Resurrection Sign

Resurrection Sign

Text: Matthew 12:38-42

Brian K. Blount, President, Union Presbyterian Seminary

(Installation Service for Pastor Gary Charles, October 30, 2016)

This scripture does not contain a fun Jesus saying. You were probably thinking to yourself as I read it: “why in the world did Brian choose this decidedly-not-fun Jesus saying on the occasion of this intentionally fun celebration of Gary starting out his ministry here at Cove? Isn't there a nicer version of Jesus that Brian could have invited to worship this morning?”

Anybody who reads the gospels knows that they contain two distinct Jesus moods. There is the nice Jesus, who sighs such soothing sentiments as "take my yoke upon you and I will give you rest." And then there is the hard Jesus, the one who passionately pounds out provocations like "you brood of vipers." Doesn’t our scripture highlight the hard Jesus? Why did Brian invite the hard Jesus to this particular party of the pious?

Here is probably a good opportunity for me to blame it on God. God told me to preach on this scripture this morning. It’s about divine inspiration. It’s a Holy Ghost thing. You non preachers wouldn’t understand.

To tell the truth, I hardly understand it myself. I was thinking about Gary and I was thinking about this wonderful celebration and I was thinking about preaching and I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, "Oh!!!! That text where people ask Jesus for a sign and Jesus refuses to give them a sign." In my half sleep state, I couldn't even remember in which Gospel Jesus said this. I don't like Matthew all that much as far as the gospels go. I know, the four Gospels are supposed to be like your children, right. You don't love one more than you love the others. You certainly don’t say it out loud if you do. You love them all equally. That's the parental story and every parent in his or her right mind had better stick to it. So, if someone comes up to me and asks, "Brian, which gospel do you like the best?" You know what I'm gonna say. "I love them all equally." Well, do you like one of them less than you like the others? "I love them all equally." OK. But the truth is, in the middle of the night, I am hoping and praying that Jesus didn't say this in Matthew because I just don't like Matthew as much as I like Mark.  Mark's my favorite. I might as well go ahead and say it. And Matthew drives me crazy. Because Matthew spiritualizes stuff. For example, when he listened to the story of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, instead of sharing what Luke shared, “Blessed are the poor,” Matthew interpreted what Jesus said as “blessed are the poor in spirit.” People like it when you tone stuff down, make it all “spiritual” so they don’t have to do anything to change anything physical or literal in their lives or in their world. People love to be ALL SPIRITUAL. “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Matthew would have loved that! Spiritually Poor?! I want to hear about God blessing the literal poor. Let those of us who are materially rich but spiritually poor buy our own blessings. But noooo, Matthew claims that God has gone all spiritual!!!! Doggone it, Matthew!!!

Yes, I know this is poor gospel parentage. I ought to love Matthew as much as I love Mark.

So,...feeling chastened, when I got up in the morning and my head was clearer, even after I realized that Jesus speaks the pertinent sign language in the Gospel of Matthew, I said, I'm still going to use it. And, thank goodness, for once, Matthew doesn't spiritualize. He doesn't interpret Jesus to be saying that folks seek a spiritual sign from Jesus. As Tom Long notices, this is a demand for physical proof. Tom writes: “Having tangled with Jesus, the leaders now demand to see some credentials...[they] have now pulled him over and want to see his license.” Rightly, Matthew therefore does not hear Jesus strike back that only a spiritually misaligned generation seeks a sign.  Jesus takes this as a real, physical, literal challenge and he responds with real, literal anger and sarcasm. For once, Matthew doesn't water down a thing. He just says what he heard Jesus say. And that is probably why, upon waking up and being more clear headed and right minded, I should have looked for another scripture.

But I'm stubborn. And I remember. I remember one of my teachers. Cain Hope Felder is his name. Cain preached the sermon the only time I have been installed at a church. It was a time before I'd ever met Gary Charles. It was 1982. I was 24 years old. 23 years of my life I had been a Baptist. Before the end of my first year as a Presbyterian, I was being installed as the pastor of Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church. And Cain, though not using this text, preached about a sign. A sign of God that Cain said was manifested in my crossing over, like the people of faith crossed over the Jordan to become a new people. I had crossed over a denominational line and yet had remained within the family of faith, in a new way. That, he said, was a sign. Of God. At work.

On the surface, the request for a sign from Jesus that God is at work seems like such an innocent request. We look for such signs all the time. Don’t we? Don’t we?

But this is precisely where Tom Long finds it difficult to understand the leaders who are asking Jesus for a sign. “What do they have in mind?” he asks. “What else in the way of a sign could they conceivably expect? They have already seen miracles of every imaginable type: The blind see, the deaf hear, lepers are cleansed, the mute speak, the paralyzed walk, the demon- possessed are made whole. They obviously want something more, something even more dramatic that will assure them that Jesus is from God. Maybe a light shining from heaven would do the trick, or perhaps a voice from the skies.”

In fact, in Matthew, there was a voice from the skies. At Jesus' baptism. Matthew makes it clear in the way he narrates the story that Jesus was not the only one who heard the voice. The voice spoke to everyone. "This is my beloved, son," they heard the voice say. So, there was a voice in the sky. Right?! They actually had such a mighty sign. And still they do not believe.

One starts to think that perhaps the problem isn't that there are signs, but that there ARE signs. God has given them signs. All the healing, all the teaching, all the from the sky speaking. They had sign after sign after sign. The problem is that the signs are pointing to something they don't want the signs to point to. The signs are pointing to Jesus and Jesus is doing stuff that they do not find acceptable. They think something is wrong with Jesus and they want a sign to prove that Jesus is all right. All right with God, that is. All right with their kind of God, that is.

