Christian Discipleship – Page 30

“Radical Generosity”

November 11, 2013November 12, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

A preacher stood up to preach one of those dreaded sermons on stewardship, i.e. Money. Her church was experiencing some challenging times financially. She told them that they all knew the church was getting stale and stagnant. She reminded them they had just sung that old Avery and Marsh hymn, “We are the Church,” which says, “the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.”

“A people on the move,” she said, raising her voice. “This church has been resting too long and there is too much need in the world. We’re gonna make this church get up and start moving if we have to crawl at first.” Someone in the choir cheered the preacher on by saying, “Make it crawl, preacher, make it crawl!”

“We will,” she said, surprised at this enthusiasm. “And after we get it crawling, we’re gonna make this church get up and walk.” “Make it walk, preacher, make it walk!” came a voice from the other side of the sanctuary. Really excited now, the preacher upped the volume and said, “And after we learn to walk, we’re gonna make this church run, my friends, we’re gonna make it run!” “Make it run, preacher, make it run!!!” shouted a whole section of the congregation in unison. “Yes, we will. With God’s help we will,” she said, “And to make it run, we need more money!” In the back row, one old timer stood up and said, “Let it crawl, preacher, let it crawl!!!”

A theology of generosity is based on the belief that we do not ask for money to fund a church budget. Budgets and numbers don’t inspire generosity. Giving out of duty or obligation or a sense of guilt may pay the bills, but it won’t build a healthy Christian community on fire for doing God’s work. Instead we ask people to be more generous for their own spiritual growth because to be more generous is to be more like God.

I was privileged recently to work with Summit United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio. That church has a generosity team that has created an excellent statement entitled “Toward a Theology of Generosity.” If I may paraphrase a bit, that statement says that we are generous because it is part of our natural identity as children of God. We are created in the image of a gracious and generous God, but we know that image gets a little tarnished and corrupted by worldly things. So we need regular attitude adjustments to let our God-given generosity shine through. Summit’s statement says, “Extravagant generosity transforms who we are and what we are about. Because the choice to live in this way goes against a culture of consumerism and individualism, when we actively decide to live this way, it is both an intentional and subversive choice.”

I can’t tell you how much fun it is to hear a church talk about being subversive as a positive attribute of Christian discipleship. That’s the kind of thing that makes Summit such an exciting congregation. Summit gets it – that the church is not just about comforting the afflicted, but it is also about afflicting the comfortable, challenging the status quo and offering a Godly vision of what real community looks like.

There are a couple of key words in those sentences from Summit’s statement:”transform,” “choice” and “decide.” Generosity is an intentional choice that we decide to make, and like any worthwhile skill it takes practice and cultivation and inspiration, or we fall back onto the wide path of popular culture that leads to destruction. The word “decide” is an interesting word. Life coach Kary Oberbrunner, recently pointed out to a group of us that the suffix to that word, the “cide” part, is the same suffix that is in words like pesticide, genocide, homicide, suicide. Get the common theme? Those are all words that describe killing in one form or another, and to de-cide is also to kill. It is to kill other options by choosing the one that we will intentionally follow.

That’s why decision making is so difficult – because we know we are cutting off other options and we mourn for those we have to let go. For example – when you decide to follow a career path, or pick a college or course of study, you close off or kill other alternatives that you could choose to follow. When you decide to get married, you’d better kill off your desires to be with other partners, or that marriage is doomed. Be forewarned that when we let God influence our decision making, the outcomes often look different that we expected. When I graduated from Ohio State University many years ago my big plan was to buy a Corvette and go to California. Know what I did? I bought a VW and went to seminary!

Pope Francis is such an exciting breath of fresh air in the Roman Catholic Church because of his generous attitude toward the poor and oppressed. He said recently, “If money and material things become the center of our lives, they seize us and make us slaves.” The gospel frees us from slavery to selfishness and transforms us into the generous people we were created to be by our gracious and generous God.

We are transformed so we can go out and transform the world into a place of justice and generosity. How in God’s name can we do that? Exactly – we can only do it if we do it in God’s name and with God’s power. And here’s the good news – that power is ready and available for anyone who is willing to accept it and surrender to it.
Where does the spirit of generosity come from? Where does the power come from that can transform selfish, fearful souls into daring witnesses and martyrs who transform the world? [For a more detailed discussion of how that is possible, please see my post on 10/31/13 of my sermon on John 20:19-22 where the risen Christ empowers the disciples for the ministry set before them.]

That power frees the giver within us. I recently learned that the word “give” appears in the Bible 2172 times, but if you add up all the times the words “believe,” “pray,” and “love” appear, they total only 1421. That surprised me at first, but then I realized that giving is really belief, prayer, and love in action, in concrete tangible forms. A news story in a small town weekly newspaper brought that point home to me last week. A young mentally handicapped woman was seen taking money out of a fountain in the town square in Bellefontaine, Ohio, and someone called the police. She had taken a grand total of $2.47 because she was hungry and had no food for herself or her pets. A reporter for the weekly paper followed up on the police report, but he then decided to do more than just report Deidre’s story. He set up a website and used social media to make an appeal for donations to help Deidre. Generosity spread from that initial act of kindness and a total of $13000 and counting has been raised from sources all over the world to help Deidre. Sharing is contagious, and so is selfishness. We can choose which to follow.

To decide to follow the path of radical generosity is to say no to the false teachings of the prosperity gospel or the limiting beliefs of a scarcity mentality. If we allow God’s spirit of abundant generosity to help us make the right choices, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to crawl, walk and run outside our comfort zones into the world God calls us to serve.

We all need God’s power to live generously, and church leaders, clergy and lay, especially need that power to be transformed so we can inspire and model radical generosity for the others in the church and community. Summit UMC’s theology of generosity statement ends with these words: “We want to build a grassroots movement. Where there is a wider group of people who are filled with the Spirit of generosity and ready to respond, people get excited about the ripple effects as ambassadors.”

In other words, generosity is contagious, and our job is to start an epidemic!!!

[Originally written for Summit UMC’s leadership dinner, November 3, 2013]

“Sent,” John 20:19-22, Micah 6:8

October 31, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values

In John 20:21 Jesus says, “As God has sent me, so I send you.” Let me share a couple stories about why and how the church is sent in mission and service. I walked into the church last Friday and smelled the wonderful aroma of 8 large pots of soup being prepared to feed hungry people at the Church for All People in downtown Columbus. Jerome UMC provides those 8 pots of soup and other food every Friday of the year in a ministry called Soup for the Soul. I did some quick math and realized that adds up to about 400 hundred pots of soup each year that serve homeless and hungry people.

The Appalachian Service Project team (ASP) recently spent a weekend in Guyan Valley, W.Va. One of the people ASP served this year was Mary, an 80 year-old retired school employee. Mary lives in a modest modular home, one of the neatest and cleanest the ASP team says they’ve seen in the 10 years they’ve been doing this work. But Mary’s house needed repairs that she couldn’t afford and her son could not do because of health concerns. Mary now has a new roof and porch thanks to ASP, and she was so grateful she cried that this group of total strangers would give of their time and effort to help her. But Mary had a deeper need. She’s lonely, and in the words of one of the missionaries, “would talk all day if we would listen… and we DID.” He summed it up very well when he said, ‘our mission work is not about the work we do, but the feeling that we give people that someone cares. Mary understood that and now we do.”

