Weekly Sermons

What Can We Say?: Psalm 50:1-6 & Mark 9:2-9; Transfiguration – February 19, 2012

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

“As they were coming down the mountain, [Jesus] ordered them to tell no one about what they

had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”

            There are times when I am disturbed by the seeming ease with which faith in Jesus Christ and a relationship with God is described in our culture.  Some describe relationship with Jesus Christ as something as simple as following a recipe or executing a chemical formula: “Read this, pray that, say that Jesus is Lord and you’re in; you have faith!” 

            It reminds me of those bumper stickers that you see on the cars of well-meaning, well-intentioned Christians that read: “The Bible said it; I believe; that settles it!”

            Oh, if were really that easy indeed … if a relationship with Jesus Christ, faith and trust in our good God were that easy.  But, I’m convinced it is not.

            There is much about faith in Christ that is, well, a mystery.  Not the kind of mystery that one reads about in detective stories or watches on “NCIS” or “Law and Order,” but something deeper and more profound.  Faith is something more in the way of awe-inspired wonder and response; something that touches upon the very core of human existence and, of course, divine presence, rather than mere detective story.

            This passage on Transfiguration Sunday from the Gospel of Mark is case in point: Jesus and a select few of his disciples are on a mountaintop and are confronted with a spectacular vision of holiness and revelation.  In fact, it is on this mountaintop that Jesus is revealed to his disciples for just who he is or, maybe better put, who he will be.

It is a dazzling spectacle that leaves the closest disciple, Peter, sputtering all kinds of suggestions that just don’t seem to fit the event.  He wants to stay there, build shelters and remain.  He doesn’t quite grasp what is going on; it is a mystery to him, but he keeps trying … a good follower of Jesus Christ, he keeps trying to comprehend, to appropriate what he is experiencing of God to his life.

            Rodney Hunter, a former theology professor at Emory University, commented on this in helpful way:

“Today noisy evangelical movements – and the mainline churches as well – often make claims for Jesus’ divinity as if it were a public truth that anyone might see and grasp.  However, the knowledge of Jesus as the divine Son is a matter of revelation that comes in God’s own way and time – as a gift.  It is not a possession on the basis of which we can claim spiritual status and institutional or personal power, as if to make little gods of ourselves by ruling the world in his name as many have sought to do.”

            But getting back to mystery, I also think that the late Peter Gome’s comment upon it is most fitting as we attempt to say something about this mysterious event that Mark lays before us this Transfiguration Sunday:

“Mystery is not an argument for the existence of God; mystery is an experience of the existence of God.”

He further heightens this intensity by quoting Diogenes Allen, a former professor at Princeton Theological Seminary:

“Mysteries to be known must be entered into … For we do not solve mysteries; we enter into them. The deeper we enter into them, the more illumination we get. Still greater depths are revealed the further we go.”

             This mysterious revelation we encounter in this morning’s gospel text is one of those moments in which the Gospel is inviting us into the mystery of life with God.  We cannot explain exactly what happened on that mountaintop to Jesus nor should we attempt to do so; for what can we say?  Even more, can we hope to explain the effects of the Transfiguration upon the select few disciples who were witnesses to the event?  No, we must admit that there is mystery in life and especially life with God!  Yet, we can see the results of the Transfiguration in both the life of Jesus and in the lives of the disciples.

            I remind you that we are just on the cusp of Lent.  What comes next in the Christian calendar is Ash Wednesday; the start of our journey with Jesus to his cross.  Something about this moment recorded in Mark supplies Jesus and his disciples with enough faith, trust, hope, love and whatever else to walk that way to the cross.  The disciples follow at a safe distance, mind you, but Jesus sets his face like flint to Jerusalem and determinedly follows that way of God all the way to the cross. 

            The Gospel witness also provides the story of the disciples’ attempts to follow Jesus on his way to the cross.  They all try, but ultimately they all fall away.  Yet, something has propelled them down Jesus’ path at least as far as they were able to go; they too have been transfigured by the event.

            One of the temptations we might face in comprehending the Transfiguration is our desire to place the event on a pedestal as it were and contemplate it from a safe, objective distance.  We tell ourselves that this happened to Jesus and thus is worthy of our study and contemplation, but we inwardly warn ourselves not to expect such events for our own lives; this is, after all, we think, only about Jesus.  If we do that we forget that his followers were there and were witnesses; they too were transfigured in this event. 

            These moments of transfiguration, where the divine graciously touches our profane lives and alters us, are all around us.  At least, I am convinced of that.  It is a matter of being aware, taking stock, being observant of this great mystery encountering us and enveloping us, here in worship and IN the midst of our lives.  

            Two brief stories tell the tale of such transfigurations for me.  Both involve worship and both involve a change, one dramatic and one much more commonplace, but transforming presences of God all the same.

            The first comes from Tom Long, a former preaching professor of mine who tells of a lonely, small Episcopalian parish in Vermont:

In his memoir A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, lay Episcopal minister Garret Keizer describes a Holy Saturday vigil held in his tiny Vermont parish. When Keizer arrived at the church, he found that only two other people, a husband and wife, had come for the service. As the three of them huddled together in the old church, Keizer lit the Paschal candle and extinguished the other lights, a symbol of hearing God’s great promise of hope “in darkness, longing to hear it in the light of day.”

Together they prayed: “Grant that in this Paschal feast we may so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light.”

The Paschal candle sputtered in the dimness. As they prayed, the worshipers could hear cars passing by outside, travelers in a secular age oblivious to the ancient hopes being spoken in the little chapel. “There we are,” Keizer wrote, “three people and a flickering light.” This act of worship was, he said, “so ambiguous because its terms are so extreme: the Lord is with us, or we are pathetic fools.”

 And from the oft-quoted William Willimon, United Methodist Bishop, this story of change and transfiguration:

“I once had a church member who was faced with the horribly difficult task of forgiving a person who had deeply, most unjustly wronged her.  He was her ex-husband.  She did not want to forgive him, resented and hated him with all her being, but her hatred for him and for what he had done to her and her family was ruining her life.

“I met with her and counseled her.  I prayed with her for the power to forgive and to go on with her life, but she just couldn’t. I had great sympathy for her because I knew that if I were her, I probably couldn’t bring myself to forgive either.

“The one Sunday she emerged from church just beaming. I could see on her face that she had just had wonderful experience of worship.

“She said to me, as I stood at the church door, ‘I can do it!  That last hymn has given me everything I needed to do what God wants me to do.’

“A hymn enables someone to forgive her worst enemy? I think in that moment an epiphany enabled someone to take up her cross and follow Jesus into Lent.”

            Life with God is not a formula or a recipe; it is a living relationship that transforms the moments of life that otherwise appears mundane and ordinary into something sacred and truly extraordinary.  The call upon our lives is to keep alert, do as the voice at the Transfiguration commands: “Listen to him,” and watch for the transforming power of grace and hope in our own lives.

The Lord’s Choice: Psalm 30 & Mark 1:40-45; Epiphany 6 – February 12, 2012

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ ⁴¹Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ ⁴²Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

            Sometimes there are moments in life when a choice must be made and we are completely aware of it!  It is a clear demarcation in our vision of life that we realize with great clarity.  For instance, we approach our wedding day and we realize, after this coming Saturday, we will no longer be single; we will be a married man or woman.  Or, we have been offered a position at a higher pay scale and great benefits, but it requires a move across country.  We are faced with a decision then: do we stay in our current comfortable surroundings or do we move to a new place, where we know no one, but our family will be more secure financially? 

            But then there are the small choices in life that are not as clear cut or are as obvious to us in the moment of the choosing.  These are moments where we are usually confronted with the right thing to do in our mind in a minor decision, but realize that there are consequences that will be drawn or realized from that choice.  Those little, day-to-day choices are the ones that really mark us and define our characters as people and, honestly, as the children of God.

            Today, Jesus is faced with just such a choice: should he do what is the right and compassionate thing and risk losing his ability to fulfill his call or should he ignore this one person’s plea and continue on, unfettered and unimpeded with his vision for ministry to the people of the Galilean villages?  That is the choice that Jesus faces in this text, this great little story from the Gospel of Mark.  What will be the Lord’s choice?  What will he do?!

             For us, the hearers of this pericope from Mark, the choice is obvious: Jesus can either heal this man with leprosy or ignore him and move on.  That sounds like an incredibly obvious choice … of course, Jesus should heal the man, isn’t that what is Jesus is here for after all?  Hasn’t he healed others?  Won’t we stumbled across other examples of such healings as we press further in the gospels found in those opening pages of the New Testament?  “Of course,” we say to ourselves, “Jesus should heal this guy … he just wouldn’t be Jesus if he didn’t.”

            The choice is obvious, but the risk is hidden or at least implied in this text today.  We don’t see the risk, but the disciples, the crowds, the people and the priests of Jesus’ time would understand and comprehend the risk immediately: If Jesus deems to touch this man, this man who the righteous and upright have identified as an “unclean” individual because of his disease, then Jesus himself will become unclean, ritually impure and unable to proceed into any body of people, any crowd in any village or city, and preach the good news.  If Jesus heals this unclean man, he gives up his calling to preach and heal others … the religion and society of the time would just put a stop to it.

            Don’t just take my word for this; here is what other, more authoritative commentators on scripture have written about it!  George Telford, Presbyterian minister and articulate preacher, says this:

“The leper confronts Jesus with a challenge: ‘If you will, you can make me clean.’ If you will. But if he accepts the challenge and is drawn into this farthest outpost of the profane, if he touches this untouchable, then he will, at least for a while, be disqualified for preaching in those towns where it is known what he has done. And perhaps not just for a while, for more is at stake here than becoming ceremonially unclean. For Jesus … touching and healing a sinner, [is] breaking a major taboo …”

In answering the question of just why Jesus might have been angered or frustrated with this choice, as some of the manuscripts and translations of this passage indicate, Dr. Ortega of the Evangelical Theological Seminary, posits this:

“Because [the crowds] look for him too much? Because he wants to visit the people? No! Because he has become himself impure.  He has touched the leper. [Jesus] is polluted, he is an unclean man, according to the sacral vision of priests and scribes.  There has been a reversal of religious conditions: the leper is clean; Jesus is unclean.”

            Maybe that helps us to put this story and the choice that Jesus made into a little sharper contrast for us.  If he touches and heals the leper, he gives up his opportunity to go into the villages, to be a part of the culture and society to which God has so obviously called him.  If however, he ignores the pleas of this diseased and hopeless man, he can continue, unstained and righteous in the eyes of his people, in the eyes of his culture, in the eyes of his religious tradition and continue.  This is an awesome and serious choice set before him!

            Now, do you perceive the risk?  Do you perceive rightly the choice that is so obviously set before our loving Lord?  AND do we, (here’s the real question!), do we perceive what this means for us as followers of Jesus Christ?  Should we be expected to do something different than what Christ has done and still attempt to call ourselves “Christians”?

            Being a follower of this healer, this gracious man/God, Jesus is a risky business.  The choices we are called to make are fraught with just as much risk and trepidation as this one placed before our Lord this day.  It is risky business in which we are engaged as the church; as the called gathering of the Body of Christ.

            One of the strongest statements or admissions of this could be found in our own Presbyterian Book of Order for many years:

“The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.”

I cannot find anywhere else, a more courageous statement issued by an institution … we freely admit that the claim of the gospel and the mission, to which we have been graciously set by Jesus Christ, is greater than the institutional drive for self-preservation.  In short, if fail to undertake this mission, this risky business with which Jesus involves himself, we fail to be the church anymore.  It really is as plain and simple as all that.

            What is not plain and simple is locating the leper in our midst and in our lives.  This is a more personal question; a more intimate inquiry.  Who is it that we are automatically excluding from our lives because of what our culture or our drive to appear righteous rather than to be actually gracious, is telling us to ignore, to pass by and pass over, those whom we are told we should have nothing with which to do? 

            I’ll leave you to answer that question to your own satisfaction for I am convinced those answers are different for each one of us.  The question we must answer however is what will we do?  We know the Lord’s choice; what will be our choice?

            Wonderfully, these are the same questions that a favorite hymn that Mr. Highberger often includes in our worship asks of us.  The hymn is called simply; The Summons and the questions asked are directed from our Savior to us:

“Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will go where you don’t know and never the same? …

“Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare, should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

AND finally, a most appropriate refrain:

“Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen

And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?”

            This day, in the gospel of Mark, a serious choice is laid before our Lord.  We know the choice he has made; the risk he has willingly accepted.  The question remains for us about all the lepers and outcasts in our own lives: what will we choose?  What will we do?

Widening the Scope: Psalm 147:1-11,20c & Mark 1:29-39, Epiphany 5-February 5, 2012

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

            I have noticed that it is a natural human temptation to narrow our scope of friends and acquaintances as we grow older.  One would think that just the opposite would be true: the older we grow, the more people we will have met and included in our “inner circle” of friends, neighbors and the natural support systems that develop merely in living.  But, I have found that the case is actually different than that: we have a tendency to narrow our scope and winnow away at our list of “Facebook” friends.

            Back in seminary, during my Middler year, I was required for a class to write a brief paragraph describing my perspective of the Kingdom of Heaven using a contemporary analogy.  I think it was a class on the parables of Jesus for that is precisely what Jesus describes in his then-contemporaneous vision of what the Kingdom of Heaven could mean.

            Anyway, my description went something like this:

“It’s Friday afternoon and I’m on a wide veranda of a house in the middle of a neighborhood.  In one corner of the porch sits a keg of beer, on ice, with enough plastic cups for a party of some size.  People stream out of the street up onto the porch all afternoon, coming and going, taking a cup of beer, chatting and laughing and spending time with one another.”