If I want God to validate what I'm doing, what I think is right, no matter what, then I want a sign that says, "Brian, yes, you're right." I don't want a sign that says something contrary to what I want to do. I want the sign to confirm what I want to do, even if what I want to do is not what everyone else wants me to do. So, when I ask my wife, after a wonderful meal, "do you think we should order dessert?" I don't really want her to weigh the appropriateness of getting a calorie rich dessert after the very full meal I've already had. I already know I don't need dessert.  I already know I should just tell myself "no." I ask because I want her to tell me "yes." And if she tells me "no," I think I want to find out what's wrong with her. That's when I want her to give me a sign that she continues to maintain control of all her mental faculties. So, even though it makes no sense to her, it makes perfect sense to me when I then ask, "are you feeling all right? Give me a sign." I mean, she told me "no" on the dessert. Something must be wrong with her. I need a sign that everything is actually all right. Whenever I ask her, "what did you think of my sermon this morning," I don't want an honest appraisal. I don't want THE TRUTH. I want a lie. A nice, Christian lie. Because if I'm asking how it went, I already know it didn't go as I had wanted it to go. I ask because I want her to tell me, "Oh, you knocked out of the park this morning, preacher!" So, as soon as she starts off with something like, "Well, you know..." then I know it’s no longer about the sermon; something must be wrong with her. So, I need a sign from her that everything is all right. So, even though it makes no sense to her, it makes perfect sense to me when I interrupt her before she can go on with whatever sermon observation point she is intending to make, "are you feeling all right? Give me a sign." I mean, she is actually going to answer my question honestly!! Something must be wrong. I therefore need a sign that everything is actually all right.

The scribes and Pharisees here are caught up in the exact same situation. They need a sign because something is clearly wrong with Jesus!  They want Jesus to stop doing things his way and start doing things their way. Because he's not just healing folks, he's teaching folks. He's teaching by how he lives and what he says. And he is doing and saying some dangerous stuff. Breaking laws that ought not to be broken. Touching people who ought not be touched. Hanging out with people who ought not to be hung out with. And claiming that this kind of radically disreputable behavior is the kind of behavior God desires.

It is bad enough that Jesus is doing all the stuff he is saying and doing. What is even worse is that he is backing up all the stuff he is saying and doing with all these miracles. These  SIGNS!  The man has power!  Real, raw, outrageous power.  Even his enemies give him that. There is no need for the scribes and Pharisees to declare that Jesus is faking these events. They agree: he has power! So, how do you compete with a person with whom you so vigorously disagree who is so clearly powerful. Well, you don't challenge his power. You challenge where he gets his power from. That is what is really behind this request for a sign.

So, they put out the story that Jesus has power, but it is demonic power. It must be Satan's power. His power is a sign that Satan has broken loose in the world. Here is where Jesus unleashes the brood of vipers quote. And right after he calls them a brood of vipers, the snakes slither up to him, call him Teacher, so the crowd can see them fawning all over him, and they try to trap him by asking him for a sign. What they say out loud for the people to hear is that they want is a sign that demonstrates that Jesus is all right, that he is of God and not of Satan. Just clear this up for us, Jesus. Do a little magic. And connect that magic to God.

Devious. And smart. They want Jesus to make a show of power for the sake of showing power. That is in itself demonic, isn't it? Showing off power just because you have power. Prove you are smarter than everybody else by doing something that makes the rest of us feel dumb.          Prove you are wealthier than the rest of us by buying something the rest of us couldn't afford. Prove you are more powerful than the rest of us by putting some innocent somebody in her place. Go ahead, show off. And in showing off, prove to these people that you're not working to glorify God, you're working to glorify yourself. You're not divine. You're demonic. They don't want the truth from Jesus. They already KNOW the truth. They want Jesus to prove their lie. That's why they ask him for a sign. They need him to give them a sign so they can use that sign against him.

No sign, though. That's his answer. No sign.

Except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

Wait...What???!!!

Jonah! What???!!!

The. Sign. Of. Jonah.

And they will play a role in bringing that Jonah sign about. They will help create the circumstance that kills Jesus, because they did not trust that he was of God. And after they have destroyed him, after they have put him down, entombed him in the earth, God will raise him up in the way that God raised Jonah out of the belly of the sea monster. After they have satisfied themselves that Jesus is not of God, after they have taken Jesus’ life because he is not of God, ONLY THEN will God give them a sign. A completely unreasonable, incredulous, inconceivable sign. Life after death. Resurrection. Because something greater than the law is here. Something greater than Jonah is here. Something greater than Solomon is here. Something so great that it defies the reason that we seek to explain and make sense of our lives is here. Something that makes no sense and yet is the only sense God has to offer is here. Something unlike anything they have ever seen before is here. Something so inconceivable, in fact, that Jesus doesn't even try to explain it to them. He knows they would never believe it.

I suspect that even in the first century most of the people in the crowd thought the Jonah episode was the biggest fish story they had ever heard. That story makes NO sense. So, Jesus using it as the answer to their request for a sign is utterly, atrociously ridiculous. It's like you all saying to me, "preach us a sign today, Brian." And, in response, I say, "You evil and adulterous generation, no sign will be given to you,...except the sign of a great preacher, wonderful pastor, and incredible large church administrator who leaves one of the tallest of tall steeple churches, a church having perhaps the highest of visibility in a highly visible capital city, and follows God's call to a little rural church in a little rural town that most people will not have heard of."

There is your sign. That is how you know God is at work in your world. The God who raised Jesus has raised up Gary. In this place. Two years ago, who in here, including Gary, could have possibly seen this coming. You want to know God is still at work. Here’s a sign.

