Jesus Calls Disciples - St. Paul's Window

Sermon for Sunday, 6 May 2012

Riverside United Methodist Church

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Acts 8.26-40:  An angel sends Philip, deacon and evangelist, to “hop on board” the chariot of an Ethiopian official puzzling over the meaning of Isaiah 53. Philip re-reads it through the story of the life, execution, and resurrection of Jesus. The man is baptized and will become a “road evangelist” in his own right.

Psalm 22.25-31:  The “turnaround” verses of this psalm of profound lament were chosen as the response to the first lesson because of verse 27: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.”

1 John 4.7-21:  The deep heartbeat of life in the Risen Lord — Abide in love; abide in the Spirit given to all who confess Jesus as Son of God; abide in God and you will above in love; love one another.

John 15.1-8:  Abide in Christ, the true vine, and you will bear much fruit, and even more as the Father prunes you. Bear no fruit, because you are not abiding in Christ, and you may expect to be cut off and cast away. The Father’s will isn’t to cast you away, but that you abide in Christ and bear much fruit.

Humility

A man who was planning to marry noticed that his future inlaws, who had been married for thirty years, invariably showed love and respect to each other and seemed never to quarrel.  So one day he went to his fiancee’s father and asked him to share the secret of their success.  The father told him, “When I was about to marry my wife, my father told me, ‘Do not criticize the shortcomings of your wife or blame her when she does something wrong.  She has shortcomings, and sometimes she will do things wrong; and those are a part of the reason she did not find a better husband than you’.”

I called that story “Humility”, because it seemed to me that the future father-in-law was encouraging his daughter’s future husband to adopt an attitude of humility in his relations with her as the primary means of maintaining a healthy relationship.  I want to note that humility as not the same thing as self-deprecation.  Humility says, “If she is imperfect, so am I; so I need to treat her as I would want her to treat me in relation to my imperfections, which is with kindness.”  Self-deprecation, on the other hand, says, “She is superior to me, so what I think of as her imperfection is just a magnification of something wrong with me; so I need to shut up and just do what she tells me.”

As I was looking for my opening story for today, I found a site that included many brief reflections on this subject of love and mutuality that I thought would be beneficial to share with you; and I wanted to do so in light of what John wrote the early church that we heard in today’s epistle lesson from First John chapter 4.

John juxtaposes the love of brother and sister with the love of God and says that they are intertwined.  This seems to echo Jesus’ earlier linking of two commandments from the Hebrew scriptures as being the greatest commandments:  Love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.  So, I wanted to consider the nuggets of wisdom I found from the perspective of our love of God, and God’s of us, as a way of helping us see John’s and Jesus’ call to love our neighbor in a different light, hoping it will help us do that more frequently and faithfully.

Actor Peter Ustinov, for example, is quoted as saying, “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”  This one, it seemed to me, is very much akin to the advice we heard in the opening story.  But what if we apply it to our relationship with God?

On the one hand, it reminds us that the God we know in Jesus Christ is a God who continually forgives us.  We are reminded of that not only in various scriptures, but also when we receive Holy Communion.  Communion, above all, is a sacrament of forgiveness, in addition to making new life possible.

But what about our forgiveness of God?  Most people don’t think of the fact that we, as lowly human beings, might hold grudges against God, our creator, redeemer, and sustainer; but, in fact, we often do more than we realize.  We might blame God for not having put us into better circumstances during our years of growing up, or for not helping us get the job or marriage partner we were after, or for not making us more attractive or for making us gay or for causing us to be someone we would rather not be or keeping us from doing things we wish, in retrospect, we had not done.  It’s my judgment that one of my friends still holds a grudge against God for cutting short his marriage that he considers to be one of the best the world has ever seen through the death of his wife when they were both in their mid-50s; but he doesn’t realize that his anger is with God, so he has no way to process it to come to a place of acceptance and joy.  His grudge actually keeps him from experiencing God’s love, from loving God fully in return, and, consequently, from loving anyone else in his life.

American author Ursula K. Le Guin writes, “Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread:  remade all of the time, made new.”  When we reflect on this in light of our relationship with God, it helps remind us that God never rests.  God is always working for our good and is creative in the ways God reaches out to us to help us know that love.

One way we Christians recognize God reaches out to us is through encouraging us to gather in worship as we do here weekly and to listen to stories of God’s love and of the love of others for God.  God appeals to our intellect through texts – scripture, prayers, sermons, invitations to service in Christ’s name – and to our senses through music, the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, the beauty of our sanctuary, and the kindness of our sisters and brothers in Christ.

Le Guin’s comment, on the other hand, challenges us to continue to be active and creative in the ways we show our love for God.  How frequently do we worship, whether we are here in town or away?  How many times a day do we give God thanks for our lives and the good things that come to us, or call on God for help and ask God to make something good out of what might otherwise be a bad situation – and then thank God for the result?

The late saint Mother Teresa wrote, “A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.”  What this reminds us is that God’s heart burns with love for us.  Like the father in the opening story, God knows we’re not perfect; yet God loves us for simply being part of God’s creation as well as for the possibilities we offer of extending God’s love to the rest of the world.

Thus, we, too, are called to develop a heart that burns with love for God – that seeks to embody all the things God desires to do in and through and for us, and to be the loving persons to others that God is and desires us to be as well.

May our hearts burn with love for God and show it to be so through our love for one another.  Amen.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd

Sermon for Sunday, 29 April 2012

Riverside United Methodist Church

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Acts 4.5-12: The leaders who had Peter arrested for healing the lame man and proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus demand by what authority he acted. Peter boldly proclaimed it was by the power and name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and that all salvation there is comes through him.

Psalm 23: A familiar psalm expressing complete confidence in the love and power of God in facing all the situations of life.

1 John 3.16-24: By the authority and power of the Risen Christ, we are led to love not in words only, but also in truth and in action.

John 10.11-18: The authority of the Risen Lord, the Good Shepherd over his flock, comes from knowing his sheep by name, caring for them, and laying down his own life to protect them. Jesus also notes his “flock” includes people not in “this fold,” and he extends the same mission and care to them.

As the Twig Is Bent – found on www.fropki.com 28 Apr 2012
A father found his small son looking very unhappy.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
The son replied, “I can’t get along with your wife.”