Two of our church members just came back yesterday from a medical mission trip to Haiti. They were there last fall too and got stranded for a few days by Hurricane Sandy. They told me that turned out to be blessing because in the extra days they were “forced” to be there, they were able to reach people that they otherwise would not have. Including kids who had not eaten in four days, kids with orange hair (not for Halloween, but because that’s what malnutrition does to your hair), and a family living in an open field during that storm. They set up a tent for that family that had no shelter, and while they did that others in the group shared the Gospel through translators. A naked little boy in the family was shaking from the cold, and one of the volunteers took the shirt off her back and gave it to him. They told me, “It was the most touching thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

We don’t have to go to Haiti or Appalachia or even inner city Columbus to serve God’s children. Service opportunities are all around us everyday and are as varied and numerous as the talents represented in this room – to teach, cook, sew, paint, build Habitat homes, make music, extend hospitality to guests new to the church. Whatever your talents are, what is clear from the Scriptures that we as Christians are all called to serve others in some way. In our Scripture lesson today from John, Jesus says, ‘As God has sent me, so I send you.”

As we celebrate the wonderful mission and service the church is already doing, we have to keep asking ourselves where else is God calling us to go. To be sent means movement – it means going somewhere on a mission, with a purpose. Often being sent on an errand or a work assignment or to comfort a sick or grieving friend calls us to move out of our comfort zone and do things we’ve never tried before and would rather not do. The “As God sent me” part of John 20:21 gives me pause. Jesus was sent to the lost, the lonely; he was sent to confront people with their sin and unfaithfulness; he was sent to expose injustice and oppression; and his prophetic witness got him into a lot of hot water with people of power in his day. He was sent to sacrifice his own comfort to serve and save others – and guess what, he needs us to do the same.

Maybe teaching a class of pre-schoolers is out of your comfort zone – or visiting a nursing home – or talking about your faith to a new neighbor who lives in a house that costs a whole lot more than yours. Where is God sending you? The point is, Christian discipleship is much more than a nice warm comfortable relationship with Jesus. Jesus welcomes us into his merciful arms and loves us – but that is not our resting place — then he sends us out to do his work.

So what does the Lord require of you and me? The Hebrew prophet Micah asked that very question. In Micah 6:8 we read, “He has showed you what is good, and what the Lord requires of you is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” The verses leading up to this verse describe the easy way the Hebrew people wanted to get right with God. They simply wanted to offer animal sacrifices on the altar at the temple and hope that would appease God and get them off the hook for any sin they had committed. Micah says, not so quick folks – God sees through our attempts to use rituals and ceremonies to cover up our lack of righteous living. Worship, rituals and ceremonies are good as far as they go – but they aren’t enough. God is much more concerned about how we live our lives Monday through Saturday than just how we spend Sunday mornings.

We all have a pretty good idea of what mercy is. That word in Micah is also sometimes translated as kindness. So I want to focus on the other two key words in that verse, Justice and Humility. We sometimes use the English word justice to mean punishment, as in “she got her just reward.” We have a department of justice that is about laws and punishment. But the biblical term “mishpat” is much broader than that. That Hebrew word for justice means fairness and righteousness – living in a right relationship with God’s will and making sure others are assured of an equitable and fair life, especially the weak and powerless. The phrase “with liberty and justice for ALL” in our pledge of allegiance reflects that vision of what life should look like for all of God’s children. And where that liberty and justice is lacking, that’s where God sends us to help make it so.

Notice Micah says we are to DO justice. Justice here is not just a noun, but a verb, an action. It’s the same idea expressed in the letter of James when he says, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.” What does doing justice look like? There was a story on NPR last week about a trailer park community in Palo Alto, California looking for justice. These hard-working people live modestly, often working more than one job to provide for their families. Their blessing and curse is that they live near Silicon Valley and developers want to displace all the residents to build luxury condos and apartments. The people in those trailer homes want to stay there because some of the best schools in California are there. Those schools are providing a way for the next generation to improve their lives. But, as the NPR commentator said, “they are confronting the harsh realities of money.“ The average home in that area costs $2 million.

Is it just that those who need the most help to break out of the cycle of poverty have fewer resources to do so? When I compare the urban school I used to tutor in to the wonderful suburban schools my grandchildren attend, it’s like two different worlds. Is that justice, fairness and equality? It’s tempting to say that’s not our problem. We’ve got enough of our own! But it is our problem if we take seriously what the Scriptures tell us God requires of us.

There was once a village on the banks of a river where people would sometimes have to be rescued who had fallen in the river somewhere upstream. As the rescues became more frequent the village built a rescue station and staffed in 24/7 and saved hundreds of lives. They were proud of their work, but one day a young woman said to the village elders, “it’s a good thing to rescue people, but I wonder what is causing people to be in the river so often. Why don’t we go upstream and find out why people are ending up in the river in the first place? Doing justice is not just rescuing the perishing, as important as those acts of mercy are. We are also called to change the systems and conditions that put people at risk for poverty, hunger, discrimination, or any other injustice. And God sends us to the ballot box, to the school board or the legislature, to write letters to the editor–to do justice.

Micah says we are also to “walk humbly with your God” – what does that mean? In a word, it’s the O word. The O word is not one we like to hear, it’s “obedience.” Humble obedience means that when God says “go” we don’t bargain or make excuses; we go where we are sent.

Does that feel overwhelming, a bit scary? It sure does to me. I preach this stuff better than I practice it. Where do we get the strength and courage to go where God is calling us to serve? This passage from John addresses that question. The disciples are afraid and for good reason. They have just seen their beloved leader brutally crucified. John tells us they are hiding from the Jews. Can’t blame them – I would too, but I wonder if they weren’t also hiding from God who wants to send them into that same world that killed Jesus? You’ve heard the advice to never play leap frog with a unicorn? Well it’s also not a good idea to play hide and seek with God. Won’t work. That’s where the phrase “you can run but you can’t hide” probably originated.

John says the doors are locked in that upper room and Jesus comes right into the room anyway. How he did that is an interesting question we could explore, but that’s not really the point. Jesus coming into that locked room means that God breaks through whatever barriers we try to put up – whatever excuses we offer: I’m too old, too young, too poor, too busy, not good enough, too scared. “Sorry,” Jesus says, “it’s your turn now.”

The best Easter sermon I ever heard was by Bishop Dwight Loder, and the phrase I remember from that sermon is this. Bishop Loder said, “Jesus was not resurrected by the church. He was not resurrected for the church. He was resurrected AS the church.” We are the body of Christ, and as such God sends us in mission and service to the least and the lost. We are transformed by the salvation of Christ, but the story doesn’t end there. We are transformed so we can go out and transform the world into a place of justice, mercy and humility.

How in God’s name can we do that? Exactly – we can only do it if we do it in God’s name and with God’s power. And here’s the good news – that power is ready and available for anyone who is willing to accept it and surrender to it.
Do you want peace in your life? We all do – real peace that only God can give, the peace that passes all human understanding. The secret to finding that peace is right here in John 20. The first thing Jesus says to the disciples is “Peace be with you.” He doesn’t send them out looking for peace on E-bay or Craig’s list; he imparts it in their hearts and then sends them out. We don’t find or create that kind of peace; it finds us, in the midst of our doubts, not after all our doubts are resolved.