Gary.   Here.   Is a sign.

I read this crazy novel this summer. Gary knows I read crazy books. Books about end of the world stuff, apocalyptic stuff. A friend recently told me, in a kind of friendly, one-on-one personal faith intervention, that I need to let go of the zombies and the plagues and the end of the world scenarios and get back to Jesus. Okay, Jesus, here I come. But on the way back, I stopped off at one more end of the world novel. The Fireman by Joe Hall. Joe Hall is the son of Stephen King, a master of apocalyptic horror fiction. That should be enough to tell you something.

In the novel, the end came not from a plague or a meteor or a zombie apocalypse. The end blew in the wind that carried a spoor. A spoor. Of unknown origin. I wrote a story once. Literary people in the know told me that you need a believable start or no one is going to publish your story. I suppose the alternative is that you have a bankable literary bloodline, then you don't need a believable start. So, even though the author never explained this spoor, where it came from, how it could have really spawned, etc., I accepted it. And once I accepted that it existed, I could accept what it did to people, even though on the surface that made no sense either, and the author didn't give any medical reason for how it could work. But here it is. This spoor transmitted through ash to people. Not by touch. By wind. Ash spreading through the wind. So, when people were avoiding touching people who had contracted the disease the spoor caused, and were shunning people and all of that, when they burned the bodies of the people with the spoor because they were afraid of those bodies, the spoor took flight in the windblown ashes and infected people who breathed in those ashes. And since the ash was in the air all the time, the disease was spreading all the time. Here was some nice criticism of the way we treat people who are ill. We don't touch them. We put them away. We spiritually burn them. In the book, they literally burned them. They were burning corpses, because they were afraid. And because the spoor was in the ash of the burned bodies, their fear was literally killing them. Well, when you got the disease you were marked with a physical sign. The sign marking was another kind of nod to contemporary culture. The marking was a tattooing. It turned out as black drawings over people's bodies. People tried to hide the markings lest someone try to hurt or kill them because of them. Simultaneously beautiful and deadly. Because the markings would become even more beautiful, taking on color, and then the marks erupted into flames and the person spontaneously combusted into fire. They called the disease Dragonscale, because the marks created flames that destroyed the person in fire. And then, from the ashes, the spoor took flight until someone else breathed it in. Here was a disease you couldn't hide from others. And others were so afraid of it they shunned and destroyed people who had it. But every time they destroyed a person by burning that person the disease took flight into many other persons.

The plot twist was this. One of the heroes of the book was a man who had learned to control Dragonscale, so that instead of the flames destroying him, he used the flames to protect himself and others. For him, the marks were a sign of a potential new future, not a frightening old past.

Well, when I finished the book, after I got over feeling guilty for even reading the book, I chastised myself for falling for all this literal fire and brimstone with that tiny flicker of hope hiding within. And then, I thought about us today. Us people of faith. We’re all the time looking for signs, spiritual and physical markings of God. On people. In the world. But then I thought? Aren’t we already marked? Really? Not by tattooed skin from some spoor, but to those who are outside of our community, what we are selling seems just as crazy, doesn’t it? We are marked by the inconceivable sign that Jesus promised the leaders, and us: resurrection.

Resurrection is our ridiculous, ludicrous, Jonah-fish-story kind of implausible call sign.

Aren’t we, by the way we live, by the things we say, by the stuff we do the sign to this generation that points back to the meaning and truth and consequence of Jesus’ resurrection? Wasn’t that what Jesus was setting up when he told that brood of vipers that the only sign this world would ever see would be the sign of Jonah? Wasn’t he talking about Gary? Moving here? Wasn’t he talking about you? Moving whenever and wherever you move when you do something ridiculous and ludicrous for God. Aren’t you, aren’t we marked by Jesus’ resurrection sign? Wasn’t that what Jesus was really saying? Aren’t we the sign to our generation just as Jesus was the sign to his generation? Isn’t the resurrection tattooed all over us, a spiritual God- scale that influences how we live and what we do?

I know what you’re thinking! There he goes, spiritualizing. But the spiritual marking has a material, physical impact. Doesn’t it? You can’t see the sign of the resurrection on this church, in this place, on your life. And yet, doesn’t our resurrection marking make us do things, sometimes explosively good and outrageously transformative things that we might not otherwise have had either the courage or the foresight to do? Don’t we try to hide the marking sometimes, lest people think we’re strange? Don’t we feel compelled by the power of the marking sometimes, so we can’t help ourselves, we end up committing more of our time, more of our energy, more of our resources, more of ourselves than we had ever anticipated for causes and for people we could have never predicted would ever be important to us? Doesn’t God’s resurrection marking literally shake us out of the comfortable places where we live and work and minister and physically move us into situations and circumstances that just. seem. befuddling.

Aren’t we marked?

God Marked . . . by the same resurrection that was Jesus’ strange and mysterious sign?

And are we not, marked as we are by the resurrection, therefore God’s Jonah sign to God’s weary world? We are a sign to the world. Gary is a sign to us. Did not God give us a sign when God marked Gary and through the power of that marking called Gary here to Cove? What? Did you miss it? Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Good God, it’s tattooed all over him. It drove him here.

The day that Gary and I first met is marked in my memory. Indelible. Transforming. Empowering. Life giving. It was at the back basement door of the Carver Memorial Church. He had come to survey a hunger and food program being run out of one of our church buildings. He was drawing his church of folks who did not live in that impoverished community into the ministry of care in that impoverished community. He marked his church with the resurrection frenzy of bringing the possibility of new life to a community struggling in the throes of this life. And he has so marked every church since. His passion, his love for others, his humble grace amidst such overwhelming ability, his friendship, his dedication to being the very best at what he does for the community of God’s people, his sacrifice of his own strength and power to strengthen and empower others. You look at Gary closely enough, you listen to Gary closely enough, you watch Gary closely enough, and you see a man marked by the resurrection. You can’t help but see it. Because one thing Gary is not, it’s shy. Not with what he wants. Not with what God wants from him. Not with what God wants him to call forth from us. Gary doesn’t hide his God marking. It stands out. It’s all over him.