My professor was not as impressed as I thought he might have been.

            That vision, though we might get distracted by the mention of beer, is really focused upon the wideness of the event: in my vision, people were coming and going and ALL were invited.  That was at least how I viewed the Kingdom of Heaven in contemporary terms then.  I wanted to have a Friday afternoon where friends and neighbors, strangers and family alike would drop by my porch and fill the fading day with friendship and the presence of one another.

            It is a shame and a scandal in some ways that I never enacted that vision.  Nowadays, I find myself contemplating how to keep people and visitors off my porch!  I find myself sometimes tempted to consider elaborate ways that I might avoid the interruption of the presence of others in my life … and that my friends, that feeling of just wanting to be left alone … is the real affront and scandal to the gospel claims upon my life!  The presence of the Kingdom of Heaven (the presence of Jesus Christ) in my life, should lead me towards others and not away from them!

            This short little passage from the Gospel of Mark relates something so important, so vital about life with God and life in Christ’s church that we risk much if we fail to hear it or overlook it wedged in the midst of everything else that is happening in the pericope.

            This vital element, this fundamental understanding appears at the very end of the passage, after the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and after the mass gathering of those ill and demon-possessed seeking attention from Jesus.  This all-important element occurs right at the end of the passage:

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

            Here’s the scene: Jesus has been busy the day before with all the healing and teaching and early on the next morning, he is out in a secluded spot in prayer.  The disciples, led by Simon Peter are desperately searching for him; like the handlers of some political candidate who want their man to keep on schedule and not delay the buses, the disciples are desperate to find him.

            Once Jesus is found, his response to their entreaties is to rise off his knees and remind them of his purpose.  He tells them that they won’t be staying here anymore, but will widen the scope of the message he brings to the surrounding villages and the hillsides of the Galilee.  In the midst of Jesus’ isolation and seclusion, the world comes crashing in and he determines to go out to meet it, doing the very thing to which he has been called by God.

            Sometimes, we are tempted as a church and as a people, to seek and desire seclusion and quiet meditation over the call of God to be with and for this world in meaningful and purposeful ways.  It is a great and common temptation for the church to do just that: satisfy our own spiritual needs and neglect the call that is upon our lives to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a world so badly in need of the healing touch of the living Christ.

            Not too many years ago, I visited with a church in our presbytery that sought to leave our denomination.  I listened, along with other colleagues sent for the purpose of listening, to all their woes and tales of how the denomination had deserted them and had neglected the real Gospel of Jesus Christ.  They related that the PC(USA) had done this and had done that which had caused them scandal and offense and now they wanted only to break ties from this heretical organization and be left alone to pursue being a church in their community, unfettered with ties to the outside world.

            Though I understood their complaints, I came to realize that there was something else that was at the heart of their concern: their anger with the Presbyterian Church was only the presenting problem, as counselors are trained to say.  It was only the surface issue and not the real heart of the matter.  This church that I visited on behalf of our presbytery wanted to retreat fully and completely into an enclave of like-minded individuals who always agreed with one another and agreed with each other about what the church should be and do.  They just didn’t want to get mixed up with “external concerns,” as one of their own elders named it.

            Yet, this passage, with its honest representation of Jesus Christ’s desire to widen the scope of the gospel and reach out to the world in which he lived should be our by word, as it were, when we consider to what we are being called as a church and as a people of God.  If the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not propel you out into the wider world of your fellow humanity, then it is not the gospel of Christ that you are hearing … or at least you do not understand it. Of that, I am convinced.

            The temptation for the American church is to become exactly what that little church I visited became: an enclave of like-minded people, intent upon seeing to each other’s needs or their own spiritual desires rather than widening their scope to reach out to the world.  This is possibly the most dangerous and fruitless temptation that we all face as a church in this culture: to wall ourselves up into something that makes us comfortable, while the rest of the world goes on without the gracious and loving influence of Christ’s church.

            I really like what John Buchanan, pastor of the great Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago says about this:

“I have thought like this.  I have to be convinced that thinking like this, understandable and logical as it is, is in fact part of what is wrong with us. We are not called to simply exist.  We are not called to just survive. We are not even called to be successful.  We are called, as churches, to be faithful to Jesus Christ and to serve the world as he served it, to love the world as he loved it, to give our lives away to the world as he gave his life away.  The resources to live, to exist, and to survive are given to us by God, not so much as we become more efficient, more economical, more astute at raising funds and conserving our resources (as important as that is), but precisely as we discover that the reason for the church’s being is simply mission.”

            As well, here are the words of one of our denomination’s statements of faith, the Confession of 1967, which reads:

“The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ has set the pattern for the church’s mission.  His life as man involves the church in the common life of men. His service to men commits the church to work for every form of human well-being.”

            In this passage from Mark, we see clearly that the model for discipleship that we receive from Jesus Christ is one that embraces God’s call to reach out to this world, not to form an closed enclave of like-minded individuals, but to follow our Lord out into this world and offer the grace and love that we have received in Christ to a world badly in need of this healing message. 

            So, let us rise from our knees and our prayerful devotion to God and follow the living Christ out into a world that he has already embraced in his life, death and resurrection; let us widen our scope just as he did in Galilee and beyond those borders and boundaries.  Let us do so for the sake of Jesus Christ and for the sake of love … and maybe, just maybe, if your porch is large enough and strong enough, you ought to think about buying a keg of beer this coming Friday afternoon!

The Transforming Word:  Psalm 111 & Mark 1:21-28; Epiphany 4-January 29, 2012

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

“They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. … They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’”

            When I was a seminarian, I worked briefly in a homeless shelter in the city of Trenton, New Jersey.  Gathered there were the folks who had nowhere else to go; most had been turned out of the local mental institution due to the federal budget cuts of the mid-1980’s.  They all seemed to show up at our little, store-front, Presbyterian-funded and inspired, make-shift shelter.

            One particular Sunday morning, the minister in charge of the shelter, Neil, was leading worship and celebrating communion with me assisting him.  Into the back of the worship space, near the end of the service, shuffled one of the regulars; let’s call him “Ted.”

            Ted had many issues, mainly an overwhelming sense of paranoia that led him to question everything anyone ever tried to do for him or with him.  He would consistently feel threatened by just about anything that the minister or I offered him and he was constantly in some form of disagreement with all the other residents of the shelter.  To say it succinctly: Ted was a handful!

            Ted entered the worship space and I could see on his face that he was greatly troubled.  The communion was finishing and Neil was about to begin the prayer following communion, when Ted cried out in a loud and plaintive voice:

“Oh my God, I missed the blood of Christ!  I ain’t got the blood! You passed over me; you forgot me!  I ain’t got the blood!”

With that, Ted dissolved into a heap on one of the old folding chairs set up in the last row and began to sob in the most heart-wrenching manner you can imagine.

            I was stunned, shocked, paralyzed and began to avoid the gaze of Neil for I knew … I just knew … that he would want me to do something as he continued with the service!  And sure enough, he pantomimed for me to take a small piece of bread and the table chalice of grape juice to Ted.

            Now, with great shame, I can tell you that I probably rolled me eyes and let out a quiet: “Oh geez…” but I went to the back with the elements and offered them to the sobbing Ted. 

            I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up with eyes wet from his own tears and his great fear.  He grabbed the crumb of bread off the small plate and took the entire cup and drank down its contents, with the grape juice pouring down his cheeks and chin onto the tiled floor.

            Ted then became … well, transformed: he thanked me quietly and sat up in his chair and listened intently and sat calmly for the remaining five minutes of the service.

            In the world of the miraculous, I know that this may seem like “small potatoes,” but in Ted’s world, this changed everything … at least for that moment.  In Ted’s world, the presence of Jesus Christ had transformed him once again into the person that he had been at some point before the demons of his own fears and paranoia consumed him.  And that, my friends, is miraculous enough for me.

            I am convinced that it is the presence of God’s transforming word in Jesus Christ that makes our worship meaningful and matter in this world.  It is here, that we are met and confronted by the truth of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ and by God’s great desire for us to be who God has intended us to be.  It is in worship, just as surely as Mark displays it in today’s gospel reading, that real transformation of heart and soul, life and work can overtake us and remake us into the people that God has intended us to be.  That is why worship is so vital, so important to us or at least should be.

            William Willimon speaks of this truth when he writes:

“True worship of a true and living God only begins when Jesus appears.  And when he appears among us, his presence can be disruptive.  We come to worship on Sunday not simply for peace, consolation, strength to go on, or any other human good.  We come first and foremost to be with the living God, no matter what … There are those within this congregation this morning who could tell the world the truth: church is not where we come to get what we want out of God.  Church is where God gets what God wants out of us.”

            Maybe that is why Ted came to worship: underneath that paranoia and fear that plagued his life, he knew that church, that confrontation with the living God, was really not about him, but was about God … it was and is about what God wants out of us, rather than what we want to get somehow from God!  And for a moment, for a blessed moment, Ted was rid of that paranoia and sat calmly before God in prayer and contemplation; he was the Ted God had intended him to be.

            Finally, in closing, and only because I couldn’t resist it: another quote from Willimon … a good and true story that sets the importance of worship in the incredibly real context of our lives:

“[Willimon] asked a group of suburban pastors what was their most formidable competitor for getting their people to Sunday morning worship.

‘Soccer,’ they answered.

‘Do you mean to tell me that the trinity is losing out to a black and white ball?’ [Willimon] asked.

‘Our people,’ one pastor said, ‘would rather raise children who can gain power and prestige in this society by knowing how to play [a game] than to raise children who know how to find the Gospel of Mark in the Bible.’

Luther says that whatever you’d sacrifice your daughter to, that’s your God.”

It is really that important.  Grace and peace to you as you listen for the transforming word in your own life and as we listen together as the people of God.

Lawful Things?: Ps. 139:1-6,13-18 & I Cor. 6:12-20 – Epiphany 2 -January 15, 2012

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything

            On a sunny Saturday winter morning some years back, I was sitting at my desk in the office of one of my former churches.  I was trying desperately to write a sermon for the next day and clearly experiencing a form of “writer’s block.”  So, I looked out my window …

            That office happened to be on the ground floor of the church and looked out over a beautiful little courtyard of green grass, brick walls and a few small trees.  I noticed an incredible amount of tiny birds perched on the trees and flying about the courtyard.  It was a scene of both constant motion and dreamy rest … as some birds were in flight, flying little patterns around the courtyard; others were perched in a resting position on the limbs of the little trees.  As some would land on the limbs others would take off and fill in the patterns of flight.

            I watched the birds for some time, locked in an interest beyond the natural desire to be distracted from an unusually difficult task. There was something appealing about the manner with which those birds engaged each other and linked themselves together in some kind of swirling, moving and then resting, community of like-feathered creatures.  Each one looked like a variation on the other.  I don’t know what species or breed of bird they were, but they appeared all to be of the same family; they all seemed to be connected to one another.

            The birds moved with collective purpose.  As I said, some rested while others flew; they were involved in a collective aerial ballet that I alone witnessed that day.  Though each bird was an individual demonstration of the whole, none of them seemed isolated or detached completely from the complicated dance or from the others.  It was apparent that they all belonged together.

            For me, that real-life, naturalistic experience became a metaphor for the church.  Indeed, we are all individuals, called by Jesus Christ to follow him; to fulfill our calling from God to live as witnesses to Jesus Christ, but we do not perform this great ballet of relatedness in Christ alone … we are certainly called to be the church of Jesus Christ together … we need each other.

            What we just heard from I Corinthians, speaks to this very issue.  The great Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth in the midst of a crisis.  That church, in a great diverse city, was beginning to come apart due to the great divisions within its membership.  Paul’s intention was to call them back to an elemental and foundational understanding that God had called them to live together as the church and to just get over their differences.  God’s call was for them to concentrate upon the things that united them in Christ rather those things that separated them.

            This is still a struggle for us in the church even today.  Here, in this great community of faith in which God has planted us, we find diverse and different viewpoints.  Sometimes we wonder, like the people of Corinth, what is “lawful” for us and what is “beneficial”, as Paul put it to the Corinthians with this letter.  Sometimes we find ourselves tempted to demand that others in the church act and think exactly as we do.  We sometimes concentrate upon what we perceive others are doing rather than subjecting ourselves to consider how we might better be of service to others rather than stand in judgment of them.  That is as true for us as it is for just about any other church.

            I look back over my twenty-five years of ordained ministry and find all kinds of things that have divided the people of God; some of them considerable issues, while others seem a bit fringe to me.  I’ve had folks in my various churches where I have served threaten to leave or actually leave over all kinds of things:

One fellow, a funeral director who was a deacon of the church, felt that there was too many funeral homes in the town where I served previously and left the church because I had actually lead a funeral service at his competitor’s!

Another left a large church I served because the Senior Pastor commandeered the Presbyterian Women’s Lounge for his temporary office while his new office was being prepared; apparently the Presbyterian Women were not as appreciative of his need for new digs as he thought they should have been!

Some have left because the church stopped using the old china and bought new, stopped using the old hymnal and bought new, stopped handing out communion tokens, started reaching out to folks who didn’t wear ties on Sundays or on Mondays for that matter … the stories abound of how it is that we separate ourselves from one another and from Christ’s church for crazy reasons.

