Glory Days

Glory Days

Text: John 17:1-11

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 5-28-2017)

In two years, Cove will celebrate its 250^th anniversary. No doubt, hours of preparation will go into honoring this momentous celebration as we look back over a long history of ministry and mission here. Just this past Tuesday, Jennell and I celebrated our 41^st wedding anniversary. We enjoyed looking back over more than four decades of married life. There is something about anniversaries that invite us to look back, to remember important moments in days gone by and most of the time, to conjure up our “glory days.” 

In the Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen, “Glory Days” are seen in the rear view mirror. Springsteen sings:

I had a friend was a big baseball player
back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

“Glory Days” for Springsteen are days gone by, days when we excelled in life, days when we were lifted up for everyone to notice and applaud.

Anniversaries rightly call us to look back, often on our “glory days.” In the case of a church anniversary, it calls us to look back on those who have gone before us, to give thanks for those who worked hard to assure the future, now, our present. On our 250^th anniversary, we will surely look back in thanksgiving, much as we do on this Memorial Day weekend. We look back and give thanks for those who have served and sacrificed on our nation’s behalf.

Anniversaries that give glory to God, though, are ones that not only look back but propel us forward, casting our gaze into God’s future. For glory is the true nature of God and whenever you and I swim the currents of God’s eternal love, we are living in “glory days.” So, just how do you and I swim the current of God’s eternal love? Pause for a moment and listen to Jesus. Look at Jesus.

Jesus puts an altogether different spin on “Glory Days,” a spin that looks more to the future than the past. In John’s Gospel, Jesus prays, “O God, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.” It is hard to miss the irony here. “Jesus is about to be lifted up and put not on a pedestal but on a cross. He is soon to receive a most unglorified treatment, reserved only for criminals,” writes Buz Wilcoxon.

Jesus does not spend his last sermon looking in the rear view mirror, recounting his “Glory Days” of feeding five thousand hungry souls or healing Peter’s mother or exorcizing demons from a Gerasene madman. Jesus does not instruct his followers to obsess on the past, but to lean into the future that God is making possible. We give God glory not simply by cranking our necks backwards, but by trusting in God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. We give God glory by paying attention to the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, Jesus.

 Living into God’s glory is not holding onto everything we have for dear life, but paying attention to the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, who says, “those who try to hold onto life will lose it” (author’s paraphrase), so Jesus invites us to let go of all in life that keeps us fixated on the past and fixed in the present, so that we might learn to live for others in the future God is creating.  

 The Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, also says, “No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He then goes on to explode any parochial idea of “friend.” His “friends” include Judas who will betray him for chump change and Peter who will deny him three times on the same night. His “friends” include those not welcome to step foot in any religious establishment, those who are forced into ghettoes because of their disease.

What if we were to follow the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, and welcome those who are cast aside in our society today? When is the last time that you heard a political leader of any party speak passionately about providing for those in the greatest need around us? What if you and I refused any longer to let the poor be blamed for their poverty, the infirm be punished for being sick, the unstable cast to the streets because mental health care costs society too much money?

Warning about the faux-glory of prosperity, Pope Francis writes:  “Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” What if you and I were to follow the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, into God’s future as relentless champions for the poor, the infirm, and the mentally unbalanced?

The Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, says: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” What if we were to excel in tending to those who are flat out weary? They are not hard to find. They are sitting in these very pews and they are living in the hollows and coves and cities nearby, and more often than not, they are us. What if we were to follow the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, the One who promises rest, into migrant camps and college campuses, into local prisons and into the homes who have given up on the church and mostly on God?  

The Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, ends his sermon with this prayer: “O God,

as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” What if we were to give God the glory by getting out more and loving the world as Jesus taught us how to love? What if we were to live into the prayer of Teresa of Avila: “God of love, help us to remember that Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours. Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world. Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now. Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.” 

This past week as a bomb exploded in the concert in Mancester, England, I relived many of the feelings of living in the D.C. area when the plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. I felt the fear again, not knowing when and where violence would strike next. I felt the rage again, wanting others to pay for all the suffering they had caused. I felt the grief again, my heart aching for families whose lives were forever changed in a horrible instant.

I preached the Sunday after 9/11 and the Sundays following, but, in all honesty, it took some time for my faith to re-ignite. I was too sad, too angry, too vengeful to give anyone glory. What if you and I were to reach out to those whom we fear the most? What if we were to trust in the promise of the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God”? What if we were to do what the Rabbi Jack Moline did on 9/12/2001 and go to the Muslim bookstore in Alexandria where the glass had been shattered and curses shouted, go and stand in solidarity with those far different from us, and yet, who are also beloved children of God?