Though the website on which I found this little story didn’t give it a name, I’ve titled it “As the Twig Is Bent.” In his 16th century text, “A Clarification of the French Language,” English linguist John Palsgrave wrote, “A man may bende a wande while it is grene and make it straight though it be neuer so croked.” In the 18th century English poet Alexander Pope wrote to one of his correspondents, “’Tis Education forms the common mind, Just as the Twig is bent, the Tree’s inclined.” And in Proverbs 22.6 we read, “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.”

However true all these observations are, they seem to focus primarily on the cognitive process of learning – teaching children something that the children will remember and process and follow as a rule to guide them through the remainder of their lives. And though when we hear these things, we all know that children break rules – in fact, at some point in our lives we’ve probably all said, “Rules were made to be broken,” though some of us have an easier time breaking rules than others – and that the rules by which we choose to live can – and usually do – change over time, either because we change them, or they are changed for us. But essentially we all know the truth of the adage, because we’ve seen it at work in our own lives and in the lives of others around us – as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

And while it is true that the rules learned early in life do serve to guide us and others throughout our lives, it is even truer that the examples we are given by others are actually more powerful influences on us than are the rules we learn. In a very real sense, the rules set by example have a greater hold on us than do the rules we learn by rote and repeat over and over again to ourselves and others.

The truth of this concept is a major part of the reason the frequency of divorce has increased over the decades of the 20th and 21st centuries and the reason fewer people have chosen to marry, even when a child or children result from the relationship. It’s a major element in the fact that we see wars and other conflicts continuously being waged in various parts of the world and so infrequently see a peaceful resolution of problems. That is, the people who have set the patterns of our common life have given us more examples of conflict and of addressing disagreements in a conflictual manner than they have of peaceableness and of coming to agreements that are satisfying to all parties.

Why is this the case? Part of it is because of the way we are “wired.” Psychologist Carl Jung noted from his studies of the human psyche and human behavior that, because as children we do not carefully distinguish ourselves from our environment but, instead, see it all of a piece with ourselves, that education by example is powerful in its formative effects on us, as we absorb it without questioning whether it is beneficial or harmful.

In the more lucid and self-aware moments of our later years we know this. How many of us have said at some point something like this: “That’s my mom (or dad) talking,” or “That’s the parent coming out in me,” or even “Oh, no! I’ve turned into my mother!”? It isn’t as though we have willingly become like one or the other of our parents – or grandparents or whoever it is who nurtured us; it is that they established the patterns in us by their example, and we unconsciously adopted them and are even unable to see, let alone to question, them until we have attained a certain level of maturity and autonomy that allows us to differentiate ourselves from our environment. Some people live their lives so enmeshed in their environments that they never question their behavior patterns and are therefore unable – and, most likely, unwilling – to change them, no matter how dysfunctional and sinful others might judge them to be.

In 1925 Carl Jung wrote, “In the last analysis, all education rests on this fundamental fact of psychic identity, and in all cases the deciding factor is this seemingly automatic contagion through example [my emphasis]. This is so important that even the best methods of conscious education can sometimes be completely nullified by bad example.”

And Jung and his sometime-teacher, Sigmund Freud, suggested that this process involves what they termed “identification,” that is, the psychological process whereby a person internalizes traits, attitudes, and behavioral patterns of another person whom the person consciously or unconsciously wishes to emulate.

So, if we want to emulate those who have successful marriages, for instance, we will not only ask them for the rules they followed in their relationship – though those can be helpful – but we will try to develop our relationship in ways that reflect the ways they relate, changing the rules we follow in order to achieve the quality of relationship we see.

If we as a nation want to resolve conflicts without waging war, we will emulate the practices – however rare they may be in history – through which other nations achieved that end.

Currently delegates of United Methodism from around the world are meeting in Tampa, Florida in our quadrennial General Conference, during which they review and establish a plan for the denomination for the next four years. Every four years since 1972, we have wrestled over the issue of the church’s view of same-sex relationships and the involvement of LGBT persons in the church. In our country, Lutherans and Presbyterians and Episcopalians and UCCs have lessened, if not eliminated, the conflict in their denominations over these issues, but we haven’t. The question for us is, is this the year in which we will follow their example, or will we continue to follow our rules that keep us conflicted? We’ll see what has happened when the Conference ends next Friday.

Part of the reason I have continued our observance of the weekly Eucharist – Holy Communion – is that, while I believe scripture reading and preaching are important and essential to our spiritual formation, I believe Christ is present to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist in ways that form us beyond the spoken word. As we receive these elements that we set apart as Christ’s body and his blood, as we see and touch and taste and smell those things that make Christ present to us in a more physical sense than simply reading and listening, let us also allow that presence to form us more fully into his image and likeness, so that, overcoming the effects of our having been mis-bent through the inadequate examples we were given in earlier years, we may be re-formed even more fully than before into Christ’s image and give him praise and glory through the ways in which we reveal him to all whom we encounter, or all to whom we reach out in acts of love and mercy.

Amen.

Honoring those of all faiths who died for our country

Riverside UMC, 82 Woodside Rd. in Riverside, IL, invites our friends and neighbors to join us at noon on Monday, May 28, for brats, chips and beverage in our side yard. This will follow the Village of Riverside Memorial Day event that will be held that morning at 10:00 a.m. in Guthrie Park, which is located between the Riverside METRA station and the Library (Riverside UMC sanctuary, if weather is inclement). In this way the church wants to provide hospitality for our neighbors, especially those who have no other plans for the holiday.  If you plan to attend, call our church office and leave a message as to how many we should expect – 708-447-1760.

There will be no charge for the food. At the same time we invite those who participate to consider bringing a donation to help members of the Riverside/Brookfield Young Life that meets in our Fellowship Hall attend summer camp.

Over 50 youth are planning to attend a retreat at Lake Champion in Glen Spey, New York this summer. They have asked us and others in our community if we can help support their trip by contributing to the cost of transportation, that has increased by something over $8,000 since last year due to the higher prices of fuel.

As part of our attempt to help them, we will not charge for the food at this event. Instead, any money received at the Cookout will be given to help the Young Life youth cover the cost of their trip. We hope that we can raise at least several hundred dollars to pass along to the group. Later this year, we will invite several of the youth who attend the retreat to share with us during one of our worship services a witness to the value of their summer experience.