I can’t help but think about those birds again … individually beautiful and different in their own ways, they seemed to be bound together by something beyond them … there appeared no particular “lead bird,” but they all seemed to know their own part of the aerial ballet they performed.  Some rested while others flew, seamlessly taking the others place when the right time came, flying and resting, flying and resting and bearing a testimony to an unseen Creator to whose tune they seemed mighty obedient.

William Willimon, a great Methodist bishop that I quote a lot, once wrote:

“Christians are those who, in obedience to Christ, bend our lives toward the needs and limitations of others.  For us, to be moral not only means to live righteously ourselves but also to live in a way that the lives of others might be blessed by our living.”

As followers of the One who gave his life for the many, we freely limit ourselves so that others might be blessed. 

Is any of this making sense?  It might not, actually! The culture in which we live does not necessarily promote this self-limitation for the sake of others.  In fact, Willimon has something to say about that:

“Our whole society seems to be built on the promise that the purpose of our country is to give you the maximum amount of freedom to get whatever you want, as long as you don’t bump into me while I’m getting what I want.”

Well said!  Thanks be to God that Paul does not promote what our culture values … instead Paul would advocate, most simply, profoundly and beautifully, that we make room for others in our lives and in our life as Christ’s body in this world.

            I can’t emphasize this enough for this is certainly one of those core values of being a Christian … making room for others, even those with whom we disagree.

            Paul seems to be telling the Corinthians just that when he wrote:

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,”

but I will not be dominated by anything

Later on in his letter, Paul will make an impassioned plea for the Corinthians to limit themselves for the sake of others.  He will intimate strongly to them that part of their witness as Christians is living in community and not in isolation from others.  He will encourage them, for the sake of Christ and for the sake of the witness of God’s love and grace, to figure out a way that they can live together in the peace and community of God’s grace.  It is still good advice for any church, anywhere.

            Clyde Fant, a retired professor from Stetson University echoes this in an article about our passage:

“Individualism in the Western world has created liberty and opportunity.  But individualism has been raised to the level of divinity in this country, along with nationalism and the wallet.  College students are deeply committed to a laissez-faire life: it may not be your way, but it is my way. Yet is that not also the mantra of the modern church? Are we willing to stand beneath the word of God, to bow down in humility at the feet of the Christ? Are we willing to obey anything beyond our own whims — particularly if something important is involved? Or do we not believe it has nothing to do with our faith and is nobody’s business but ours — least of all, the church’s?”

            Fant is right … the church is more about collectivism than it is about individualists.  Jesus is no individualist; he calls us to be together as his Church.  Christ calls us to express the freedom and liberty we have found in God’s grace by willing binding ourselves together in mutual obedience to him.  In short, Christ calls us to serve one another and this world; to make room for others as some of us rest on the branch while others fly, and then take off in flight while others find opportunity to rest.

            There was something about those birds on that snowy wintry day … something beautiful about just how they all, as individuals, worked together to be a flock … it is a lesson that the church would do well to never forget.

The Heart of the Lord: John 1:6-8, 19-28 & Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Advent 3-December 11, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

            I’ve heard countless television evangelists target this or that as what is at the very heart of the Lord.  Sometimes it the material success of the believer that the evangelist isolates, such as in the purveyors of what is called the “prosperity gospel.”  Sometimes it is more political in nature, such as one Texas evangelist who is convinced that the only thing that lies at the heart of the God of the universe is the ultimate preservation of the American way and the United States as the only God-fearing nation … the new Israel, he calls it. 

            Whatever it is that they say is at the heart of the Lord, I would advise them and all of us here present this day to examine most closely the words from the 61^st chapter of Isaiah.  Here is a strong statement of what is at the very heart of the Lord; the very desire and hope of the Almighty … that justice might be done; that liberty might be proclaimed to the captives; the brokenhearted will be made glad …

            The passage from Isaiah comes from the third and final portion of the great prophecy, the portion that is concerned with the returning children of Israel from their captivity in Babylon.  In Palestine, they find devastation and disaster all around them; downtrodden and brokenhearted refugees from their own captivity are welcomed home to find their once beautiful city, Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside, in utter ruin.  And yet, this is the vision that they receive … the hope in God’s work of restoration right in their midst … the vision of what can and will happen in their lives.

            At the heart of the Lord is a vision that we name the Advent hope: that which is broken and devastated about our world and our lives will be put to right and will be set to restoration.  What appears as the parched and dry land of our hearts will be replenished with the fertile soil of a great, divine garden, where, as Isaiah puts it, “the Lord God will cause righteousness and praised to spring up …”

            Sometimes it is only the vision of that for which we hope that keeps us going.  We have an idea, a goal, a vision of what life can be or has been or will be again and that seems to lend a hand in our getting through this recent or long-lasting personal desert we face.

            William Willimon, once the chaplain at Duke University, tells a story about a college student he knows that keeps such a vision before her.  He wrote this:

“She had a miserable time the second semester of her sophomore year.  She had unwisely signed up for a couple of killer courses.  She was flunking both them, in way over her head.  Then, her mother had a heart attack and was reduced to being an invalid.  To top it all off, her boyfriend of three years unceremoniously dumped her.

            ‘How on earth do you keep going,’ [Willimon] asked her.

            ‘I think of May 14, 2012,’ she responded.

            ‘May 14, 2012? What’s that?’ [He] asked.

            ‘It’s the day of my graduation.  Sometimes I picture myself in my cap and gown.  I can hear the music of the orchestra.  In my mind’s eye I can see myself processing down that long row of graduates, see myself receiving my diploma from the hands of the President. That dream, that vision of the future, keeps me going.’”

            The value of visions of restoration and redemption should never be discounted.  They are important not only to our lives, but to the very life of God; that kind of vision of restoration and redemption for all creation, all humankind, is what is right at the heart of God.  Therefore, it should be right at the heart not only of our Advent celebrations, but at our very actions and work as Christians and as a congregation of followers of Jesus Christ.

            The call both of the Advent season and the witness of Isaiah is for our full participation in the acts that might bring justice, righteousness and kindness to this earth.  Saying that, I realize, it is nothing revolutionary or radical or new for you folks; however, as well as we know this about our Christian faith and the call from the very heart of God, it is good for us to be reminded of it from time to time.  This is the duty of the text and of those who interpret the text on a weekly basis in the setting of worship: to remind us all of the call upon our lives.

            As some of you know, I’m an avid golfer … Now; I said “avid” not necessarily good! I love to play the game and I love to watch others play it.  It is a grand game, developed, of course, by wise Scots who would come to perfect Calvinism into something we call Presbyterianism.  Those Scots knew something about the hard lessons of golf and life; about the way that both playing the game and living life can teach a good dose of humility to each of us.

            I was watching a few holes of a recent professional match on television and was taken by the contrast between the reactions of some of the pros as they made exceptionally good shots.  Some of the pros, after hitting a particularly great putt or a clutch sand shot, pumped their fists, shouted short, loud acclamations and nearly thumped their chests.  Others, had more restrained responses, which I like.

            One, in particular, a slight, Irish youth, hit a clutch chip around the green, out of thick rough, over a bunker, down the slope of the putting surface and nearly holed it.  He was in danger of slipping out of the frontrunners if he muffed the chip.  Instead of chest thumping or fist pumping, he merely ducked his head and one hand pulled at the brim of his cap, as if to say: “Ah shucks, anyone could have done that.”  Or maybe, more likely, he thought as most of us do when we hit a good shot: “That could have gone a lot worse!”

            Golfers are told by the experts that not only is it really a mental game, it is a game where you best remember or envision your good shots rather than the ones of which you made a major mess and pulled a double or triple bogey, or in my case, much worse. The golfer is often exhorted to envision the ball landing on the green or going in the hole long before the approach shot is struck or the putt aligned.  The golfer is encouraged to remember the good shots and shake off the bad.

            I think that this is excellent advice for living out what is at the heart of the Lord.  It would be best for the Christian to remember the times when we have really got it; when we have really done well by others, reaching out our hearts and hands and offering ourselves as part of the solution.  We have had more than enough experiences of not doing what is right; we all know that if we are honest.  And sometimes, the remembrance of those times and acts threaten to bury us in either massive guilt or anxious inactivity, afraid we will repeat the bad rather than pioneer in the good.

            The season of Advent and the call of Isaiah should convince us that God’s redemption is coming and we all have a part to play.  We don’t all have to be Joan of Arcs, Albert Schweitzers, Mother Teresas or Rory McIlroys. We can all be ourselves, the selves that God has made, the selves that do, from time to time, summon up enough passion, courage and conviction to actual do the good, work for justice, righteousness and wholeness in this world, and actually follow the very heart of the Lord.

            William Willimon reminds us all that we are not alone at this work; that the golf course is not empty aside from us and our slight abilities to hit the ball:

“…to believe in God is to believe that your actions are not the only actions that are occurring.  In the present moment, there is a story working itself out beyond the present.  Your circumstances, as bleak as they may be at the moment, are not the only circumstance.  It is not all left up to us. We do not have the whole world in our hands. There is a good, gracious presence moving behind the circumstances of life.”

            Anyone who has stood on the tee and watched your ball land squarely in the fairway knows that there is more going on there than you can muster on your own … anyone of us who have actually done the good, sought justice, promoted righteousness, knows that there is One who really deserves the credit.

Build It Where You Are: Mark 1:1-8(9-15) & Isaiah 40:1-11- Advent 2: December 4, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ The Temptation of Jesus 12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry 14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

            Those are the words that follow immediately after the First Lesson for this day.  It was not a part of the lectionary pericope, but, as you can tell, it needs to be read along with it … at least I think it does.

            For it is here that the intersection of our Advent texts for today actually takes place: The opening to the second part of Isaiah and the opening to the Gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ as related by Mark.

            The author of Mark takes his readers back before he propels them forward … he takes us back to the Old Testament promises and hopes before he spends the rest of the gospel demonstrating just how those promises and hopes have been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.  No elongated birth narrative or genealogical survey opens the Gospel of Mark … just this whiplash between what we have hoped for and the beginning of our hope’s fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

            In short, the words from Isaiah and John the Baptist remind us that this world and our lives are not what they should be, but in the coming of Jesus Christ, a light has dawned and that fulfillment is coming … not yet here, but yet is coming.

            The Rev. William Goettler, a Presbyterian pastor in New Haven, Connecticut, tells a story about a sometimes-homeless man in New Haven named Danny.  He has known Danny for years and provided him with all kinds of assistance when asked by the man.  Whenever Rev. Goettler sees Danny on the streets of New Haven, the conversation always ends with Danny asking: “Reverend is this the way it is supposed to be?”

            Of course, it really isn’t a question for which Danny is expecting an answer in response.  It is more of a statement, or a mini-sermon as Rev. Goettler calls it. However, it is the very thing that John the Baptist and the Second Isaiah is crying out in the wilderness … it is a way of preparing the way of the Lord right in the midst of life.  It is a modern-day proclamation of the very thing that has been in the hearts of the ancients and in our hearts as well: “This is not the way the world should be …”

            This is the message of Advent: God is coming to us not to say how wonderful and perfect we are, but coming to us in judgment of how the world is and how our own little individual worlds are.  God is coming in the King of kings and Lord of lords in mercy and grace AND in judgment.

            Yet, sometimes we see visions … we get glimpses of what could be and that is a judgment on how things are in this world and our little worlds.  In this rather extended illustration, allow me to share what that great Presbyterian author and minister, Frederick Buechner saw once:

“It was a couple of springs ago.  I was driving into New York City from New Jersey on one of those crowded, fast-moving turnpikes you enter it by.  It was very warm.  There was brilliant sunshine, and the cars glittered in it as they went tearing by.  The sky was cloudless and blue. Around Newark a huge silver plane traveling in the same direction as I was made its descent in a slow diagonal and touched down soft as a bird on the airstrip just a few hundred yards away from me as I was driving by.  I had music on the radio, but I didn’t need it.  The day made its own music – the hot spring sun and the hum of the road, the roar of the great trucks passing and of my own engine, the hum of my own thoughts.  When I came out of the Lincoln Tunnel, the city was snarled and seething with traffic as usual; but at the same time there was something about it that was not usual.

“It was gorgeous traffic, it was beautiful traffic – that’s what was not usual.  It was a beauty to see, to hear, to smell, even to be part of.  It was so dazzlingly alive it all but took my breath away.  It rattled and honked and chattered with life – the people, the colors of their clothes, the marvelous hodgepodge of their faces, all of it; the taxis, the shops, the blinding sidewalks.  The spring day made everybody a celebrity – blacks, whites, Hispanics, every last one of them.  It made even the litter and clamor and turmoil of it a kind of miracle.

“There was construction going on as I inched my way east along Fifty-Fourth Street, and some wino, some bum, was stretched out on his back in the sun on a pile of lumber as if it was an alpine meadow he was stretched out on and he was made of money.  From the garage where I left the car, I continued my way on foot.  In the high-ceilinged public atrium on the ground floor of a large office building there were people on benches eating their sandwiches.  Some of them dressed to kill. Some of them were in jeans and sneakers.  There were young ones and old ones. Daylight was flooding in on them, and there were green plants growing and a sense of deep peace as they at their lunches mostly in silence. A big man in a clown costume and whiteface took out a tubular yellow balloon big around as a noodle, blew it up, and twisted it squeakily into a dove of peace, which he handed to the bug-eyed child watching him.  I am not making this up. It all happened.

