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Life Lessons from Luke: Following

6/26/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 26, 2022

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2 Kings 2:1-8; Luke 9:51-62

I want to begin this morning with a Jeopardy moment. So here is the answer, Cristiano Renaldo, Khaby Lame, Barack Obama, and Pewdiepie? What is the question? Any guesses? What they have in common is that they have the most followers in a particular branch of social media. Cristiano Renaldo has 456 million followers on Instagram. Khaby Lame has 142 million followers on Tik-tok. Barack Obama has 132 million followers on Twitter. And, Pewdiepie…yes that is his handle and he simply plays and talks about video games, has 111 million followers on YouTube. That’s a lot of people following each of them. However, they all pale in comparison to the followers of Jesus. Jesus has about 2.6 billion followers, or as Wikipedia puts it, adherents. The question we might want to ask ourselves this morning is what is the difference between being a follower of someone on social media and a follower of Jesus? Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to compare them to a follower of someone on social media is to be interested in their thoughts, insights, abilities, or music…or perhaps what they wear. To be a follower of Jesus, if we see being a follower through the lens of scripture, is to move from believing to being. Let me say that again, being a follower of Jesus is about moving from believing to being.

We can understand this movement from believing to being by understanding a bit more about who Jesus is on a fundamental level. On the most fundamental level, Jesus is the embodiment of God with us, and us with God. What I mean by this is that Jesus did not simply live as a great teacher or rabbi, which he was. He did not live simply as a purveyor of secret knowledge about how to get to heaven, which he did possess. He did not simply live as a healer, which he certainly was. He did not simply live as an apocalyptic miracle worker. Jesus was all these things, but more importantly Jesus was the literal embodiment of God with us, and us with God. This is the concept that Jesus was both fully divine (God with us) and fully human (us with God). And so, when the scriptures talk about Jesus’ desire to have people follow him, it was not just about his teaching, healing, or miracles. Following was about the transformation of human beings from those who believed in Jesus, to those who embodied us with God to become fully human as God designed us to be; meaning we are those who live in full communion with God, and it is the Spirit that empowers and directs all we that are and do. It is moving from believing to being.

I bring up the concept of following because it is at the heart of this section of Luke in which Jesus tells his followers several important things about following. First, he shows them that following is corrective. In other words, following Jesus, moving from believing to being, is intended to correct patterns of believing that are incompatible with being fully human. We see this in the strange story of James and John wanting to rain fire and brimstone on the Samaritans who would not welcome Jesus into their homes. While that might seem odd to us, we need to remember that Jews and Samaritans hated each other. They despised one another. So when Jesus is cutting across Samaritan territory and was refused the kindness that ought to have been shown to strangers, it was not a great leap for the disciples’ hatred of Samaritans to show itself. Jesus however rebukes them. Jesus rebukes them because he understands that he has come to give his life for the whole world and not just for those who are nice to him. He understands that Samaritans are children of God deserving of God’s love and grace, and that they have reasons to hate Jews since Jews under the Maccabees destroyed their temple and oppressed them. Thus, following is intended to correct those beliefs and actions that keep us from experiencing our true humanity.

The second thing Jesus wants his followers to understand is that following is continual. This is the focus of another odd story in Luke in verses 57 and 58. “As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, following Jesus is not something someone does for a while, and then one settles down in one’s den or nest. Following Jesus is instead a journey without an end…there is no place to finally stop and lay one’s head as if the journey is over. In some ways one could liken this to professional athletes who still have coaches. NBA stars have shooting coaches. Pro golfers have swing coaches. Major League Baseball players have hitting and pitching coaches. These pros understand that they are on a journey to become better and better at their craft. They understand that there is room for continual improvement. The same is true with following Jesus. It is true because we are not just trying to get our theology right, but working to become new people. We are trying to become the people who God designed us to be. We are moving from believing to being, which is a lifetime endeavor.

Finally, Jesus wants his followers to understand that following is critical. What I mean by critical is not criticism, but critical as in the most important thing. I would argue that this is the meaning behind the final four verses. “Jesus said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” In both conversations the people involved believed that there were other obligations that were more important than following Jesus. Burying one’s family was a mitzvah, or good deed that all Jews were expected to do. Saying goodbye to one’s family was a way of honoring one’s parents, or one’s spouse. Each was important. So, when Jesus says these things, he is not asking people not to bury their dead or say goodbye to family, he is instead reminding them of the critical nature of following: that it is only in following, in moving from believing to being, that one can truly emerge as a new human being. Putting anything else in the way of following restricts the transformation that God has planned for us.

Following Jesus is what Cindy Merten has been helping us do for the past 23 years. She has helped children and adults move from believing to being. She has helped people of all abilities move from believing to being. She has helped us understand that following is a lifelong pursuit and a critical part of our lives. She has been a gift to the process of embodiment for hundreds and hundreds of children and adults. I hope that you will stop and thank her this morning before you leave.

My challenge to all of us then is this, to ask ourselves how am I working at following Jesus that I might be the embodiment of the true humanity that Jesus is offering?

Life Lessons from Luke: Risking

6/19/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 19, 2022

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2 Kings 9:1-3; Luke 8:27-39

      You can see it on their faces. They are doing a risk versus reward calculation. They are trying to determine how much they will wager. Will it be a little or a lot? It often depends on whether they are ahead or behind, on how much they are ahead or behind, or perhaps how much they know about the categories at hand. Sometimes it depends on whether the individual is someone willing to risk everything. Regardless, when a Daily Double shows up on the board, it is never clear what the contestants will do. For those of you unfamiliar with the Daily Double, it is not a new lotto game from the Michigan Lottery. The Daily Double to which I am referring is an option in the game of Jeopardy to wager as little as a dollar or the entire amount that a contestant has accumulated. Most people seldom bet everything because they are not willing to risk all that they have accumulated. Still, it is always a risk versus reward scenario.

      Calculating risk versus reward is something that we do every day. I say that because every day we take risks. We take risks getting out of bed, driving a car, going to the grocery store, or eating at restaurants. Each of these is risky because we could trip and fall, be in a car crash, get Covid from someone in the checkout line, or end up with food poisoning. Yet, on a regular basis many of us do all these things. We do so because we do a risk-reward analysis and decide which risks are worth taking, such as driving in a car…and which are not, such as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to see if our parachute will open…though I know there are those among us who have done this. These are the type of risks that we are constantly weighing. But this raises a question for us this morning and that is, how do we evaluate the risk reward relationship along our faith journey?

