1.28.24, "Perspective" - Westminstere Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

The eye of the beholder … 

The right angle …

The perspective …

It’s all in how we look at it … 

Someone sees a tree … the leaf catches their eye … or the trunk and its rough bark … the shape of its limbs … or maybe just the location, and all the other trees … and how pleasant it is.

It’s all in how we look at it …

Some see possibility … others see defeat … 

Angry people see everything that’s wrong … 

People of good cheer walk on the sunny side of the street …

Frightened people jump at their own shadow … 

People of worry conjure up futures that will never happen …

Artists see color and lines … 

Musicians hear sounds and rhythms …  

Chefs taste the seasonings …

Moses sees the Promised Land … 

Paul, the beloved community …

I’m all of these people and then some … from day-to-day, and time-to-time.

I can be a person of worry …  

I can be angry … I can be frightened … I can be sad.

I can be a man of great faith, hope and peace … 

I can love much, and love deeply …I can see the Promised Land … the beloved community …  

And, then, sometimes, none of it … my spirit is cold, my soul limps along, my faith collapses … I’m in the shadows!

When I’m in the shadows, I have to haul myself back to the light of my life … 

I rehearse the words of faith … Come thou fount of every blessing … tune my heart to sing thy grace …

I read Scripture … The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want …

I think of all the people who have walked the ways of faith before I ever showed up, the cloud of witnesses, my spiritual ancestor.

Women and men of good cheer and faith, who struggled with life, just like I do.

Teachers and ministers who taught me the ways of Christ, and good friends who still teach me the things of God.

Call them prophets … 

Moses said to the people: The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet …

Prophets are human beings … frail, fragile - they can lose it and get lost …  

Jonah ran away. 

Samuel got frustrated.

Moses smashed the “first edition” of Ten Commandments.

A prophet is someone who stands in the middle of a busy intersection … there are no traffic lights … everything is moving fast.

Intersection of time and eternity … the world and God’s love …  the visible and the invisible … life and death, goodness and evil … despair and hope … holding it all together … like a traffic cop, waving first to this car, and then to that car … keep the traffic flowing, keep it safe.

Think of the Cross of Christ … a vertical beam connecting heaven and earth … the horizontal beam embracing the world.

Christ at the intersection … holding it all together …  

Who are your prophets? 

They have their finger on the pulse of the day … they do their homework, the speak well-formed thoughts, grounded in real data, and information, they love, they dream, they hope! 

It could be just about anyone … 

A novelist … historian … politician …

For me, Jacqueline Winspear and her Maisie Dobbs detective series … Heather Cox Richardson with her brilliant analysis of American history … or FDR and the New Deal.

It could be:

A musician/composer/lyricist … an artist … a 4th grade teacher …

a poet … a dancer … a comedian …

A grandparent, a neighbor, a stranger on the street, or your best friend.

When I lived in Detroit, I often had Sunday morning breakfast at Samson’s Coney Island, on the corner of Five Mile Road and Middlebelt … he opened at 6:00 AM, and sometimes I was the first customer, rewarded with a glass of his homemade grappa (what a way to begin a Sunday morning) … 

When I left his restaurant, he would always say: “Be happy, be heepy," whatever that meant … nevertheless, it cheered me, and I called him, “my preacher!” 

I left his restaurant fortified in body and soul.

Who are your prophets?

Whose voice do you find compelling and liberating … on a more serious note, those two words - compelling and liberating - must go together, if it’s going to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth …

A voice may be compelling, but not liberating …

Lies can be compelling!

Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy, compelling, but not liberating; 

Abraham Lincoln of the Union, compelling AND liberating; 

Governor Faubus of Arkansas, compelling, but not liberating … 

Martin Luther King, Jr., compelling AND liberating …

Let my people go. Says Moses to Pharaoh.

The truth will make you free. Says Jesus our LORD.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Says the Apostle Paul!

Freedom - freedom for ALL … not a select few, not the privileged and the powerful … nor white Protestants living in Nebraska … but all people - the great American dream … from sea to shining sea … often beaten down and trampled upon by those who would restrict the broad reach of freedom for their own interests.

Let me put this way: if freedom for all is missing from what’s being said and done, it’s not the truth … no matter how loudly it’s shouted … no matter how often it’s repeated … no matter how many people believe it.

If freedom for all, liberation for everyone, is missing, it’s just another lie.

As the guardian Knight said to Indiana Jones:

Choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you

Who are you prophets? And what is the truth they speak?

Courtney was a student chaplain at a public hospital in downtown Atlanta. A hard place to work.

She walked into her first hospital room wearing her chaplain badge as she had been taught. “Hi, I’m Courtney,” she said to the older couple in the room. “May I spend some time with you?” 

The man looked up at her with contempt in his eyes and said, “Little girl, this is my wife of 62 years. I’ve spent every single day with her. I’m 84 now, but she stopped recognizing me. If you can tell me why God allowed this, you can stay. If not, move on.”

As Courtney recounted the story, she said:

“I wanted to move on, but when I tried to, my feet were stuck.” 

All she could think of, she said, was her grandparents — and how much they had loved each other.  As she looked at the elderly man, she saw how much he adored his wife.

Unable to think of anything to say, she began to cry, watching her tears drop on the floor of the room. When she looked up, the man had tears streaming down his face as well. 

He reached out his hand to her and said, “Chaplain, I’d be honored if you stay.” 

That’s when Courtney’s feet moved. And for the next 45 minutes, she held their hands and cried with them.

Sometimes prophets - just hold our hands and cry with us.

Amen and Amen!

1.21.24 "Jonah" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Mark 1:14-20

The word of the LORD came to Jonah … a second time.

The first time didn’t work out so well …

God asked Jonah to go East, Go east! young man, go east, to Nineveh … of all places!