If you would be able to help mount this event (we’re looking for someone with a gas grill), or if you have questions about the church, Young Life, or the event, please contact Pastor Doug Asbury, 708-442-1982.

We hope to see you there!  Let us know you’re coming by calling 708-447-1760.

Risen Christ Shows His Wounds

Sermon for Sunday, 22 April 2012

Riverside United Methodist Church

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Acts 3.12-19: After a lame beggar is cured by the power of the Risen Lord through Peter and John, Peter invites the wondering crowd to repent and follow Jesus. Five thousand of them do!

Psalm 4: Thanks to God for vindication and rebuke/teaching to those who criticize or disgrace.

1 John 3.1-7: We are God’s children now as we abide in Jesus. Abiding in Jesus enables us to live more and more without sin. Repentance is no one-time act, but a lifelong commitment to abide in Jesus. That is why we continue to purify ourselves, that we may be like him when he appears.

Luke 24.36b-48: After his appearance to two dispirited disciples heading toward Emmaus, Jesus tells the rest of those gathered at another meal to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name.

The Final Fixing of the Foolish Fugitive
Feeling footloose, fancy-free and frisky, this feather-brained fellow finagled his fond father into forking over his fortune. Forthwith, he fled for foreign fields and frittered his farthings feasting fabulously with fair-weather friends. Finally, fleeced by those folly filled fellows and facing famine, he found himself a feed flinger in a filthy farm-lot. He fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from fodder fragments.
“Fooey! My father’s flunkies fare far fancier,” the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, frankly facing fact. Frustrated from failure and filled with forebodings, he fled for his family. Falling at his father’s feet, he floundered forlornly. “Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited further family favors…”
But the faithful father, forestalling further flinching, frantically flagged his flunkies to fetch forth the finest fatling and fix a feast.
But the fugitive’s fault finding frater, faithfully farming his father’s fields for free, frowned at this fickle forgiveness of former falderal. His fury flashed, but fussing was futile.
His foresighted father figured, “Such filial fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent festivities? The fugitive is found! Unfurl the flags! With fanfare flaring, let fun, frolic and frivolity flow freely, former failures forgotten and folly forsaken. Forgiveness forms a firm foundation for future fortitude.”
(Originally composed by Rev. W. O. Taylor, quoted in More Holy Humor, Cal and Rose Samra, Thomas Nelson Publishers, ISBN 0-7852-7156-2, modified by Robert Woodman. Feel free to publish this but leave the copyright information in place. source: http://www.jokebuddha.com/Forgiveness#ixzz1sk1EZf6J)

Last week we heard about the dysfunctional first family – Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel – that was characterized by self-centeredness and separation; and how the life of the early church as presented in the Acts of the Apostles reversed that dysfunction, so that no one considered anything to belong to themselves alone, but all was given to the apostles to distribute as any had need, and there was great fellowship among them all as they learned and, in the process, became part of God’s New Creation.

This week we hear about another dysfunctional family – that of the father whose younger son we call The Prodigal and whose older son is faithful to carry on the work of his father and, at the same time, is prideful over it and resentful of his father’s actions towards his returning younger brother.

It was fortuitous that I found this humorous setting of the story of the so-called prodigal son, because it illustrates in a way similar to that in which the gospel story from Luke also does the generosity of God as demonstrated in forgiveness. The story of the prodigal son does so in fairly succinct fashion; the story as presented in Luke in only partial fashion, requiring a recap of some of what went on before it.

A key element in both stories is the eating of food.

In the story of the prodigal son, the father is so happy that his younger son had returned, that he calls for the killing of a prize animal that was being raised for a special occasion – perhaps the wedding of the older son; we don’t know – so that the whole household could rejoice in the younger son’s return after having been thought “lost” in some sense – certainly lost to the father’s affections.

There is a similar dynamic at work in the story of Jesus and the disciples in Luke. Here, though, rather than it being the son who goes away and returns and the father who remains, it is Jesus – the god-figure in the gospel story – who goes away and the disciples who remain.

What does this tell us?

It gives us, as the sermon title suggests, the look and feel of forgiveness that is unexpected. In the story of the prodigal son, it seems the younger son must “come to his senses” and realize the error of his ways; and that somehow that qualifies him to be welcomed back into the family. We can understand that. You “repent” of the wrong you have done; come humbly to ask for forgiveness; and the gracious recipient of the genuine apology grants the forgiveness we seek. It seems to work, and it resonates with our life experience; so we accept it with some ease, though there may be a bit of the older brother in us, holding us back. We may want to keep reminding our father and our brother of our own sacrificial and faithful life, even after the celebratory feast is finished.

In the gospel story, though, it is the disciples who know they’ve done wrong in abandoning Jesus in his time of need, even after they had followed Peter in claiming that they would stick with him even if it meant their own deaths. Jesus had known better. He had known they would all betray and/or leave him in the end to face the trial and death alone. Even though his mother and the other women stuck with him, he knew they could do nothing to stop what was happening.

In such a situation, it would be natural for the discouraged disciples who had seen their leader killed in such an infamous way to disband and go to their respective homes, realizing that the Powers That Be were always going to be more powerful than the alleged power of the God of Israel, the God of their ancestors. So, when the risen Jesus came into their midst, they were dumbfounded. They didn’t believe it! That’s part of the reason he asked for something to eat and then ate it in front of them: to prove that he had indeed been raised, and that he wasn’t just a disembodied apparition.

But the other reason he asked for something to eat was that he wanted to convey to them that he forgave them their abandonment of him, their doubting, their disbelief, their discouragement, their links to the things of this world, their expectations that things would never change. And he wanted to proclaim, through sharing their simple meal, which is a powerful act of fellowship in Middle Eastern culture, that God’s forgiveness will persist until lives are changed, and that nothing can overcome the power of that forgiveness.

As we share in the Lord’s Supper today, let us see and feel and taste the forgiveness of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ for all our weakness and failings. Amen.

Peace Window - Canterbury Cathedral

Sermon for Sunday, 15 April 2012, Second Sunday of Easter

Riverside United Methodist Church

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Acts 4.32-35:  Christians living in Jerusalem show clear signs of the Risen Christ among them by sharing all things, bearing witness to the resurrection of Jesus, and caring for all who are in need.