      Throughout the scriptures there are people who are willing to take risks and those who are not. This morning we have two stories which show us how this works. Our Old Testament text concerns one of the company of prophets. We don’t know his name, but what we do know is that the prophet Elisha asks him to risk his life. This prophet is to go and anoint a general to be king. There are several problems with this action. First, there is already a king who would kill the prophet if he discovered what the prophet was up to. Second, the general works for the king who might see this anointing as an act of treason and kill the prophet. Third, even if the general allowed the anointing, his men might see this an act of treason and kill the general and the prophet. So, all in all a risky business, which calls upon the prophet to do a drive by anointing…meaning as soon as the oil hits the general’s head, the prophet is to flee. The outcome of the story is that the prophet weighs the risk; death; and the reward; doing God’s will and chooses the latter.

      Our second story from the Gospel of Luke contains not one but two stories of risk vs. reward. The first story is about Jesus. Jesus has taken his followers out of Jewish territory and into Gentile Lands. On the surface this is not a great risk, though the two groups did not always get along. The greater risk is that the boat in which Jesus and his friends are riding comes ashore in a place haunted over by a man of superhuman strength; strength that is the result of demon possession. Though the people of that area had bound him in chains and shackles, they could not hold him. He was a man of whom all around him were afraid. The man could have attacked Jesus and his disciples. There was also the risk that when Jesus commanded the spirits to leave the man, they could have inhabited the disciples. While we tend to see Jesus as a superman, we need to remember that he was fully human, and as the cross reminds us, capable of dying. Yet Jesus weighed the risk and the reward; being harmed or doing the will of God and making this man whole. Like the prophet hundreds of years before him, Jesus chose the will of God. But this is just half the story.

      The second half of the story concerns the people of the land where Jesus and his disciples landed, and where Jesus healed the man with the demons. These people had lived in fear of the demon possessed man. We would assume then that when he was cured there would have been a celebration. The people would have come out of their homes and carried Jesus into town and given him wonderful gifts. Yet they had a risk reward calculation to do as well. Their risk reward had to do with the fact that Jesus had sent the demons into a herd of swine and the swine had drowned themselves. To put it simply, Jesus’ act of freeing the man was only done at great financial cost to many of them. The question they were facing then was do we invite Jesus to stay and risk other financial losses or do we ask him to leave and run the risk of another demon possessed man arising. They chose the latter and asked Jesus to leave.

      With all of this having been said, many of you may be asking yourselves, as I did for much of this week, so what is the risk that we take as Christians? I asked this because regardless of what you may hear in the media, Christians are not persecuted in this nation. We can worship freely. We can speak of our faith freely. We can read our Bibles freely. And because of these freedoms it would appear as if there were no real risk in being a Christian…yet there is. There is a risk because of what we are called to believe. As Jesus people we are called to believe that God is a God of justice and mercy. We are called to believe that God’s love is for all persons and that we have no right to say who is in and who is out. We are called to believe that we are to love not only God but neighbor. We are called to believe that we are to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, and visit the prisoner. We are called to believe that we are to share what we have with those who don’t have enough. And these beliefs are risky because they call us to do what we believe.

      If we believe that God is a God of justice and mercy, we are to work for justice and show mercy to those whom the world doesn’t believe deserves mercy. This is risky business. If we believe that we are to love all persons and refuse to say who is in and who is out of God’s love, then we must act and love all of those people we might not want to love. This is risky business. If we believe that we are to love our neighbor and our neighbor is everyone, even our enemies, then we are to truly love our enemies. This is risky business. If we are to give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, house the homeless, and visit the prisoner…then we must do this regardless of the personal or financial cost involved. This is risky business. Living our beliefs is risky business…personally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. This is the risk reward calculation that we must make every day.

      I wish this risk reward calculation could be easy, but just as in deciding on what to risk on the daily double in Jeopardy depends on any number of factors, so too does each risk we take for the kingdom of God. Some may be simple and the risk low. Others may be more difficult and the risk to ourselves great. Yet if we are to be Jesus people, then we need to at least make the calculation. We need to ask ourselves if the risk is worth the return and allow the Spirit to guide us. For in so doing, we just might discover that we can be like the prophet, and Jesus and risk it all for the Kingdom of God. My challenge to you this morning then, is for all of us to ask ourselves how am I measuring the risk and reward of faithfulness in order that I might do the will of God as the best I can.

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Life Lessons from Luke: Healing

6/12/2022

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Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 12, 2022

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2 Kings 5:1-15; Luke 7:1-10

      It looked like a great idea for continuing education. Many of you may not be aware that one of the things that ministers are encouraged to do is to engage in continuing education. Over the years I have taken a few short courses, watched videos, or simply done some reading. But this was the perfect continuing education opportunity. First it was online. Second, it was only eight, one-hour sessions. Third, the price was, well, reasonable. Fourth, even if I could not use what I learned in the church, I could probably use it as a sideline income generator. Oh, and what was this continuing education? It was a course on healing. That’s right, in eight, one-hour sessions I could learn how to lay my hands on people, channel the power of God, and heal them of all diseases. Just imagine what a difference that could make. None of you would have to go to the doctor. None of you would need surgery. Just drop by and see Dr. John and everything would be well. Even so, I made the difficult decision to not take the course…though it might have been interesting.

      Healing. Of all the stories and occurrences in scripture that cause people to pause, question, and doubt, the healing miracles and stories are probably close to the top of the list. As 21st century believers we have physicians, therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostic tests, robot surgical equipment, and a whole host of other scientifically oriented items that cause us to look askance at the healing stories. There are other Christen traditions in which healing still plays a significant role but for Presbyterians we usually follow John Calvin’s lead when he states that the miraculous spiritual gifts such as healing and speaking in tongues were simply a part of the life of the early church and no longer function in the modern world…even if for Calvin the modern world was the 1500s. This always raises the question of what do we do with these stories? Do we argue over whether they were “real”? Do we argue about whether this kind of healing is still possible? Or are there other alternative ways of understanding them? What I want to do this morning is to offer a different way of seeing these stories, and that are signposts pointing to God’s ultimate desire for humanity. Meaning that human beings, in God’s final consummation of all things will be made whole. They will all be healed.

      To understand this idea, I want to use a Texana illustration. Which is especially fitting since my family is here visiting…and they will all get it. In Texas there are a series of the world’s largest car and truckstops called Buc-ee's. They are on major interstate highways and they are known for several things, including clean bathrooms and kitschy Texana merchandise. But the other thing they are known for are their road signs. Some of them read, “You can Hold it…Buc-ee's only 276 miles ahead.” “No waiting for our java to load.” “Let us plan your next potty.” And the one that is most germane to this morning, “Here is your sign.” These signs are always assurance that there is a place of rest and refreshment ahead. This is the way the healings in scripture work. They are reminders that God has something wonderful ahead. They are reminders that God’s ultimate plan for humanity is that we be healed and made whole. This means healed on both an individual and a communal basis. The individual basis is healing such that human beings become capable of loving God and neighbor…that as the prophet Jeremiah stated, the Law would be written on people’s hearts, and they would just live it. Communally, healing can be seen in the Book of Revelation where there is a tree in the garden of the New Jerusalem whose leaves are intended for the healing of the nations. These are the healings toward which the signposts are directing us.

