It’s a good thing it’s not all up to us.

Bulletin April 27

Scripture: 1 Peter 3:12-22 Acts 17:22-31

John 14:15-21

Message April 27

It was a congregational meeting, almost 30 years ago. The budget-cutters were wringing their hands. “We’re spending more money than we’re collecting,” they said. The membership committee was worried. Membership was down to half what it had been a decade earlier.
These church leaders looked down the road and what they saw scared them. They thought it was all up to them, and they didn’t know what to do. They talked about cutting back – close the building during the week to save utility bills, cut the Sunday School budget, cut back on mission contributions.
But a young mother stood up and said that this congregation would run out of people before it ran out of money, especially if they kept running the church like a closed club. She referred to the parable of the talents and she begged the congregation not to bury their considerable resources in the ground. The people who died and left the church money in their wills wanted it to be used to increase the kingdom.
The congregation prayed for guidance and searched their hearts.
Instead of cutting the budget, the Session voted to hire a Christian Education director. Years later, their second CE director went to seminary under the care of this congregation. She was the congregation’s second woman ministerial candidate. I am the seventh.
If you had asked this comfortable congregation struggling to find its place in an inner tier suburb where their children were becoming a minority in the public school … if you had asked them to become a major supporter of women in the ministry, they would have looked at you like you were daft. “Why us?” They would have said.
It’s a good thing it’s not all up to us.
God had plans for them.

Just five years ago, another congregation celebrated their 150th anniversary holding their breath. They had enough money to pay their pastor, but their long-time members were dying off and few younger people were joining to replace them. Children’s Sunday School had all but ended, for lack of children to attend.
One Sunday, a poor African woman who had moved into the neighborhood came to worship. The congregation welcomed her. As a result of that welcome, she brought friends and family. They were Liberian refugees, the poorest of the poor, having spent as many as 15 years in refugee camps. The church leaders prayed for guidance: what are we to do to help these people when we hardly have enough money to get by ourselves?
They sought a grant and leased a school bus. 23 adults joined the church, many of them through adult baptism. The Sunday School is so full they have trouble finding teachers and buying curriculum. But it is a problem they seek to solve with joy. They still have money problems, but they’re no longer frightened of the future.
If you had asked Carondelet-Markham Memorial whether they should seek to serve an immigrant refugee population, they would have looked at you like you were daft. “Why us?” They might have said.
It’s a good thing it’s not all up to us.
God had plans for them.
Neither of these congregations planned their rebirth. What they have in common is that most of the members clearly loved their church and they loved God.
God sent someone to show them how they could use their gifts to increase the kingdom.
Those of you who are regulars at altworship have already realized that this message is a departure from my usual message. Usually I tell a story right out of scripture. Today, I’m applying the scripture first.
Lets look briefly at the gospel message and the letter from Peter. Jesus tells his disciples and Peter tells his listeners that God will not desert them. They are not alone when they seek to do God’s will. Neither are we.
When we forget that, we practice what one author (whose name I cannot recall) has called practical atheism. That is, we act like it’s all up to us, as if there was no God to guide and help us.
I am as guilty of this as any of you. Each week I prepare an altworship service and a message wondering who will be there to participate. On those Sunday afternoons when I know none of the regulars plan to attend — my daughter Julie and her boyfriend, Ben, my preaching partner Serenia, Pastor Gibson-Turner, the elders Cozart – when any of them or maybe all of them have told me, “I can’t be there tonight,” I wonder, who am I doing this for?
And then I pray that God will send someone to worship with me. And I remember, I am doing this for God. If it’s God’s will that people show up, then they’ll show up. If it’s God’s will that I continue, no matter who shows up, then I’ll continue.
I know Berea is coming to a crossroads. Don’t feel alone. Nearly every church comes to this crossroad – more times than some leaders even realize – what are we doing? And how are we to keep on in the face of these difficulties?
I know, too, that you members of Berea love your church and you love God. The Holy Spirit is in you.
So first, listen to your pastor. She’s been telling you to wait for the Lord.
And next, listen to this preacher. While you’re waiting, pray for guidance. Ask God, what would you have us do?

I brought a book I’m rereading that I recommend for you to read, individually or as a group: “Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism.”