Psalm 133:  A meditative psalm that celebrates the unity of those who share spiritual life together. Though the psalm was originally designed to celebrate the unity of a group of pilgrims heading toward the temple in Jerusalem, it quickly came to be used to express the unity of the whole people of God around the earth.

1 John 1.1—2.2:  More signs of the presence of the risen Lord in our midst: honest confession, assurance of God’s forgiveness, and lives where sin’s power is being overcome.

John 20.19-31:  To help Thomas believe, Jesus showed Thomas the scars in his hands and side and invited Thomas to touch them.

Original Dysfunction

Whenever your kids are out of control, you can take comfort from the thought that even God’s omnipotence did not extend to God’s kids. After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve. And the first thing he said was, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Adam replied.
“Don’t eat the forbidden fruit,” God said.
“Forbidden fruit? We got forbidden fruit? Hey, Eve…we got forbidden fruit!”
“No way!” said Eve.
“Way!” replied Adam.
“Don’t eat that fruit!” said God.
“Why?” they asked.
“Because I am your Father, and I said so!” said God (wondering why he hadn’t stopped after making the elephants). A few minutes later God saw his kids having an apple break and was angry.
“Didn’t I tell you not to eat the fruit?” God asked.
“Uh huh,” Adam replied.
“Then why did you?”
“I dunno,” Eve answered.
“She started it!” Adam said.
“Did not!” Eve retorted.
“Did too!”
“DID NOT!”
Having had it with the two of them, God’s punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own. Thus the pattern was set, and it has never changed. If God had trouble handling children, what makes you think it would be a piece of cake for anyone else who has them?

Well, as we know, the dysfunction of the First Family didn’t stop with eating the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve had two sons early in their life together – Cain and Abel. Cain ended up killing his brother and then trying to cover up the deed by lying to God about it. Though God had already banished Cain’s parents from Eden, God banished Cain even further away, to the land east of Eden. (That term, and the story of the dysfunctional family, lie at the heart of John Steinbeck’s novel by that name, which was made into a film directed by Elia Kazan in which James Dean made his debut in 1955.)

The family that is the focus of Steinbeck’s treatment of the story combines several biblical families in its outworking of the story of sin and redemption – not only that of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, but also that of Rahab the prostitute and of Isaac and Jacob. At the root of Steinbeck’s story is the concept presented in the Second Commandment, that the sins of the elders are visited upon their children to the third and fourth generations; that is, the dysfunctional family produces dysfunctional kids, whose just punishment comes on account of their own misdeeds rather than those of their parents; and yet the pattern of behavior that leads them to commit those punishable deeds is inherent in their upbringing.

Steinbeck, however, provides what I like to call a “Christ-figure” – that is, one who gains insight into his or her situation and intentionally changes the pattern, sometimes at great cost to him- or herself. For me, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars was such a character, as is Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, or Sister Mary Prejean in Dead Man Walking. In Steinbeck’s novel, it’s Caleb, or “Cal,” whose mother, Cathy, was a prostitute and whose father, Adam, favored Cal’s twin brother, Aron, over Cal. Cal and Aron, by the way, had actually been sired by Adam’s hateful brother Charles, when Cathy went to bed with him to spite her husband Adam; and she gave birth to the twins only after having been unsuccessful in her attempt to abort the pregnancy. Though he commits his own misdeeds in the story, after being mentored by his father’s housekeeper Lee, Cal attempts to right various wrongs and, in the end, succeeds in receiving his father Adam’s blessing.

In the story from Acts, we see that the Holy Spirit’s power working through the disciples had so transformed the people who had responded positively to it and had become part of the church that worshipped and fellowshipped together and listened to the teaching of the apostles about Jesus, the Christ, and the way God intended to save the Creation, that the people were inspired to, as the story says, consider nothing as belonging to themselves alone, but holding everything in common, giving to each as he or she had need – what amounts, in a very real sense, to a reversal of the dynamic that got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden, and Cain exiled to the land east of Eden, in the first place. That is, each considered him- or herself as being separate from others and able to exercise decisions that failed to take others into consideration. It is this separation from God and each other that lies at the root of Adam and Eve’s sin and the dilemmas that follow.

In the post-Pentecostal era of the narrative of Acts, we see no one doing anything without taking others into consideration. There was such joy and unanimity of spirit among the apostles and those who received their message, that all barriers to mutual love and care were broken down, and what replaced dysfunction was a functioning that resembled God’s original plan for the world – an edenic sharing of all resources as each had need, with the realization that there was enough for everyone, and no one had to be concerned that any would prosper while another had need.

Such a reality seems farfetched to us; and yet it is what we are called to act out, empowered by the same Spirit that came to those first Christians. It is because we have continued to act according to our dysfunctional past that Jesus had to die, both because of us and for the sake of our forgiveness. But his Resurrection is God’s powerful statement that we are being given another chance to “do it right,” as Cal in Steinbeck’s novel finally did. May we allow that Spirit to guide us and to empower us in our attempts to restore functional relationships in place of the original dysfunction of our First Family.

Sermon for Sunday, 19 February 2012, Transfiguration Sunday

2 Kings 2.1-12:  A story of discipleship and transition of leadership.  Elisha dutifully stays with and follows his master, Elijah, knowing that Elijah is about to die.  He seeks one final blessing from his master — a double portion of his spirit. A chariot of fire receives Elijah into the sky.

Psalm 50.1-6:  God calls the covenant people to assemble for a word of judgment and redemption.

2 Corinthians 4.3-6:  Paul reminds the Christians at Corinth that his message was never about eloquent delivery, but always about “Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” Just as the “god of this world” blinds those who do not receive the gospel, the true God of all opens the eyes of those who do.

Mark 9.2-9:  Six days after explaining that he would be executed in Jerusalem, Jesus leads three of his disciples up a mountain where “he was transfigured before them.” These disciples saw Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah and did not know how to respond. A voice from the cloud instructed them to listen to Jesus.

Mississippi Student Absentees
These are real notes written from parents in a Mississippi school district. (Spellings have been left intact.)
My son is under a doctor’s care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute him.
Please excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot.
Dear School: Please ekscuse John Henry being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33
Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.
John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.
Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father’s fault.
Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.
Sally won’t be in school a weak from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.