Nineveh is the capital city of the Assyrian Empire …   

A huge city, a three-days’ walk, says the story … today, it’s called Mosul, in modern-day Iraq.

The Assyrian Empire is the Enemy … the enemy of everything Jonah values … God, country, family, faith … ultimately, Assyria conquers the Northern Kingdom of Israel and takes the Ten Tribes into captivity.

Jonah wants nothing to do with it … he’s not afraid of Nineveh … he hates Nineveh … as far as Jonah is concerned, Nineveh can go to hell. 

So Jonah heads west … he flees to the Mediterranean coast, hops a ship bound for Tarshish … all the way through the Mediterranean, through the straits of Gibraltar, to the southeast coast of Spain.

Jonah wants to get away from God, as far as he can go … but who can get away from God?

God sends a huge storm to assail the ship … the crew knows what’s up because Jonah is foolish enough to tell ‘em … I’m on a spiritual trek to get away from God.  

Jonah heads below deck and falls fast asleep as the storm rages.

The crew is frightened … they strive valiantly to keep the ship and save the cargo … but the storm rages on all the more … 

The crew awakens Jonah - You’re the cause of this. What shall we do with you?

Jonah is determined to escape from God - if he can’t do it by ship, he’ll do it by death … Throw me into the sea! 

And that’s exactly what the crew does … the storm subsides … Jonah is lost at sea.

But the LORD provides a large fish to swallow up Jonah … it’s a tall tail … as tall tales go, everyone listening to the story would be smiling … it’s not the tale of a whale, but a whale of tale …

 Back to the story: for three nasty days, Jonah sloshes around in the belly of the big fish … Jonah realizes his goose is cooked, and there’s no getting outta the fish … so Jonah prays … no doubt - some second thoughts on Jonah’s part.

Then the LORD spoke to the fish, the story says, and the fish spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. An ignominious end to Jonah’s escapade - vomited up onto the shore.

Let’s try it again Jonah! 

God is the God of the Second Chance … and the third and the fourth and the fifth chance, for as long as it takes … 

So Jonah goes to Nineveh, with contempt and disgust in his heart … grumpy as all get out … he does what God wants, but he does it without love.

Jonah preaches his heart out to that great city … threats of hellfire and damnation … Jonah is at least partially right - if Nineveh continues its headlong pursuit of power and domination, it will end badly.

Lo and behold, the great city of Nineveh repents … when it’s clear to God that Nineveh is moving in the right direction, God changes God’s mind … there will be no disaster for the city, but a fresh chance to chart a new course.

Jonah is ticked off … I mean, really ticked off, steaming mad … he says to the LORD …

Is this not what I said would happen the first time you came to me with this proposition while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled to Tarshish … I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And, now O LORD, take my life from me … 

Jonah wants to die all over again.

God says to Jonah - Does this make any sense, that you should be angry about this?

Jonah heads outta the city, and sits down to sulk … he knits together some branches for shade, and there he waits to see what will become of the city. He’s hopes for hellfire and brimstone.

The LORD appointed a bush to provide shade for Jonah, says the story, and Jonah was very happy … and then, God appointed a worm to attack the bush, and then God sent hot winds … and once again, Jonah says, It is better for me to die than to live.

By this time, God is a wee bit impatient … Oh, for crying out loud, says God, does this really make any sense, that you should be so angry about that dadgum bush?

Jonah replies, Yes … angry enough to die!

God says to Jonah: You’re all hot and bothered about that bush, for which you did not labor … you didn’t grow it … it came up and went away … and you’re fit to be tied.

Jonah is so angry, and God is exasperated with him …

Ok Jonah, you’re angry about the bush … but think of me for a moment … ought I not to care about this great city, more than 120,000 people, and they don’t know their right hand from their left?

And if that isn’t enough, God says: and also many animals.

I care about all of that Jonah … all my creatures, great and small.

I suspect the person who wrote this story did so with an ironic smile … tinged with a sense of tragedy … the contrast between God’s great love, and Jonah’s sickness of soul … the human condition in technicolor. 

So, what’s the point of the Jonah story?

It’s a simple story of God’s love for the world … to see the world with God’s eyes!

In the recent movie, ISS, astronauts on the Space Station talk of the overview effect … 

Reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space. 

Researchers have characterized the effect as "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus". 

The effect can cause changes in the observer’s self concept and value system, and can be transformative.

To see the world with God’s eyes … a world without boundaries, without enemies, without territory to conquer, or territory to defend … just a beautiful blue marble in the vast expanse of space.

Jonah’s story is a fine example of Hebrew fiction, like Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter … or Sherlock Holmes … or Star Trek or Star Wars …

It’s not about a fish or a whale … or even a guy named Jonah … we know that Nineveh never had a spiritual awakening … the Assyrian Empire continued to dominate the Middle East and destroy … until another power, the Babylonia Empire, rose up and destroyed Assyria …

The story of Jonah is a short story, a piece of fiction, with big questions:

Which way am I going? Am I running from God? 

Am I taking on the work of God? 

Am I doing the work of God gladly, or am I doing it resentfully?Am I in the belly of a fish, sloshing around? Have I been given a second chance, a third or fourth? Am I going to Tarshish or Nineveh?

Am I becoming more human, or less … or am I stuck somewhere in between?

What’s my attitude? Am I angry? Sad? Frustrated? Lonely? Am I grumpy, gracious, sweet, or sour?

And why?

What’s going on with me?

The Jonah story ends abruptly - boom! … mic drop … does Jonah ever get it? Do we?

Can we see the world through God’s eyes? …

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
naught be all else to me, save that thou art -
thou my best thought, by day or by night;
waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Hallelujah and Amen!