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!

March 2 7, 2022, "Get Set" - Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena

Joshua 5.9-12; 2 Corinthians 5.16-21

On your mark.

Get set.

Go!

That’s how the race begins … 

We are the people … these are the times. 

It’s our race … our moment … no one else to run the race for us … others have run their race long before we born, and to all of them, a debt of gratitude.

From the vast beyond, they say to us:

Thank you; thank you for your gratitude; we’re glad you recognize what we did. 

We built something with stone and steel; we built it by the Spirit of God … we didn’t give up, we didn’t give in … by the mercies of God, and for the love of Christ, we raised this Tower to the glory of God - a beacon of love and hope.

We did it for you.

We did it for the world.

We appreciate your gratitude, but we want something more.

We want you to run your own race.

That’s the best gift you can to us. 

Gratitude, for sure, then your gumption.

Your determination - to run the race as well as you can.

Here we are dear friends.

We’re on the mark.

And now the announcement: “Get set!” …  

In our prayers and with our devotion.

In our meetings together and our plans.

In the strength of our bodies, as best we can.

And if the body isn’t what it used to be, then the courage of our soul. 

No greater tower can be crafted, than the tower of prayer.

From God’s call to Abraham and Sarah to the final trumpet of the Book of Revelation.

The race is set.

Always forward, always something new … not forgetting the past, but building upon it … denying the temptation to recreate the past, bring the past back - like Lot’s wife, who turned around to see from whence they had come; she turned into a pillar of salt. 

Nothing wrong with salt, but a pillar of salt ain’t going anywhere. 

It’s stuck in place and stuck in time. 

The challenge any of us face, when times are changing, when one era is ending, to know how to say “Farewell!”

“Farewell!” to what was, and welcome the new.

Even when we haven’t a clue what the new will be like, or where it’ll take us.

In our reading from Joshua:

The people are now, finally, in the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the Wilderness.

Moses did his work.

Moses confronted Pharaoh and demanded the release of his people.

Pharaoh said Yes, and then Pharaoh said No.

There was the crossing of the Sea, just in the nick of time.

Pharaoh and his army are washed away.

The people march through the sea - safe and sound.

A pillar of cloud to guide them during the day … a pillar of fire to give them light at night. Manna in the morning, and water from a rock.

Moses on the Mountain … Moses and the Ten Commandments. 

But when faced with the Promised Land, they fail to take it.

They’re afraid … Maybe we should go back to Egypt. It wasn’t so bad after all.”

The lure of the past.

The troubling trick of the mind -  when we trick ourselves about the past … we remember the best of it, and not all of it … “if only we could regain the past,” we think, “then we’d be happy.”

Churches succumb to this troubling trick of the mind … so do political parties, and entire nations, and folks just like you and me - when the past lays hold of the mind and imagination, it leaves no room for innovation, experimentation; fear takes over and the future dies.

That’s what happened to Israel, as they stood on the threshold of the Promised Land, the first time around. Their spies came back and said: There are giants in the land, and we can’t fight them. In their eyes, we’re as small as grasshoppers.

It was all “fake news” - the people rose up in anger at Moses and Aaron … better dead instead, they cried. Why is God doing this to us? Let us choose a captain who will take us back to Egypt.

So off to the Wilderness God sent them; forty years of wandering, until they could shake off yesterday's dust, set aside inaccurate memories, reject fake news, trust the LORD God Almighty, and get ready to try it again.

In our reading today, Joshua 5 - the second time around …  they crossed the Jordan, set up camp, just shy of Jericho. 

Joshua said: We’ve got some prep-work to do. Here and now. To get ready for the Promised Land.

Circumcision for one … the cut of the flesh to mark the body. To God we belong, in life and in death … God’s purpose is our pursuit.

The Lords says, “Today, I’ve rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” The past is past … this is now … tomorrow stands before us.

And then the Passover Feast - to remember when the Angel of Death came to do its hard and terrible work - taking the first-born of all living things … but the Angel of Death passed over the homes marked with the blood of a lamb.

It’s a harsh and terrible business sometimes … 

To set the captives free.

To right the wrongs.

And clear the way.

To see a brand new day.

That day, the Children of Israel ate the produce of the land.

The manna was no more.

Forty years of wandering - behind them.

Ahead of them, the Promised Land.

Centuries later, the Apostle Paul says to his friends: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away … everything has become new!

Paul says: in Christ, God was reconciling the world to God, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ.

The high and holy calling of God.

The past is behind us. The race is before us.

On your mark!

Get set!

Amen and Amen!