Each of these excuses is a serious attempt on the part of a parent to let the school know a valid reason for their child to be excused from school or from taking part in some aspect of the school program or not to be penalized for being late. They are funny to us because, though we either know or can figure out what the parents meant, the way they phrased it sets up a somewhat different picture of reality; and it is the difference between the picture conveyed by the words and the reality they sought to convey that makes the statements humorous.

When we first hear the statement, we think, “They can’t mean that!” Then, when our minds try to make sense of the odd statement, and we realize the context of the message and add or change a word or two, and we come up with what was meant, we laugh. The light comes on, and all is clear. We realize that Jimmy’s mother isn’t asking for Jimmy to be excused for “being” – but for “being late.” She’s not blaming Jimmy’s father for siring him; she’s blaming him for making him late to school.

In the process of figuring this out, we say we are “in the dark” at first about what is meant, and then “the light comes on,” and we understand the reality in a way that at first we didn’t because the phraseology didn’t make sense – or it made sense, but it was unbelievable. We needed the “aha! moment” in order to come to a knowledge of the truth of the matter. Without that “aha! moment,” we would have remained clueless.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “aha! experience” as “a moment of sudden insight or discovery; the sudden finding of a solution to a problem; also, aha moment, reaction, etc.”

Oprah Winfrey, who has talked about such “aha moments” with many of her guests, defines them as “flashes of understanding.” More extensively, she has described them as “unforgettable, connect-the-dots moments, when everything suddenly, somehow changed.”

As we heard the gospel story this morning about the experience of the disciples on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured in their presence, and they saw Elijah and Moses with him, we heard that, at first, they didn’t know what to make of it all. Peter piped up and proposed that he and the others set up tents, so the three great men in front of them could have places to stay. But then, a cloud came over them, and a voice emerged from the cloud telling them to listen to what Jesus had to say. After the cloud lifted, Jesus looked again as he had before the transfiguration, and Elijah and Moses were gone. At that point Jesus told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until after “the Son of Man” – by which Jesus was referring to himself – had been raised from the dead – an event that was still quite far in the future and not yet anticipated nor comprehended by the disciples.

The time of viewing the transfiguration of Jesus wasn’t an “aha! moment” for the disciples; but it was an essential element of the aha! moment the disciples were to have following the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  The changes in Jesus witnessed by Peter, James and John on that mountain, including his encounters with Elijah and Moses, made little sense to the three disciples when they occurred; but they made all the sense in the world to them after they had also become witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It was after that event that they could tell what had happened on that mountain and would then have a basis upon which to interpret it rightly. They could tell the other disciples, as well as all who would listen to them and might become disciples, that Jesus was a lawgiver comparable to Moses for the Jewish people, and that he was the prophet of God who signified the return of Elijah that heralded the time when God would make everything right in the world for God’s people. What resulted from these two moments in the disciples’ lives – the transfiguration and the resurrection of Jesus – was what we know as Pentecost – the day on which the disciples were filled with God’s Spirit and began bringing good news to the world of God’s salvation from sin and want through the power that had been revealed in Jesus the Christ and that was now present in them and available to all who would come to put their faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Now, not all “aha! moments” have the import that this dual experience of the disciples. Most, in fact, have much less impact; and yet they are not necessarily to be dismissed as unimportant or lacking in value. Take a look at the insert, on which I’ve printed ten aha! moments of an Australian woman named Mia. Some of them have specifically religious content (6, 8); the others don’t, though the last one is a quote from Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California.

On the other side of the insert I’ve given space for you to put your own name and to list ten aha! moments of your own. I want to encourage you to look back over your life and to jot down messages that have come to you in times of challenge or struggle or confusion or darkness that have resulted in something like a light coming on in your life, so that you knew what your next step needed to be; or so that a concern was relieved; or so that an answer was given to a question that had perplexed you. You may be able to think of fewer than ten, or you may have many more. Use the sheet however you find it appropriate for you.

What I want to claim today is that God is always speaking to us; but there are times when we are more open to listening to God, and those are often the more difficult times in our lives. When things are going in ways with which we are comfortable, or at times when we feel in control, though God may be speaking to us, we often are not in a mood to listen. It is often only at times when things have gotten out of control, or we’re thrown into a situation with which we don’t know how to deal, that we become open to that voice of God that conveys some necessary wisdom to us that we otherwise would have missed.

We might still miss the wisdom of God. We might just turn back to some other prejudice or take a route we remember seeing someone else take in a similar situation and apply it to our own, and in the process ignore the light of divine wisdom God is making available to us. But if, like the disciples, we understand that God is continually revealing divine wisdom to us to be applied at the right time in our lives to enable us to do what God has placed us on earth to accomplish, then the likelihood that we fulfill our divine purpose with the aid of God’s aha! moments is increased; and we can trust that God is with us always as guide and friend.

Next week we begin our Lenten soup lunch and book study. The little books by Bishop Rueben Job that we will be using for the study are collections of Bishop Job’s aha! moments in terms of how to live the Christian life with faithfulness and joy. I hope you’ll join us as a part of your Lenten discipline and thereby open yourself to the possibility that you’ll increase your own aha! moments to the glory of God and your own growth in the experience of the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

MIA’S 10 FAVE QUOTES – THE AHA! MOMENT

1. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. – Maya Angelou
2. Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I’ll try again tomorrow.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
3. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. – Nelson Mandela
4. The most influential person who will talk to you all day, is you. So, you should be very careful what you say to you. – Zig Ziglar
5. Wisdom is knowing what to do next; skill is knowing how to do it; and virtue is doing it. – David Starr Jordan
6. Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be snapped. Change is inevitable; don’t get too rigid. Flow with what God is doing today. – Christine Caine
7. It is wise to direct your anger towards problems, not people; to focus your energies on solutions, not excuses. – William A. Ward
8. Hope is not when you compare your suffering to someone who suffers worse than you. Hope is when you compare your suffering to the infinite, immeasurable love and grace of God. – Nick Vujicic
9. In character building, you will not find justice and fairness being upheld for your own convenience. If you focus on gaining them for yourself, you’ll be frustrated in your pursuit. On the other hand, if you strive to do the right thing with the right attitude, you’ll find yourself grow amidst the injustice. – KP
10. When you die, you won’t regret your unfulfilled dreams, just your unattempted ones. The first is reality; the second is tragedy. – Rick Warren

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Sermon for Sunday, April 8, 2012 – Easter

Acts 10.34-43:  Peter proclaims to Cornelius the resurrection of Jesus and that God has appointed Jesus as judge of the living and the dead.