      What this means then is that these healing story signposts are to engender hope. The distance between my parents’ house in Houston and our house in San Antonio was almost exactly two-hundred miles. And as Cindy often said, it was probably the world’s most boring drive. You sort of point your car toward home, drive in a straight line and set the cruise control. And though we often stopped at Buc-ee's along the way, there were other times when we were in a hurry and did not. Yet the Buc-ee's signs were signs of hope. They were signs of hope because the reminded us that we were two-thirds of the way through our journey and home was around the corner. This is the hope that these healing stories give us. They tell us that the condition in which find ourselves is not the last word. That the condition in which we see the world is not the way it is always going to be. That there is hope that just as Naaman and the slave were healed so can be creation; so can be humanity; so can be our relationships; so can be our nation. There is in these signposts hope that God is at work continuing God’s healing mission and that one day we will arrive.

      Finally, there is one more important aspect of these stories which we ought not to miss and that is that this promised future healing is open to all. Buc-ee’s makes sure that motorists know that they are open for business for all kinds of vehicles. Trucks, cars, RVs, motorcycles, and yes, Buc-ee's is even installing Tesla supercharging stations for electric vehicles. In other words, the refreshing and rest of Buc-ee's is open to all. This is what this promised future of healing and wholeness does as well. To make this clear all we need to do is to look at our two stories. The first is of Naaman, a Syrian general who was the enemy of Israel. He was suffering from leprosy, a horrific, slow, debilitating disease, for which there was no cure. Naaman is told that there is someone in Israel who can heal him. He sends gifts to the king of Israel who is afraid that Naaman will attack him because he, the king, has no ability to heal the general. Into this story then comes the prophet Elisha who tells Naaman to go and bathe seven times in the Jordan river. While at first hesitant, the general does so and is healed. The second story concerns a Roman slave. Not a Jewish person as a slave, but probably a captive from another nation. Even so, the healing power of God is made visible in his or her life. What this means is that God’s end game of healing and wholeness is not limited to any subset of human beings but is offered to all.

      This morning on the way to church I was listening to an interview with a musician who described the last several years as the world being turned inside out. I would argue that that is an appropriate way to describe what we have been and are still going through. And in those times of the world being turned inside out it is often hard to find a firm frame of reference for our lives. What I hope for all of us this morning is that we will allow these healing stories to help offer us a frame of reference in that they remind us that God desires a healed world. That God is at work slowly, but consistently bringing that world about through us and through others. My challenge to you then is this, to ask yourselves how am I allowing the healing stories of scripture give me hope in this moment?

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The Marks of the Church: Transforming

6/5/2022

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Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 5, 2022

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Joel 2:23-29; Acts 2:1-13

Some people said it tasted like bubblegum. Others said it tasted like cherry. Some said that it had a mixed berry or perhaps a strawberry flavor. One person described it as “cheap strawberry syrup, but with an aftertaste somewhere between chewing rubber gloves and aspartame.” A recent Reddit post on this stuff garnered 13,000 comments from people who remembered it fondly. It even made BuzzFeed’s list of 90’s nostalgia even though it was invented in 1972. For Cindy, me, and our children we simply referred to it as “the pink stuff.” How many of you remember “the pink stuff?” For those of you unfamiliar with “the pink stuff,” it was the antibiotic Amoxicillin in its pediatric, liquid form. It was the miracle drug for young parents. It could turn our hurting, suffering, children who were hurting from ear and other infections, back into their joyous and loving selves. Though it didn’t work instantaneously, we knew that it would do the trick, and that the children we loved would be restored to us once again. Let me ask this morning, have any of you ever wished that there was an adult spiritual pink stuff that could take angry, hateful people and turn them into loving and joyous people? If you have, you are in luck because there is such a thing…and it is the Spirit of God.

In order to fully understand what I mean by this view of the Spirit, we need to step back and look at the larger picture of what God has been and is doing in the world. We begin with the words of the prophet Joel. Joel is addressing the people of God who have been through two of the most dreaded events in the life of an agrarian culture: drought and a locust invasion. These two events are what often caused starvation and relocation of peoples. Without access to foreign grain or water people found themselves in desperate straits. The word from Joel though is that this is not how God wants God’s people to live. Instead, God desires that people experience the fullness of all that creation can offer them. Thus, God has given early and late rain such that the threshing floors shall be full of grain and the vats overflowing with wine and oil. But God does not stop there with the restoration of creation, but God continues by promising the transformation of humankind; transforming humanity into the people God desires them to be. And God will do this through the giving of the Spirit. “And I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. Even on your male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” This my friends is God’s promise of universal transformation in which people are intimately connected to their creator.

This idea of God's continual work of transformation lays the foundation for our Pentecost story. But before we make the connection, I want us to be clear that the Spirit of God does not just suddenly appear at Pentecost. The Spirit is integral to the Old Testament. The Spirit was at creation. Moses speaks of the presence of God’s Spirit in the wilderness. The Spirit infused both King Saul and King David. The Spirit gave visions to the prophet Ezekiel. And Zechariah speaks of God’s Spirit empowering other prophets. So, the Spirit has been around. But what we believe about the Spirit that arrives on the Jewish festival of Pentecost is that this is the moment that the Spirit of God becomes the spiritual pink stuff intended to heal and transform the world; that, as Peter puts it, this is the moment that Joel had been referring to in his ancient prophecy. And we can begin to see this transformation as it takes the fearful and timid disciples, and turns them into fearless and bold proclaimers of the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. And not only does it do those two things, but it shapes them into a community in which all persons (remember Joel’s “all flesh”) are not only accepted but are embraced and transformed. The spiritual pink stuff of the Spirit has been unleashed into the world.

I wish we could say this morning that this spiritual pink stuff of the Spirit has transformed all persons; transformed all flesh. But looking out at our world…and even at times looking at our own lives, we can see that the transformation is not complete. We can see anger, hatred, jealousy, pride, violence, and perhaps all sorts of other sins loose in the world. This creation has not yet become what God desires it to be. Which is why these Sunday mornings are so important. They are important because here in this place, or online, or if you are watching this later on YouTube, we are taking the next dose of the Spiritual pink stuff. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff in the act of baptism where we profess that the Spirit is present and we make commitments to the children and to God, through which the Spirit can operate in us. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff when we hear the word read and proclaimed, as the Spirit uses these words to transform us. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff when we come to the table and eat the bread and drink from the cup, because we are transformed as we are fed. We are taking the Spiritual pink stuff when we allow the music to transform our hearts and minds. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff when we spend time with others, being transformed by sharing our lives together.