I look forward to celebrating our 250^th Anniversary at Cove, but I am convinced that as we follow the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker, the “glory days” for Cove are before us. We will find them whenever we live out the answer to the Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of humanity?” “To glorify God and enjoy God forever.”

Follow the Glory-Giver, not Glory-Seeker. He is the best guide I know to the delightful land of “Glory days.”

AMEN

No Orphans Here

No Orphans Here

Text:  John 14:15-21

(Gary W. Charles at Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, on 5-21-2017)

          Do you love Jesus? 

Do you love Jesus?

Do you love Jesus?

Allow me time here to apologize to my Seminary professors who taught me never to begin a sermon with a question. Let me also apologize to you, members and guests who are worshiping in this historic sanctuary this morning. I know it is not polite for well-educated, urbane, sophisticated people to be asked such a simple question. 

And, yes, I know it is really not such a simple question. You and I could spend months, years, debating whether we love Jesus and how to know when you love Jesus the way we are supposed to love him. Half the time we are not even sure whether or how we love the people living in the same house with us. How can we be sure that we love Jesus? So, with all these apologies and qualifiers in place, I will ask you again: Do you love Jesus?

          The fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel is a winding trail circling around the question that I just asked you multiple times. John does not wait for an answer. He both asks and then answers what it means for anyone to love Jesus.

Jesus tells his road companions that his time with them on this good earth is almost over and then says, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.” Jesus does not command warm feelings for him. Feelings are beyond even Jesus’ ability to command, but the love that John writes about in his Gospel, the love Jesus asks of us for him and for the world is not about feelings; it is about concentrated wills, willing the best of God’s gracious purpose for friend and also foe.

           To his credit, Jesus left his friends with more than a question and more than a farewell announcement and command. He left them with a farewell promise. Before panic could set in, Jesus promised that though leaving them, he would not abandon them. He promised to send them a Paraclete, a Comforter, an Advocate, a Helper. However we translate the Greek term, Jesus says to his flawed but beloved followers, “There will be no orphans here.”

Jesus promises his living abiding presence to his best friends. His promised will stir them to love the creation Jesus loved, to love the people Jesus loved, to love until there is no room left for anything else but love, even in the darkness.  

I am amazed at how many Christians who claim to love Jesus and yet consider his command to love as optional equipment for the Christian life, to be exercised when convenient. They excuse their hatred for people and nations as righteously provoked by hateful people or hateful countries or hateful terrorists. They excuse their greed as sanctioned by Jesus who wants the faithful to have more than anyone else, as if Jesus would sanction that another suffer in order to sate our greed. They suggest that loving Jesus means minding our spiritual p’s and q’s, acting as if there is only one way to think about God, forgetting that we always have more to learn about God than what we now know.  

          The late Roman Catholic priest and writer, Henri Nouwen tells the story of a young fugitive trying to hide himself from the enemy in a small village.  “The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every man in it unless the young man was handed over to them before dawn.

          “The people went to the minister and asked him what to do. The minister, torn between handing over the boy to the enemy or having his people killed, withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. After many hours, in the early morning his eyes fell on these words, ‘It is better that one man dies than the whole people be lost’.

          “Then the minister closed the Bible, called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the minister had saved the lives of the people. But the minister did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room.

          “That night an angel came to him and asked, ‘What have you done?’ He said, ‘I handed over the fugitive to the enemy’. Then the angel said: ‘But don’t you know that you handed over the Messiah’? ‘How could I know’? the minister replied anxiously. Then the angel said:  ‘If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known’.”

          If you and I love Jesus, we will read our Bibles to learn the story of the faith that names us and claims us. We will gather to worship here Sunday after Sunday because you and I were wired to give praise. We will give generously to the ministry of the church because we know that all that we have and all that we are is on sacred loan from God. We will center our lives in prayer because we need to hear a voice of clarity above the din of madness.

But if you and I are to love Jesus in the way that Jesus asks for us to love him then we will do far more. We will look into the eyes of those that our world leaves orphaned. When we do, we will discover something new about them and something new about us.

          Having grown up in solid white suburbia, I never understood why so many people live in such substandard conditions in the U.S. Then, years ago, I started hanging out with Habitat for Humanity and meeting those that our society has orphaned to substandard housing or no housing at all. I soon found out that no person likes to live in a house that leaks or has no insulation or has holes in the floor large enough to eat a cat or welcome a rat.

