackson's astonishment, the engine roared to life. The power was there all the time. Only a loose connection kept Jackson from putting that power to work.

C. This passage in Acts makes it clear that the Church as the people of God is only Church when the Spirit is present. Oh, you can have a "Church" without the presence of the Spirit, but such a group is more a club than a church. The Spirit empowers believers for mission and ministry. Now, we need to make a distinction here. God's power through the Spirit can work in two ways, either dramatically or subtly. Obviously, the divine fireworks that were seen on that first Pentecost prove that the power of the Spirit is real and active. But the power of the Spirit can also work behind the scenes, working out God's Will in quieter ways. Think of the energy contained in ten gallons of gasoline. This energy can be released all at once, explosively, by dropping a lighted match onto the gas. Or that same 10 gallons of gasoline can be channeled through the engine of a car in a controlled burn and used to transport people many miles. The Holy Spirit works both ways. In the passage of Scripture we just read, the Spirit exploded onto the scene. Thousands were affected by one burst of God's power. But He also works more subtly over the long haul.

We must avoid mistaking the subtle workings of God with God not being present at all. There is no mistaking that God was present at that first Pentecost. And today, when we see divine healings and other miracles we have little doubt that God is present with us. But what about those times when the hand of the Lord is less obvious? God is equally present with us at both times, but it is the times where the only way we can be sure that God is present is through the vision of 20/20 hindsight that test our faith.

Years ago I served as an associate pastor at a church in Arlington. Besides sharing pastoral duties with the senior pastor, I was also charged with the responsibility of designing programs that would draw new people to the church. The Spanish speaking community was growing rapidly around the church at that time, and soon it became apparent that the Church was being called to speak the Gospel to this large group of people. But we had no idea how to go about doing that? One Sunday morning, I was speaking with the head usher – a fellow by the name of Roy Heinbuck -- at the front door of the sanctuary. While we were talking, a young Hispanic fellow walked up the front steps of the sanctuary and tried to get our attention. He could speak no English and neither one of us spoke Spanish, so we didn't make much progress understanding him. While all this was going on, another member of the congregation named Lynn Epps walked up to us from the other side of the sanctuary. She listened to the young Hispanic man, and then responded in perfect Spanish. He smiled, thanked us, and left. Roy asked her what the fellow wanted. "Oh, he was looking for a Spanish-speaking Church service, so I sent him to the Mormon Church up the street. That's the only church I know that has a Spanish service." Well, that infuriated Roy, who thought God Himself had to be Methodist. He went back to his Sunday school class, a group of about 50 adults, and told them what had happened. They took a collection, and asked me to use the money to do something to reach out to the immigrant community. We started an English as a Second Language Program, which now, some 20 years later, teaches ESL to 3,000 people in 27 churches each year, and has spun off a Spanish language congregation.

The Spirit of God empowers our ministry, and our lives, so that the word of God can be spread to those who need to hear it. It's not always clear when and how God is at work, but it's always obvious when we look back, and see how events and decisions have been gradually nudged in the right direction by the finger of God.

And God oftentimes picks the unlikeliest people to do His work. Think about it; what corporation today would want that first bunch of disciples running their business? They were uneducated fishermen and other common folk; but when they submitted to the Spirit by letting go and letting God, miracles happened. God gives us the gifts we need to do the job He has for us to do. The NT describes over two dozen different spiritual gifts that God gives the Church to enhance the life of the congregation and individual believers. We've already talked about the gift of tongues. There are also the gifts of administration, teaching, preaching, miracle working, healing, serving, prayer, evangelism, encouragement, and a variety of others. One is no more important than another, and it takes them all, working together, to make a church. God gives a variety of gifts to a specific congregation to be used to enhance the ministry of that particular church. It's up to us to figure out what those gifts are, and how God wants us to use them.

The bottom line is that God doesn't call us to be a club; He calls us to be a Church, to receive the anointing of the Spirit so we can do what God calls us to do. God calls us to action; He doesn't want us to sit on the sidelines once we get our marching orders to proceed. And God will transform us by the power of the Spirit, from what we are to what we need to be to respond to what we are called to do. I stand before you this morning as living proof that God can change and renew us. Two years ago needed such a renewal. I needed time to pause and rest and heal. I needed to re-orient my life back to God, and to allow Him to equip me again for ministry after a very difficult time in my life. Thank God that this faith community was God's instrument for doing just that in my life. My friends, God isn't done with any of us. If we pray for the Spirit, we will receive Him. God will transform us over time, and equip each of us for unique ministries in the Kingdom, all with the goal of spreading the Good News, and helping others find a relationship with Christ. We can be healed, restored, and made right with God. And God will bring joy and purpose into our lives, by empowered us to reach out to others in our own way and in God's own time. Amen.

Keith Almond

P.O. Box 4388

Leesburg, VA 20177

703-344-3569

almond_keith@yahoo.com