My friends, God desires us to be transformed into the image of God’s one and only Son, Jesus of Nazareth. We can do so by being open to the Spirit, and by partaking of the Spiritual pink stuff, such that we are made new each day. My challenge to you then is to ask yourselves, how am I being open to and engaging with the Spirit so that I may be transformed.

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The Marks of the Church: Including

5/29/2022

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Rev. Bethany Peerbolte
May 29, 2022

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Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 8:26-40

I got an F on the first sermon I ever wrote in seminary. Actually, everyone in the class got an F. We had three weeks of instruction, and then we all went down to the sanctuary to preach our sermons from the pulpit. When we were all done, the professor returned our manuscripts with giant red F’s on the front.

He asked us, “Whose words are more important, yours or the ones in the Bible?” Obviously, we all said the Bible. Then he asked each of us how much time we had spent writing and rehearsing our sermons. We all gave our estimated times (with maybe a little bit of inflation) and then the professor asked us, “How much time did you spend reading and rehearsing the scripture?” We saw what he was saying. We had spent hours on our words and a couple of minutes reciting the Bible’s words. Lesson learned.

A while back I preached a sermon with the story of Babel and as I spent time reciting the words in the bible, as I had learned were needed, I played around with different speaking tones just to try and make the words sound fresh. When I tried with a lighter brighter tone I had to stop and restart because I didn’t think I was reading the right words. They sounded very different suddenly. Normally when I read God speaking about the people of Babel I hear an angry, frustrated God fed up with humanity. But when I lightened up my tone it sounded like God was proud of them. Let me show you: (Excited, proud, tone) “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

Such a different impression, but those are the same words! That version of a proud parent God echoed in my mind this week as I looked over the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Now don’t freak out but I am not going to focus on the fact that this is a story about a gender nonconforming person of color. Because the specific identity labels scripture gives this court official does not matter. The point scripture is making is that Philip and this court official represent two different groups of people.

Their ancestors that were at Babel ended up in different tribes. If Babel is God dispersing humanity, this moment is God drawing them back together. This is why for me the proud excited God makes more sense than a frustrated angry God. If God was angry that humanity had found unity it would be foolish of God to send Philip to the court official at this moment.

If the people being “one” caused them to sin and build those heaven-bound towers then this seems like a terrible idea. If the creation of diversity was God’s way of punishing humanity for Babel, encouraging it now feels like the wrong plan.

But if God was proud of the people of Babel, if God was thrilled that they had worked out their issues and wanted to live together as one people, in the same city, this is a huge development for humanity!! Diversity isn’t punishment, it is the next level in God’s design.

Does anyone play video games out there? What do you do when you beat a level in a game?

Right, you make it harder, start again. I recently began my exploration of the metaverse. Yes, I have a virtual reality headset. Do you expect anything else from the millennial pastor? There is a game called Beat Saber where a song plays and you have to slice these boxes that come flying at your head. You have to hit them with the correct hand, in the correct direction, and on the correct beat.

When I first started playing I was horrible! I could not beat a level! So I did what all good gamers do, I found cheat codes. I tricked the game to make the floor higher, I told the game I was shorter than I was, I turned off the walls (oh yeah, there are walls you have to duck around too), and for a few songs I found the place I could slow down the whole song until I got the pattern.

A week later I was feeling confident so I turned the walls back on. Then the next day I was honest about my height, and slowly I removed the cheats and now I can play the game as intended. I was only able to do that because I started with what I could handle. I took small steps to build my confidence, then attempted something harder. I failed a few times, went back to an easier level to build confidence up, then tried again.

We see God and humanity doing this in the Old Testament. Noah’s community could not stand one another, then we get Babel where humanity is choosing to all live in one city. They leveled up. Then we get Abraham’s partnership with God, which has a couple of issues with trust, but eventually, level up. Try having judges, then kings, we see this trajectory begin to form. With more responsibility being entrusted to humanity, and God, the proud parent, guides them along the way.

Then we get to Phillip and the court official. Their meeting sets up the challenge. Since Babel, the fullness of God’s creativity, from Philip to the court official, has been expressed in humanity AND NOW they are ready to be drawn together and begin building again.

Phillip and the court official prove that humanity is ready to see more in each other than just what is different. With Jesus’ teachings, the family of God begins to notice God’s image in “the other” and learns to value and include diversity in their community.

Babel was an accomplishment for humanity, but what they would have been able to build was not yet worthy of God’s intended world. God knew diversity would make what was built far better. And so the people of Babel were gifted with the fullness of human diversity and spread out into the world to develop their unique identities, preparing for the moment when they would be ready to be drawn back together to begin the work of building a grand kingdom, the kingdom of God.

Now a sermon about inclusion to Everybody’s Church is a bit of a soft ball topic. Just because we do this well does not mean we can forget why inclusion is a mark of the church. When we recognize how important diversity is to God we can push past our fears and go meet the strangers God is sending us to.

Phillip and the court official felt the same Spirit tug on their heartstrings, strings that ran through their family line all the way to Babel and they knew they were actually from the same family. That all humanity is meant to be united. All the things that made them different in the eyes of the world actually connected them to the same source. A God that is diverse in expression, a messiah that welcomes everyone, a Spirit that runs through humanity tugging and drawing us together so that we can build a city truly worthy of reaching God in heaven.

We have lived long enough hearing God’s words to Babel as a condemnation. It is not innately bad for us to work together. They were not punished for their unity, they proved they were ready for something greater. Let’s hear God’s words to Babel as our objective, to meet the challenges diversity presents, to include, to feel the Spirit drawing us together by that one string that connects us all so that one day God looks at us and says, “Look, they are one people, and they all understand one another, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

May we meet the challenges and push ourselves past what we think we are capable of, and may we keep leveling up, improving and living closer to how God intended this world to be.

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The Marks of the Church: Blessing

5/24/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 22, 2022

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Psalm 23; Acts 8:14-24

June 1938 was a year in which the world seemed to be coming apart. The Japanese war of conquest in China was in motion with battles across the mainland. The Nazi war machine was gearing up and the government issued a declaration that all able bodied men could be called up for service. Jews were being attacked with growing frequency. The civil war in Spain was raging and Franco’s forces were slowly defeating their enemies. Hitler was named Time’s Man of the Year. Italy was threatening other nations. The great depression, while abating somewhat, was still gripping most of the world. In other words, the world appeared to need a hero…and they got one. They got Superman. Yes, issue #1 of Superman appeared on the shelves of comic stores in June of 1938 and has been there ever since. The staying power of superheroes is amazing. Each of us probably has our favorite. But superheroes are nothing new. There was Hercules, Odysseus, and Gilgamesh among others. While all of these were fictional heroes like Superman, there were real life superheroes. These were the magicians. Magicians like Simon.