          When I looked in the eyes of those orphans sweating with us to build their Habitat House, I knew that I could not love Jesus and bask in my isolated spiritual haven content to let decent and affordable housing be a worry for someone else.

When I spent my first night in a shelter for those without a home, I knew that I could not love Jesus and be content that in this land of rich and plenty that grown men, women and children, each one created in the image of God, each one our brothers and sisters in Christ, have no other shelter than the one offered on gym floors and church fellowship halls. Just as Jesus promises not to leave his followers orphaned, so you and I are commanded to pray and worship and work for the day when there are no orphans here. 

In one of her essays, the somewhat mouthy, Presbyterian elder, former anti-church, now Presbyterian elder, Anne Lamott recounts going to the grocery store on her birthday, feeling the weight of the world’s need and hunger and our nation’s overwhelming affluence. She makes it through her shopping ordeal only to have the clerk tell her that she has won a ham. 

          The problem is that she does not like ham, has no need for ham, and in her fluster about this unwelcome gift she ends up crashing her ham-laden grocery cart into a slow-moving car in the parking lot. 

          “I started to apologize,” writes Anne, “when I noticed that the car was a rusty wreck, and that an old friend was at the wheel. We got sober together a long time ago, and each of us had a son at the same time.  . . .

          “She opened her window, ‘Hey’, I said, ‘How are you – it’s my birthday!’

          “’Happy Birthday’, she said, and started crying. She looked drained and pinched, and after a moment, she pointed to her gas gauge. ‘I don’t have money for gas, or food. I’ve never asked for help from a friend since I got sober, but I’m asking you to help me’.

          “’I’ve got money,’ I said.

          “’No, no, I just need gas,’ she said, ‘I’ve never asked anyone for a handout’.

          “’It’s not a handout,’ I told her. ‘It’s my birthday present.’ I thrust a bunch of money into her hand, everything I had. Then I reached into my shopping cart and held out the ham to her like a clown offering flowers. ‘Hey!’ I said, ‘Do you and your kids like ham?’ 

          “’We love it’, she said.  ‘We love it for every meal’. 

          “She put it in the seat beside her, firmly, lovingly, as if she were about to strap it in. And she cried some more” (Anne Lamott, Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith, pp. 10-11).

          Do you love Jesus? 

Then look in the eyes of those people sitting next to you in the pew this morning. Some are worried sick about money or their job or their health or their children or you name it. Look in the eyes of those you hit with grocery carts in parking lots or stumble into at a soccer game or stand next to in the grocery store, of those on the streets listening to music so loud that it makes your head swell. Look into their eyes. Listen to their stories. Do not try to dazzle them with your piety. Simply assure them that for the love of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, there are no orphans here. 

To love Jesus that way means that we will give away something that we have needed to give away in the first place. We may even give away a birthday ham to someone who actually wants it, to someone who actually needs it. No telling what loving Jesus might lead us to do. No telling what kind of company we might keep if we get serious about loving Jesus.

So, while you are still thinking through my opening question about loving Jesus, fast forward to the end of John’s Gospel. Three times, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” Jesus asks this of Peter – this arrogant, impetuous, disappointing, denying, disciple. Three times he asks the same question of Peter and finally Peter says, “Enough already, you must know that I love you.” Jesus looks Peter in the eyes and says, “Then love others in just the way I have loved you.”

Now, fast forward with me to this morning and I will ask the same opening question for one last time:  Do you love Jesus? 

Wouldn’t you hate for this sermon to end with a question?    

Malabarriga

Malabarriga

Text: Romans 8:18-27

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 5-14-2017)

The cover of the April 8, 1966 edition of Time magazine announced the death of God. From Time to Seminary campuses, as Vietnam dominated the nightly news and fire hoses blasted marchers in Selma, there was a relentless chorus that God is dead and that any hope to change a broken and decaying world rests with us. The movement drew its inspiration from the German philosopher, Friederich Nietzsche, who in the late 19^th century pronounced, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” (The Gay Science, section 125).

Sometime and somehow, almost inexplicably, God has made a comeback in the 21^st century. Current pollsters tell us that God is very much alive in the hearts of many Americans today, and now it is not so much God, but the church, that is dead. Therefore, the only job of those of us called as pastors, educators, church musicians, and ruling elders is to give the church a decent funeral.  