In that novel, people marked by Dragonscale were distracting. So, too, are God-Marked people distracting. Gary is distracting. You notice Gary. You always notice people who are marked. Don’t you? But Christians aren’t all that distracting any more, at least not in a good way, a really transformational way. I don’t know that the world is distracted by the resurrection marking on us. Jesus didn’t just talk about the sign of Jonah. We know that he became the sign of Jonah. We can’t just talk about the sign of the resurrection. Like Gary, by the way we live our lives, by the way we answer God’s call upon our lives, we must become the sign of the resurrection. We must become the sign that God is doing a new thing . . . in the midst of the old thing. We must become the sign that God is bringing new life to this world choking itself to death. So that people see the resurrection isn’t just an inconceivable, unbelievable fish story told about the faraway past. So that people see that it is not just a fantastical, apocalyptic story told about the faraway future. The resurrection story is a story about now. It can be. It will be. When we who are marked by its reality live its reality. Physically, literally, not spiritually, LIVE its reality.  Now. Like Gary is living its reality. Now. By how and by where he has followed God’s call. Now. I’m telling you, Gary is a sign. Everyone of us in here can be a sign. Of God. On the move. A sign of new life breaking through old expectations.

A person marked by the resurrection makes as little sense to most folks as Jesus answering the demand for a sign with the sign of Jonah. Gary’s move is a sign of faith in a world that seeks signs of reason. The reasonable view is that power is about numbers and size. We are so worried today about how big we are, how big our admissions numbers, how big our endowment, how big our Sunday attendance, how big our denomination, how big our church. In making this move, Gary has remained faithful to the resurrection marking that first compelled him into the ministry. God’s call that you care for God’s people, not about how many people you care for. God’s call that it is not how big your membership is, but how big your mission is. God’s call that it is not about how many members you drag in; it’s about how much resurrection witness you dish out. By his hearing that call and his following that call, Gary has yet again shown me that he is marked by the resurrection. In Gary Charles’ life, in Gary Charles’ ministry, God has provided a spiritual and a physical resurrection sign. We shouldn’t just marvel at this sign. We should use it, to help us mark our way, as we, too, do our best to follow God’s call. Jesus was right. Something greater than we have realized has happened here.

Standing in the Need of Prayer

Standing in the Need of Prayer

Text:  Luke 18:9-14

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 10-23-2016)

Two men went up to the temple to pray. So, the parable begins. We know neither man’s name, only their vocations. The man who prays standing is a holy man – just ask him. But, to be fair, he is a holy man by all community standards. Not only does he pray daily in the temple, he is a law abider and even exceeds what the law demands. He eats what he is supposed to eat and sets aside two days a week to fast. Even more, this man tithes; he gives ten percent – off the top – of all he earns to God’s work.

The other praying man is barely standing with his head in his hands at the far edge of the temple. He is not a holy man by anyone’s estimation. This parable tells us everything we need to know about this unholy man before he opens his mouth. He is unholy because he profanes himself by working for the dirty, gentile Romans. If he is like most Jewish tax collectors of the day, it is likely that he exploits his own people for personal financial gain. The story does not say, but you can go to the bank that this man did not tithe.

Two men go to the temple to pray. We will return to them a little later. Right now, I want to talk about a third man, the one reading this story to you. This man has come to the church to pray as a pastor for 36 years now and long before that as a church member. The third man, of course, is me.

I wish I could say that my normal posture is one of humility like the tax collector who knew that he had no hope save for the goodness and grace of God. When I am honest with myself, though, I suspect that the Pharisee and I are close kin. Like the Pharisee, I have spent much of my life trying to excel, trying to be better than “that poor, sinful tax collector.”

To excel, I have learned to compete in all I do. Being the second born, early on I competed for more attention from my parents than my older brother who had already been hanging around for five years when I came upon the scene. From kick the can to Little League baseball to high school basketball to stints in the theater, I have always competed. I competed for grades. I competed for the lead in the play. I competed for acceptance by friends and those I wanted to be my friends. I have even competed for the attention and favor of God and God’s people.

I will tell you something now that I did not know as a boy or even as a young man. The competitive life is exhausting, not just for me, my family, and for those who hang in there with me as friends, but for the churches I have served. It is not only exhausting; it is delusional. It leads you to measure success by how much better you are at what you do than others rather than how well you help others do better or be better. It can easily lead you to treat those you consider as inferior as deficient and easy to ignore. 

A problem with such self-centered, delusional, and self-righteous competitive Christianity is that it robs the faith of all its color and complexity, leaving everything either black or white, everyone as either good or bad. It leads to preoccupation with self, never noticing all the others standing around you, each one of whom, yourself included, is standing in the prayer. It can lead you to think, if not say aloud, “thank God we at Cove are not like. . . ” You finish the sentence. Christianity that is achieved at the cost of diminishing another human being is a Christianity that is light years removed from the One who told today’s parable.  

 At this point, I would like to introduce a fourth character, a woman and a friend. Her name is Barbara Brown Taylor. A few years back, Barbara wrote a book that has disturbed some of my clergy friends, but I have found it a book that often sears my soul. The book is called, Leaving Church. When I first read it, I found myself weeping in self-recognition more often than not as she recounts much of her story as an Episcopal parish priest. 