To be clear, magic in the First Century is not what we think of as magic. Magic today is David Copperfield with sleight of hand, smoke, mirrors, and illusions that can all be explained. Magic in the First Century was the act of manipulating the unseen forces in the universe to advantage one person over another. Think of it as casting spells, using magic potions that caused the unseen spiritual forces to bend to the will of the magician on behalf of his or her clients. This was the career to which Simon had been drawn, and as such he was probably constantly upgrading his skills. So when he saw Peter and John pray for the Samaritan believers and for the Spirit of God to inhabit them, he wanted in on the action. He wanted to buy the Spirit so that he could do the same “magic.” Let’s be clear, however, that we don’t know what the physical manifestations of the arrival of the Spirit were. Maybe a grouchy people turned into a people of love; maybe people started speaking in various languages as happened at Pentecost. We don’t know, but what we do know is that something dramatic occurred.

Simon’s request was met with Peter’s usual over-the-top kind of response, that the Spirit was not for sale, because the Spirit was a gift. And most importantly for our time this morning, that Peter and John were merely the conduit of God’s blessings that God desired to give to the Samaritans. I realize that this passage does not use the word blessing. But for me, that is what the gift of the Spirit is. It is the ultimate blessing of God. What is a blessing? To put it simply, blessing is the favor of God bestowed on individuals or communities to fill them with God’s love so that they are encouraged, sustained, and transformed. Let me say that again, blessing is the favor of God bestowed on individuals or communities to fill them with God’s love so that they are encouraged, sustained, and transformed. If you want to see blessing at work, we can look to David in Psalm 23. The context of the Psalm is that his life is on the line. He is in the shadow of death. But God blesses him with God’s own presence. The image that should strike us this morning is that of God anointing David’s head with oil. Anointing with oil was an act that essentially said to a stranger, you are welcome here and you are safe here. That the stranger has received the favor of the host, thus encouraging, sustaining, and transforming the stranger into a friend. Therefore, David can find the strength to go on.

I would argue that the same can be said of the believers in Samaria. Before the arrival of Peter and John, they were people who believed something about Jesus. When they were blessed by the Spirit, they became people who were something. They became people who were encouraged, sustained, and transformed, filled with the love of God. What I would also argue is that they too became conduits for the blessing of God; that they became those through whom the blessings of God flowed out into their community and into the world. What this means is that blessing, being a conduit for blessing, is one of the marks of the church. The church is to be the community that anoints others with oil. The church is to be the community that encourages, sustains, and helps to transform people through the work of the Spirit that we have been given. My friends, what this says is that the church is not simply another social service agency, or a gathering of like-minded people. We are instead a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, Spirit-guided community, called to be the conduit for God’s blessings to the world. And this is something that you all do well.

You, the members and friends of Everybody’s Church, understand how to be conduits of God’s blessing to the world. You bless people through what you do at Alcott Elementary when you teach children to read. You encourage, sustain, and transform them. You blessed people when you took food to hungry families throughout the pandemic. You encouraged, sustained, and transformed them. You blessed children in Ukraine with your gifts of money and goods. You encouraged, sustained, and transformed them. You blessed the clients at Baldwin Center through the overwhelming gifts of diapers. You encouraged, sustained, and transformed them. You bless foster families and children in the foster system by the work you do with Rev. Dr. Kate. You encouraged, sustained, and transformed them. You blessed people when you gave to our covid fund that helped more than a hundred families avoid eviction or utility shutoff. You encouraged, sustained, and transformed them. You bless people by your constant prayers for those you know and those on our prayer list whom you might not know. You encouraged, sustained, and transformed them. And there are so, so many other ways in which you have blessed and continue to bless the world around you. You are living out this mark of the church.

This morning however, I would like us to celebrate one who has been a blessing to so many of us, and I know she does not want me to do this but I will anyway, to speak of the blessing that Jan Peters has been over the past 38 years. Jan has been a blessing to those of us who have worked alongside her. She has always been present; ready to listen, lend a hand, offer us encouragement, and help to sustain us when things have not been easy. She has blessed so many families in this church when they have been grieving the loss of one that they loved. She was ready to listen, give a hug, show compassion, and do whatever needed to be done to ensure that the church was a place of encouragement. She has blessed strangers. Most of you are probably unaware that we regularly have people call us or drop by looking for assistance. Jan was always there for them, even when we had nothing to offer. Many of these people became her friends over the years and Jan not only offered them financial assistance, but words of love and encouragement. Jan was a conduit for God’s blessing.

This morning we celebrate Jan and the example that she has offered all of us. My challenge to all of us this morning is to simply ask ourselves, how am I being a conduit for God’s blessing so that people might be encouraged, sustained, and transformed?

The Marks of the Church: Telling

5/15/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 15, 2022

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Acts 6:8-15; Acts 7:1-8

“Who are you?” I suppose there were lots of ways I could have answered. I could have said I'm John, or I'm John Judson, or I'm the Reverend Doctor John Judson, or I'm Roger and Carolyn's son, or I'm David, Richard, and Paul’s brother. Or I am the great, great, great grandson of the man who broke the law in England and brought the plans for the first throstle to the new world. If you don't know what a throstle is, just Google it. There are many ways I could have answered him, but because the question is often contextual, my answer was I'm Principal Judson's husband. One of the things some of you may or may not know about Cindy, is that when she was a Principal on the south side of San Antonio, she was tasked with opening a brand-new school. Meaning she oversaw new construction, ordered supplies, and hired new teachers. The weekend prior to school opening and the students arriving, there were no cafeteria tables at all. They finally arrived on the Saturday before by truck. And so, Cindy and I and our kids and some of the faculty offloaded the cafeteria tables and put them together. So, when the guy asked me, “Who are you?” I knew the best answer was I'm Principal Judson's husband.

So, who are we? If we think about it, that question has far more answers than we might expect. Some of us are husbands; some of us are wives; some of us are daughters; some of us are sons; some of us are cousins; some of us are aunts and uncles; some of us are people who work in the auto industry; some of us are retired; some of us are from Germany. There are, in other words, an almost unlimited number of ways in which we might answer the question, “Who are you?” But the one thing about all these identities is that we are shaped by the relationships to which those identities are linked; and they are especially shaped by our families. I say this because our families teach us who we are supposed to be. They teach us how to interact with other people. They teach us what we're supposed to believe. They teach us how we understand and engage in relationships. Our families shape who we are and how we understand ourselves. And it is that idea of being shaped by family that is at the heart of Stephen's defense of Jesus. Let me explain.