How does that work? Notice what happens right after Jesus says “As God has sent me, so I send you.” “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them ‘receive the Holy Spirit.’” He breathed life into them just as God breathed life into humankind in the creation story. God’s Holy Spirit empowers before it sends us out to serve.
But here’s the catch – that powerful spirit only comes in surrender. True peace only happens when we are vulnerable enough to get up close and personal with God. You have to get very close to let someone breathe on you. The question is do we want Jesus getting that close? Invading our personal space, meddling with our priorities? That’s scary. But, if we let down our barriers and allow Christ into our hearts we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to humbly and obediently do justice and act mercifully – outside our comfort zones in the world God sends us into. To say with all the saints that have gone before us, “Here I am, Lord, send me!”

[This sermon was preached at Jerome UMC on October 27, 2013]

Keeping our Balance, 2 Kings 5:1-14

July 8, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, Lectionary Texts

Back when my body would allow it, I used to play a lot of softball in the summer. I love that game in part because as one of my favorite movies, “Bull Durham,” says, it is a non-linear sport – which is a fancy way of saying what Yogi Berra says in plain down to earth language – “It ain’t over till it’s over.” I learned that and another important life lesson in a softball game many years ago. Our team was down by 4 runs coming up for our last at bat. Just so you know, our team had never come back from 4 runs down ever in the history of the franchise. I was the 8th batter due up in that final inning; so I was not optimistic that I would get another at bat.

But, a few hits and a couple of errors by the other team later I suddenly realized I might be called on to hit. That was good, but the bad news was that because I didn’t expect our team to make a comeback, I hadn’t been paying as close attention to the score as I should have. Lo and behold, with two outs the batter just before me hit a triple and drove in a run and I was due up to bat. I knew the runner on 3rd base represented either the tying or the winning run, but I wasn’t sure which. Of course I could have asked the umpire or our coach, but I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know. And it made a big difference. If the score were already tied and I made the 3rd out – we would just go to extra innings. But if we were still down a run and I messed up, the game would be over; and my out would result in our losing the game. (Just for the record – I got the game winning hit–one of the few highlights in my non-athletic career.) But the life lesson learned was more important – be sure you know what the score is, because you never know when you may be called on to step up to the plate with the game on the line.

I preached two weeks ago about the imperative to take our God stories to those outside the church who need to hear them. There were some things I didn’t have time to say in that sermon two weeks ago; so I’m really grateful to get another at bat today. Making new disciples is without a doubt job one for our church, but today I want to talk about the other side of the coin, the need to balance outreach with inreach, to balance the great commission to make disciples with the great commandment to love God and our neighbors as ourselves, to balance the preferences of young people with the desires of our elders, to balance evangelism with mission and service. So the sermon topic for today is keeping our balance.

Naaman, who we are told was a great man – a commander, a victorious leader. Everybody loves a winner. Just win the lottery or a big promotion or an election, and see how many best friends [BFF’s] you now have that you didn’t even know! But Naaman’s story also reminds us that even the great and powerful are vulnerable and mortal. Steve Jobs, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela–all of us are dust and to dust we will return. Naaman fell victim to one of the worst diseases in human history – he contracted leprosy, which not only ate away the body but was so contagious and dreadful that anyone with it was isolated and excluded from society and any contact with other people. The great poet Robert Frost was once asked what the ugliest word in the English language is, and his answer was the word “exclusive.” We are social beings who need each other, even if we get on each others’ nerves at times; so the worst thing you can do to a human being is to exclude him or her.

So Naaman is desperate to find a cure for his dreaded illness, and the advice he gets on where to find that cure is fascinating. A young slave girl who has been captured in Israel tells Naaman he needs to go see a prophet in Samaria. A young slave girl from a foreign country– you cannot get any lower on the socio-economic pecking order in those days than that; and to send him to Samaria of all places (think Ann Arbor or some other place you would never want to go).

That couldn’t be the answer to Naaman’s problem! He knows he needs to go to someone with real power – not to some intern or resident but to the best surgeon available. I might go to the local hospital for a simple tonsillectomy, but if they’re doing a heart-lung transplant on me or brain surgery, I’m not going to Dublin Methodist. Take me to the Mayo Clinic, or Cleveland clinic, please.

Naaman knows the best things in life are never free; so he takes a bucket load of cash to get the best medical treatment money can buy. Money has its privileges. It may not buy happiness, but it sure can buy most everything else. Wealth is the universal language the power people of the world speak. So Naaman bypasses God’s prophet and goes straight to what he thinks is the top – to the King of Israel.

But notice how the king of Israel reacts when Naaman comes calling – he’s threatened. The king knows he has no power to heal Naaman. His worldly power is illusory, like the wizard of Oz – hiding behind the magic curtain pulling levers. It’s all smoke and mirrors. And notice also how the king immediately assumes the worst about Naaman. Rather than take Naaman’s plea for healing at face value, the threatened, insecure king immediately assumes that Naaman’s real motive is to expose the King’s lack of power and make him look bad.

Why do we so often project our own fears and suspicions on others instead of just asking what’s really going on? When dealing with conflict or potential conflict, it’s like the old story about everyone trying to ignore the elephant in the room. The way to deal with conflict constructively is to communicate – not behind someone’s back, but face to face. There are always at least two sides to every story, and we will not really know the other side until we get it from the source. The king’s reaction in this story illustrates again that when we expect the worst from others – that’s exactly what we get.

Now the prophet Elisha enters the drama. He hears of the king’s distress and his response to Naaman is very interesting. Elisha says, “Come to me…” that makes sense, but notice why he tells Naaman to come. It’s not just to get the healing he wants, there’s much more at stake here. Elisha says, “Come to me, so you can learn there is a prophet in Israel.” Prophets are not fortune tellers, remember, but are spokespersons for God. So if there is a prophet in Israel, the important message here is that there is a God in Israel who is for real and can heal whatever ails you, no matter how important and rich or poor you are.

Do we believe that today? Do we believe there’s a God who can cure what ails us? Naaman does, sort of, at least enough to go to see Elisha. But then the story takes another interesting turn. Naaman’s visit to Elisha is like getting an appointment with a famous physician who’s very hard to see, and when you get to her office you don’t even get to see the doctor. You just get a message from the receptionist that says, “Go take 7 baths and call me in the morning.” The prophet doesn’t even bother to come out and see Naaman in person. You can imagine the reaction of this great commander who’s used to people bowing a scraping before him. He expects better treatment than that. He expects a big showy miracle with red white and boom fireworks, and all he gets is a prescription to go wash 7 times in the Jordan River.

And Naaman gets very parochial. He complains about the water quality in the Jordan and says, “We have better rivers back home in Damascus.” He doesn’t know of course how important the Jordan River becomes many years later when Jesus himself is baptized it its waters.

Does our parochialism ever get in the way of what God wants us to do? Our ways are better than those of others; so we’re reluctant to venture out of our comfort zones? Happens to me all the time. I don’t even like to play a new golf course where I don’t know the lay of the land and where the sand traps and lakes are hidden.
But this story is not about water quality or if our river is more beautiful than yours. It’s about faithful obedience to what God asks us to do. Naaman is too proud to accept this simple solution to his leprosy and is about to stomp off and go home to pout in Damascus. And again, a lowly servant intervenes who is smarter than the great and powerful leader.