Barbara writes:  “I had . . . become so busy caring for the household of God that I neglected the One who had called me there. If I still had plenty of energy for the work it was because feeding others was still my food. As long as I fed them, I did not feel my hunger pains. . . . I knew how to pray . . . but by the time I got home each night it was all I could do to pay the bills and go to bed. I pecked God on the cheek the same way I did Ed. . . . For years I had kept hoping that intimacy with God would blossom as soon as I got everything done, got everyone settled, got my environment just right and my calendar cleared.

“For most of my adult life . . . I thought that being faithful meant always trying harder to live a holier life and calling [the church’s I served] to do the same. I thought that it meant knowing everything I could about scripture and theology, showing up every time the church doors were open, and never saying no to anyone in need. I thought that it meant ignoring my own needs and those of my family until they went away altogether” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church, pp. 75, 99, 133, 218, 219).

 Many of Barbara’s words hit home, but the words that haunt me are these:  “As long as I fed them, I did not feel my hunger pains.” Now travel with me back to the temple. Two men are praying, only one of whom is feeling hunger pains and it is not my close kin, the Pharisee.

Make no mistake. The tax collector is not a sympathetic figure in the story. He has made some despicable life decisions and works daily for the enemy. He comes to the temple not with a huge sense of self-confidence, but with nothing left but a plea to God for mercy. 

So, why does Jesus tell this story anyway? Maybe he tells it to shake up our preconceived notions of others and ourselves, to invite us, whatever group we find ourselves in at whatever time, to feel our own hunger pains for God and never to imagine that we come before God with any extra credit earned that give our prayers a special glean or divine priority. Maybe, then, the main character in this story is not the Pharisee standing tall or the tax collector stooped over in self-loathing. Maybe the main character is you or me.

In the 60’s Jerry Garcia made an old African American Spiritual popular to a much wider audience when he sang:

Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me oh Lord

Standing in the need of prayer
Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me oh Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
It's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
It's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord
Standing in the need of prayer

                                                                         

            Indeed, oh Lord, it is.

         

                    AMEN

Always and Never

“Always and Never”

Text: Luke 18:1-8

          (Gary W. Charles at Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 10-16-2016)

In the uncharted terrain of God’s reign, Jesus says, “always pray and never lose heart.” Few words of Jesus make me squirm more. I find it hard enough praying daily, much less praying always – and I am in the praying business!

When my son, Josh, was in first grade, he was asked about his parents’ vocations. When asked about mine, Josh responded, “My dad goes to meetings.” How true. If Jesus had said, “Always go to meetings – Session meetings, committee meetings, Presbytery meetings, civic meetings, Seminary board meetings,” well, I’d already have at least one foot well planted within God’s reign. Jesus said none of those things. He said, “Always pray.” 

I once spent a silent weekend at a Trappist monastery. The monks spent a good part of the day baking bread for commercial sale. They also read and walked and reflected. And, Lord God, did they pray. They prayed in the early morning, at noon, at midday, at meals, at dusk and at midnight, but even there they did not “pray always.”  

Jesus only makes matters worse when he insists that we “never lose heart.”  How can you and I live in this world and “never lose heart?” How can we listen to the current election rhetorical race to the gutter and never lose heart? How can we pass mentally wounded veterans walking homeless on our city streets and never lose heart? How can we witness the massive devastation and loss of human life in Haiti and along the U.S. Coast after Hurricane Matthew and never lose heart? How can we watch too many innocent inmates executed by our states and never lose heart? How can see the deadly arrow of cancer strike friends and family and never lose heart? Always pray. Never lose heart. Who are you kidding, Jesus?

To make matters worse, Jesus follows this confounding counsel with a story of a widow and a judge.  Unlike a majority of widows in modern times, widows in those days were rarely old, fragile, or frail. With a short life span for males, women were often widowed at a young age, still capable and vigorous, but also vulnerable, frequently ignored and exploited, an easy prey.

Hebrew tradition insists on protection of widows. Deuteronomy says that God executes justice for orphans and widows (10:17-18). Old Testament law includes provisions for the community’s care of widows (Ex. 22:22-24; Deut. 14:28-29; 24:17-22) and the Psalms describe God as One who “upholds the widow” and “maintains the widow’s boundaries” (Psalm 146:9). In reality, though, a widow in those days had little hope for anything more than rugged survival. 

Hebrew tradition insists of behavior beyond reproach of judges. King Jehoshaphat gives these instructions to all judges, “Consider what you do, for you judge not for humanity but for the Lord; the Lord is with you in giving judgment. . . . take heed what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the Lord our God, or partiality, or taking bribes” (2 Chron. 19:5-6). 

In practice, though, in Jesus’ day, widows were powerless and judges were too often corrupt. In this parable, Jesus tells of a certain widow who refuses to accept the lay of the land. She demands justice from the judge and keeps coming at him day after day, relentless in her cause. She is the kind of person that you avoid when you walk down the street, someone whose phone call you try to miss, or whose email you never return. She has no power other than the power of persistence, so persist she does.

Jesus then tells us of a certain judge who evidently had never read Jehoshaphat’s instructions. You can hear the crowd chuckle as Jesus gives us a peek inside the judge’s head as he muses, “I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won’t quit badgering me, I’d better do something. I’ll give her what she wants and be done with her” (translation by Peterson and Charles).

At this point in the parable, the crowd around Jesus must have roared with laughter, at the very idea of a powerful judge who is beaten to the punch by a powerless, persevering widow. What a comic tale. “Tell us another one, Jesus.”      