If we return to our story, we see that there were some members of the Jewish community in Jerusalem who did not believe that Jesus or his followers were really part of God’s family; that somehow Jesus and his followers were outliers who had left Judaism behind. This was the accusation against Stephen which opened him to persecution. The question was then, how would Stephen defend himself? How could he convince people that Jesus was part of God’s family? The answer was to tell a story. Well, not just a story, but THE story. Stephen tells the story of Abraham and then of Moses. He begins by telling the story of how Abraham was living in Mesopotamia where God came to him and said, get up and go first to Harran and then to the promised land. This led to God’s declaration that through Abraham, God would bless all the nations of the world. Stephen continues with the story of Moses; how God came to Moses and told him to lead the people out of captivity, into the wilderness, receive the Law and prepare them for entry into the Land of Promise. The climax of this telling of the family story is, essentially, that Jesus is the next chapter of THE story. Jesus is the next chapter of THE story because what THE story is about is God's desire to recreate humanity, to create a humanity in which all human beings are seen as having worth and value; of creating the kind of world we would all love to be a part of; a world of love, peace, joy. Thus, Jesus and those who follow him are not outsiders, but family; shaped and formed by the same family story.

This understanding that the followers of Jesus are part of this ancient story is one of the reasons that we preach out of the entire Bible. Over the forty or so years of my ministry, people have come to me and asked, why do we bother with the Old Testament? My answer is that we bother with it because it is our story. It is part of our family story and we cannot understand who we are unless we know the whole story. And this is the reason that the confirmands, those who are coming in a few minutes to confirm their faith, to publicly affirm their faith, used a curriculum called God’s Story, Our Stories, which covers the entirety of the scriptures. And in exploring that story, the confirmands had the opportunity to reflect on their own stories. To reflect on where their stories intersect with God's story and are being shaped by God's story. Again, not just the stories in the New Testament, but the whole breadth of the scriptures. And I have to say, that in reading the statements of faith of the confirmands, you will see how these young adults are wrestling with and discovering what their faith looks likes as it is being shaped by our common family story. And I admire these statements of faith because I don't think at their age, I could have written anything as powerful as what they have done.

Before we finish, I want to say that there is one more story that has shaped these young adults, and that is the story of this congregation. I say this because many of our confirmands mentioned the importance of this church; its community, mission, preaching, and teaching as instrumental in shaping their faith. And so, I want to take a moment and reflect on why this church is the kind of church that it is; why our church family is the kind of family it is that is shaping these young adults. I will do so by telling the story of Elijah Fish and how he helped shape our family D.N.A. First Presbyterian church was founded in 1834. Their first meeting place was Elijah Fish's barn. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was. It was a big deal because Elijah Fish was an abolitionist; meaning he worked for the abolition of slavery long before it was a popular cause. He invited abolitionist speakers to come and address the people of Birmingham and the surrounding communities. But Fish did not stop there. He participated in the Underground Railroad helping escaped slaves find safety either in Canada or in the Birmingham area. His barn, our first meeting place, was probably where he hid many of these formerly enslaved people. At least two of those formerly enslaved people, the Taylors became members of our congregation. What this says is that our family is one that from the very beginning embraced the full humanity of all persons. What this means is that our confirmands have been shaped not just by their families, and by the Biblical story, but by the story of Everybody’s Church; a story of a community in which all persons are loved and accepted and embraced by God in Jesus Christ.

The challenge for this morning for our confirmands and for the rest of us, is to continue wrestling with the question of “Who am I?” To continue wrestling with our faith as it is shaped by our families, the scriptures, and this community. It is to refuse to allow our faith to become dormant and cease growing. It is to refuse to allow what we believe to become stagnant rather than vibrant. To put it succinctly, my challenge to all of us is to ask ourselves, how is my faith still growing and changing that I might be more faithful tomorrow than today to Jesus Christ and to the God who sent him into the world?

The Marks of the Church: Serving

5/8/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 8, 2022

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Psalm 22:25-31; Acts 6:1-7

It was a great first church for a seminary student. It was the summer after my first year in seminary and I was fortunate to be invited as the summer pastor for a small Presbyterian Church in western Virginia. The church had about 75 members and I could begin learning the ropes of weekly preaching, teaching, and visiting. After about a month, I noticed that people tended to sit in the same spots every week. There was a group of people who sat on the right side of the church and a group who sat on the left side of the church. Out of curiosity I asked one of the regular attenders if there was a reason they sat on the side they did. The response was interesting. He said that he sat on the newcomers’ side, while the long-term members sat on the other side. I then asked him how long he had been in the church. Only about 25 years, he replied. I didn’t ask how long the long-term members had been there. But that was one of those powerful lessons on the tribal nature of human beings…that we gravitate toward and gather with those with whom we have something in common.

This tribalism was also at the heart of the issue riling the church in Jerusalem. There were the long-term widows and the new widows, and they were being treated differently. One of the realities in the first century was that many women became widows, and if their children had died and there was no one to care for them. In some cities there was a regular collection taken to feed these women so that they did not starve. Somewhere along the way though, the widows who belonged to the church were left out of the general offering. The church then collected money from its members and distributed it to their widows. The issue however, was that only the long-term widows, meaning those who had grown up in Jerusalem and spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew, were being fed. The newcomer widows who spoke only Greek were being left out because they had no real connection to the members of the church. When this issue was raised for the leaders of the church, they responded by turning the world upside down, by asking some men to become servants.

You may be surprised that I refer to this decision of asking the men listed in the passage to become servants as turning the world upside down. To understand we need to wrap our minds about how radical an action this was.

First, it was turning the world upside down because the early church was asking free men to become servants. Servants were usually not free. They were usually slaves and as such had no agency of their own. And even if they were free servants, they were looked down on by society in general. No one would grow up with the goal of being a servant. Yet here are the leaders of the church asking these men to take on a serving or subservient role in the life of the community.

Second, it was turning the world upside down because these men were being asked to serve women. This was not the way the world was supposed to work. Women were to serve men. Think of all the times Jesus was having meals and it was always the women who served. Even when Peter’s mother-in-law was ill and Jesus healed her, she got up and served Jesus and the disciples rather than Peter stepping in to help her out. For men to serve women, especially widows, was a radical departure from the societal norm.

Finally, it was turning the world upside down because not only were these men asked to be servants, and servants to women, they were asked to be servants to women who were outsiders. They were asked to be servants to widows who sat on the wrong side of the church. These women had come to Jerusalem to die in the holy city and knew no one. They had no family connection and so they were outsider newcomers. Why should someone be tasked with taking care of them? Yet this is what those men were asked to do, and they did it. They turned the world upside down with hesitation.