Do you ever get advice from a child or someone else that is so obvious and simple you hate to take it because you feel stupid for not seeing what is so obvious yourself. That happened to me last week. We had a leak in the furnace room up above the men’s restroom and water was dripping down thru the ceiling. I do not have a plumbing gene anywhere in my DNA; so my solution was to put buckets under the leak until someone could come and fix the problem upstairs. Fortunately one of our church secretaries had a better idea, which was to put some buckets upstairs too and catch the water before in ran thru the floor and the bathroom ceiling. [HIT EASY BUTTON]. Why didn’t I think of that?

That’s what happens to Naaman. He is too proud to do what Elisha tells him to do, but one of his servants says, “With all due respect, sir, what have you got to lose? Why not give this a try, and if it doesn’t work, you are no worse off than you were before.”

So Naaman reluctantly does what he has been told to do – he washes, not once but 7 times. And that’s important. If we expect instant gratification or simple solutions to complex problems, it’s not gonna happen. Sometimes the solution is simply doing what we believe God is telling us to do, even if it seems foolish or unlikely to work. Washing even multiple times in a river does not sound like a logical cure for something as dire as leprosy, but we will never know unless we try.

I have had one of those weeks when it was very hard not to be turned in on myself and my problems. In addition to dealing with all the joys of aging, life threw me some extra curveballs this week. And the worst part is I think I asked for it. After dealing with the epidemic of road closures and detours in our neighborhood on Tuesday I decided to wax philosophical and wrote a little piece on my Facebook page and in my blog about how detours and obstacles are good metaphors for the roadblocks we run into in life. And when we do, we can either give up on getting to our goals, or we can get creative and find another way to achieve what God wants us to do. It sounded great on paper and I got a lot of “likes” on my Facebook page.

But then it was like life said to me, “OK preacher, put your money where your mouth is. Let’s see how well you really cope with some roadblocks!” Within one 24 hr. stretch I got three major pieces of bad news. I learned some good friends are moving out of state. I got an email from a very dear friend that he was in the hospital and told he has had some mini-strokes. And then I went to the mailbox to find a not-so-friendly letter from the IRS informing me that they think I owe them $10000 in back taxes, penalties and fines. I didn’t really need that many obstacles to deal with all at once, and my mood was lower than a snake’s belly for quite some time. Being turned in on oneself is one definition of sin, by the way. It’s one of my favorites when I see others doing it, but when I look in the mirror and see it in myself, not so much.

Now I’m not telling that story to get pity or sympathy (although I’ll take whatever I can get). I tell it because churches and other organizations, companies, nations, and families can all get turned in on themselves too. And the solution to dealing constructively with our challenges in life, health, finances, relationships, grief, whatever threatens to break our spirits and isolate us from others like Naaman was, is as simple and as hard as keeping our balance.

The church needs balance. I know some of you have legitimate concerns that the consultation initiative prescriptions put so much emphasis on evangelism that mission and ministry to existing member will suffer or cease to happen. That’s not gonna happen, folks. Ministering to others and to our members is not an either/or question, it is a both/and. And to those who say we can’t do both, I say read Matt. 19:26 where Jesus says, “With God all things are possible.”

We need to keep our balance. I was privileged to see that balance in powerful action a few weeks ago when one of the older saints in our congregation was in the church office needing help making plans to go home to his family in New York before his terminal cancer made that trip impossible. I came into the office as he was leaving with two of our staff members to go to the airport, but what I learned was that while in the midst of the very busy time of planning our new evangelistic emphasis, all 5 members of the church staff who were in the office that day dropped everything else they were doing to help this dying man make a plane reservation and financial arrangements for his final trip home. That kind of ministry will never stop.

Keeping our balance means a greater emphasis on welcoming newcomers to our church family, but it also means nurturing them and our current members with study and prayer, worship, sharing, caring, and growth that deepens our faith so it’s strong enough to serve one another and to be in mission to transform the world.

Is that a tall daunting order? You bet it is. Are we up to that Mission Impossible, should we choose to accept it? With God’s help we are, and that’s We with a capital WE. We’re not talking about the paid and volunteer staff doing all that work. That’s not going to be possible. We’re talking about the priesthood of all believers. All baptized Christians are commissioned to be in ministry to others in need. We are all wounded and broken servants, simple, common folks like the slave girl and servants who ministered to Naaman and helped lead him to a cure for his affliction.

Naaman’s story is really a baptism story. Baptism is an act of celebrating the fact that God has created us each in God’s own image. That image gets tarnished from time to time and needs to be renewed, but the divine power of love and mercy is in us all from birth, waiting to be nurtured and fed. It again reminds me of the Wizard of Oz story. The wizard didn’t have the power to give Dorothy and her friends what they were seeking, and he didn’t need to. Because they already had courage and wisdom and hearts that got them to Oz in the first place, and Dorothy already had on her feet what she needed to get back home. Those gifts were already there within them – they just needed to trust and believe, and when they did–THAT WAS EASY.

PRAYER – O God our creator and re-creator, like Naaman, we all need multiple cleansings. We don’t drive a car thru a car wash once and expect it to stay clean forever. Our spirits need regular cleansing and renewal also so we can be rid of whatever imbalances there are in our lives as individuals and as a church. We need regular reminders where real power lies so we are not fooled by false power. We ask that you provide us with modern day prophets who are the ones to show us the way to the power to heal and make us whole. Let us be those obedient and humble servants who minister to one another as disciples of the servant king from Nazareth who was baptized in the same River Jordan just as Naaman was. We ask these things in his name and for his sake. Amen.

Consumed (sermon on Luke 8:26-39)

June 24, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Lectionary Texts

The 2008 movie “Mad Money” starring Diane Keaton, Ted Danson, Queen Latifa, and Katie Holmes is a comedy with some serious life lessons sprinkled in. Keaton and Danson play a middle-aged, upper middle-class suburban couple who are victims of the recent recession. Danson loses his job and like many 50 somethings can’t find another comparable one. To avoid losing their house, Keaton takes a job as a cleaning woman at the federal reserve bank in Kansas City where she sees thousands of dollars of old currency being shredded every day as they are taken out of circulation to be replaced by new bills.

One day on a shopping trip to Home Depot to replace a broken kitchen faucet Keaton sees a Master padlock exactly like the ones used to lock up the old money at the bank and she conceives a complicated scheme to smuggle lots of the old money out of the bank before it gets shredded. When he’s asked later by the cops what happened, Danson delivers one of the best lines of the movie – after a flashback to all the appliances and gadgets on sale at Home Depot, he says of his wife, “We live in a consumer society, and she got consumed.”

“She got consumed.” What consumes you? It could be something positive like providing a loving safe home for your family, or are you driven by a zeal to be the best teacher, parent, spouse, grandparent, employer or employee you can be? Is your whole life shaped by a passion to do God’s will and leave the world a better place than you found it?

Being consumed or passionate about something can be a good thing, but we also know we can be consumed or possessed like the man from Gerasa in our Luke 8 by a whole lot of evil forces that can destroy us and others around us.

I thought of one of my good friends, we’ll call him John, as I read this scripture because John and his wife experienced first-hand what demon possession can do to the best of people. About 20 years ago their only son became terribly addicted to gambling. He stole money from his parents and others to feed his addiction and eventually ended up in prison – not because he was an evil person or came from a “bad” family. He was raised in a loving Christian family and in the church—but the forces of evil are stronger than we can imagine, rather like the devastating tornados in Texas and Oklahoma last month that leveled everything in their paths.