Psalm 118.1-2, 14-24:  God’s love is victorious! A fitting response to the first reading.

I Corinthians 15.1-11:  Paul declares the things of first importance: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Mark 16.1-8:  Mark’s account of women who went to embalm the body of Jesus, an empty tomb, a young man in dazzling garments, the announcement of the raising of Jesus, and a commissioning to tell the others. They tell no one (at the time) because of their fear.

Middle East Resurrection
George went on a vacation to the Middle East with most of his family, including his mother-in-law. During their vacation and while they were visiting Jerusalem, George’s mother-in-law died.
With death certificate in hand, George went to the American Consulate to make arrangements to send the body back to the States for proper burial.
The Consul, after hearing of the death of the mother-in-law, told George that sending a body back to the States for burial is very, very expensive. It could cost as much as $5,000, he told George. He advised that in most cases such as this, the persons responsible for the remains of their loved ones decide to bury the body in Israel, which would cost only $150.
George thought for some time and answered, “I don’t care how much it will cost to send the body back; that’s what I want to do.”
The Consul said, “You must have loved your mother-in-law very much, considering the difference in price.”
“No, it’s not that,” says George. “You see, I know of a case many years ago of a person buried here in Jerusalem. On the third day he arose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance.”

Though even the resurrection is something about which we can joke today, as we heard in the Gospel lesson today, the women who found the empty tomb on the first day of the resurrection were in no joking mood. They were so overwhelmed by the experience of finding the tomb in which Jesus’ body had been laid on Friday empty and their encounter with the man in white, that Mark tells us they initially told no one what they had seen or heard. Obviously, at some later time they did tell Jesus’ other disciples; but their initial reaction to the event was fear rather than joy.

And in fact, it wasn’t only the women who went to the tomb that day who had a problem accepting the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection. In each of the Gospel accounts of the first Easter, it is recorded that someone had a problematic response to it. In Matthew’s account, an earthquake occurs, and an angel descends from heaven, rolls back the stone from the grave, and must tell the women not to be afraid, suggesting that these unnatural occurrences had been met with a fearful response. Unlike in Mark, in Matthew the women go “with fear and great joy” to tell the other disciples, and on the way they encounter Jesus himself, who must repeat the angel’s early admonition not to be afraid. Even when Jesus appears to the disciples gathered in Galilee at his direction, Matthew writes that “some doubted.” In Luke’s account, the story the women tell is said to be received by the other disciples as an “idle tale.” Peter doesn’t believe the women’s story until he goes to the tomb to see for himself that it is empty. And two disciples encounter Jesus while walking from Jerusalem back to their home in Emmaus, but they are so disbelieving, they don’t even recognize him until he joins them for a meal in their home and acts as host by breaking the bread. And in John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene also fails to recognize Jesus when she encounters him outside the tomb, thinking him to be the gardener until he calls her by name.

But all these early reactions of disbelief to Jesus’ resurrection are nothing compared to the disbelief of people since that day in the power of God revealed by the Resurrection. You see, the importance of the Resurrection is not solely in the fact that God has power over death, so that dead people can be brought back to life – even though that was the only thing that worried George in our opening story. The important thing about the Resurrection is tied up with what was important about the birth of Jesus – son of humanity and son of God. Its importance was tied up with his life and ministry – the healing, teaching, gathering disciples and sending them out to continue his ministry of love and to allow him to live his life through them. It was tied up with his establishment of the sacraments of the Eucharist during his final Passover meal with the disciples, linking the bread with his body that was to be broken on the cross the following day, and the wine with his blood that was to be shed in his death; and of baptism as he gave them the Great Commission to make disciples of all people, as we United Methodists say, “for the transformation of the world.” It was tied up with his witness to the power of God through his appearances to and teaching of the disciples in the forty days following the resurrection, and with his ascension to heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit on the disciples on Pentecost and on every disciple since then, so that the Church could continue not only to be taught the way of Christ but also empowered to follow it. Of not least importance, and arguably, of greatest importance, has been the forgiveness of sins, to which we are good at giving lip service but which we ourselves reveal we have as much difficulty believing as those first disciples had believing that Jesus wasn’t in the tomb any longer, and that he was alive and continues to live not only in heaven with God but on earth with and through all who are faithful to him or who desire to be so.

It is our own disbelief on this Easter day and on the other days of our lives that keep Christ entombed and thwart his returning in power to draw all people to himself, transforming the world into the paradise it was created to be. Because we and too many others fail to accept not just the Resurrection but the forgiveness of sins, and because we fail to live in the power of God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection and fail to extend the forgiveness of sin that has been offered to us to others who need it no less than we, our world continues in darkness and fear.

As we receive communion on this Easter day, I invite you to receive along with the elements of bread and cup a new awareness of the reality of the power of God over death as revealed in Jesus’ resurrection and in the promise of our own, and of the forgiveness of sins, so that we can be freed from the shame and guilt that keep us from living our lives in the ways that fully glorify God as we were created to do. What a difference we could make!

Sermon for Sunday, March 25, 2012

Riverside United Methodist Church

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Jeremiah 31.31-34:  God’s new covenant requires no stone tablets. It will be a covenant written in the people’s hearts, informing everything in their whole lives.

Psalm 51.1-12:  A reprise of the confession of sin from Ash Wednesday. Today the focus is verse 6 — “therefore, teach me wisdom in my secret heart.”

Hebrews 5.5-10:  Jesus is our great high priest by God’s appointment and made perfect through his obedience and suffering.

John 12.20-33:  Jesus tells Phillip and Andrew that the time for his glorification; i.e., his execution is drawing near and that those who serve him will be found with him wherever he leads or goes. God ratifies the message with a sound from heaven, which Jesus interprets as a sign that the present spiritual regime’s days are about to come to an end.

Christian Unity(?)

Here is a funny bit that was originally done by standup comedian Emo Phillips:

Two men are standing on a bridge, one is about to jump off and the other is trying to talk him out of it.

The man asks the jumper, “So are you a Christian or a Hindu or a Jew or what?”

The jumper replies, “A Christian.”

The man says, “Small world, me, too! Protestant, or Catholic, or Orthodox?”