“In some ways it was like a dream and in other ways as if I had woken up from a dream. I had the feeling that I had never seen the city so real before in all my life. I was walking along Central Park South near Columbus Circle at the foot of the park when a middle-aged black woman came toward me going the other way.  Just as she passed me, she spoke.  What she said was, ‘Jesus loves you.’ That is what she said: ‘Jesus loves you,’ just like that.  She said it in as everyday a voice as if she had been saying good morning, and I was so caught off guard that it wasn’t till she was lost in the crowd that I realized what she had said and wondered if I could possibly ever find her again and thank her, if I could ever catch up with her and say, ‘Yes, if I believe anything worth believing in this whole world, I believe that.  He loves me.  He loves you. He loves the whole doomed, damned pack of us.’

“For the rest of the way I was going, the streets I walked on were paved with gold.  Nothing was different. Everything was different. The city was transfigured. I was transfigured. It was a new New York coming down out of heaven adorned like a bride prepared for her husband. ‘The dwelling of God is with men.  He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people …. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away’ (Rev. 21:3-4). That is the city that for a moment I say.

“For a moment it was not the world as it is that I saw but the world as it might be, as something deep with the world wants to be and is preparing to be, the way in darkness a seed prepares for growth, the way leaven works in bread.”

 

Wow! What a phenomenally unusual but everyday experience of the divine that Buechner was privy to in his trip into the city.  This is the very essence of Advent; seeing beyond the moment; beyond the dirt and grime of this world and the human traffic jams we make of our own lives, to what is really coming into the world.  Here is the answer to Danny’s question / sermon: “Reverend is this the way it is supposed to be?”  This is the call of hope that is at the every center not only of this Advent season, but the Christian life itself.  This is where we must build the kingdom of heaven … right where we are … and yet, … as Buechner concludes his sermon, I conclude mine:

“We cannot make the Kingdom of God happen, but we can put out leaves as it draws near.  We can be kind to each other.  We can be kind to ourselves. We can drive back the darkness a little. We can make green places within ourselves and among ourselves where God can make his Kingdom happen. That transfigured city. Those people of every color, class, condition, eating their sandwiches together in that quiet place.  The clown and the child. The sunlight that made everybody in those teeming streets a super-star.  The bum napping like a millionaire on his pile of two-by-fours.  The beautiful traffic surging all around me and the beautiful things that I could feel surging inside myself, in that holy place that is inside all of us. Turn that way.  Everybody.  While there is still time. Pray for the Kingdom.  Watch for signs of it.  Live as though it is here already because there are moments when it almost is …”

God-Chasers? – Mark 13:24-37 & Isaiah 64:1-9 – Advent 1: November 27, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down …”

            Today marks the opening of the season of Advent.  It is the beginning of a new liturgical year in the Christian church.  The Christian year does not begin with New Year’s Day or with Christmas Eve festivities nor even with the American holiday of Thanksgiving; the Christian year begins not with a holiday, but a holy season: Advent.

            Yet, we confuse Advent and Christmas in our society and sometimes in the church.  Advent is a season of preparation and expectation, not looking toward Christmas celebrations necessarily; but looking beyond this time to the final days of culmination or judgment in God’s kingdom.

            If there is anything that you take away from today’s service, it is my hope that you take away an expectation for the future … a future that is definitely not owned or possessed by us, but a future that is fully and completely in the hands of God.  The texts for today speak of this expectation that it is God who holds all of our futures; that the future is actually beyond our manipulation or possession … a future that is surely and safely in the hands of the God whom we have known in the past and who abides with us even now, in our present. 

            But now, about the past … The people of Israel have been in captivity and bondage in Babylon.  They have been released from that captivity and have returned home to Jerusalem to find a horrible mess … the temple is in ruins, the streets are overrun and the people who have been left to inhabit the once great city are a dispirited and hopeless muddle of humanity.

            It is here, in this condition and situation, that the great prophet Isaiah, the Third Isaiah as the scholars call him, writes this wondrous lament … this great appeal to God bidding God to intervene, to rend the heavens and come down. The people of Israel and Third Isaiah himself, have learned that though they can remember the past and inhabit the present, the future belongs solely to their God.  This is the very same lesson that the holy season of Advent bids to teach us … the God of our past and present owns the future.

            Jesus adds much to this understanding when we hear the passage from Mark.  The passage from the Gospel as well as the lament from Isaiah can rightly be called apocalyptic.  Some would define apocalyptic literature and the apocalypse as being about that which is to come in devastating power and a world-turned-upside-down finality.  That is surely one definition of the passages we receive this day and Advent itself.

However, I like very much the explanation offered by Kathleen Norris, a Christian writer whom Wikipedia says currently divides her time between South Dakota and Hawaii … apparently it is good work if you can get it!  Anyway, here’s what Norris wrote:

The word apocalypse simply means to reveal, to uncover, and if facing reality brings us despair, we need to ask why. Above all, we must reject the literalist notion that apocalyptic literature is about a future pie in the sky. It is a command to come to full attention in the here and now. And that is hard to do.

“I think that Ms. Norris is on to something important about our texts this morning: the coming future of God’s reign that Advent celebrates and points towards is something that is to be lived in the here and now rather than in the sweet-by-and-by!”

            Jesus’ words and the even more ancient sentiments of Isaiah call us to do the very thing directed by Ms. Norris: to come to full attention here and now and anticipate in our very living, the way that God will set to right this old world in the final judgment, in the final consummation.

            Not too terribly long ago, I was talking with a member of our congregation about optimism and hope.  This person had great optimism for the way things could be set right, made better for others and for our community.  She had mentioned that there had been phone calls in her work that had indicated the opposite of that: fears expressed that if things were changed in some ways, if the patterns of the past weren’t repeated, things would go awry.  This did not dissuade her or her colleagues: instead, she chose to look upon the future with an optimism not based in naiveté, but rather in hope.

            The conversation got me thinking about the hope we have as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ.  We should never feel compelled to apologize for our optimism or maybe better put the hope that is based in God’s future.  Pessimism, however, should be challenged to offer a defense for its banal predictions of failing or status quo based on their “sure” view of a future that will always be like the past.  No, hope in God’s future should never have to apologize; we should just live it. For, as Christians, influenced by both passages of scripture that we’ve heard today, we realize and know that each day is both a gift and a judgment, thus signifying our great need for the grace that we are given by God. This too is the message of Advent.

            Maybe it’s better to hear William Willimon’s take on this rather than mine:

“When we come to church and are exposed to such speech from Isaiah … we are beckoned out beyond the world of predictability into another world of thought and risk and gift, in which divine intervention enables new life to break our prosaic reductions, to subvert our tamed expectations, and to evoke fresh faith. One reason why the world doesn’t want you to believe in apocalyptic poetry is that the world knows that dangerous hope for the future leads to daring resistance in the now. It’s hard to be docile when you believe that tomorrow may be better today … Our actions may not be the sum of all actions in the world.  Tomorrow may not be exclusively in our hands, and knowing that can make a huge difference in how we live today.”

I believe that.  I believe that is right at the heart of the lessons of this holy season of Advent: trusting that God alone holds the future, and living courageously and faithfully into that future by acting today as if it were tomorrow already.

            Thomas Long, my preaching professor, tells a great story about such things:

A minister friend of mine in Atlanta at a downtown church planned one evening to go out to eat with his wife to celebrate their anniversary. His wife met him at the church, and the two of them headed out to the parking lot to take the car to the restaurant. But when they got outside they encountered a crisis. An elderly woman, a desperate look on her face, was kneeling on the sidewalk beside a man, her husband as it turns out, who was lying on his back in pain clutching his chest. My friend’s wife ran quickly back into the church to call an ambulance, and my friend leaned over to comfort the man. “We have called for some help and they will be here soon . . . ,” he began, but the man interrupted him.

            “Charlie, forgive me,” the man said.

            “I’m not Charlie,” my friend said. “My name is Sam.” What Sam did not know until later is that Charlie was the man’s son, and years before the man had, in a rage over something, disowned Charlie, and the two had not spoken in years.

            The man looked up at Sam and reached out and touched his hand. “Charlie, please, forgive me.”

            “Just relax,” Sam said. “Somebody will be here soon to get you to the hospital.”

            But the man suddenly clutched in terrible pain, and it was now clear that he would not make it to the hospital. With his last gasping energy he pulled on Sam’s arm and begged, “Charlie, please, forgive me.”

            Sam followed his faithful instinct, reached out and put his hand on the man’s forehead as a blessing and said, “I do forgive you. I do forgive you.” Those were the last words the man ever heard in this life.

            Later, when he learned what the circumstances were, Sam wondered if he had done the right thing. “I am not his son. The relationship was still broken. What right did I have to grant forgiveness,” Sam wondered. Then it came to him that his whole ministry was about this, that the whole Christian faith is about this. We have been given in Christ a restoration and a reconciliation that is already true, already whole, and we are beckoned from God’s fullness to live into God’s future and toward what has already been given as a gift.

Charlie’s father had failed to live today as if it were tomorrow; consequently hope for the future was beyond his ability to see.  Advent points us squarely towards a future that already is shining brightly into the present: a future that God owns and we are called to “live into …” 

Royalty – Matthew 25:31-46 & Psalm 100 – Christ the King: November 20, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

There is an old legend about a monastery that had fallen on hard times and great disrepair.  The monks quarreled amongst themselves, the work around the monastery just didn’t get done, and the place was a total mess.  The new Abbot didn’t quite know how he could change things.  He ventured out into the forest to speak with a Jewish mystic who had a small community of followers gathered around him.

 When he asked the mystic what he could do to restore order, the mystic seemed a bit shocked.  “Don’t you know … I’ve been watching your men for some time and I have seen in a vision that one of them is the incarnation of the Messiah!”  The Abbot was greatly impressed by this news, having much faith in the perception of the mystic.

When he returned to the monastery, the Abbot gathered the monks and related the story.  The men were shocked and began to wonder to themselves just who was the incarnation.  In the days that followed, things changed.  Everyone was cordial to each other.  Each was eager to help and comfort the other.  All the work got done without bickering.  The village around the monastery sensed the change and began to picnic on the now lovely grounds of the institution.  The people in the village themselves began to reflect the kind actions of the monks and treated each other with greater respect and reverence.

Not only was the monastery saved, but all the village and the surrounding lands were transformed, all because the monks began to treat one another as if one of them were the living Christ …

            Our ability and response to seeing the living Christ in the lives of those around appears to be the only criterion of the Last Judgment portrayed by the parable that we just heard read from Matthew’s Gospel.  This section of the Gospel of Matthew is the only New Testament representation of what the Last Judgment will be like.  There is no other description in the Gospels, Epistles or any other part of the New Testament: this is it … so if we want to know what the criterion is for us in judgment, these words of Jesus are the only ones we can go by.

            John Buchanan, my favorite preacher in Chicago, wrote this about that:

“Students of the New Testament know that the only description of the last judgment is in Matthew 25.  There is nothing in it about ecclesiastical connections or religious practices.  There is not a word in this parable about theology, creeds, orthodoxies. There is only one criterion here, and that is whether or not you saw Jesus Christ in the face of the needy and whether or not you gave yourself away in love in his name.”

            We hear all kinds of criterion for either ultimate blissfulness in Jesus or ways in which to live a Christian life faithful to the One who was and is faithful to us.  But here is offered the ONE criterion that Jesus gives for judgment at the Last Judgment … have we considered the plight of others and have we recognized the presence of Jesus Christ with those in need?  That’s it.  That is what is said here by Jesus.  Consequently, it seems pretty plain to me.

            But, do we really do it?  Of course, that is the question that the parable is designed to elicit from each of us … do we really take the time and energy to reach out and give ourselves away in love of Jesus’ name?  That’s really it.  Do we allow God the room in our life to take time for others or do we fill up our life with only the stuff we want to do and the people we want to see? I’m not saying that any of this is easy; that’s why it is called discipleship!  It requires something of us!  I’m not saying it is simple; I’m merely saying that the criterion appears pretty plain to me.

            Allow me to share with you another story; this one not a legend, but a reporting of something that happened in a specific place and at a specific time that is actually repeated throughout Christian congregations wherever they may be found and of course, here at First Church.  The story comes from Anthony Robinson, former minister to the Plymouth Congregational Church in Seattle:

The clothing bank was open from 10:00 to 4:00 every Wednesday in the church basement. The “bank” was actually a large closet with a section for hanging clothes and drawers underneath for boots and shoes. Piled high atop the closet were cardboard boxes stuffed with folded clothes.

On Wednesdays at about 9:30 Gertrude and Vernet came up the church walk. Even though Vernet, who had spent most of his life as a logger, was in his late 70s, he was still tall and lean. These days he tilted forward a little as he walked or stood, like a tree leaning with the weight of the years. His wife, Gertrude, by contrast, seemed almost as wide as she was tall. She was not, however, fat. She was simply a farm wife who had settled.

In the basement Vernet would climb a chair and pull down the cardboard boxes. Gertrude would carefully put the contents out on the tables. It always surprised me to see how many tables were filled. Boots and shoes would be pulled out and the closet doors opened to reveal heavy wool suits and long raincoats. As the day went on, anywhere between two and ten people would follow Gertrude and Vernet down the stairs into the basement. Often late in the day, when it was starting to grow dark on winter days, a mother followed by two or three children would descend the stairs. Gertrude would play with the children in a grandmotherly way while Vernet helped the mother find what she was looking for.

Gertrude and Vernet were not always in perfect spirits about the labor they had chosen. People would donate huge bags of unsorted, even unwashed clothes, and all manner of odds and ends for which Vernet could never find space. This irritated him. It also irritated him that some people made such a mess of the clothes as they looked through them.