That’s what life was like for the poor demon-possessed man in Luke 8. This man has no name in the Gospel accounts of his life-changing encounter with Jesus. His identity is determined solely by the evil forces that control his life. We usually refer to him as the Gerasene Demoniac. How would you like to be stuck with that identity? It’s not only an ugly name; it’s unfair and inadequate because it ignores what Paul Harvey would call “the rest of the story” in verses 32-39.

Luke tells us the Gerasene man was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but the demons still broke those bonds and drove him into the wilds. Perhaps you know first or 2nd hand what demons can do to lives and relationships. There are too many demons to name them all, but if you have fought with one or more you know their names all too well. When Jesus asks the Gerasene man his name, the response is chilling. He says his name is “Legion,” because many demons had entered him.” A legion in the Roman army of that day was 5-6 thousand men. Five or six thousand to one!!! No wonder we sometimes feel helpless and hopeless to ever escape from that which consumes us.

But here’s the good news, and if you are currently feeling consumed by some demon or demons, please hear this good news. God and Jesus are stronger than all the demons life can throw at us. This is such important good news that Luke spends several chapters making sure we hear it. In our lesson for today, Jesus is in the midst of a victory tour when he crosses the Sea of Galilee and enters Gentile territory for the very first time. That is very significant. It means Jesus’ power is not just for the nation of Israel, but is universally available to any and all people, including us Gentiles, who believe in that power. Another important point – Jesus doesn’t wait for the demons to come to him. He doesn’t build a church and wait for people to come to him. Jesus goes and confronts the demons on their own turf, wherever they are. There’s a clue there as to how we should do church.

This story is in the middle of a series of narratives where Luke is showing us who Jesus is and how vast and unlimited God’s power is. Jesus has revealed his power to the Jewish scribes in Luke 5, to his own disciples in chapter 7, and on the way across the Sea of Galilee to the land of the Gerasenes he has demonstrated his power over even the forces of nature by calming a storm at sea that scared the bejeebers out of his brave disciples. These guys who had spent their entire lives fishing those waters cry out to Jesus to save them, and he does so with just a simple command for the waters to be still.

Power like that is comforting, but it can also be overwhelming and scary. Notice how many people in this narrative are afraid of Jesus and the very power they need to be free. The demons recognize Jesus before anyone else does and beg him not to send them into the abyss. When the townspeople see the demon-possessed man restored to health and sanity you’d expect them to be amazed and celebrate wouldn’t you? But Luke says “they were afraid and begged Jesus to leave them for they were seized with fear.”

When my kids were about 7 & 4 my daughter best friend made a great comment about our son, the pesky little 4-year old brother. Christie said, “You know, Matt’s not so bad once you get used to him.” That’s true of our demons too. We get used to them, comfortable with them, and the fear of the unknown without them is sometimes stronger than the desire to be healed and set free.

I recently read a biography of Louie Zamperini. Louie was a very promising runner in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and expected to be the first man to break the 4-minute mile and bring home several gold medals in 1940 Olympics. Except there were no 1940 Olympics. Louie’s life and dreams were derailed by the demons of fascism and World War II. Much of this biography by Laura Hillenbrand describes in almost unbearable detail the 2 years of inhumane brutality Louie and others suffered as Japanese POW’s. Against all odds Louie survived that ordeal only to encounter much stronger internal demons that haunted his dreams for years after the war. Those demons drove him to self-destructive behavior and alcoholism once he was back in the U.S. No amount of therapy or pleading by his wife could break the chains of the demons that consumed Louie. But, here’s the good news again, and this time not in ancient Galilee or Gentile Gerasa, but in Los Angeles in the mid-20th century.

The title of Zamperini’s biography is Unborken, and like all good titles it is a multi-faceted description of Louie’s life. He was not broken by the death of most of his crew when his B-24 crashed in the south Pacific; unbroken by 47 days adrift at sea, unbroken by the extreme cruelty of his captors who singled him out for torture because of Louie’s celebrity and strong spirit that were a challenge and an affront to them; and unbroken when his war injuries ended his dream of Olympic gold. But when he was consumed by nightmares and hatred and alcohol that were destroying him and his family after the war, Louie was almost broken by the fear of his own salvation.

When a Billy Graham crusade came to L.A. in 1949 Louie’s wife went and heard the young evangelist preach about Jesus’ power over all demons. She went home and urged Louie to go back with her to hear Rev. Graham. Louie refused her pleading over and over again, but as spouses often do Cynthia Zamperini persisted and Louie finally gave in to shut her up. He listened skeptically to Graham’s message and when the invitation came at the end of the sermon to come forward and receive Christ, Louie didn’t walk, he ran the other way and out the back door. This happened not once, but several times; but Cynthia didn’t give up on Louie and neither did God. In God’s good time Louie did finally surrender his demons to Jesus one night at another Graham crusade. Miraculously the demons and nightmares and anger and alcoholism that had consumed him were gone for good – they never returned. You may be skeptical, as I often am, about such instantaneous miracle healings, but this one was real. Louie went on to live a productive long life of ministry to countless young men at a camp he founded and as a motivational speaker. He was truly unbroken and restored to wholeness by a power greater than all the demons known to humankind.

Of course, not all releases from demons are as dramatic and immediate as Louie’s or the Gerasene Demoniac’s. When our conference consultants were at our church few weeks ago working with us on designing the future of Jerome UMC, one of the activities we did was to practice telling each other our God stories. A God story is what people in the business world call an elevator speech. For entrepreneurs an elevator speech is a catchy, concise two minute description while you have a captive audience in an elevator of what your business can offer to a potential client or customer that will pique his or her interest enough to ask for more information. A God story is the same thing offered to invite someone you meet to a closer relationship with God by telling them what God has done in your life.

I had trouble with that activity. As I listened to other great God stories of how others in our church had experienced dramatic changes in their lives by someone sharing Christ’s love with them, I was jealous in a weird way because I grew up in the church from birth. I had no dramatic conversion experience. For me there is no before and after I met Jesus because he was in my life from birth on.

That doesn’t mean I’ve not struggled with demons or had moments when I turned my back on God and rebelled against rules and regulations I thought were old-fashioned and foolish. It means my God story is not a dramatic moment of liberation from demons, but a lifetime of a sometimes contentious love-hate relationship with a God who simply refuses to let the demons control my life. Part of my story is a liberation from a narrow, legalistic view of a God that I feared, to a more universal, loving God who calls me to move out of my comfort zone and work with others to transform the world to a place of peace and justice for all of creation that brings God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

The church is called to invite new people everywhere to experience the liberating love of God that sets us free from demons. But that’s only part of our job description as disciple makers. Personal salvation and freedom from our demons is absolutely necessary, but the process doesn’t end there. God sets us free not for freedom’s sake, but to serve God and others in whatever places and ways God provides.
All of us, whether we are brand new Christians or seasoned veterans of many church wars, or those who have been turned off by the church or angry at God for tragedies in our lives – wherever we are in our faith journey, we all need to continue to deepen and nurture our faith always so we have a better God story to share and live every day.

What’s your God story? No matter how short or long, it may be a tragedy or a comedy, dramatic or mundane, short or long. Without hearing your story I know three things about it: 1) You’ve got a God story or you wouldn’t be here today, and 2) your God story is still being written. And 3) someone needs to hear your story and God wants you to share it by your words and your actions.