The jumper answers, “Protestant.”

The man replies, “Me, too! What denomination?”

The jumper says, “Baptist”

The man replies, “Me, too! Southern Baptist or Northern Baptist?”

The jumper answers, “Northern Baptist.”

The man replies, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

The jumper answers, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”

The man replies, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern region?”

The jumper answers,” Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”

The man replies, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region council of 1912?”

The jumper answers, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region council of 1912.”

The man then pushes the jumper off the bridge and yells, “Die, Heretic!”

This joke makes a simple point in a quite extended fashion, and that’s part of the humor of it.  We hear two men talking with each other, one in some extremity of life that has driven him to such despair that the only way out he can see is to end his life; and the other, supposedly concerned about his fellow human, trying to find some way to identify with him, so the man will develop a trust that will allow the stranger to talk him out of making what is likely to be an irreversible decision.  The problem is, the man does it by offering categories that, while they have the potential for establishing a sense of unity, are based on a series of disunities that have occurred through history that finally lead the two to the recognition that they are on opposite sides of one of the disunities, thus causing the would-be savior to become the executioner instead.  It is the series of affirmations of unity that set us up to be taken by surprise at the final revelation of disunity and the radical reversal in attitude and action on the part of one who is nominally Christian, and a “fellow Christian” with the other man at that.

The point is, it is we humans that create categories by which we separate ourselves, because it has been God who created us all in God’s image and who claims every one of us as one of God’s children – whether we know it or not, or in whatever way we may think of it.  Those who are children of God – that is, all of us – are meant to benefit from everything that God has put in Creation, and we are to represent God to one another as the way we make use of the blessings we have received from God.

This means that we are to act toward others as though they, too, were children of God and in a way in which they could easily identify us as the same, whether they would use that language or not.  At least they ought to be able to say that we are “kindly” people, or “loving” people, or “generous” people, or “wise” people, or “responsible” people, or “thoughtful” people, or “just” people, or “helpful” people.  Whatever adjectives they would use for us, one would expect them to be laudatory rather than condemnatory.

At the same time, because they, too, are children of God, it would be important that we identify the ways in which they, also, reflect the nature and goodness of God, even if we must look long and hard to be able to see that.  In the second chapter of the book by United Methodist Bishop Rueben Job several of us are reading through Lent, he talks about the labels we put on each other – whether it be “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region council of 1912” or “bigot” or “tightwad” or “illegal alien” or “misogynist” or whatever.  Such labels tend to box those in upon whom we place them, and they tend, also, to box us in relative to the ways we respond to the ones to whom we refer in those ways.

Instead, what we are called to do by the scriptures today – that call us to have God’s law written on our hearts and to lift up the Christ so as to draw all people to him – is to recognize each person, first, as a child of God, and ourselves as well, and then to refer to the ways each of us is and is not acting accordingly.

What we will find out is that we must heed the call of God through Micah, who reminded us to “do justly, and love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.”  These are the marks of a child of God, and a true source of the unity of all humanity.  May we exhibit and engender that unity in all we do and say.

Sermon for Sunday, March 18, 2012

Riverside United Methodist Church

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Numbers 21.4-9: The people’s complaining brought death in the form of serpents. God offered healing from the serpents’ bites for all who would look upon a bronze serpent Moses fashioned and lifted on a pole.

Psalm 107.1-3, 17-22: A psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance from deadly disease caused by human sin.

Ephesians 2.1-10: Paul proclaims the power of God’s salvation, delivering us from “the ruler of the power in the air” and “the passions of our flesh,” which were killing us. God extends this salvation to humans through grace — not through our earning it in any way. God’s salvation not only breaks the chains of the powers that bind us, but empowers us to live lives full of good works. We become a reflection of the “immeasurable riches of God’s grace” that God desires to lavish upon all who will receive them.

John 3.14-21: Jesus offers two meta-narratives to help Nicodemus understand the meaning of God’s salvation through him — Moses lifting up the serpent, and God’s free gift of eternal life to all who will “believe into” (i.e., live as disciples of) Jesus.

Optimist and Pessimist

A family had twin boys who were totally opposite from one another.  If one was too hot, the other was too cold.  If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up.  Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, on the twins’ birthday their father loaded the pessimist’s room with the best toys and games.  The optimist’s room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist’s room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.

“Why are you crying?” the father asked.

“Because my friends will be jealous, I’ll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I’ll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken,” answered the pessimist twin.

Passing the optimist twin’s room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure.  ”What are you so happy about?” he asked.

To which his optimist twin replied, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

Yesterday, I was no optimist nor pessimist; I – along with others here at the church – was a realist.  The reality with which we were dealing was that the floor drain in the women’s restroom downstairs was allowing sewage to flow out onto the floor and into the hallway.  The problem was compounded by the fact that the drainage from the toilets was linked to this floor drain, so that the sewage contained waste products and remnants of toilet paper, making an ugly, smelly mess.

Tom, who was here to sell his records, apparently did much of the initial cleanup before I arrived; but I tried to remedy what I thought to be the originating problem by plunging one of the toilet stools, so the water would flow properly, and I ended up exacerbating the problem, as more waste came up out of the floor drain.  After an hour or so of mopping and several changes of wash water, including deodorizer and disinfectant, the floor drain was no longer leaking, and the floor was as clean as it was going to be.  Phil came in and worked on the problem for a bit and eventually arranged for the plumber to come tomorrow to scope out the drainage system to find and fix the problem.  In addition, he will do the scoping out of the entire drainage system for the church, so we can see if there are other blockages that have contributed to the more general basement flooding we’ve had over the past few years.

Now, it seems like it would be easier to be a pessimist in such a situation as this than to be an optimist.  The pessimist would say, “Oh, no!  One more problem that is going to cost a lot of money to solve, and this old building seems to be one that, even when one problem has been solved, another one appears, and it’s a terrible thing when these things happen just when people are here for sales, so even if they were looking for a church home in addition to a good price on things they needed or wanted at the sale, they would be less likely to come here to worship when they know the building is in poor condition.”

The optimist, on the other hand, might say, “Well, good!  This problem that we thought we had solved last year with the plumbing work we had done then is still there; but we had wanted to scope out the drainage system, and this makes that more urgent, so we’ll get it done sooner rather than later; and that will allow us to resolve all the flooding problems more quickly, so we can get the floor treatment done that we’ve wanted for several years now and allow us to make the basement a much more appealing place to hold events and to provide better hospitality for visiting groups than it has been for the past several years.”