 In this parable, Jesus does not reduce prayer to rare moments when we collect our thoughts, close our eyes, bow our heads, and try to put together some coherent words to say to God before we fall asleep. Prayer according to this parable is the single-minded focus of the widow who persists in demanding justice from the judge, no matter how hopeless her situation. Prayer is a way of life more than a particular daily activity.

Bishop Craig Anderson recalls a conversation with Father Bear’s Heart, chief of the Lakota people. Anderson lamented the deplorable conditions that the Lakota Indians have to endure. The Chief then offered him a different view of their world.  “Bishop, every year different church groups from around the country come here to save the Indian people. These groups come for a week or two . . . and work very hard repairing our churches, teaching our children, setting up programs and trying to help.  Then they leave frustrated because their needs to succeed have not been met. They want immediate results, change now!

“They seem to have the answers but never ask the questions. It is sad because if they did, they would discover something important about us as Lakota people and even more about themselves. One of the four Lakota virtues is perseverance.  Perseverance is the ability to endure, to suffer as a people without ever giving up hope.  We Lakota think of it as a Christian virtue and see it in our Kola (brother) Jesus. He suffered, endured, and persevered, even on the cross. He did not desert his people or God, his father. Our people have suffered and persevered. We will not desert our family or “Wakan Tanka” (our God). If they (the visitors) would minister to us, they should minister with us by enduring and persevering rather than treating us as a problem to be solved or a condition to be fixed. Perseverance . . . helps us to cope and to hope. Bishop, we have a deep faith; we persevere” (Craig Anderson, Lectionary Homiletics, Oct. 1998, pp. 21-22).

The widow in this parable keeps one singular cause at the center of her life.  Likewise, suggests Jesus, prayer keeps God at the center of our lives no matter what the time or circumstance of our lives. Prayer keeps God at the center of our being when we are cooking breakfast or working on a legal brief, finishing a term paper or writing a novel, when we are picking vegetables or chasing after our children. For Jesus, prayer is a way of living that keeps our lives directed toward God and God’s will and God’s love. 

When Huck Finn heard about prayer he put an empty shoebox under his bed. He prayed for God to fill it by morning, and when the box remained empty, he said that was it between him and prayer. Huck loses heart when God does not act like the tooth fairy. How can you and I possibly pray always and never lose heart when daily we see the black hole of injustice expanding, the creation treated as a human dump, and the disparity between rich and poor growing wider than the Mississippi? Because, says Jesus, if a worthless no-count judge will finally listen to the relentless cries of a powerless widow, how much more will our good and just and merciful God listen to our faithful prayers?        

Over fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. It looked as though the boycott would fail. King had to face an evening crowd in church and with something less than conviction he preached, “Tonight we must believe that a way will be made out of no way.” He then reflects, “I could feel the cold breeze of pessimism pass over the audience. The night was darker than a thousand midnights. The light of hope was about to fade and the lamp of faith to flicker. . . . it became obvious that Judge Carter would rule in favor of the city.

“At noon . . . I noticed an unusual commotion in the courtroom. A reporter said . . . `read this release’. In anxiety and hope, I read these words: `The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Montgomery, Alabama’. My heart throbbed with an inexpressible joy. The darkest hour of our struggle had become the first hour of victory. . . .

“The dawn will come. Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows.` Weeping may endure for a night’, says the Psalmist, `but joy cometh in the morning’. This faith adjourns the assemblies of hopelessness and brings new light into the dark chambers of pessimism.”

Not many years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. would bend over a Memphis balcony robbed of his life far too early. Long before Memphis he would endure death threats, bombs on his home, wiretaps of his conversations, and racial slurs by the thousands, but he persevered. How? Because of a God-given faith that stirred him to pray always and finally never to lose heart. 

Always pray. Never lose heart. Always pray. Never lose heart. Always pray.  Never lose heart. An impossible conundrum leaving us lost and confused or a divine recipe for the only life that is finally worth living?

                          AMEN

A Whole New Life

A Whole New Life

Text: Luke 17:11-19

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 10-9-2016)

          As a child, my grandmother lived in a one bedroom studio, adjoined to our house by a breezeway. I would walk into her kitchen and smell the sweet aroma of apples simmering on the stove and hear the crackle of chicken frying in a cast iron skillet. Those are delicious memories, to be sure.

          On a less pleasant note, my grandmother was a real stickler for good manners. These included writing a thank-you note for any and every gift my brother and I ever received. There are few more tortuous tasks for a ten-year-old who wants to go outside and play baseball than having to sit down in his grandmother’s living room and compose a thank-you note.  

Some read the story of the healing of the ten lepers as the definitive biblical justification for writing thank-you notes. A nice, Southern reading of the story tells of ten lepers whom Jesus healed, only one of whom had the decency to write a thank-you note and hand deliver it, while the other nine get so caught up in the remarkable moment of their healing that they temporarily forget their manners. That might be a fair reading of this story if the story stopped a few verses before it does.

The keys to this story are not just paying attention to the last verses but also to the first ones. Luke makes a point of telling us where Jesus is. He is on his way to Jerusalem, the holy city of the people of God, but his GPS has dangerously malfunctioned. Luke says that Jesus is traveling through the borderlands of Jewish and Samaritan territory, in other words, Jesus is traveling through a bad part of town. No Jew of good repute travels here, visits here, or lives here. Not only a location full of filthy Samaritans, wanna-be Jews according to those who live in Jerusalem; it is where filthy lepers live in a refugee camp. “Someone fix the GPS and get us out of here now,” should be what Jesus tells his followers.  