Most of the folks in this Gerasene story are afraid of Jesus’ power and run away from it like Louie Zamperini did. So it’s OK if we are we also afraid to let go of our demons. Are we nervous to share with others what our demons are because we foolishly think we are the only one with demons? Guess again. It’s our demons that bring us to worship week after week, and when we put on a happy face and pretend otherwise God can’t help us – just like a Dr. can’t help cure an illness we refuse to admit we have.

But notice another important thing about Jesus in this story. He doesn’t force himself on anyone. When the fearful people of Gerasa ask Jesus to leave them alone, he doesn’t nag them like a telemarketer who calls every night at dinner time; he just gets in his boat and goes back to Galilee. Why does Jesus give up so easily? Because he doesn’t care, or he’s given up on them? No, Jesus knows the power of invitation and the patience of allowing others the space and time to respond when they are ready. That’s a very important lesson for us to remember when we have the chance to share our God story with others.

Louise Hay describes that process this way: “Think for a moment of a tomato plant. A healthy plant can have over a hundred tomatoes on it. In order to get this tomato plant with all these tomatoes on it, we need to start with a small dried seed. That seed doesn’t look like a tomato plant. It sure doesn’t taste like a tomato. If you didn’t know for sure, you would not even believe it could be a tomato plant. However, let’s say you plant this seed in fertile soil, and you water it and let sun shine on it.

When the first little tiny shoot comes up, you don’t stomp on it and say, “That’s not a tomato plant.” Rather, you look at it and say, “Oh boy! Here it comes,” and you watch it grow with delight. In time, if you continue to water it and give it lots of sunshine and pull away any weeds, you might have a tomato plant with more than a hundred luscious tomatoes. It all began with that one tiny seed.

St. Paul says the same thing about God stories in I Corinthians 3. When talking about planting new churches and growing new Christians, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Seeds take time to grow. My friend John’s son took years to be healed of his gambling demon. It nearly broke his parents’ hearts to drive 100 miles every week to visit their son in prison. I can’t imagine anything much worse. John has helped thousands of other people as a pastor in his churches and in countless mission trips he has led, but he will tell you those painful trips to visit his son in prison were the best thing he ever did. His son is now a productive citizen with a good career and a beautiful wife and daughter because his family and friends and God never gave up on him.

God wants us to plant seeds and for those seeds to prosper and bear fruit, no matter how long it takes. The Gerasene man responds to his healing in a most positive way. He is the only one in this story who is not afraid of Jesus’ power. In fact he begs Jesus to let him stay with him and follow him – but following Jesus doesn’t always look like we think it will. Jesus tells the man to go home and witness there – tell his God story to the folks at home. The former demoniac obeys Jesus because he has felt the power of God’s love and knows he has a story to tell – does he ever! Do we know what the response is when this man tells his God story? Not a clue. The Gospels are totally silent on that score. And that’s a faith thing. We don’t need to know the outcome when we tell our story and plant God seeds. Our job is to plant the seeds and not to pull them up by the roots when they don’t grow fast enough. Our job is to obey Jesus, to go and tell, and trust others to water so God can give the growth in due season.

The chance to live out your God story may happen when you least expect it, like in this story that has been floating around the internet for awhile: “A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. Well, as such things go, one thing led to another. The sales meeting lasted longer than anticipated. Their flights were scheduled to leave out of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and they had to race to the airport. With tickets in hand, they barged through the terminal to catch their flight back home. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table, which held a display of baskets of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding, all but one. He paused, took a deep breath and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him and told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight.

Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the floor. He was glad he did. The 16-year-old girl at the apple stand was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping or to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them into the baskets, and helped set the display up once more. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $20 for the damage we did. Are you okay?” She nodded through her tears.
He continued on with, “I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.”
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister….” He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, “Are you Jesus?”

Do people mistake you for Jesus? Isn’t that what we want to consume us, so our words and actions in life reflect the love and grace of Christ to a world that is often blind to God’s power?

What are you consumed by? I invite you to make room for God’s love to possess you and then take that God story to share with those longing to hear it—to those literally dying to experience Jesus in you and me. Their life depends on it, and so does yours.

Originally preached at Jerome United Methodist Church, Plain City, Ohio, June 23, 2013

Listen to Jesus

May 4, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values

Of all the millions of words contributed to the gun violence debate since Newtown, there is one scripture that seems most relevant to me that I have not heard anyone cite. Come to think of it I have not heard anyone in our “Christian” nation quote Jesus on the matter at all. I understand the fear that motivates people to want to protect themselves and the ones they love. When in mortal danger it is quite natural to want to defend oneself. When Jesus was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by heavily armed Roman soldiers his disciples quite naturally wanted to defend and protect him. One of them drew a sword and “struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear” (Matt. 26:51). Jesus’ immediate response is to rebuke his disciple, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (v. 52).

That verse came to my mind again this week when I read one of most tragic gun violence stories yet. It is hard to shock us these days when we have seen and heard about far too many violent deaths, but this one really amazed me. Ironically, In the May 2nd edition of The Columbus Dispatch (p. A3) the AP story appeared right next to a story about the NRA convention being held in Houston this weekend. A 5-year-old boy in Burkesville, KY accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister this week. As tragic as that is, it gets much worse. Kristian Sparks was playing with his own rifle, a gift someone gave him last year, and his mother thought nothing of it until she heard the gun go off and found her 2-year-old daughter Caroline had been hit with a single fatal shot to the chest. The story says, “Kristian’s rifle was kept in a corner of the mobile home, and the family didn’t realize a bullet had been left in it.”

And it gets worse from there. You can’t make this stuff up. “In this case, the rifle was made by a company that sells guns specifically for children.” (The company “Cricket Rifles,” I discovered, has taken down its web site for obvious reasons that won’t do Caroline any good.) You can Google “my first rifle” to find all kinds of national reactions to this tragedy.) The AP news story goes on, “’My First Rifle’ is the slogan—in colors ranging from plain brown to hot pink to orange to royal blue to multicolor swirls.”

Christ have mercy. Somehow I don’t think marketing hot pink rifles to 5 year olds was what the 2nd amendment was designed to promote. The haunting refrain of an old Peter, Paul and Mary song, “Where have all the flowers gone?” keeps running through my head as my heart breaks for Kristian and Caroline and their family. The old folk song asks over and over again, “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”

Boston: Words of Truth and Hope

April 17, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values

Anne Lamott posted these powerful words on Facebook this week and they strike me as powerful words of truth and hope in a very scary time. I just want to say Amen and pass them on.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

But it is hard not to be afraid, isn’t it? Some wisdom traditions say that you can’t have love and fear at the same time, but I beg to differ. You can be a passionate believer in God, in Goodness, in Divine Mind, and the immortality of the soul, and still be afraid. I’m Exhibit A.

The temptation is to say, as cute little Christians sometimes do, Oh, it will all make sense someday. Great blessings will arise from the tragedy, seeds of new life sown. And I absolutely believe those things, but if it minimizes the terror, it’s bullshit.

My understanding is that we have to admit the nightmare, and not pretend that it wasn’t heinous and agonizing; not pretend it as something more esoteric. Certain spiritual traditions could say about Hiroshima, Oh, it’s the whole world passing away.

Well, I don’t know.

I wish I could do what spiritual teachers teach, and get my thoughts into alignment with purer thoughts, so I could see peace and perfection in Hiroshima, in Newton, in Boston. Next time around, I hope to be a cloistered Buddhist. This time, though, I’m just a regular screwed up sad worried faithful human being.