Sociologists love to describe the dying or dead church; they tell us how churches are closing at rapid rates and how a vast majority of people are staying home or doing anything else but worshiping God on Sundays, even in the Bible belt. Take a trip to most major cities in Europe and increasingly within the U.S. and you will find some of the best hotels and finest restaurants now situated in former church buildings. Why fly red banners and sing songs of the Spirit in a few weeks when we should be wearing black and singing songs of lament?

Now, it is true that there are some things that need to die in the church, from some of our arcane and mean theology to our frequent lock step with prejudice and racism in the name of Jesus to our repeated obsession with matters that matter little. It is not without a wealth of irony that I am preaching in a church this morning, when, in reality, we all have been told that the church is dead.

Before you and I are tempted to join the prevailing chorus of death, I would remind us that we are gathered here in the season of Easter. If Easter means something more than tasty chocolate bunnies and an annual dose of false hope for desperate preachers of booming crowds, it means that God has the last word when it comes to who and what is to be pronounced “dead” in the world. If the Pentecost story in Acts is clear about anything, it is clear that God brings to life some pretty dead or frightened communities.

 In Romans 8, Paul suggests that any death call for God or for the church of Jesus, God’s beloved child, is radically premature. Paul offers us, instead, a much more evocative image for our theology, a markedly female image, but one that many males have witnessed close up.   

It is the image of “labor pains” and Paul uses that image both for creation and for Christians. Paul tells the Romans that God is bringing something to birth in the Christian community and it will not come without excruciating consequence.

Lutheran pastor, Heidi Neumark, uses the Spanish term, Malabarriga to describe what Paul is saying in Romans 8. Paul says, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” Heidi says, “In both pregnancies, I suffered a bad case of what the Puerto Rican mothers in the church call `malabarriga`, which translates as `evil belly`, and seems more to the point than the comparatively benign English equivalent.”

          At the time of her two pregnancies, Heidi was pastor of the Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the Bronx, a church that when she arrived looked like it was on its way to the grave. It was dying and had Heidi accepted what was apparent she would have pronounced the last rites and given the church a good funeral. 

          Instead, Heidi believed that the Transfiguration Lutheran Church was hardly dying, but instead, was suffering a wicked case of malabarriga. In her marvelous book, Breathing Space, Heidi tells the story of what God gave birth to in that congregation in the face of so much death and dying. Writing about morning sickness in her pregnancy and the new life awaiting the people of her church, Heidi writes, “The doctor happily assured me that my belly was not cursed at all. On the contrary, the prodigious hormone level was a healthy sign of strong new life taking hold. This ‘malabarriga’ was a sign of blessing. It would just take time to adjust to the changes. And so it was at Transfiguration” (Breathing Space, p. 13).

Heidi refused to see the church as dying. Neither do I. She refused to be a prophetess of doom. Nor will I. Arguably, the church of the 21^st century is suffering from a fierce case of malabarriga , nonetheless, it is a new church that God is bringing to birth despite all the premature announcements of its death. Just look at some faces of new life that make my case. 

Look at the face of Pope Francis. Tell Francis that “the church is dead” and he will give you one of those impish smiles of someone who knows more than all the great prognosticators combined, who recognizes malabarriga when he sees it, and then kneels down to wash a Muslim’s feet on Holy Thursday. He gives daily witness to Christians of all stripes of the church that God is bringing to birth, often with a loud, birthing cry.

Look at the faces of the thousands of religious pilgrims who visit the tiny French town of Taize each year. People of all ages and colors and denominations kneel in prayer, in silence, and in song at Taize three times a day, every day of the year. They do not see prayer as the last ditch effort of Christians when all else has failed, but as the beginning of being quiet long enough to listen for the birth cries of the people of God. In the oftentimes, malabarriga type prayers of the Taize community, Christians align themselves with Paul’s profound words: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” These prayers propel the pilgrims in Taize and pilgrims in any pew to  go into the world God so loves, as agents of God’s grace and mercy, advocacy and justice.

Look at the faces of students and faculty at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond. These are the courageous souls for whom the prevailing narrative, “the church is dead” has been drilled into their heads, but even so, who choose to believe otherwise, choose to believe that our Easter God is doing something new, something extraordinary, choose to believe that the Pentecost Spirit of God is busy bringing new life to the church. Students are at Union are not being trained as hospice chaplains for a church on life-support, but as labor and delivery nurses for a church God is bringing to birth.