We are not privy to any of the discussions that took place or the mindset of the first deacons, which comes from the word diakanos, or servant. We are not sure why these men were chosen. Yet I would argue that they were honored to turn the world upside down because that was what Jesus had done in the upper room before his death. He too had turned the world upside down when he took off his robe, hiked up his shirt, got some water, and washed the feet of the disciples. Jesus, the Messiah, the rabbi, the chosen one, the Son of Man, the Son of God, chose to become a servant. The Apostle Paul would reflect on this in his letter to the church at Philippi when he speaks of Jesus humbling himself not only to become one of us, but to become a servant. In this way Jesus turned the world upside down, or should I say right side up. I say right side up because God’s plan was that all should serve and be served. That as the Psalm puts it, “…the poor shall eat and be satisfied and the rich of the earth will feast and worship.” There is no mention of the poor serving the rich, but instead it is an image of a world in which all persons share in the work and the riches of God’s creation. An outcome that can only happen when people serve one another.

I must admit the older I get the fewer memories of childhood I retain. Yet one of those that is burned into my memory is of one of my first pack meetings as a cub scout. I had on my blue uniform with the blue and gold scarf. I had my pack number on my shoulder where my mother had sewn it. And that night I received this pin, though you in the back probably can’t see it, my Bobcat pin. The Bobcat was the first step in becoming a full-fledged cub scout. When the cubmaster pinned on my and my friends, he pinned it upside down. Then he looked at all of us and said, this pin is upside down until you do a good deed as a reminder that scouts are to “do a good turn daily.” After that we all sat down with our proud parents and waited for the moment the meeting ended. Then we all ran for the back doors to open them for our parents, thus doing a good deed and getting our pins turned right side up.

As the church we are called to turn the world upside down and right side up by living into our roles as servants, servants of those we know and servants of those we don’t know. Of being servants to those who are on our side of the church and those who sit across the aisle. My challenge to you on this day is to ask yourselves this week, what I am doing or what can I do as a servant in order to get my pin, and the world, turned right side up?

The Marks of the Church: Giving

5/1/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 1, 2022

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Psalm 37:18-24; Acts 3:1-10

      The writer of the books of Luke and Acts is an amazing storyteller. I say this because he does not simply retell what happened, but he adds drama to the events. We can see this in our morning’s story. The story begins with Peter and John doing what good Jews living in Jerusalem did, they were going to the Temple for daily prayer. The scene is familiar. As the two disciples approach the gate into the Temple there are multiple beggars seeking alms. The beggars were gathered there because the entrance to the Temple was the perfect place to beg because Jews were called to share what they had with those in need, especially before they went to be in the presence of God. The lame man who, because of his disability, was unable to work and had to be carried to the gate was going through his daily ritual of asking for assistance. Luke, the storyteller, builds a sense of expectation when he describes Peter and John. turning to the man and saying, “Look at us!” Readers will anticipate that something is about to happen. Will Peter and John give the man more money than he expected? Will Peter and John tell the man about Jesus? What will happen? The response is startling. First, they tell the man that they have no money to give…and so the reader is deflated. But then Peter does the unexpected, in the name of Jesus he gives the man the gift of mobility. “In the name of Jesus, get up and walk.” And then the man not only gets up and walks, but he jumps, leaps and praises God. Everyone around them is filled with wonder and amazement. It’s a great story but what are we supposed to do with it?

      I ask this because chances are few of us have ever witnessed such a miracle. We may have heard of miracles, and we may have thought of the wonders of modern medicine as being miracles…which in my opinion they are. But we are people who live in an age of science, where miracles are no longer the norm. And chances are if we were to see someone in the same situation as the man at the Temple, we might give him some money, or see how we might give him some assistance, but we would probably not hold out our hands and tell him to walk in the name of Jesus. Which by the way, is part of our Reformed heritage. Calvin and other Reformers were clear that miracles were part of the early church, but that God no longer worked through them because there were other means of dealing with similar issues. So again, we would probably tell persons in need to seek a physician, or a social-safety net organization to assist them. Diseases are not miraculously cured, except…except…for one kind of illness, which 21st century Christians often believe can be instantaneously solved by prayer, determination, and will. And that is mental illness.

      I have been fascinated by the church and its response to mental illness. What I have witnessed is that mental illness is not really seen as an illness like heart disease or diabetes. Instead, mental illness, meaning everything from depression, to bi-polar disorder, and multiple other diagnoses have been treated like nothing more than a failure of the will of the individual. And that if the individual merely thinks more positively, prays to Jesus, or has people pray over them, then everything will be fine. And if it is not, then the fault lies with the individual. This can be seen in a couple of ways; first in the rise of what is called Biblical Counseling. Many of the degrees that are offered in this area are nothing more than teaching pastors which scripture verses to offer those in need, believing that by reading the Bible the person will be cured. The second way I have witnessed this is in the anti-psychiatric and anti-therapy movement in many churches, where psychiatrists and psychologists are seen as the enemies of faith because…and this critical…there is no such thing as mental illness. But the truth is that mental illness is a real illness. It is physiological. And those wrestling with mental illness need treatment, love, support, and acceptance. And so the question becomes, what can we give those suffering from mental illness? What can we offer them as Peter and John offered wellness to the man at the gate?

      Before I answer that question, I want to tell you why I am speaking about mental illness this morning. I am doing so for a variety of reasons. First, we call ourselves Everybody’s Church where all are welcome. Yet I know that for many people struggling with mental illness they are not comfortable sharing with others, even in this place, about their struggle. In other words, they are not able to be their true selves in our midst. And if we are to be Everybody’s Church then we need to be a place where all persons can freely be their true selves. Second, I am doing so because the Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice Committee of the Session has been learning about and wrestling with how we can be a place where people dealing with mental illness can find a home. Third, I am doing so because it is personal. It is personal because depression runs in my family. My grandmother suffered from it; my mother suffered from it; and one of my brothers and I suffer from it. And if there is one thing I learned from my mother’s experience with depression is that there is a stigma to mental illness and so rather than speak about it we are to hide our illness because of the fear of what others might say about us. So again, the question becomes, as Everybody’s Church, what can we offer to those wrestling with mental illness? The answer, I believe, is that we can offer a safe space in which they can be themselves and be open about their illness. There are many ways to do this, but I will offer three.

      First, we can create an assumption free space. What I mean by this is that we tend to assume that we know what other people are going through. We pretend that maybe because we have felt down or blue or had a bad day that we know what it is like to have deep and profound depression. We assume that we can have empathy and share others’ feelings, but we can’t. This reality was brought home to me by a speaker who has bipolar disorder. The speaker said that even he cannot understand what another person who has bipolar disorder is going through. So we are challenged to set aside our assumptions and simply listen, love, and learn.