There is amazing love and grace in people’s response to the killings. It’s like white blood cells pouring in to surround and heal the infection. It just breaks your heart every time, in the good way, where Hope tiptoes in to peer around. For the time being, I am not going to pretend to be spiritually more evolved than I am. I’m keeping things very simple: right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe; telling my stories, and reading yours. I keep thinking about Barry Lopez’s wonderful line, “Everyone is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together; stories and compassion.”

That rings one of the few bells I am hearing right now, and it is a beautiful crystalline sound. I’m so in.

“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real,” I Kings 19:1-15

March 11, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

I have a few moments in life that are free of fear and worry – I call them moments of sheer panic. But with God’s help, there’s another name for such moments – we call them “peace.”

Travelers insurance ran a series of TV commercials a few years ago about fear. One of my favorites showed a bunch of cute bunnies who are confronted by a very large menacing rattle snake. We see the panic in their little rabbit eyes. But then something strange happens. The rabbits all start laughing hysterically, and as the camera pans around to show a full view of the snake, we see why. Instead of a real rattle, this snake has a pink baby rattle duct taped to his tail. And the announcer says, “Let Travelers take the scary out of life.”

With all due respect to any of you who are in the insurance industry – we can’t really take the scary out of life thru any kind of financial instruments. We even call our investments “securities.” But as we know from the recent roller coaster recession, they aren’t always. I hasten to add that we all need insurance because insurance can take some of the pain out of accidents and life events. When Hurricane Ike took half the roof off our house a couple of years ago we were very glad to have coverage that paid most of the cost of putting a roof back over our heads. But any time we get high winds and ominous skies and the tornado sirens are wailing, it’s still scary.

I even read in the Columbus Dispatch recently that you can now buy divorce insurance. Honest, I’m not making that up. What a great wedding gift for the couple that has everything? Sort of seems like betting against your own team, doesn’t it? I’ll check with Pete Rose about that next time I see him.

The problem is that it’s not insurance we need, its assurance. We all know money can’t buy happiness (even though we keep trying). Well, you can’t buy peace of mind either. That’s putting trust in things that “thieves can steal and rust and moths can consume,” – to quote Jesus in Matthew 6. Nothing that’s finite and material can give us peace because none of that stuff will last forever.

I mentioned the prophet Elijah in my Ash Wednesday post on “Transfiguration” a few weeks ago, and his story is worth a deeper look for what it can teach us. I Kings 19 tells how Elijah learned up close and personal how scary and uncertain life can be. Remember the job description for a ‘prophet’ in the Bible is not a fortune teller, but someone who speaks God’s truth to powerful people who need to hear it, and who usually don’t want to. It’s not a job for sissies. To understand Elijah’s fear, we need the back story that precedes chapter 19. In those chapters Elijah gets engaged in a super bowl contest with the prophets of Baal, one of the pagan gods in Israel. The odds are not good in this contest. 450 prophets of Baal vs. only 1 prophet for Yahweh, and that prophet is Elijah. The contest is pretty simple. Each team calls upon their god to send fire down from heaven and ignite a big bonfire they have built around an altar. The 450 prophets of Baal go first and try everything they can think of to implore Baal to show his power. Nothing happens.

When it’s Elijah’s turn, he decides to up the ante. He pours gallons and gallons of water on the wood piled around the altar. If any of you have ever been camping and tried to build a fire with wet wood, you know how difficult that is. But Elijah calls on Yahweh, and the altar is consumed in flames. And then the story takes an ugly turn. Elijah gets a little carried away with himself and his victory. It’s sort of like football players celebrating too much after a touchdown, only much, much worse. Elijah killed all of the prophets of Baal. I’m guessing he was still a little afraid of a rematch in a BCS bowl game; so he wasn’t taking any chances. But very seriously, we need a footnote and reminder that whenever we read these kinds of Hebrew scriptures that seem to glorify vengeance we need to read them thru the filter of Jesus’ commands that we love our enemies and turn the other cheek. Violence and revenge only perpetuate more of the same until someone says “enough, this is just not working.”

And speaking of vengeance – that’s exactly where we pick up the story in I Kings 19. Verse one says, “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done.” Oops – now, Elijah is in deep do do. Ahab and Jezebel were king and queen of Israel and big fans of the false god Baal and his prophets. And Jezebel hasn’t heard Jesus’ message about loving enemies. She’s from the eye for an eye school, and when she threatens to kill Elijah he knows she means business. Let’s just say Jezebel was never in the running for Miss Congeniality.

So Elijah, quite understandably, is afraid. His flight or fight mechanism kicks in, and knowing he has no chance to win a power struggle with the wicked queen, he gets out of Dodge post haste. He goes a day’s journey into the wilderness and leaves his servant behind so he can be as alone as he feels. He is so scared and discouraged that he simply plops himself down under a solitary broom tree and asks that he might just die and get it over with.

Ever had times in your life when you are just ready to give up – when all hope is lost? Elijah is overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty. Life is coming at him fast in the form of Jezebel’s hit men, and he sees no way out. He has forgotten about the God of Moses and Ruth and Abraham and Sarah who can make a way out of no way.

There are several lessons we can learn from Elijah about coping with uncertainty in our lives:

Lesson 1: God provides for our needs.

Elijah has forgotten God, but God hasn’t forgotten Elijah. God sends room service – an angel touches him, not once but twice, and says “get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you.” And that angel is not just talking about Elijah’s trip from point A to B. He’s talking about the journey of life. When we are lost and lonely and grieving, we frequently lose our appetite or literally forget to eat. But God provides for our needs—both physical and spiritual– when we’re ready to receive them–and frequently in most unexpected ways.

Elijah eats the food provided by God, and it must have been really good food. The text tells us that “on the strength of that food Elijah went on for 40 days and nights,” Why 40? The same reason Lent is a 40-day period of preparation for Easter. 40 is a Biblical number that is used often to show us how long God provides for us; and the answer is for as long as it takes. Noah’s flood lasted 40 days and nights. The Hebrews wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. And Elijah travels for 40 days. All of that means God is with us for the long haul. The 40’s are not necessarily literal numbers but a way to remind us that God provides for us for as long as it takes, no matter how long that is.

And please note where Elijah’s journey takes him – to Mt. Horeb, the mount of God. Horeb is another Hebrew name for a mountain we know better as Mt. Sinai, the very place that Moses ascends during the Exodus to receive the 10 commandments. Just as we call that big mountain in Alaska “Denali” or “McKinley” because it was named by different tribes of people at different times, so the Hebrews had two names for this Holy place where God’s presence was found.

Elijah thought he was running away from evil, but he was really running to God. He doesn’t know it, apparently, just as we are often surprised when we stumble into God when we least expect to, because there is no place we can go that God is not already there.

Lesson 2: We are never separated from God.

And that’s another important lesson for us to learn from this story – we can run, but we can’t hide from God. God comes to Elijah in the cave where he is hiding and asks a haunting question that we all need to hear. God says, “what are you doing here Elijah?’ And Elijah takes the question, as we often do, too literally. He goes into this long sob story about how awful his life is and why he needs to hide, and how he’s the only faithful person left on the face of the earth. But the question for Elijah and for us is not so literal – it’s a life purpose and mission question – what are we doing here? What is our life purpose as individual Christians, as a church, as citizens of a troubled nation and world? What are we doing to make a difference? Hiding because we’re afraid, because life is coming at us too fast? Saving up for a rainy day instead of trusting God’s abundance and providence to meet our needs? Snarfing up all the manna from heaven we can find in case God reneges on his promise and fails to provide daily bread for us tomorrow or next week? Because we trust God to provide for us every day, the Lord’s prayer doesn’t ask for food to last us until spring or until the economy recovers – we simply pray “give us this day our DAILY bread.”