And remember, it’s not all up to you.
Jesus did not leave you orphans.

Praise God. Amen.

“I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

Bulletin April 20

Scripture: Psalm 31 (The Message), 1 Peter 2:1-10

John 14:1-14

Message Apr 20
“I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

Who’s on First. What’s on Second and I Don’t Know is on Third.
That’s the classic American expression of people talking at cross purposes, and cluelessly or willfully, misunderstanding each other. How many times have you wanted to interrupt that routine and say to both Abbot and Costello – Stop it! Who, What, and I Don’t Know are players’ names. The first baseman is Taiwanese and his last name is spelled HU, pronounced like the pronoun, “Who.”

We have a similar misunderstanding being expressed in this Bible passage. Jesus says he goes to prepare a place for the disciples and that he is the way to get there. But do they understand? No. They ask for a map.
He says the disciples know the Father – God – through him. And they ask for an introduction.
In essence, the disciples want to Google God. Just give me the search terms and I’ll find the answer on the Internet.
Our modern-day misunderstanding continues in this passage, when Jesus’s offer to answer prayer requests is reduced to the prosperity gospel: You want a Mercedes? Just ask in prayer and if you trust enough, Jesus will see that you get it.

I believe that language is God’s gift which makes us human. But language also limits us and keeps us from fully understanding God or sharing our insights. So we are thrown back on metaphor, on figures of speech or narratives to tell our truths. Jesus tells his disciples, if you can’t believe or understand what I’m saying, then look at what I’m doing. Or if you can’t understand the words, understand your experience.

I’m going go bite off a leetle tiny piece of this passage and try to understand it through experience. Jesus said he is “in” the Father and the Father is “in” him. There’s a lot of theology hanging on this phrase. I’m going to look at one tiny word, one of the shortest in the whole passage: “in”

In?
As in, “in the groove,” “in the moment” “in sync”

My mother-in-law, Ruth, is tasting, for the first time, the experience of being a journalist. She’s writing a story for the newsletter of her senior citizens’ residence. And she’s having a lot of fun, as well as frustration, in getting this story just right.
She told us the other night in our every-other-day phone conversation that she got some very good feedback on her story from one of her friends. She started revising the story and she got so immersed in the excitement of creation and revision that she missed her hair appointment. She never misses a hair appointment. But she was so caught up in the moment.
Barry and I both recognized the feeling. She was “in” that story, that process of writing, so completely that she forgot everything else, even the sacrosanct weekly hair appointment.

I recognized that feeling. It’s what kept me working at the newspaper for so long. It didn’t happen all the time, just every now and then – driving back from an interview or a breaking news story and the lead would come to me, and I couldn’t wait to get to a keyboard to write it down. I knew what my colleagues meant when they would say, “this story wrote itself.” They were “in” the groove.

Song writers, poets, novelists, have been quoted saying much the same thing. “The characters are in charge of my novel.” “I set out to say one thing, and the song took over.” “This poem wrote itself. I just tweaked it.”

I’ve felt this “in” feeling, singing with choral groups. Not every song, not every performance or worship service. But now and then, the choir or chorus would be singing an especially demanding or meaningful piece of music and everything would come together so powerfully that when we were finished, we would be standing in awe. Sometimes, this awe would bounce back from the congregation or audience in a silence that was electric. I have occasionally been in the audience when that happened with a singer or group in a concert. There’s a hush before the clapping begins, a collective “in sync” of appreciation for what just happened.

I’ve felt this “in” feeling sometimes in prayer. It’s always when I’m praying with someone, whether I’m speaking or someone else is speaking, or in one case, when no one was speaking. When Joseph Pulitzer Jr. died, all the employees of the Post-Dispatch gathered in the lobby and second-floor balcony for a moment of silent prayer. Hundreds of people just standing there, not saying anything. But most of us were praying.
The feeling was so powerful it almost knocked me over. A whoosh of energy that you could almost hear. After we heard the “amen,” I turned to the woman next to me, Sue Thomson, and she acknowledged my unspoken question: “That was powerful, wasn’t it?” she said. And I knew she had felt it too.
We were “in” prayer.