Jesus makes no such detour. He does not do what many of us do when someone asks us for some money when we are walking along the mall in Charlottesville; we pretend not to hear their requests or we simply cast our eyes in another direction. Jesus sees the lepers, hears the lepers, and tells these ten shouting souls to go where they should not go – to go and visit the priests, even though Jewish laws tells them that they are ritually unclean and have no business there. All ten obey Jesus, at least initially, and on their way to visit the priests, all ten are healed.

This would be a great way to end the story. If ended here, faith in Jesus would lead to being healed of the most dreadful disease. Luke, though, does not end the story here. Faith does involve obedience says Jesus but it involves far more than that. All ten lepers are obedient, all ten believe that Jesus has the capacity to heal their broken bodies and all ten trust Jesus when he tells them to go see the priests and all ten are healed on the way.

I say “all ten,” but listen again. Only nine lepers fully obey Jesus. One leper finally does not. He does not go to see the priest as clearly instructed by Jesus; he turns back, falls at the feet of Jesus, and sings the Doxology, sings praise to God, with thanksgiving in every breath.

And, oh, by the way, says Luke, this healed leper who turns back in thanks to God is a Samaritan. He is the second Good Samaritan we meet in Luke. To add insult to injury, Jesus says to the healed, thankful, good, Samaritan leper, “Your faith has saved you.” If there could be anything more offensive than the idea of a “good” Samaritan, it had to be the notion of a “saved” Samaritan.

Another way to translate the last words of Jesus to the Samaritan leper is:  “Your faith has made you whole.” Remember, all ten lepers go, at least initially, as Jesus commands. All ten lepers are healed. Only one, though, is made whole. All his life, the Samaritan leper has been isolated not only by his gruesome disease, but by his religious and ethnic identity. He has never had to wonder what people thought of him and even after being cured of his leprosy, he never will. He has been doubly cursed all his life: a leper and a Samaritan.

When this “good Samaritan” runs back to Jesus, falls on his face, and shouts “Alleluia,” he knows better than most that faith and gratitude live in the same house. The Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, once said, “What else can we say to what God gives us but stammer praise?” (Church Dogmatics, III/3, p. 564.) Anne Lamott says her two favorite prayers are, in the morning, “Help me. Help me. Help me,” and at bedtime, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Faith and gratitude are housemates to be sure. Grace and gratitude are close kin. Granny, you were right!

Look again at this story. It surely links grace and gratitude, but it dares to take us to a deeper place. In a marvelous reading of this story, Debie Thomas writes, “What does [the Samaritan leper’s] otherness enable him to see that his nine companions do not? He sees that his identity—his truest place of belonging – lies at Jesus’ feet. He sees that Jesus’ arms are wide enough to embrace all of who he is – leper, foreigner, exile. Ten lepers dutifully stand at a distance and call Jesus ‘Master’. One draws close, dares intimacy, and finds his lasting home, clinging to Jesus for a better and more permanent citizenship” (Christian Century, Sept. 28, 2016, p. 20).

What do you suppose happens on Day 2, when the healed, thankful, joyful, no-longer-a leper Samaritan gets up off the floor, heads home, and awakens to a new day? From the outside, little has changed. He is still a hated Samaritan. Like the other nine, he has been cured of his leprosy, but he has not been cured of his “Samaritanism.” Yes, he is healed, but you know how suspicious people are about germs and sickness. Surely some wonder if this is just a temporary healing and they had better keep their distance from him. So, the next day, he is still the one always on the outside looking in.

Tell that to the oh-so thankful, no-longer-a-leper Samaritan. Tell that to the one who disobeys Jesus, who stops in his tracks on his way to the priests and return to Jesus to sing the Doxology. He wakes the next day to know the power of God in Jesus, to know that even if he will never belong in the Jerusalem temple or be accepted in “healed,” polite society, he belongs to God, he is a beloved child of God no matter what he looks like, no matter where he lives, no matter what label people put on him before they ever know him.

The oh-so thankful, no-longer-a-leper Samaritan is found wherever exclusion and solation rule, where “not welcome here” signs are posted in concrete. He is found not heading to church, but standing in solidarity in the bad side of town with all who are the cast-offs in the world. He is not deterred by other’s hatefulness. He is the one teaching praise songs to people who have been told that their sexuality is distorted or are wearing the wrong shade of skin, those who weigh too much or who learn in ways not considered “normal,” and sadly, have sometimes been told these things by the church. He is the one who knows that the wideness of God’s mercy is far more expansive than you and I can begin to imagine, much less to practice.

Flat on his face, with his mouth wide open, the story ends with a disobedient, oh-so-thankful, no-longer-a-leper Samaritan being blessed by Jesus and getting up to lead a whole new life. I wish I knew his name. I wish I could tell him how his story inspires me. I wish I could also move beyond all the broken places within me and be blessed by Jesus with a whole new life.

If I read this story right, maybe a whole new life awaits anyone daring enough to follow the disobedient, thankful, no-longer-a leper Samaritan back to the feet of Jesus, back to the God who makes all things, makes all people, makes every last one of us new.

AMEN

A Time to Sing

A Time to Sing

Text: Psalm 137

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 10-2-2016)

           Sitting on the banks of a Babylonian river, some six hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a despondent refugee from Jerusalem opined, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?”

I have never lived as a hostage in an alien land, but I have felt like one. A few weeks ago, I spoke about living just across the Potomac on 9/11. The days following 9/11 made the ancient words of the Psalmist feel current. There was an eerie silence in the skies. Our house was on the flight pattern of Washington National, but no planes were flying. I stepped into a D.C. restaurant and got far better service than any tip the waiter might reasonably expect, because D.C. was largely a ghost town.        