I wish everyone here could look at one face of a person who changed my life. Her name was Katie Bashor and she and her husband, Mark, were the moving forces behind the Night Shelter connected with the church I served in Atlanta. The Apostle Paul did not have any convincing to do with respect to Katie. She knew all about malabarriga and the church God is birthing in the world. Katie knew that God does not intend for God’s creatures to have no safe shelter and to be subject to the whims of the weather and victims of political leaders who have no use for the poor. She also knew that until God’s great birthing project is complete that she was going to exercise hospitality and would not be a part of any church that decided that for financial, security, or convenience sake there is no room in the inn.

I wish I could also transport you to the small island of La Gonave off the main island of Haiti. This time last year, my nephew Sean and I were there to assist in dedicating a new church in the mountain village of Trou Jacques. Ask Monsieur Bellegarde, the lay leader of the church there, if the church is dead, and he will give you a hearty laugh and point to the new church building filled to overflowing with children and youth and adults of every age and he would say, “The church is dead? A first world fantasy.”

          What faces do you see that demonstrate the church’s malabarriga, pictures of the church God is bringing to birth? What faces have changed the prevailing moribund narrative for you that “the church is dead”? What faces would you paint on the front door of Cove that gives powerful witness of the Risen Christ and the Moving Spirit pushing beyond all the current harbingers of hate and prognosticators of death to usher in a reign of justice and peace that will not decay with time?

          “God is dead.” “The church is dead.” Paul has no patience with such theological nonsense and if we pay attention to the faces of life all around us, neither should we. The church may be suffering an especially bad case of malabarriga, but from this suffering and struggling, God is bringing a new and transformed church to birth.      

In a fit of glorious poetry, Paul says it this way,  “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the joy about to be revealed to us.”

The church is dead!

Not a chance. Not even close!

Thanks be to God!

                              AMEN

The Church of the Sensational Nightingales

The Church of the Sensational Nightingales

Text: Ephesians 5:15-20

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 5-7-2017)

Sunday morning with the Sensational Nightingales

                                                  Billy Collins

          It was not the Five Mississippi Blind Boys

          who lifted me off the ground

          that Sunday morning

          as I drove down for the paper, some oranges, and

              bread.

          Nor was it the Dixie Hummingbirds

          or the Soul Stirrers, despite their quickening name,

          or even the Swan Silvertones

          who inspired me to look over the commotion of

               trees

          into the open vault of the sky.

          No, it was the Sensational Nightingales

          who happened to be singing on the gospel

          station early that Sunday morning

          and must be credited with the bumping up

          of my spirit, the arousal of the mice within.

          I have always loved this harmony,

          like four, sometimes five trains running

          side by side over a contoured landscape –

          make that a shimmering, red-dirt landscape,

          wildflowers growing along the silver tracks,

          lace tablecloths covering the hills,

          the men and women in white shirts and dresses

          walking in the direction of a tall steeple.

          Sunday morning in a perfect Georgia.

          But I am not here to describe the sound

          of the falsetto whine, sepulchral bass,

          alto and tenor fitted snugly in between;

          only to witness my own minor ascension

          that morning as they sang, so parallel,

          about the usual themes,

          the garden of suffering,

          the beads of blood on the forehead,

          the stone before the hillside tomb,

          and the ancient rolling waters

          we would all have to cross some day.

          God bless the Sensational Nightingales,

          I thought as I turned up the volume,

          God bless their families and their powder blue suits.

          They are a far cry from the quiet kneeling

          I was raised with,

          a far, hand-clapping cry from the candles

          that glowed in the alcoves

          and the fixed eyes of saints staring down

          from their corners.

          Oh, my cap was on straight that Sunday morning

          And I was fine keeping the car on the road.

          No one would ever have guessed

          I was being lifted into the air by nightingales,

          hoisted by their beaks like a long banner

          that curls across an empty blue sky,

          caught up in the annunciation

          of these high, most encouraging tidings.

(from The Art of Drowning by Bill Collins, 1995; University of Pittsburgh Press)

          Leave it to the poet Billy Collins to transform a routine Sunday drive to a hike into heaven. An English professor in New York, Collins could well be the most unlikely U.S. poet laureate ever named. His poetry often is often flip and funny and seemingly too mundane for one holding the distinguished title of “poet laureate.”  As for me, I want to write a “thank you” note to the committee that selected him as our national imaginative voice, because Billy Collins writes for the common man and woman, his poetry appeals to anyone who is willing to look for the extraordinary in the ordinary goings on of life. It is precisely there, as our Celtic ancestors would argue – in the ordinary goings on of life – that you and I are most likely to meet God.