These “in” moments are intellectual, they’re creative, they’re mental, they’re emotional and they’re physical. Mere words can’t begin to describe them, but you know the experience.

So now I’m going to ask you, for a brief – please – description of when you have had that “in” feeling, of complete absorption, essential creativity, spiritual communion, divine unity or oneness.

Tell us about an “in” moment.

…

Jesus had an awareness far beyond what his disciples – including us – could sustain. For Jesus, his “in” moments were more or less all the time. And he knew them to be divine. He was “in” God and God was “in” him. Whenever we want know what that is like, we have only to believe and trust. In the original language of the gospel, one word stands for these two English words – believe and trust.

“Believe me (trust me): (Jesus said) I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. –If you can’t trust that, trust what you see—these works. — The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, — The person who believes me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things.

Believe and trust, whether it’s Jesus’s words or his works. Whether it’s the language of words or of experience. If you want to know God, study Jesus.

Jesus ends this passage with a promise. It’s not about praying to receive material goods or for things to go your way. It’s about having those “in” experiences.

Jesus says, The person who believes me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things. Because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I’ll do it. That’s how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I’ll do.

Praise God. Amen.

The Good Shepherd

Message April 13

Bulletin April 13

Psalm 23 (The Message)

1 Peter 2:20-25

John 10:1-10

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, the time in the schedule of scripture readings in the Revised Common Lectionary when several passages compare God’s care to that of a good shepherd. In the Hymn we sang, based on the 23rd Psalm, God is the shepherd. In the gospel and epistle passages, Jesus is the shepherd. In both, we are the sheep.

Are any of you farmers or relatives of farmers?
Did you ever raise sheep?

My sole understanding of sheep raising in America comes from a legendary story about my late ex-brother-in-law, Ed. He was my first husband’s oldest brother. We divorced a little more than 10 years ago and Ed died a few years after that. He was born and reared in the city of St. Louis, but he wanted to be a farmer. He majored in Agriculture at Mizzou for a year, then quit and joined the Army. After he came back from the service, he majored in accounting. But he married a farm girl and they bought a farm off Highway 3 between Waterloo and Red Bud.

Ed was an enthusiastic experimenter. He didn’t just plant strawberries. He read up on all the varieties and planted some that were good for freezing and some that were good for making jam and some that were good for eating raw. He planted grapes and made wine. He kept horses and he and his wife, Alice, would buy a couple of calves, feed them and then have them butchered, keeping some of the meat and selling the rest to his relatives.

Ed didn’t make a living farming. He worked most of his adult life as an accountant. His and Alice’s best, most successful crops were their five children and several grandchildren, all raised on the farm.
Early in his farming days, Ed decided to try sheep raising. I haven’t seen a lot of sheep in southern Illinois, but Ed wouldn’t let that stop him. He figured if you had pasture, you could raise sheep. He bought a ram and some ewes. My ex-husband was a teenager at the time of this story and tells it with great detail.
This ram was one ornery animal. It evidently had not read the scripture passage about sheep responding to their master’s voice. This ram would attack anyone who entered the pasture. Anyone including – maybe especially – Ed. Leading this sheep anywhere would have been difficult, because you couldn’t turn your back on him. He’d butt you. Ed’s wife thought it was funny. But it was a real problem for Ed. He had invested considerable money in this experiment. It would have been the early 1960s. And if I remember the story right, Ed paid $200 for the ram alone.
I don’t know enough about sheep to know if this territorial ram was typical, or if there were things Ed could have done to change the ram’s behavior. Cowboys used to sing to cows to calm them down. Does that work with sheep? I don’t know.
Anyway, one day Ed was in the sheep pasture, tending to the sheep, and he leaned over – to pick something up, or maybe to pull a weed. And the ram butted him in the behind and knocked him flat on his face.
Ed had had it with this ram. This was no placid sheep following his master’s voice. This was one dangerous, annoying animal. So he went over to the house he was remodelling for his family and he got a 2 by 4. Ed played semi-pro baseball in his younger days and he had a pretty good swing. He swung that board and hit the ram right between the eyes. My ex-husband said the ram took one shaky step and just collapsed. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Suddenly all Ed had from his sheep raising experiment was some very expensive stew meat. And a good lesson.
That was the day that Ed decided he would not raise sheep. That there was more to being a good shepherd than buying the animals and providing them with green pasture, still water and protection from predators.
Whenever I’m tempted to romanticize passages in the bible about sheep, I think of that cantankerous ram and how he met his end by butting Ed’s end. Sheep are not cuddly little stuffed animals gambolling through a Disney cartoon. They’re smelly and stupid. A good shepherd understands the sheep and has patience with them, even when they foolishly butt the man who feeds them or when they scatter and run off at the first sign of danger, as in the passage from 1st Peter.
Getting sheep to recognize your voice and to trust you and follow you is evidently not an easy thing. Well, isn’t that the way with people too. Sometimes we follow the wrong leader’s voice, or we fail to recognize the one who would best care for us. We resist and rebel. We’re not good followers. Neither were the listeners of Jesus’s parable.
In the context of this gospel, Jesus tells this parable to doubting pharisees who have challenged him about healing a man blind from birth. These listeners may have wanted to believe Jesus, but they had a lot of baggage – pride, privilege, too much power or too many possessions to give up easily.