          Those were some of the obvious changes in my known world. The most powerful changes in this new, alien land were not nearly so visible. Each day brought an awareness of losses within me. I missed feeling immune from the rest of the world’s madness. I missed my relative sense of calm and hated that I would jump every time I heard a loud thud. I grew tired of having sadness stalk me like an unavoidable shadow.

 I wanted to board a plane again and not look around at other passengers in my own private version of racial profiling. I wanted the desire for vengeance to be someone else’s spiritual disease. As a person of faith, I missed the admittedly misguided and unexamined notion that God watches specially over America and would never allow terrorism, at least, large scale terrorism, to happen here. As the national economy crumbled, I counseled with employers forced to lay off valued employees and skilled workers who could not find work. I was frustrated that our congregation’s substantial emergency assistance fund could not begin to meet the new demands upon it. Amid the rumblings of war and the rhetoric of vengeance, I wondered whatever happened to the God who promises peace that passes all understanding.

          Always a keen observer of life, the British classicist and theologian, C.S. Lewis observed his own travels through grief. After he lost his late-in-life bride, Lewis wrote down his daily thoughts in his book, A Grief Observed. He asks, “Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms [of grief]. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing God, so happy that you are tempted to feel God’s claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to God with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. 

          “But go to God when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. . . Why is God so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?” (C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, pp. 4-5; inclusive language my own).

           

          Did you notice what was missing as we just sang the haunting Latvian hymn, By the Babylonian Rivers? The hymn captures a longing for home, nostalgia for a treasured past, weariness with life lived in an alien land, but it stops before the Psalmist does. It leaves the last verses on the cutting room floor.

The last verses of Psalm 137 are an uncensored cry for the most brutal revenge, “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” 

          For years, preachers, church musicians, and lectionaries have carefully excised these last treacherous verses of the Psalm. It is a natural mistake, but ultimately, a misguided one. I am not commending the Psalmist for wishing the death of his most vulnerable foes and in the most horrendous of ways. I am not excusing his rage as justified.

What I am commending is the wisdom of the Hebrew and then Christian communities that insisted that this Psalm, in its entirety, needs to be a part of our Scripture, because it reflects an essential part of who we are. When hurt, we want others to hurt. When maligned, we want to malign in return. When devastated, we will not rest until others are devastated as well.

         

This Psalm knows what church censors are too embarrassed to admit. It knows that sometimes we godly folk think ungodly thoughts and say ungodly things, that the hearts of righteous people can dry up like a prune in the face of evil and that if God will not get even, we will. 

“How can we sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?” I heard that question asked a thousand different ways in the aftermath of 9/11. How can we open our lungs wide and sing when grief has taken our breath away? What words of praise do we have to sing to God when God has been so conspicuously absent, noticeably silent, despite our most fervent pleas? “How can we sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?” The clear answer that resounded in most of us in those dark days that followed 9/11 was “We can’t.” So we sat beside the banks of the Potomac and the Hudson and we wept and we shouted our pain to the heavens.         

          Of all the things I missed most after 9/11, the greatest of them all was the urge to sing, sing aloud, to sing praise to God who reigns above, the God of all creation. I was terrified of the spreading cancer of hatred that threatened to consume me and our country. I had absolutely no desire to sing.

Sitting on the same banks of that Babylonian river, another hostage refused to “hang up his lyre.” Recognizing that his view of God had been too provincial before the destruction of Jerusalem, too small, too nation-centered, and trusting that God wills people and nations from grief into joy, from despair into hope, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them. Sing to the LORD a new song; sing the LORD’s praise from the end of the earth! Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the tops of the mountains.”

          After a few weeks consumed by the darkness of silence after 9/11, I could sit at the river’s edge no longer. I had to sing again. I had wept enough tears. I had to sing again. I had been choked with anger long enough. I had to sing again. I had questioned the presence and purpose of God long enough. I had to sing again. I tried, but my voice was too frail, too broken, and my faith too fragile. I needed the faith of other believers to sing and they needed mine.

          So, after living through this national nightmare for almost a month, I said to all who were ready to move beyond the river’s edge and to re-string damaged instruments, “Let us sing.” Let us sing praise to God who raises heroines and heroes among ordinary folk, who prompts poets to write and musicians to compose, artists to paint and architects to re-build. Let us sing praise to God who prods us to ask ourselves what is really important about life, to stop chasing that which intoxicates us, only to leave us empty and shallow. Let us sing praise to God who reaches down within us and plants seeds of peace where hatred festers, a passion for justice where vengeance lingers, a vision of forgiveness and reconciliation where retaliation burns, a new song where old words simply no longer make sense.

Easter morning did not erase the haunting laments of Maundy Thursday or the horror of Good Friday; it only made the Easter song that much sweeter and lyrical and lovely. Easter morning taught Christians to sing even in the dark, even at the river’s edge.

So, as we come to the table today with Christians across the world, many who are now living an alien existence, as we pray our multi-language prayer to the God who reigns over God’s beloved world, I say, “Sing.” Sing until we drown out the despair that seeds its cancer within us. Sing until we blanket the earth with a chorus of contagious compassion. Sing until we defy anyone to sow terror in the fields of God’s peacemaking people. Sing until we refuse to raise the offspring of violence. Sing until the sour lyrics of greed are translated into the sweet poetry of grace and gratitude.

          The old preacher in Ecclesiastes was absolutely right, “There is a time to mourn.” There is a time to hang up our lyres and weep. But the old preacher did not stop there. He also said, “There is a time to sing.” Yes, there is a time to mourn and some must do so even today, but for all who are able and who have a voice to lift up someone who simply cannot, it is time to sing. Lord God Almighty, it is time to sing.

          [choir sings the 16^th Lutheran Chorale, “Shall I praise my God not singing?” set to music by Alice Parker]