Some of us wondered, more often in our thoughts than out loud, if this faithfully tended clothing bank did any real good. After all, the Northwest had major economic problems. Could a few boxes of clothing make a difference? It seemed that more large-scale efforts, such as government intervention, were needed. But on Wednesdays Gertrude and Vernet came, and so did those who needed what was stuffed in the big closet.

            If I understand that parable that Jesus told about the sheep and the goats and the coming judgment, our faith requires us to see Jesus in the least of our brothers and sisters and actually do something about their suffering, their hunger, their lack, their need.  For all of us wanting to see the face of God, desiring to draw close to the source of love and grace and meaning, we know what we must do to actually see God and been drawn closer …

            John Buchanan again, puts it very well:

“The God of Jesus, the God of the Bible, is not a remote supreme being on a throne up there above the clouds or out there somewhere in the mysterious reaches of the universe.  Jesus said, God is here, in the messiness and ambiguity of human life.  God is here, particularly in your neighbor, the one who needs you.  You want to see the face of God?  Look into the face of one of the least of these, the vulnerable, the weak, the children.”

            No surer case exists for what we have been called to do in Jesus Christ.  It seems to me to be as plain as the nose on my face … now, the question remains to me and to you, as followers of the living Christ, as children of royalty, Christ the King, what will WE do?

“On Wednesday evenings, Vernet pulled his coat on and went down the walk. The year was heading toward its end and night was coming on, even though it was only a quarter past four. Into their old station wagon he and Gertrude climbed and headed back down the road. But even as darkness fell and a cold wind blew down off the hills, there seemed to be a light around that station wagon, and the world was a warmer place.”

To You I Lift My Eyes – Ps. 123 & Mt. 25:14-30 – Ordinary 33- November 13, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

“To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!”

            There’s a phenomenon that I’ve mentioned before that I’ve observed around weddings.  Have you noticed?  This most often occurs with non-member weddings, where the invited guests have no real relationship to our church or congregation other than a place where their two friends or beloved relatives are being married.

            This phenomenon is observable if you are in the sanctuary fifteen minutes prior to the service.  Usually, there’s hardly anyone present that early.  Most of the guests wait until almost the last minute to find a place in the pews.  I don’t think that it is necessarily unfamiliarity with our church building or the location; rather I believe that is a fear that something might just happen to them if they hang around a church sanctuary too long.

            Folks who are not members of a church, but members of our culture, get the idea that something important happens here; that some kind of communication with the divine occurs; that there is the awesome possibility of being confronted by God if you hang around a sanctuary too long.  It is a dread or a fear that seizes folks and helps to keep out of the sanctuary as long as they possibly can stand.  For if it is true; if this is the place where the human meets the divine, what just might be asked of them?

            Maybe better put are the words of the Presbyterian author Annie Dillard, who as a child, attended Shadyside Presbyterian Church in nearby Pittsburgh.  Here’s what she wrote about attendance at even a staid sanctuary like Shadyside’s:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

            Maybe that is the fear: risking our comfortable lives for something a little more God-infused; something that might just lead us out into unchartered waters; something (or better put: Someone) who will lead us out of our satisfied, but troubled existence into a new life of risk and a call to trust in the One to whom we are called to lift our eyes?

            The Parable of the Talents as the writing from Matthew is often called is about just such risk-taking on behalf of the living Christ.  Jesus tells his disciples and followers a couple of parables here in Matthew all in succession that imply that something more than the status quo is expected of them.  The parables detail a division in the human race between those who hear God’s call and faithfully risk everything on behalf of it and those who do nothing or ignore the call.

            Too often, this parable has been connected in preaching with the ordinary, annual stewardship drives of churches.  I suppose I’ve done that myself at some point in my ministry.  However, there is much more involved here than mere money or wealth: this parable is really about the things that we cannot fold, or jingle in our pockets or place in our checking accounts.  This parable is about our very souls and our response to God’s call to become involved in our life in God’s kingdom.

            John Buchanan, great preacher at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, puts it this way:

“The point here is not really about doubling your money and accumulating wealth.  It is about living. It is about investing. It is about taking risks. It is about Jesus himself and what he has done and what is about to happen to him. Mostly it is about what he hopes and expects of [his followers] after he is gone. It is about being a follower of Jesus and what it means to be faithful to him, and so, finally, it is about you and me.”

            Buchanan goes on to say:

“The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is not to risk anything, not to care deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest deeply, to give your heart away and in the process risk everything.  The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is to play it safe, to live cautiously and prudently. Orthodox, conventional theology identifies sin as pride and egotism.  However, there is an entire other lens through which to view the human condition.  It is called sloth, one of the ancient church’s seven deadly sins.  Sloth means not caring, not loving, not rejoicing, not living up to the full potential of our humanity, playing it safe, investing nothing, being cautious and prudent, digging a hole and burying the money in the ground.”

Wow!  Now that is the greatest sin for any of us who claim to be followers of the One who risked everything for the sake of humankind … not doing anything … not risking anything, but rather being smug and content in our own righteousness and faithfulness.  No, as followers of Jesus Christ, we can never faithfully choose to follow the example of the third slave in his parable; the one who dug a hole and buried his life in it!

            That’s the way I see it: it is a kin to a form of practical or self-defensive atheism: believing that our life belongs solely to ourselves and that God, if there is a God, is so wrathful, judgmental and harsh, that it would be best not to get ourselves involved in life itself for the risk of losing it.  It is akin to burying what we have received from God and thinking that somehow the preservation of what we have received will guarantee our justification or salvation.  Somehow, we believe that if we just give back to God what he has given us, that that is somehow the safest bet.  This parable demonstrates just the opposite indeed.

            As faithful followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to so much more than just the preservation of what we have received.  We are called to follow this One who, as Annie Dillard said so well, “may draw us out to where we can never return.”

            Lindsay Armstrong, Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, has commented upon this:

“Faithful living is not static; yet, like this third slave, we are good at knowing without doing.  We are adept at holding on to a talent entrusted, knowing what we should do with it, but not doing so. We know what faithful living looks like, but we hesitate to live it. We bury too much goodness, time, love, treasure, and talent in the ground.”

            This is one reason why I’m proud to be a Minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  Our denomination has taken risks all along that have not always been popular with the the standing culture, our Christians brothers and sisters of other denominations or our own membership.  We have taken those risks not because we felt it the popular thing to do, or the prevalent course of the culture, but because we have believed what we have read in scripture.  We advocated for the abolishment of slavery when it was not considered the most prudent course.  We ordained women to the ordered ministries of the church when the rest of the Christian church held its breath and counseled otherwise.

Our denomination has recently undergone great inner turmoil in providing a place of respect and full acceptance to folks within our congregations regardless of sexual orientation.  Our church has done all these things and more because we have refused to bury our talents and return to God nothing on God’s investment in us.  For this, I am proud of our denomination.

            In a like manner, I am very proud of members of our congregation who have recently stood for elected office in our community.  These folks have risked much to seek election to office, not for personal gain, but to place themselves at the service of the public.  They have not buried their talents, but have offered them for the service of others.

            Our history as a church and a congregation points up to me the merits of not burying our talents, our gifts from God, but actually risking them in their use.  This seems to me to be the point of this parable: that we are called by God to risk what we have been given, what we possess, for the sake of God’s kingdom; for the sake of reaching out to others and actually living the gospel.

            Again, remember the words of that great preacher from Chicago:

“The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is not to risk anything, not to care deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest deeply, to give your heart away and in the process risk everything. The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is to play it safe …”

            We are at our best when we refuse to “play it safe” or bury what we have received from God.  We are at our best in following Jesus Christ when we take what has been entrusted to us and share with this world: whether it financial resources or the even more important treasure we have received: our very lives.  We are at our best when respond faithfully to God’s gift of life by actually risking it all in extending the grace and love we have received.

            The greatest risk of all, or so it is said, is not to risk anything … just ask the third servant!

A Present Immediacy: Psalm 78:1-7 & Matthew 25:1-13 – November 6, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise replied, “No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.”

            Brothers and sisters in Christ: you have chosen well! On this beautiful, fall morning, you have chosen to be present in worship rather than the myriad of other places you could be, doing a multitude of different things.  You have chosen to be present in worship and indeed, you have chosen well.

            Still, I am a Calvinist … the ultimate decision is not something that you have chosen.  Scripture assures us that God chooses us and not the other way round. I know that left to our own devices, when it comes to the ultimate decision, we would probably choose poorly!  Remember, I am a Calvinist after all!

 However, like the parable indicates, we can be either wise or foolish and still be bridesmaids.  We can be either wise or foolish and still be a part of the party.  You have shown yourselves to be wise: you have sought to find oil for your lamps here, in worship, in association with Christ’s body, today.

            The young couple was completely distraught and with good reason.  They had lost their child to an incredibly quick illness that baffled the medical professionals.  No one had any real answer for them: their child seemed healthy one minute and then was gone the next.  Even an autopsy had not given them any confirmation to the question of “Why?”

            They were not members of any church and had no real religious attachments or expressed faith.  One of their friends was a member of my church and asked me if I would meet with the grieving parents and officiate at the funeral.  Of course I did.

            Now, the death of a child is devastating to any set of parents, but this young couple, it struck me, had nothing to draw upon in their grief.  Their grieving was abject misery and nothing that I shared with them could touch the depth of the hurt and loss.

            I expressed my concern about them to their friend who was the member of my church and he said something to me that I will never forget: “Well, I tried Martin to get them to come to church with me; maybe if they had a bit of faith they would have some hope.”

            At first I thought this a callous statement from a well-meaning and well-intentioned younger member of my church.  I quietly hoped that he hadn’t said that to the couple and I’m pretty sure that he didn’t. However, after many years removed from the situation, I think what the man said to me was true.   

            Now, no one would have been prepared for such a tragic and miserable loss, but that poor couple just had no reserve of faith or belief to draw upon in the midst of their personal tragedy. It seemed to make their suffering ten times worse, I suppose in some ways.  I had a faith and a hope in Jesus Christ that I shared with them as the minister praying with them and planning and officiating at the sad little funeral, but I couldn’t give them my faith.  I could share what I knew to be the truth of God’s great love for us, but I couldn’t give them any confidence of that.  That was something that needed to be there in their lives beforehand.

            It is not unlike what is going in this quizzical little parable delivered by Jesus to his disciples.  The ten bridesmaids are divided between those who had appropriately prepared and those who had not.  At first, one might be a bit bothered by the presentation of the five wise bridegrooms refusing to share with the five foolish some of their own oil for their lamps.  But then again, it might just be that they couldn’t. 

            It’s not that we have a limited amount of faith and to share it would endanger our own reserves of trust in God, rather it is like speaking a wholly different language to one who just doesn’t have the requisite preparation to understand.  Faith is something that is a gift from God and also something that we develop; something for which we prepare.  Our faith cannot be given away, just as the five wise bridesmaids could not give away their preparations: it just isn’t possible.

            You folks have chosen well: by your presence in worship and your other associations with the Christ’s body in this world (the church), you are preparing yourselves for the time when a reserve of faith may need to be drawn upon in your life.

            It doesn’t have to be major tragic moments like the young couple I described in the opening of the sermon.  There are enough challenges and events in our daily life to ensure that our faith and trust in God will be needed by us.

            This is exactly why attendance to worship; attendance to service of Jesus Christ; attendance to the fellowship of Christ’s church is vitally important.  In all those little moments of participating in worship; serving Christ; fellowshipping with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are being prepared to go back out into the world and be informed and strengthened by our faith and trust in God.  It is like added oil to the lamps of faith. 

            I say this is an encouragement because you are here.  Whether this is the first time you’ve crossed the threshold of this sanctuary or you’ve been here so much you might be mistaken as part of the furnishings (that’s a good thing); you’ve made a good decision.  You’ve placed yourself in the position of having oil added to your lamp that you might be ready and prepared when the call comes; the faith that has been developed and nurtured inside you comes to full maturity.

            This is why, our faith, our attendance to the things that make for being Christian should never be taken for granted.  Like a muscle, faith must be exercised in order to remain strong and useful to God and informative to our living.  It really is that important.

            William Willimon, great Methodist bishop, wrote of such ordinary, everyday preparations of faith being drawn upon in a present immediacy:

            I remember preaching a series of sermons in which I talked about death and eternal life. One Monday morning I got the call. “Fred has collapsed. Mary says that she thinks he has died. She has called the ambulance.” I put down the phone and raced out to their farmhouse. I got there just as the ambulance was arriving.

      Mary met me at the door and asked me, “Tell me again what you said in your sermon last Sunday about eternal life? I want to be sure I got it right.”

      Though she didn’t know it, when she was listening to my sermon she was preparing herself, she was obtaining oil for her lamp, getting ready for night. She would be able to go into that dark with her lamp shining.

            You have chosen wisely … you have availed yourselves of opportunity to fill your lamps … now, let us go out into this world with our lamps burning brightly into any darkness that we might face; let us learn to count on the reserves that God has given us this day and each day.

A Generous Undertaking: Psalm 107:1-9, 33-43 & II Corinthians 9:1-15 – October 30, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

            As you are well aware, this morning is Commitment Sunday; the day in which we collect the pledges for the ministry of the church in the coming year.  It is an important day; not because the financial secretary will spend the better part of next week tallying and the Stewardship Committee worrying until the results are announced, it is an important day because this is one of those days in which we are called as a congregation to respond to the grace of God.