          Leave it to the Apostle Paul to make a list and then pass it on to the church. I will confess that when I read Paul’s lists, my eyes almost automatically begin to roll back into their sockets, much the way my two grown children’s eyes still do when I pull out my list of things they need to do. Their eyes either roll back or glaze over with parentally caused cataracts. In much the same way, I initially check out when I hear Paul begin one of his long lists of how to be and not be a Christian. 

          The list in Chapter Five of Ephesians is no exception – at least, it is not exceptional at the beginning. Though not all scholars agree that Ephesians was written by Paul, the list in Chapter Five sure sounds like Paul. To paraphrase the apostle, the list begins: “Don’t live like a fool because these are bad times, evil times.” You can almost see Paul’s admonishing finger wagging and I can almost feel my eyes rolling northward.

Then, out of nowhere, the list-giving, dictate-demanding, do-this-and-not-that Paul starts to sound less like an overbearing parent and more like a “sensational nightingale.” His finger drops and instead of raging against fools, he starts to sound like one. He says: “Sing, give thanks to God for everything, all the time, in the name of Jesus.” Now, even here Paul cannot quite bring himself to shift out of the imperative mood, but, at least, it is a much more inviting imperative – “Give thanks to God for everything, all the time.”

Paul is talking about what happens when God’s grace comes sneaking up on you and you just have to sing. He is speaking from experience, remembering the day he was a strident Pharisee, headed out on purity patrol. He was going to clean out the synagogue in Damascus from creeping Christianity when out of the blue he heard the singing of the sensational nightingale, the risen Christ. Years later, Collins would hear the same singing through the collective voices of the “Sensational Nightingales,” as he describes: “I was being lifted in the air by nightingales . . . caught up in the annunciation of these high, most encouraging tidings.”  

          The Apostle Paul and Billy Collins describe the two sides of the grace of God. One side of grace is being lifted up out of the muck of life – the muck of a messed up marriage, a no-future job, the muck of too much power to too little control. You know what it is like to have muck clinging to you; some of you might even be stuck in some right now.  It is nasty and it is thick and it grabs hold of you with the strength of Samson; it is too deep to climb out of and too sticky to shake loose of. The “high, most encouraging tidings” of the gospel is that you and I do not need to try. In Christ, God has given us a lift ticket out of the muck and a promise to climb in with us when the lift is out of order. That is one side of God’s grace.

           The other side of God’s grace is living like a grace-filled, grateful fool every moment of every day because there is just not enough time to return to God all the thanksgiving we feel. The other side of grace is gratitude. And, I have to warn you, gratitude can mess up your life. When gratitude works its way inside you, it makes you see things differently, makes you treat people in ways you never would have done otherwise. Gratitude will send the greed in you packing, because when gratitude nests inside you, you finally know that you cannot ever want for more than what you have been given already. Gratitude will make you turn up the volume when the Sensational Nightingales are singing; otherwise you will miss their song for all the street noise. 

Even scarier, gratitude will turn you into a Sensational Nightingale. Do not forget that Gratitude turned the pious-persecuting-pompous Saul into the certified, original “fool for Christ” Paul. What Paul learned on the road to Damascus and Collins learned on that early Sunday morning drive is what the church is still learning – that the future of the church, the growth of the church, the hope of the church rests not in our being a community of purity police, making sure that we check every theological bag at the church door, sending away those carrying too much baggage or checking everyone’s spiritual ID at the church gate to make sure that they think the same way as we do about Jesus.

The future of the church, the growth of the church, the hope of the church is allowing God’s grace to turn us into a community of sensational, singing nightingales, people who stop Sunday drivers and neighbors and colleagues with “high, encouraging tidings,” people crazy enough to announce that WE CHOOSE WELCOME. The grateful church of Sensational Nightingales will give away their time and money, creativity and commitment, not with parsimonious piety, but with genuine gratitude and gladness for God’s unrelenting pounding of grace.  

          So, pray with me for the day when people will drive up and down Highway 29 and won’t say, “I didn’t even know there was church on that hill” or “Oh Yeah, that’s a nice, cute, little church. Maybe I’ll visit it one day” or “I’ve never heard one thing about that church.” Pray with me for the day when people will drive up and down Highway 29 and say without a stutter or a pause, “Oh yeah, Cove Presbyterian Church, now that’s the church of sensational nightingales.” 

                                                  AMEN