Sunday, March 31, 2019 Palms Westerminster

Joshua 5.9-12; Luke 15.11b-32

The Basic Stuff … 

The Gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ.

We are loved …

Here and now … then and there.

The whole story.

All of our life.

All of time.

From the beginning to the end.

The Alpha and the Omega.

By God we were created … by God, our days are determined, and in the end, it’s God.

God in the morning … God in the evening … and God in all the in-between places, the nooks and crannies of our lives … to God be the Glory.

We are loved.

We are loved:

Because the way of Christ requires love.

God hopes that in loving us, we might learn the ways of love … 

That we could be loving of one another.

Especially paying attention to the trinity of need, the Biblical image of those most vulnerable to abuse and hurt: the widow, the orphan and the alien.

To love is fulfill the law of God, all the law, all the requirements are summed up in the power and courage of love.

Paul the Apostle writes:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Christ calls to us, beckons to us, commands us, pleads with us, to love one another as he has loved us.

To love the world in all of its diversity, as God created the heavens and the earth with all of its people, and all of its creatures, great and small.

The wind and the air, the earth and the water … 

The cattle of the field and the birds of the air.

The fish of the sea and all that lives and moves and has its being in the love and mercy of God.

To love like this requires maturity … maturity of soul and spirit.

For everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

Our reading this morning from Joshua …

It’s a growing up story.

In the Wilderness:

Manna in the morning and water from a rock.

A pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire at night.

God is leading the people by the hand, as a parent holds a child’s hand while out and about … sometimes the child pulls away, annoyed with the hand, and eager to be on her own … but the child remains the child until the days of her maturity.

So it was for Israel

Now, in the land of promise, on their own.

To plow the ground and plant the seed.

To tend the vineyard and gather the harvest.

But there’s sadness in the story, if we pay attention to it.

The Promised Land didn’t come free of charge.

There were people living there.

Children and grandparents.

There was song and dance … art and literature.

People laughing and people playing.

Folks crying and folks mourning.

Going to work; paying the bills.

Life, every-day life.

In the land of Canaan.

Israel took the land.

At the time, it made sense, I guess.

Hard decisions have to be made, sometimes.

I wonder if God cried that day.

Did God cry when God saw the walls of Jericho Fall … and all the death that came that day … and all the death that was to come?

How did the story turn out?

Israel as a nation was mostly a failure … over the centuries, a few good kings, and lots of bad ones.

Some mighty fine prophets, and plenty of false prophets, too.

A story of repeated failure, greed, corruption, crime, spiritual pride, idolatry, shallow religion, war and victory, war and defeat, war and rumors of war … and always the mistreatment of the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan and the alien.

Read the Book of Kings … it’s a sad story … ending in the destruction of Israel and Judah … the destruction of Jerusalem … the end of it … Israel ceased to exist.

Which is why God got out of the land business. 

In Christ, a new day.

It’s the whole world that counts.

For God so loves the world … because that’s what love is like … love is all or nothing, which is why Jesus says, to love your enemy … that’s what it means to be like God, says Jesus … 

You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to your, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

Paul the Apostle writes:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

And then Pauls says:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

Growing up is what it’s all about … it’s a long journey, and none of us ever finish it … I’m always growing, and sometimes not … I get stuck, I get lazy … I’m satisfied … and then Spirit comes along, maybe a book, something my wife says, or just some inner prompting … and maybe I grow a little bit more that day … always putting an end to childish ways, to be a little more mature in how I respond to people, to my own self … a little more mature in the ways of love.

Growing up …

I remember the first day our son got on a bus for kindergarten … Donna had made him a little green patterned jump suit, and there she was, kneeling down by him, to see that everything was shipshape, his lunch box in hand, and then he boarded the bus … he didn’t look back.

Donna stood up and looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both had tears in our eyes … 

We’ve had plenty of goodbye tears over the years … but this is what parenting comes down to … raising a child up, to take leave of Mom and Dad, and head out on their own, the road ahead.

We love our children, and would do anything for them … but we’ve given them life, and they’re on their own … 

Sometimes we lay awake at night, wondering …

We want only the best for them.

Their decisions wouldn’t necessarily be our decisions.

Or the chances they take.

The risks they meet.

The dreams they have.

Their sorrows are their own, course, but ours, too.

Such is love.

Love embraces, and love sends away.

Love makes the jumpsuit, and love waves goodbye.

Love rejoices and love weeps.

With love, Christ calls us to follow.

And with love, Christ sends us on our way.

To God be the glory.

Amen and Amen!