This is an important day, because it is the day that we, for sure, get to ask ourselves the question: “How will I respond to the grace of God?”  Now, we should be asking ourselves that question all through our life of response to God’s grace, but today, we ask it both personally and collectively. How will we respond?  What will we give in response to the mercy and grace that we have received from God?

            Now, let me be clear about this: there will be no extortion offered here in order to get you to do something that you don’t want to do.  If you pledge in a grudging manner or because that is what is expected of you, don’t bother; I’m not sure if God can make use of such a gift.  So, take a breath; breathe easy … no one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.

            To this point, let me share with you something I read this past week in a commentary on this passage from II Corinthians, written by the biblical scholar, J. Paul Sampley:

“If we think about how hard we worked to arrive where we are, we are likely to become stingy, because there is something innately programmed into us to have us think either that by our hard work we deserve what we have or that we have been shortchanged and do not have enough.  If, on the other hand, we think about how many doors have opened to us, about how we have gotten where we are by the way things have surprisingly opened to or ‘broken for’ us (by God’s grace and the working of the Spirit), then we are more likely to think more generously.  No doubt some truth resides on both sides of those arguments. The issue is how we keep perspective. Paul may help us here.  God graces. God sows. We do not deserve God’s favor, but we receive it.  Such beneficence, especially when we know we do not deserve it, takes away some of our control of our lives and places us in a response mode. Grace received demands a response. The grace that comes from God finds it fruition as it flows through us to others.”

I think Dr. Sampley said that very well, don’t you? 

I receive, via email, an alumni publication from my seminary.  It very often, as I’m sure your alumni publications do, features some former graduate who has done well by the seminary.  That is, this featured alumnus is someone who has done something significant with the education they received and then given back to the institution as a donor.

This past month, the featured alumnus was a retired Presbyterian minister; a man by the name of Thomas Fisher.  The Rev. Dr. Fisher graduated from Princeton Seminary in 1958 and then enjoyed a long and well-travelled career. 

In interviewing the good reverend, the author commented that Dr. Fisher had “come to understand the blessed paradox that is at the heart of service.”  What Dr. Fisher said to enjoin that response from the author was this:

“Everything in life is about mutuality and reciprocity – you receive as you give, and you give as you receive.”

That sounds down-right biblical!  In fact, it sounds very much like the scripture that we just heard from II Corinthians:

“The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”

I’m pretty sure that this is a scripture with which Dr. Fisher is very familiar.  I’m confident that he, in his fifty year career, has had ample opportunity to reflect upon it, puzzle over it and even deliver a sermon or two on it!

The television evangelists love this passage.  They seem to never tire of preaching to their congregations present in their sanctuaries or out over the air waves, that if only they will give, God will return their gifts five-fold, ten-fold, even hundred-fold.

As a child, I remember my grandmother being devoted to Oral Roberts, one particular tele-evangelist notorious for preaching the “success gospel” as it is called.  She would sit in front of that old black and white television and call me to come and sit on the floor and together we would watch the telecast from Tulsa. 

As an early adolescent, I attempted an experiment based on Dr. Roberts’ preaching: I sent in ten dollars to his ministry, the only ten dollars I had and then waited by the mailbox for the return on my divine investment.  It never came … or at least it never came in the manner in which I perceived it would be returned to me or in the manner that Dr. Roberts spoke so confidently about.

I guess that I was expecting a hundred dollar check or even a thousand dollar check from Oral Roberts Ministry.  It never came; but then Dr. Roberts never promised that HE would personally see to the fulfillment of a hundred-fold return. 

No, what I learned from that, and many other experiences with giving since then, is to not actually look for a return.  When Julie and I decide upon our stewardship of what God has given us; when we consider the pledge card or the tithe, we count that as money gone … I’m not looking for any checks from Oral Roberts or even from First Presbyterian in response to my personal giving to God’s work.

The response that I do look for is in something that can’t be banked, traded or stolen.  I guess the response I look for and seek earnestly now is a freedom from my wallet and bank account.  Disciplined stewardship’s reward is freedom … freedom from thinking that I am validated by the amount that is tallied in the net gain column or some personal holdings statement.  Giving frees me from putting a number on my validity as a human being; as a child of a living, giving, gracious God.

I think that something like this was behind both Dr. Fisher’s statement and Paul’s.  Giving as freely as we have received from God liberates us to trust not in what we give or even in what we receive, but rather to trust ultimately in God.  Ultimately, my giving, my decisions, my commitment, my discipleship is a reflection of the trust that I have in God.  I’m not saying that the amounts or the dedication or the energy put forth is a barometric-type measure of that trust … I’m merely saying that the more I give, the more I am given to trust in God.  I hope that you find the same about your giving …

As a follow up to one of the illustrations I just offered, I have this … I shared with the elders and deacons at the Leadership Retreat a couple weeks ago that story about my adolescent donation to Oral Roberts’ ministry.  I told them about the ten dollars and expecting to find a letter and a check from Oral with my ten-fold return.  Well, one of them responded. 

The week following the Leadership Retreat, I received in the mail an envelope with no return address other than simply the name: “Oral.”  I opened the envelope, not connecting it with the illustration and found a handwritten note which read simply: “Your faithfulness has paid off TENFOLD after all these years.”  As I opened the note, a crisp $100 bill floated down onto my desk.  It took me just a moment to realize what had happened; that this really wasn’t from “Oral,” but from one of you folks!

I want this anonymous respondent to know two things: First thank you for your response.  This is truly what giving is all about: simply responding.  And secondly, I did give that $100 bill to LuAnn to be put toward retiring the budget deficit; I didn’t keep it … I was tempted, but instead of seeing it as MY money, I saw it for what it really was: the Lord’s! 

            How will you respond to God’s grace in your life?  This is really what Commitment Sunday is about … what kind of relationship do we have with God and what will be our response?  It’s not so much about meeting a budget or gathering enough financial support to continue for just one more year … it is about God’s grace in our life and our response to God.  Paul said it best:

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

Eagerness and Earnestness – II Corinthians 8 – Ordinary 30 – October 23, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

            I stumbled across something this past week that I thought important enough to pass along to you.  I received as a gift last year an old Book of Common Worship from the Presbyterian Church in the USA; a predecessor denomination to our own. The book was published in 1932, but the quote I want to share with you was actually a reproduction from the Minutes of the General Assembly of 1831. This is what I read:

“A particular Presbyterian church, so far as adults are concerned, is constituted and organized as such, by a number of individuals, professing to walk together as the disciples of Jesus Christ …”

What an absolutely appropriate and accurate definition of what it means to be a church!  That definition applied to the church in 1932 as well as 1831 and it applies to us still to this day: we are still “a number of individuals, professing to walk together as the disciples of Jesus Christ.”

            That kind of definition would have applied to the folks who originally received the letter from Paul that we’ve heard in worship this morning.  We’re not that much different than the folks to whom Paul addressed himself in the First Century Corinth.  They were a number of individuals who were professing to walk together as disciples of Jesus Christ … just the same as we are.

            Now, a lot has changed since that time.  The world has grown older, the church has grown wealthier, wider and more influential … and then we have receded from those halcyon days when the church was at its heights of influence and importance … and yet, down deep inside, we are not that much different than those believers in Corinth who were professing to walk together as disciples of Christ.  At the end of any discussion about similarities or differences, stand surely the truth that we share more with the Corinthians than we differ from them, precisely because we profess to walk together as followers of Jesus Christ.

            Paul wrote to them about a collection the entire church at the time was supporting for the poor in Jerusalem.  It was the main focus of Paul’s ministry and he traveled about from city to city, visiting and collecting from the early Christians for the sake of others.  This is the collection that Paul is challenging the Corinthians with in this Eighth chapter of his Second Letter.  Here’s what he writes:

“Now as you excel in everything – in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you – so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.  I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others.  For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”  AND …

 “For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has – not according to what one does not have.  I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.”

            Paul asks of the Corinthians about both their eagerness and their earnestness.  He sets those two elements not in opposition to each other, but rather as a way of making a judgment: One’s eagerness to do God’s will is judged by their earnestness to actually fulfill it.

            How did the Corinthian respond to Paul’s pleas?  How did they answer the challenge that had placed before them?  I don’t know exactly how, but we do know that they did.  They responded to Paul’s call and supported the collection. Now no scholar, no church historian, no expert on the New Testament, can tell us exactly how much was collected at Corinth or whether the church made their goal or not.  No archeologist has yet produced a plaque that continues the individual names of the donors in Corinth, thanking the ones who answered the call of God and the challenge of Paul.  No, those names and those figures are unknown to us, but we are the beneficiaries of their response; we are, in essence, the plaque that witnesses to their faithfulness! 

            Indeed, just as Paul had alluded to, their abundance has been an answer to our scarcity; their response in faith with lives lived in the faith of Jesus Christ, has lead to our relationship with God.  Without them, without all the saints of the Lord who have gone before us, we would not have the abundance of the Christian life: the abundance of faith, hope and love that we have found in Jesus Christ.  We would have had none of this, if others had not provided for us.

            That is the challenge that is set before us in our Stewardship Campaign.  We are called upon by the leaders of our church to prayerfully rededicate ourselves towards generous support of the church. 

We are faced with many challenges here at First Church, not unlike other churches of our ilk: the culture is not what it used to be; the sanctuary is not filled as it might have once been; the people of the community do not seem as willing to hear God’s call to come alongside of us and follow Jesus Christ … and yet, the challenge remains and is even now still before us.

We are in the same position as the Corinthians: called by God to give of ourselves for the sake of the ministry of Jesus Christ in the world.  We are called from our abundance to provide for others in their scarcity.  Certainly, those who have gone before us have provided for us! Consider: Who among us was present when the cornerstone of this great edifice for Christ was laid?  Who among us raised the rafters and set them into place?  Who secured the pews in their places?  None of us!  Yet, all this has occurred because those saints of the Lord who came before us answer the challenge, heard the call and committed themselves to the work of Christ!  

The question today is: will we do it?  Will we respond with the kind of faith that inspires others, provides for from our abundance for the scarcity of others and represents a real sacrifice for us?  Will we do it?

            Charles Hodge was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 19^th century.  He was well-known for being proud that “no new idea” ever came from a Princetonian; he was that entrenched in tradition and the past … he was, in short, a good Presbyterian.  Anyway, Hodges wrote a commentary on II Corinthians in which he commented upon the subject of genuine response to a call for generosity.  He wrote:

“The real test of the genuineness of any inward affection is not so much the character of the feeling as it reveals itself in our consciousness, as the course of action to which it leads.  Many persons, if they judged themselves by their feelings, would regard themselves as truly compassionate; but a judgment founded on the acts would lead to the opposite conclusion.  So many suppose they really love God because they are conscious of feelings which they dignify with that name; yet they do not obey him.  It is thereby by the fruits of feeling we must judge its genuineness both in ourselves and others.”

Dr. Hodge echoes the sentiments of Paul: it is a case of judging one’s eagerness by placing it alongside one’s earnestness.  To put it more succinctly: Genuine response to God’s call is not so much how we feel about it, but rather what we do about it.  What counts then is not so much the feeling, but the doing something about the challenge placed before us.

            It is important here to revisit and expand that opening quotation I offered from the 1932 Book of Common Worship:

“A particular Presbyterian church, so far as adults are concerned, is constituted and organized as such, by a number of individuals, professing to walk together as the disciples of Jesus Christ, on the principles of the Confession of Faith and Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church, and the election and ordination of one or more ruling elders, who, by the ordination service, become the spiritual rulers of the persons voluntarily submitting themselves to their authority in the Lord.”

            You will be glad to know that our spiritual leaders, the elders and deacons of our church, have answered the challenge that our current financial situation has placed before us.  As part of our Stewardship campaign this year, the Stewardship Committee held a Leadership Challenge Retreat to which the elders and the deacons were invited.  We met together, prayed together, discussed the church together, and worshipped together.  It was a wonderful morning and when the leaders were asked to make their pledges first, before the congregation, they did.  As you can see in the First View, the results were inspiring … The average pledge card came to just under $4,000 for next year’s budget.  The average increase from their pledge last year was just over 10%.  Now, that is leadership; that’s really doing something about the challenge that has been set before us for the sake of Jesus Christ.

            Just as Paul gave the Corinthians an example in the Macedonians, so too have we received an example of leadership from our elders and deacons.  Is a ten percent increase appropriate for your answer to the challenge?  Would increasing your pledge to meet the average of your church’s leadership, at $4,000 be the appropriate answer for you?  I don’t know; you’ll have to answer that between yourself and God.

            What I do know is this: We may not remember the names or the amounts of the donors and their pledges in Corinth, but we know that their answer to Paul’s challenge has provided for us. Because of them, we have learned of God’s love in Jesus Christ; we have come to be included in this great divine endeavor that we call church; we have had the scarcity of our lives in sin replaced with the abundance of God’s grace in Christ.  We know all of this because they answered the call … Now, what will we do?

A Simple Question – Matthew 22:15-22 -Ordinary 29 – October 16, 2011

 Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

            Soren Kierkegaard, great Danish philosopher of the early 19^th century, wrote a little treatise entitled: “Purity of the heart is to will one thing.”  I’ve thought of that title often over my years of ministry and I think that its sentiment is akin to what Jesus is saying in this passage we hear today from Matthew.  It’s an unfamiliar concept for most of us in this postmodern world, but Kierkegaard advocated that true discipleship of Jesus Christ included willing one thing amongst the many things that could be willed by the human soul.  Just as Jesus implied that there were competing claims for our allegiance (i.e. Caesar and God), Kierkegaard saw that only one allegiance was worth the will of the human soul: God.