      Second, we can create a paternalistic free space. What I mean by this is that many of us, both men and women, pretend that we know what someone else needs and how they ought to treat themselves. We know someone who has done well on one medication, so we tell others they ought to take it. We know someone who has been helped by a particular kind of therapy and so that is the cure for what ails everyone. When we do this, what we are actually doing is robbing those struggling with mental illness of their agency. We are treating people as if they are not capable of making informed decisions about their care and treatment. So, we are challenged to set aside our tendency to give advice and simply listen, love, and learn.

      Third, we can create a stigma free space. Again, we don’t want to believe that we bring a sense of stigma into our conversations about our relationships with those dealing with mental illness. But I want you to answer a couple of questions for me. First, would you feel more comfortable saying I have spinal stenosis, or I have bipolar disorder? Second, would you feel more comfortable saying I have a-fib or I have Schizophrenia. Can you feel the difference? See, many of us have internalized stigma against mental illness. So, our challenge is to set aside our tendency to stigmatize mental illness and simply listen, love, and learn.

      Like Peter and John, we are called to give what we can to those in need. In some cases, it is money. In others, it is our time. And in this case, I believe that we are called to create a safe space for all persons struggling with mental illness as well as all other issues that negatively impact lives. If you want to think more deeply about this issue, I recommend the book Hiding in the Pews by Steve Austin. We have some copies in the hallway. My challenge to all of us then is to consider how we can create a safe space for all people, and on this day, especially for those struggling with mental illness, so that we can truly be Everybody’s Church.

The Marks of the Church: Waiting

4/24/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
April 24, 2022

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Psalm 130:1-8; Acts 1:1-14

I want to give you a word of warning this morning. If you are ever in a grocery store and you see me in a checkout line…do not get behind me. If you are ever traveling down Maple or Telegraph or any other road and see me driving. Get in another lane. If you ever see me at an ATM at the bank…go find another branch. I say this because I have been cursed with always being in the slow lane of everything. I say cursed because if anyone hates waiting it is me. I hate waiting for the microwave to finish. I hate waiting for water to boil. Now it may be that there are others here who dislike waiting as much as I do. So, let’s do a quick poll. How many of you here this morning enjoy waiting? Well, I see that I am not alone. I suppose there might have been a time when people didn’t mind waiting, but I am not sure when that was because both of our passages this morning show people’s impatience with waiting.

The Psalmist has been waiting for God to forgive and restore. Listen again to the words. “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;   Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive   to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,  Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness,  so that we can, with reverence, serve you. I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,  and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord  more than watchmen wait for the morning,  more than watchmen wait for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord,  for with the Lord is unfailing love  and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel  from all their sins.” This is a person who desperately wants God to restore them but is forced to wait, and wait and wait. And the waiting is painful. The disciples are forced to wait as well. They want to know when Jesus is going to restore the kingdom…the answer is, wait. They want to know when Jesus is coming back…the answer is, wait. They want to know when the Spirit is to arrive…the answer is, wait. And I would guess that they are as happy with waiting as was the Psalmist and as are you and I.

      I think one of the reasons we hate to wait is that waiting seems like a waste of time. When we have things we want to accomplish, places we want to go, personal transformations in which we want to engage, people we need to see…waiting appears to be stealing time from us; stealing time that we cannot get back. And yet, from a Biblical perspective, waiting can be some of the most productive time there is. To gain some insight into this idea, let’s return to the wilderness…the wilderness in which the people of God were sent when they fled from Egypt. They spent forty years waiting to leave the wilderness and enter the Land of Promise. That seems like a lot of waiting. Yet that period of waiting was one of discovery and discernment. It was a time of discovery because in their waiting they could receive the Torah, the Law of God. Because they were not busy building new lives and conquering new territory, they had time to listen and receive. In the same way, that time of waiting allowed them to discern that in following Torah they would find life and hope.

       This is the same kind of moment in which I believe the disciples found themselves. They had followed Jesus for three years. He had been crucified and yet God raised him from the dead and he was with them for another forty days, appearing to them and to others. Now, however, Jesus was gone. His physical presence was no longer with them. The Spirit had not yet been fully manifested to instruct them. And so, the disciples…meaning not just the twelve, but many more, both men and women, were forced to confront a new reality. They were forced to confront the reality of a life of faith without Jesus. Did this mean returning to a whole hearted Judaism? Did this mean returning to their old jobs and businesses? Did this mean that they were to see themselves more as followers of Jesus, or Torah, or a combination of the two? Did this mean telling others about Jesus and if so, what ought they to tell them? What would they tell them about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection? If the Spirit had arrived instantaneously, I don’t believe the disciples would have been able to discover and discern who they were supposed to be, what they were supposed to proclaim, or what it was they believed about Jesus and what he accomplished. Waiting gave them that chance. I say this because when Pentecost arrives, the disciples have their messaging prepared and ready to be revealed.

       We are in a similar situation in that we at First Presbyterian Church are waiting. We are in that strange waiting time between the announcement of my retirement and the welcoming of a new senior pastor. For many this might seem like nothing more than a lame duck waiting period. Yet it is not. I say this because we have been about the business of discovery and discernment during these months. We invited everyone in the church to participate in the Holy Cow survey. This survey asked people’s attitudes about the church, its mission, its ministry, its direction, and its leadership. We then conducted listening sessions with a wide variety of individuals throughout the church. In those sessions we gained more insight into people’s views about the purpose and direction of the church…and tomorrow one of the members of the listening team is meeting with program staff to share some suggestions that came out of those meetings. And now we are engaging in a sermon series that will help us wrestle with not only the purpose of the church in general but of our church in particular. Thus, this time of waiting is an intentional time of discovery and discernment intended to help us continue to be the church that Jesus Christ has called us to be.

      Finally, waiting can be a time of discovery and discernment for individuals as well. What I mean by that is that I believe that each of us is called to periods of waiting so that we can discover more and more who God desires us to be. Let me ask, how many of you have spent any significant time asking questions such as: what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? What does the resurrection and the possibility of new life mean for me? How does my life reflect the love and grace of God in Jesus? What does it mean for me to be a part of Everybody’s Church? How am I living out the commitments that I made to children and their parents who have been baptized in my presence? These questions are not about making any of us feel guilty or inadequate. They are instead questions that are intended to help us discover and discern who we are to be. What I am going to do then is challenge all of us to take one of these questions and wait on it. Spend time with it between now and Pentecost. Spend time reflecting on your chosen question; asking questions about it, reading about it, and seeing if this time of waiting that we share with the disciples can be a time of post-Easter growth.

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Life Lessons from Luke: Following

Life Lessons from Luke: Risking

Life Lessons from Luke: Healing

The Marks of the Church: Transforming

The Marks of the Church: Including

The Marks of the Church: Blessing

The Marks of the Church: Telling

The Marks of the Church: Serving

The Marks of the Church: Giving

The Marks of the Church: Waiting

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