Jesus surely had Psalm 23 in mind when he told his parable about the good shepherd. God fills our every need; God leads us in paths of righteousness; God comforts.

But the psalm and the gospel reading both acknowledge that the world is not all green pastures and comfort. The psalmist walks through the valley of the shadow of death (the darkest valley). He feasts in the presence of his enemies. In Jesus’s parable, theives and bandits climb over the gate to get at the sheep.

Jesus was reminding his listeners that some leaders would take advantage of people’s yearning for tender direction from God. In his day, as in ours, there were would-be leaders who would use God’s name for their own purposes, and, in effect, steal and rob the people’s confidence and allegiance.

There were “hired men” who looked on their sacred trust as leaders as just a job that they could forsake at the first sign of trouble.

Episcopal minister, Barbara Brown Taylor, tells about a friend who knows good sheep-raising techniques.

Taylor says, according to her friend, “cows are herded from the rear by hooting cowboys with cracking whips, but that will not work with sheep at all. Stand behind them making loud noises and all they will do is run around behind you, because they prefer to be led.

You push cows, Taylor’s friend said, but you lead sheep, and they will not go anywhere that someone else does not go first — namely their shepherd — who goes ahead of them to show them that everything is all right. sheep tend to grow fond of their shepherds, her friend went on to say. It never ceased to amaze him, growing up, that he could walk right through a sleeping flock without disturbing a single one of them, while a stranger could not step foot in the fold without causing pandemonium.
I guess Ed didn’t keep his sheep long enough to be trusted in that way.
Taylor’s friend said sheep seem to consider their shepherds part of the family, and the relationship that grows up between the two is quite exclusive. They develop a language of their own that outsiders are not privy to. A good shepherd learns to distinguish a bleat of pain from one of pleasure, while the sheep learn that a cluck of the tongue means food, or a two note song means that it is time to go home…They know whom they belong to; they know their shepherd’s voice, and it is the only one they will follow.” So says Taylor in her homily.

This coincides with what Jesus says about a good shepherd, “when he, the shepherd, has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

Jesus has gone ahead of us, facing death at the hands of sinners. Then he came back after the resurrection to tell us that the way was safe, that we can trust God to lead us through the darkest valley. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

As the writer of 1st Peter wrote, “They called him every name in the book and he said nothing back. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right. He used his servant body to carry our sins to the Cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way. His wounds became your healing. You were lost sheep with no idea who you were or where you were going. Now you’re named and kept for good by the Shepherd of your souls.”

We may have more in common with Ed’s ram than we would like to admit. But Jesus was not weighed down by sin, the way we are. Jesus has infinite patience with us, even when we do the worst. Peter tells us his wounds became our healing.

When we respond to our shepherd’s voice, we are led in right paths. We are followed by goodness and mercy all the days of our lives. The Good Shepherd – who came that we would have life abundantly – has shown us the way.

Praise God, Amen.

Please pray with me.
Gracious and merciful God, our every waking moment is made safe and comfortable through the sacrifice of your son, Jesus. We praise your grace and patience in leading us in paths that lead to goodness and mercy all the days of our lives. We pray our gratitude in Jesus name, Amen.