            I read an article this past week written by a Protestant minister that began with this story:

“I was emphasizing to parents of confirmands that the young people should be with their families in worship as part of their preparation for membership. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have time for worship,’ one mother told me after the meeting. Her words were soothing and gentle, yet they sounded condescending, as if she were explaining something to a not-very-bright child. ‘We’ve committed to soccer and cheerleading for my youngest on Sunday mornings. We have a full plate. Maybe in a few years.’  This same woman had been adamant that her children be baptized and confirmed. Although she and her family could fit in brief forays into religious rites, other activities were more important than a steady commitment to the church.

Not to sound too preachy here, but it is obvious that that woman has already answered the question that has been placed before Jesus to her own satisfaction whether she realized it or not.

            Such compartmentalization of our faith and our faithful response to God is not that uncommon.  We all have competing claims upon our lives; just like those to whom Jesus directed his response to the question.  The people of Israel definitely had plainly defined and also insidious claims upon them, just as we do … and the most powerful of those claims came not from external sources, but rather from internal.

            Remember, it was Kierkegaard who said: “Purity of the heart is to will one thing …”

            In the same article that began with the story about the confirmands and the parents, Dr. Thomas Kelly, Quaker missionary and scholar is quoted:

“We are trying to be several selves at once, without all of our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us.  Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves …”

When I read this I was nearly panicked … a committee of selves within the one?  Oh my, not another committee!  I don’t know if I can take being on yet another committee!

            Studies have shown that a fair amount of folks drop out of participation in church when they have served on a committee.  Isn’t that strange?  Is committee work that wrangled, boring or inept that it causes us to drop out of activity or participation because we just can’t take it?

            I remember once hearing a story about a church in conflict.  One-third of the membership had stopped participating and were withholding funds.  A committee of five members of the Session was drafted to interview the disgruntled third and report back.  They did and they themselves resigned from the board and the church!  Amazing what a little committee work can do …

            Anyway, back to what Dr. Kelly has to say:

“Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves … And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not cooperative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes … It is as if we have a chairman of our committee of many selves within us who does not integrate the many into one but who merely counts the votes at each decision, and leaves disgruntled minorities … We are not integrated.  We are distraught.  We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all … Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center … Most of us, I fear, have not surrendered all else, in order to attend to the Holy Within.”

Haven’t you felt just like that … tugged and pulled internally in so many different ways that you don’t know where to turn?  The pace of our culture and the activities of our children and those that attract us; the speed of media dissemination of news and the call to service of fellow humanity and neighbor; the pressures of work, familiar relationships and all else weighing down upon us.  Of course we have bifurcated souls; of course we have a committee of many selves in our heads: we are a divided people.  We don’t know with what we should align ourselves, pledge ourselves, and give ourselves.

            As Kelly said, life is meant to be lived from the Center, a divine center.  Kierkegaard put it more succinctly: “Purity of the heart is to will one thing!”

            Here’s the golden moment that Jesus’ words leap out at us from the pages of the Gospel of Matthew.  Asked whether or not it was okay to pay taxes, Jesus requests a coin be produced and after seeing the likeness of Caesar upon it proclaims that well-known, but little understood line: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

            I say that it is little understood because it has been used to bolster the idea of the bifurcated soul.  That is, folks have pointed to this and have added in Aristotle’s: “All things in moderation” and come up with some kind of justification for a sacrifice free way of living out the Christian faith.

            I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is NOT what Christ is saying.

            Dorothy Day, great Catholic advocate for the poor, has said this about the Matthew passage: “If we gave God all that belongs to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar.”  Amen?  I say Amen!

            Or how about this little aphorism from William Sloan Coffin, former chaplain of Yale University and advocate in his own right:

“Then I saw another thing: that a broken pride does not make for passivity as I had thought.  ‘The world owes me a living’— that’s passive. ‘I owe the world and God a life’ – that’s active.”

Wow!  Now I like that!  I think that might be right at the point that Christ is speaking to his listeners in the Gospel of Matthew.  We owe God a life of service and devotion.  God owes us nothing.  We owe God.

            I think that this particular feeling is rather foreign to our little self-committee holdings it’s raucous and noisy board meeting in our heart and our head.  It’s foreign to us to think that we really owe anything to God.  Isn’t everything from God free?  If it isn’t, where do I send the check?  To whom do I make it out?

            Again, if that’s our response, and it’s sometimes mine I’ll admit, then we’ve missed the point.  It’s the life we owe to God.

            Think about it.  What a wondrous and rare gift life is.  We all know that life can be gone in a shockingly brief amount of time.  The one who walked out of the door of the house with keys in hand confident that she would return by supper-time may be gone in an instant.  Life is precious and it is a gift from God.  Our lives must be lived then in response to God.

            Here’s the point that Christ is making with his eloquent turn of the phrase and the flip of a coin: give to God what is God’s … your heart and soul … your loving devotion and thanksgiving … your work and your service … your whole self, without excuse.  Remember that you belong to God when you make decisions about what to do with your time on Sunday mornings and Tuesday afternoons.  Remember that you belong to God when you fill you that cards sent from the Stewardship Committee, including and most poignantly, the pledge card that is yet to come. 

Remember that you have been called to a higher calling … to make a difference for Jesus Christ in this world … you … yes you with your little committee of selves already lobbying the chair of heart and head with all kinds of objections over the demand that Christ is obviously put on you.  Yes, you heard right: demands … the way of Christ in this world does make demands of us.  In Jesus Christ, God is loudly making his demands known …

            So what in your life (or how much of your life) belongs to God?  Is it not your whole life, your whole committee of selves in that bifurcated soul of yours?  Of course it is.  It all belongs to God.  Now, let us, you and I, live our lives as if we believed that: Render to Caesar what is his, and to God … everything!

Proper Attire?  Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 & Matthew 22:1-14 Ordinary 28 – October 9, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, ¹²and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless.

            Mark Twain, great American author and humorist of the 19^th century, rather famously said: “Clothes make the man. Naked people rarely have much influence on world history.”

            Today’s parable from Jesus has much to say about having the proper attire at the right event.  It is a parable that is often misunderstood and, I believe, misinterpreted.  Yet, it is a difficult word from Jesus that we receive this morning.  We, however, should be getting used to that … Jesus seems to always be saying something difficult!

            “Clothes make the man …” that’s how the old saying goes and that’s been a byword with me.  I learned early in my ministry that folks really do judge you as a pastor by the manner of your dress.  If the event calls for something formal, wear something formal; if the event calls for a robe, make sure that you have your robe handy.  These were lessons that I learned about my calling and the realities of living out that calling in our culture.

            The Parable of the Wedding Guests echoes the sentiment of proper attire appropriate to the event.  The parable entails the treatment of the messengers who are sent out to collect the guest of the wedding.  They are beaten, abused and killed.  What a guest list!!!  The parable borders upon implausibility, for who, in their right mind, kills their mail carrier for delivering a wedding invitation?  Who would assault the limo driver who pulls up into your driveway to convey you to your boss’s daughter’s wedding service?  No, it just doesn’t seem right that the approved guest treated the servants of the king in such low and mean ways.

            However, if you think of it this way, it comes a bit clearer:  What about all the folks who are invited to various events and find that on the appointed day they have other more attractive plans?  Folks who find that the Saturday morning tail-gating is more important to them than their own niece’s wedding?  Or people who find a trip to the mall as more compelling than cleaning up the highway; a day spent idling with their own concerns as more appealing than joining in a family reunion? Now, it sounds more plausible and more common to our own experience of the demands that are placed on our time and the decisions that we must make.  All of us, every one of us, have competing claims for our time, our talents and our treasure.

Of the many activities that my wife and I do together, one is the prioritization of our giving.  Sometimes we sit down and talk about weighty commitments that we make: the annual giving to the church or a pledge for a capital campaign of one of those institutions that we support. Other times, it’s a local push for a Day of Giving by many of the civic-minded organizations we support.  We’re bombarded with requests to give on that particular day so that our gifts might be more generous with the assistance of matching grants.  When those days come around, we sit down and decide what we will give to which institution and which of us will actually visit the website.  Regardless, it takes some time and commitment and decision-making … it is akin to donning the proper attire for the appropriate event … you have to think about it a bit and maybe even prayer about it a touch!

Some time ago, I was mortified by my own lack of preparation and appropriate consideration.  I was called on a dreary Tuesday morning by a funeral director wanting to know if I was coming to the do the service at their funeral home or not.  When I asked when, he said: “NOW!”

That’s right, I had done the one thing that no minister should ever do: I forget about a funeral service I was called to do.

I was not dressed appropriately: certainly, I had on a tie and shirt, but wore only a sports jacket and slacks, not a sincere, gray, pin-striped Presbyterian Pastor’s suit!  I couldn’t appear before those doubly grieved people in that manner. I say doubly-grieved because my forgetfulness and insensitivity in not showing up further added to the grief they were already enduring … I just couldn’t I appear to them in only a jacket and slacks.  So this is what I did: I took my robe with me.  I put that robe on and made my way through the service in the funeral home.  That robe covered, you might say, a multitude of sins, but it couldn’t cover my lack of attention to that family.  I could provide the proper attire by covering what I had on under my robe, but I couldn’t hide my insensitivity in letting other concerns that had been on my mind crowd out remembering my responsibilities to the family. I was mortified about it and am still to this day.

The man who is not dressed appropriately at the end of the parable is a man who has been thoughtless at best and arrogant at worst.  This becomes clearer when you consider the cultural context of Jesus’ parable. The man had to sidestep the offer of a robe that would have been provided for him as he entered the wedding space.  The tradition of the time and culture was that the host, the king in this case, provided wedding garments at the door for their guest.  This one, preferred to appear on his merit as it were, rather than to accept being covered by the gracious provision of the king.

Now, maybe it is getting even clearer: in Jesus Christ, we have not only been included in the great banquet of God’s kingdom, we have been clothed appropriately in his sacrifice for us.  We have been robed in Christ’s mercy rather than standing on our merits before God.  Any one of us who refuses to respond to God’s grace may find ourselves in the same predicament of the poorly attired guest.  But, then, who would refuse mercy and grace?

Andrew Purves, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, wrote this about our passage:

“…the parable carries us into the subtle relation between the grace of election (all were invited) and the obligations of the obedience (to be clothed with Christ, to live in Christ).  Grace is freely given, situating us in God’s company by an act of loving election.  As a consequence, we are obliged to live as God’s people, according to God’s will for our lives.  To do so is to give honor to the king, to God, and to live in terms of God’s claim upon us. The failure to do so is to scorn God’s love, God’s choice of us.  It is to assert our autonomy, to live in pride, which means that we are found clothed with ourselves rather than with Christ.”

So, the proper kingdom attire is really being clothed not with our own achievements, but rather to be clothed in Jesus Christ.

            This means trusting in God’s love and mercy in Christ more than in our own abilities to fulfill the law or be good people in and of ourselves.  It means accepting Christ’s work on our behalf as more valuable than our own work in this world.  It is a hard learning … a difficult parable … but finally, and completely, it really is the only proper attire … the very attire of grace in Christ.  Thanks be to God!

Who Owns the Church? Psalm 19 & Matthew 21:33-46; Ordinary 27 –October 2, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

              Early in my ministry, a long time ago now, I was sent to visit a man in the hospital who had miraculously survived a very serious accident.  He was a former member of my church at the time and I expected to find him grateful for having been preserved in the face of death.

            Instead, I found the man angry.  He told me of all the clubs and jobs and institutions of which he had once been a part and then left.  He left one country club because they didn’t manage the putting greens well; he left the one that he joined after that because the wait staff didn’t show him suitable respect … “they didn’t know their place …”  He married and had children and then left those relationships to form new ones.  He had been a Methodist until they held a building campaign and then left them to become a Presbyterian.  I never learned why he had left the Presbyterian Church, but I don’t think it very much mattered.

            What amazed me was this man’s self-consuming anger that just completely blotted out any realization that his life had been spared and that it might have been appropriate for him to be grateful.  His life, such as it was, was indeed a gift of God and therefore something good … why did he appear to hate it so?

            How can anyone hate what is good?  It is a kind of philosophical question I suppose, but in the context of this morning’s readings from scripture, it is much more a theological queston: “How can anyone hate what is good?”

            The workers in the vineyard of Jesus’ parable for this morning hate what is good.  They do not want to be reminded that they owe the fruit of the vineyard to the owner of that vineyard.  They would rather react violently to efforts of that same owner to collect upon what was duly and rightfully his than to actually acknowledge their dependence and need for that owner.  They do not want to acknowledge the good; they rather turn to the dark side and stake their own claims for that which is not really theirs. 

            Too many commentators have, over the years, resorted to making this simple parable an allegorical statement of condemnation of the Jewish people.  In their eyes, it is simple: God is the owner, the people of Israel are the workers, the slaves sent who are battered and beaten are the prophets and, of course, finally, the son who is sent and killed is obviously Jesus.  The logic runs: the people of Israel not only mistreated the prophets but they killed the Son of God, Jesus Christ and are therefore, deserving of all the condemnation that we can heap upon them.

            Nothing could be further from the truth!

            The parable is about recognizing that we are all dependent upon God and are therefore accountable to God for the gifts of life.  The parable is about the vineyard of life and about the workers who are given so much and so much is expected from them.  The parable is about how we, the workers, are called to care for the vineyard and be receptive to the visitations and expectations of the owner of the same vineyard, God himself.