I believe this situation – and the story of the twins who reacted in opposite ways from one another – give an illustration of how the scripture is seeking to instruct us in dealing with what I’m calling an “undeserved gift.”

We normally think of a “gift” as something nice, something we’d like to have, something that brings us pleasure when we receive it.  Yet the reality is that all of life is a gift; and we did nothing to merit that gift; it was simply given to us, and we have been faced with the challenge of dealing with it.  We could deal with it as the pessimist is described as doing – or as the Israelites dealt with the lack of food and water in the wilderness – complaining and considering the hardships of slavery as better than the freedom they were experiencing and failing to anticipate the promise of their own land with joy.  Or, we could deal with it as the optimist did – and as the Apostle Paul urges his fellow Christians to do – to respond with gratitude for whatever life brings, and to figure out how to do what he calls the “good works” for which we were created, whether that be to mop up sewage, or to refinish a damaged floor, or to offer the use of our underused facility to a vibrant youth ministry or a private school or a natural-foods cook, or to use it ourselves for worship and fellowship and community gatherings and special programs geared to drawing people in and bringing them a new vision for their lives that includes devotion to Jesus Christ and loving fellowship with other of his followers.

Let us seek to accept the undeserved gifts of life and whatever life brings in light of the love of the giver, the God we know through Jesus Christ, so that we can do the good works for which we were made and draw others to the One who teaches and heals and helps us makes life what it was meant to be.

Sermon for Sunday, 11 March 2012

Pastor Douglas Asbury

Exodus 20.1-17: God speaks the “Ten Words” (as they are known in Judaism), beginning with an important identity statement: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Psalm 19: A psalm declaring Creation’s praise of God and our praise of God’s instruction (“Torah”).

1 Corinthians 1.18-25: Paul notes what must have been obvious — proclaiming a crucified man as Messiah and Savior can be a stretch for all people, Jewish or Gentile. But for those who “get it,” it is a powerful, life-changing message that opens up a new understanding of God and the world.

John 2.13-22: Jesus makes Temple worship impossible at the busiest time of the year — the Passover sacrifice. He confronts those who had turned the Temple courtyard into a marketplace, and they ask him what sign of authority he has for doing this. He tells them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Phases of Teachability
An alumnus from a certain school tells this story: When I first started college, the Dean came in and said “Good Morning” to all of us. When we echoed the words back to him, he responded “Ah, you’re Freshmen.”
He explained. “When you walk in and say good morning, and they say good morning back, it’s Freshmen. When they put their newspapers down and open their books, it’s Sophomores. When they look up so they can see the instructor over the tops of the newspapers, it’s Juniors. When they put their feet up on the desks and keep reading, it’s Seniors.”

“When you walk in and say ‘good morning,’ and they write it down, it’s graduate students.”

Obviously this story has some truth to it, and it is also a gross generalization. Not all college students start out being obediently respectful of authority figures and move through various stages of realism and cynicism to the point of flauting authority, let alone becoming automatons when they seek a graduate degree. Some students actually like the educational process and involve themselves in it fully; and others never do, so they would continue reading their newspapers, even as freshmen.
But let’s look beyond the story, because some people these days go to graduate school in an attempt to get a better job or to prepare for a more specialized career than would be available to them with only a bachelor’s degree. Some of those even go on to get a Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., or other professional degree in order to become knowledgeable in an even more limited field.

But among all these students of whatever level of study or achievement, only a relative handful fall in love with their field and study for love’s sake rather than for the sake of the expertise or the achievement or the prestige or the influence or whatever else they decide they want to “do with” the things they’re learning.

As any good teacher knows – and many others who aren’t teachers but who have had many – the teacher who is in love with her or his subject can be both a frustrating and an inspiring person under whom to study. A teacher who has fallen in love with the subject wants, obviously, to have students learn about the subject in great detail. And yet, the teacher who loves the subject wants more than that; such a teacher wants the students, too, to fall in love with the subject, just as the teacher has.

Of course, that doesn’t always happen. In fact, it might be said that most of any subject-loving teacher’s students fail to fall in love with that teacher’s subject. I suppose this is to be expected. There have to be some sympathetic vibrations between student and subject for love to emerge in the studying, and not every student will be on the wavelength of every subject studied.

But the second thing a good teacher wants for the students is that he or she knows as much about the object of the teacher’s love as possible so as to live responsibly in the world in relation to that subject. And beyond that, the teacher wants each student to know that it is possible to fall in love with learning, and particularly, learning about something that touches one’s heart and calls forth the best efforts one can muster.

This comes across in the scriptures for today. Though Moses gave the Ten Commandments as a set of directives, the psalmist celebrated the commandments of God as things that “revived the soul,” that “make wise the simple,” that “rejoice the heart,” and that “enlighten the eyes.” Can you hear in such images the love the psalmist had for what many learned simply as a set of teachings or rules that some followed but to which many gave only lip service – like the juniors and seniors in the opening story?
The Apostle Paul goes beyond the psalmist, even, by directing his hearers’ attention not to a set of teachings but to an act of sacrifice – to the cross of Christ. This reality, he noted, was a stumbling block to those who wanted signs of power and foolishness to those who sought sensible wisdom. And yet, Paul writes, “to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

How, then, are we to understand a crucified God as power and wisdom? This is the challenge before us. The Church through the centuries has had conversations and conflicts over this very thing that have tossed it about and split it from time to time; and no one can truly be said to have the one right answer as to how a crucified human at one point in history can be all the divine power and wisdom people need, whoever and wherever they are.

But those who fall in love with seeking the answer to this question are those who have the greatest chance of coming to live in the way we were meant to live. Those who allow this act of Jesus giving himself over to death for the sake of the sins of the world to challenge them and to draw them into a love relationship with the God whom Jesus presented and presents to us will find that the power and wisdom of God are not the things after which we must quest through study, but they are the gifts of God to those who love God and are called according to God’s purpose.

As we receive Holy Communion today and continue to do so in the coming weeks, I invite you to consider that it is a feast celebrating God’s love for us and inviting us more deeply into that love relationship offered in Jesus Christ.