            You see, the problem in the parable is that the workers within that vineyard began to see that they owed nothing to the owner of the vineyard.  They had worked long and hard in amongst the vines and they felt that they deserved ultimate sway, ultimate say and ultimate choice over what was and what wasn’t theirs.  They came to believe that they actually owned the vineyards themselves and they offered only ridicule and violence to those who were sent by the owner to tell them otherwise.

            If we are honest, this may be our very stance when it comes to our lives.  We conveniently forget that we had no hand in the making of our lives.  We did not decide when we would be born or to whom or where.  This is where I agree with the Christian Existentialists who say that we have “thrust into being.”  None of us decided when or where we first saw the light of day; all of us understand innately that life is a gift and if it is a gift, there is certainly a Giver: God.

            No, we understand that, but we continue to believe that our lives are just that: OUR lives.  We believe that we can do with them as we wish and that we will be the ones who have to face any consequences from the common, ordinary course of life.  We, sometimes, forget that there are consequences beyond just what we might face in this world for poor life-decisions … there is the ultimate consequence that comes from denying to God what really is God’s.

            This is why there are some moments in our lives when we might catch ourselves actually hating what is good.  We don’t like to be reminded of the ultimate goodness of God because we know that to acknowledge that means that we must acknowledge we are NOT gods ourselves! We are not the masters of our ultimate fate, only God is!  We are not self-made men and women; we are made by God and, most importantly, we are made FOR God.

            The chief priests and scribes did not like to hear this parable; not in the least.  There are parts of our own heart that causes us to shrink from the import of Jesus’ worlds and scramble to offer a different, alternative interpretation, such as saying it was the fault of the Jews or it was the fault of the religious leaders.  All the while, we know the truth in our own hearts: it is us.  We are the people who have refused to listen when it has mattered most and preferred our ways to God’s new and living way in Jesus Christ.

            This is why communion is so very important to us.  Here is a reminder that we cannot claim to be divinity; that we cannot claim to have ultimate sway over our own lives.  We belong to the Lord … the only legitimate response for us is gratitude!  In Jesus Christ, God has reached out to us and provided us with a vineyard called life.  God has set table in the kingdom of heaven and transferred it to here in our midst and bid us to come, partake of these gifts of God and acknowledge that we, the church, belong not to ourselves but to our God.

            I am reminded of the opening lines of the old Heidelberg Catechism that seems almost a direct response or antidote for the behavior of the workers in the parable of today:

 Q. 1. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

A. That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him. 

 And so, as the old confession says, let us be made wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Lessons in the Way: Romans 9:1-5 & Matthew 14:13-21; Ordinary 18-July 31, 2011

Rev. Martin R. Ankrum

21   ¹⁵When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ ¹⁶Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ ¹⁷

            Right now, the balance between scarcity and abundance appears to be sharply defined.  We live in the wealthiest society in the history of humankind and yet our elected representatives are engaged in a much publicized struggle in order to save the nation from bankruptcy.  The whole nation appears to be holding our collective breath over what might just happen between now and the deadline of two days from now.

Into this milieu of panic and concern enters our text for this 18^th Sunday of Ordinary Time: the story of “The Feeding of the Five Thousand.”  I believe that this story says so much to we who profess belief in a generous and loving God; those who profess belief in a compassionate and wise Savior, Jesus Christ; those who have faith and trust that the world is not really just about what is tallied and counted, but rather about what is given and received and the abundance of life in the midst of a persistent tendency in the human heart to take scarcity of resources and scarcity of love as the norm.  This little story speaks volumes to us in our need and in our hope.

So, in composing this sermon, I decided to do something a little differently.  This sermon is not so much my commentary on the text as much as it is a compilation of some of the abundance of illustrations that others have used to shine a light on this old story.  So, without any further ado, hear now from others … others who have either contemplated this text or have illustrated it without even knowing it.

Gandhi, the great Indian mystic and activist has said: “There is enough for our need, but not for our greed.”¹

From a sermon entitled, “You Provide the Bread,” delivered by the Rev. Dr. William J. Carl, III, President of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary hear these two fascinating stories:

There was once a missionary in the Philippines who worked in the gold-mining communities of Bagio. He led many worship services in little huts that had been put up on stilts because of the monsoon rains. One Sunday he went up into a little hut only to find it packed with people. It was communion Sunday. In the front was a little table covered to the floor with white cloth. On it were a little piece of bread and a tiny Dixie cup filled with grape juice. He wondered whether these elements would be enough for this large group huddled together. But he forged ahead. He said the words over the bread and passed it around. Somehow, miraculously, a small corner of it came back. Then he took the little cup in his hand as he had held that silver chalice many times back in the states and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink ye all of it.” He passed it around. It made it through the first two rows and came back. It was set on the table in front of him, empty. They looked at him smiling as if to say, “Produce some more now.” He looked about frantically for a bottle of grape juice. There was none in sight. He prayed, “Lord, help me” and suddenly a little brown arm came up from under the table and snatched the cup off. The missionary smiled at the people nervously and then pulled up the cloth only to see a little Filipino man with a pitcher of water and four packages of grape fizzies! Dropping the cloth quickly, the missionary looked back at the crowd smiling confidently. Pretty soon a little brown arm came up and placed a full cup of grape juice on top of the table. And off they went with the rest of the service. “You provide the bread; let me take care of the miracle.”

And …

What preacher who has spent a lifetime preaching in a pulpit has not known the frustration of a sermon that seemed limp on Saturday night, but soared Sunday morning by the power of the Spirit? “You provide the bread. Let me take care of the miracle,” says the Lord.

And so it happened with a little man in North Carolina named Mr. Beam. He was a minister for a while in small country churches. Oh, how he loved to preach the Word, to stand before a little huddle of God’s people and preach the Word from the Book. He considered it the greatest honor and privilege a person could ever have. But then he developed a problem with his throat. And that was the end of his preaching. It nearly broke his heart — the man who loved preaching so much.

When he died, he left all he had to a church in Charlotte for “purposes of evangelism” he said. What he left grew and grew and now, single-handedly supports the weekly television ministry. And it is said around Charlotte that in a single service on any given Sunday, more people hear the message of Christ than Mr. Beam ever preached to in a whole lifetime. “You provide the bread. Let God take care of the miracle.”²

As a kind of homiletics bridge hear this commentary about the Feeding of the Five Thousand from Amy B. Hunter, Episcopalian poet and minister:

Jesus insists that his disciples make such compassion their own work as well. This feeding is not a razzle-dazzle spectacle to boost Jesus’ image with the crowd. It begins with the insistence that the disciples themselves give the people something to eat. This story is not one of a wonder worker and his astonished onlookers, but the much bigger one of Jesus charging those who follow him to be agents of God’s compassion and power.

I have a friend who has been described as, among many other things, “a Buddhist, Anglican sympathizer, and an-tirealist about God.” Although he’s not a Christian, he loves chapels and likes to kneel quietly beneath stained glass. He imagines that others perceive him to be trespassing in “our space” and in “our story.” Paul and Jesus challenge me to see that there can be no possibility of trespass, because the story is always larger than we imagine. Paul claims that no one is “out,” neither the people of Israel for not accepting the Christian story nor the non-Jewish people for not being part of Israel’s story. God’s story is a far greater story, one able to hold all the stories and characters.

Even more, Jesus insists that the story is one of enveloping compassion. All that the people have to do to be fed is be hungry and in need. No creeds, no spiritual or cultural pedigrees, no vows of loyalty are required. “You give them something to eat,” Jesus charges his disciples then and today. To all who come, whether to be healed, to be fed, to doubt or simply to kneel beneath stained glass, Jesus insists that the church claim a story big enough to hold them all.

They need not go away.³

 Rev. Hunter has a great point … we, the church, has been called upon, like those disciples in the story, to help be the conduit for God’s abundance in a world dominated by impossibilities and scarcity.

William Willimon, the United Methodist bishop, has a story made to order:

I know a church in the heart of one of our large cities. It once was a large, thriving downtown church. Over the past two decades it has shrunk to nearly nothing. A young woman went to be the pastor at the church. In a sermon one Sunday she noted how impressed she was by all of the children who walked past the church each afternoon after school, all of the children who played in the church playground in the afternoons.

“Few of those children have parents at home in the afternoon. That means that most of them go home to an empty house or else hang out on the streets on their own, and you know what that can lead to,” she told the congregation. “I wonder if God is calling somebody here, this morning, to respond to this. I look out and I see experienced, wise people who, in their day, were masters at raising children. Is this your day to step up and raise someone else’s child?”

That next week six of her members, among them one of the oldest people in the congregation, volunteered to begin an after school ministry at the church. They were soon joined by a dozen others who provided recreation, homework tutoring, and refreshments for the children every afternoon from four until six.

Out of that ministry there has arisen a new church. That congregation is now thriving with an influx of families and people from the neighborhood.

“You don’t have to be a great church to have a great ministry,” the pastor commented. “The American family is in such lousy shape, there are so many kids out there who are forced to fend for themselves, all you need is a surplus of older people. God had already given us all we needed to have a future as a church.”⁴

Or more to the point, a story about this abundance of love which originates from God between two persons and the sharing of that abundance totally overcoming the scarcity that one person has been experiencing:

In her memoir, The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird, tells of the power of words of acceptance in her own life.  She was born with multiple birth defects: deaf in one ear, a cleft palate, a disfigured face, a crooked nose, lopsided feet.  As a child, Mary Ann suffered not only physical impairments but also the emotional damage inflicted by other children. “Oh, Mary Ann,” her classmates would say, “what happened to your lip?”

“I cut it on a piece of glass,” she would lie

One of the worst experiences at school, she reported, was the day of the annual hearing test.  The teacher would call each child to her desk, and the child would cover first one ear, and then the other.  The teacher would whisper something to the child like, “The sky is blue” or “You have new shoes.” This was “the whisper test”; if the teacher’s phrase was heard and repeated, the child passed the test.  To avoid the humiliation of failure, Mary Ann would always cheat on the test, secretly cupping her hand over her one good ear so that she still hear what the teacher said.

One year Mary Ann was in the class of Miss Leonard, one of the most beloved teachers in the school.  Every student, including Mary Ann, wanted to be noticed by her, wanted to be her pet.  Then came the day of the dreaded hearing test.  When her turn came, Mary Ann was called to the teacher’s desk.  As Mary Ann cupped her hand over her good ear, Miss Leonard leaned forward to whisper.  “I waited for those words,” Mary Ann wrote, “which God must have put into her mouth, those seven words which changed my life.” Miss Leonard did not say “The sky is blue” or “You have new shoes.” What she whispered was “I wish you were my little girl.” Mary Ann went on to become a teacher herself, a person of inner beauty and great kindness.⁵

Finally, I close with the inspiring words of Charles Allen from a sermon delivered in 2002 about that original story we heard about The Feeding of the Five Thousand:

This story invites us to see that what’s most true about it is what we can’t explain. It means to break open our chronic tendency to shrink God’s generosity down to the limits of whatever we happen to think is possible. No doubt miracle stories grow in the telling. And I’m not about to suggest adding a prayer for multiplication to the Prayer Book – we probably all agree on how well that one would work. But we do tend to shrink God’s generosity to fit our versions of the world.

And that shrinking tendency lies behind most of the rotten things the church has done to people in Christ’s name over the past two thousand years. Just last week, Boston’s Cardinal Law, speaking at a youth gathering in Canada, tried to shift attention from his own scandals in the time-honored Christian practice of attacking somebody else.

First, he said that Catholics shouldn’t even attend gay union celebrations. (So don’t bother sending him an invitation.) And then he promised that women would never be ordained as priests. These are his words: “It’s one of those things that I don’t think about, because it can’t change … Just rest comfortably in the faith, and understand that this has nothing to do [with] equality.”Right.

It can’t change … Just rest comfortably in the faith … I don’t think about it. Those are pretty revealing phrases. And it wasn’t that long ago that most Episcopal bishops said things like that too, though our current bishop takes a different view. But do you hear that shrinkage at work? God’s generosity only works this way, not that way. It can’t change – no women priests, to say nothing of bishops, and no union celebrations. They’re just not possible.

When Jesus’ disciples said certain things just weren’t possible, he had a different response. He took their stingy little worlds, then he blessed them, then he broke them open, and then he gave them out. And the impossible happened.

He took, he blessed, he broke, he gave. That’s not the only time he performed those four actions. And we’re about to perform them too. Now we call them the Offertory, the Great Thanksgiving, the Fraction, and the Communion. We take, we bless, we break, we give. And then, we’re promised, impossible things can happen.

Maybe you’ll find you can afford to forgive somebody after all. Maybe you’ll get forgiven. … Maybe we can make more of a difference around here than we ever dreamed. Maybe you’ll find that you still have more faith than you know what to do with, just when you thought it had run dry. If you listen to people’s stories here, you know that impossible things like these happen every week, every day. The limits of our world break open, and we’re awash in God’s generosity.⁶

 1.             Summers, Charles A., Interpretation, 59, No. 3, July 2005, p. 298.

2.             Carl, William J, III, “You Provide the Bread,” from Church People Beware! Sermons for Sundays After Pentecost (Middle Third).

3.             Hunter, Amy B., “Living by the Word,” Christian Century, July 26, 2005, p. 18.

4.             Willimon, William H., Pulpit Resource, Vol. 39, No. 3, p. 23.
5.             Long, Thomas G., Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004, p. 86 – I am indebted to William Willimon for this resource.

6.             Allen, Charles W., “A Sermon: When Worlds Break Open,” Encounter, 65, No. 1, Winter 2004, pp. 75-76.