What are we doing here? Shaking in our boots, making excuses, complaining about how awful those politicians or CEO’s or terrorists, relatives, bosses, kids, spouses, teachers, coaches, preachers… are making our lives? Or are we drawing on the resources of our faith and our mighty God and living lives of faithfulness–confronting our fears and turning them over to the only one who can ever really take the scary out of life.

Lesson 3: Most Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real

Most fears are false evidence appearing real, but the only way to know that is to face them. You can’t defeat an imaginary foe. Our granddaughter once told her little brother that there were vampires living in the closet in his room. For weeks he was afraid to go into his room alone because he believed his sister’s false evidence was real. Elijah was afraid because he believed he was totally alone, doomed, abandoned by God and everyone else. He believed that he was dead meat, and as we will see, he was dead wrong on all counts. His fear was fed by false evidence appearing real.

Lesson 4: We all need time alone with God ….

The next lesson here is that Elijah needs rest – time alone with God. And we all need that. Turn off the “smart” phone and computer and Ipod and tv and telephone, and take time, regularly to relax, re-create our bodies, minds and souls. We all need vacations, sabbaticals, retreats – even Jesus did, and if he did, what makes us think we don’t? We need time to listen for God’s still small voice. As Elijah learns, God doesn’t always speak to us in earthquakes or wind or fire, but in what one translation calls “the sound of sheer silence.” In other words, if we want to hear what God is telling us, we need to shut up and listen. And that includes when we pray. Don’t just spend all your prayer time telling God things God already knows! Take time to listen.

Lesson 5: We need time alone with God… But, we can’t stay there permanently.

Next lesson, yes, we do regularly need retreats – time alone, but we can’t stay there permanently. In the Gospel accounts, when Jesus takes Peter and James and John with him for a mountain top experience and Elijah and Moses appear to them, the disciples first reaction is to homestead there. They want to build houses for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, but Jesus says, no. He knows they have much work to do down in Jerusalem and can’t stay on the mountain forever.

My church’s mission statement says “We share God’s love by words and action.” We need to walk our talk. God’s question is what are we doing here? The letter of James says “faith without works is dead.” We can’t work our way into heaven, but we also know that faith inspires lives that bear good fruit. Of course it is important to be assured of our personal and individual salvation – but that’s only half the gospel. Remember that when asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus didn’t stop with one. He said we need to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, but then he says the second is equally important — love your neighbor as yourself.

OK, I can hear what many of you are thinking. It’s the “yes, but” moment in the sermon. You’re thinking, “that’s good, Steve. We believe it, but we’ve got too much to do. There are too many problems in the world. We can’t possibly fix them all. We’d like to help and we do what we can, but we feel so alone.” When the “yes, buts” raise their ugly heads, we need to get off our buts and trust God—because …

Lesson 6: We are NEVER in this Alone!

Perhaps the most important lesson of this Elijah story is that we are never alone, even though it often feels like we are. Elijah is never alone. He is suffering, but we all suffer. It’s part of the human condition. There are two parts to this lesson – we are obviously never away from God (see point #1 above). But sometimes we feel like little Johnny who was afraid of a storm and unable to go to sleep one night. His mother went in to comfort him and reminded him that he had learned in Sunday School that God and Jesus were always with him, that he wasn’t alone. And Johnny said, “Yes, Mommy, I know, but sometimes I need somebody with skin on them.”

We all do, and the Elijah story reminds us that we never without human partners if we’re willing to see them and accept the fact that our partners in mission don’t always look the way we expect them to look. God says to Elijah later chapter 19 – “Go on your way and as you go anoint Elisha to be a prophet in your place and anoint Jehu as new king of Israel, and by the way, there are still 700 faithful people out there who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” We are never alone if we are doing God’s work.

It is so important to face our fears because fear motivates retreat. Fear shrink wraps the Gospel when it makes us afraid of being prophetic, of challenging bigotry and judgmental thinking. That kind of fear is the spark for burning flags and Korans instead of promoting dialogue and tolerance for different perspectives. Fear is what wants to throw the baby out with the bath instead of finding the good in any situation or relationship or failure or political system. Living in assurance means building on those 700 faithful ones instead of letting one evil queen or king silence the truth. Fear keeps us from getting to know others who appear so different from a distance but have the same needs for love and grace all humans have. It is so much easier to judge or fear a stereotype than someone we know as a fellow human being.

Faith is the only antidote to fear that works – it allows us to laugh at our own foolishness, just as the rabbits crack up in the Travelers’ commercial. We love and laugh at our fears because we know that God alone can take the scary out of life. How do we know that? We know the cross of Calvary and the tomb on Easter are empty. We know that in the game of life, the powers of evil and hatred and fear have a big goose egg on the scoreboard, and God’s eternal, life-giving love is off the charts. It’s a worse mismatch than OSU vs. Eastern Michigan. No contest.

Paul says it best in Romans 8 – “If God is for us, who is against us. For we know that nothing – hear that, nothing in all creation, not fear, worry, death, powers or principalities, nothing in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I leave you with a great question: If you knew you could accomplish anything God wants you to do and were guaranteed that you could not fail – what would you do with your life? Well guess what? The good news of the resurrected living Christ that we model our lives after is that we can’t fail if we have God on our side. In Christ, God has already taken the scary out of life and death once and for all.

That means we have no excuse to run and hide when life comes at us fast. God says, hey Steve, hey church, I have already conquered the world – so what are you doing here?

Stop Kicking the Can or Perish

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values

I was reminded the other day of how strong denial can be in getting humans to face obvious but difficult realities. An obituary in a local newspaper reported that a person who was under hospice care had died “unexpectedly.” Seeing others in denial is worth a chuckle, but it’s also a reminder to check the mirror for any logs in our own eyes.

When I played “kick the can” as a child I never could have imagined what a dangerous political game it would become in the 21st century. The most recent federal fiscal fiasco has me reflecting on what the Judeo-Christian heritage has to say that can help save my grandchildren and their children from paying for the short-sightedness of my generation. This is not a new problem. Several times in the Hebrew Scriptures we are warned that the sins of one generation are visited upon their off-spring “to the 3rd and 4th generation” (Exodus 20:5, 34:6-7, Deuteronomy 5:9). Even though it’s bad theology to blame bad consequences on a vengeful God punishing children and grandchildren for their ancestors’ disobedience and foolishness, the simple wisdom that actions have consequences is indisputable and needs to be applied across the board to liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike, to complex problems like balancing the budget and global warming.

My first thought about political short-sightedness is often about climate change and the refusal of many conservatives to take seriously the mountain of scientific evidence that indicates we are damaging mother earth’s eco-system in a multitude of ways that will have irreversible long-term effects for much longer than 3 or 4 generations. When well-meaning politicians and business leaders say we can’t afford environmental regulations on businesses because of the short-term impact those laws have on employment and economic development, the Scripture that comes to mind is Proverbs 29:18. The King James translation of that verse I learned as a youth says, “Without vision the people perish.” More recent and better translations of the Hebrew text say, “When there is no prophesy (or prophetic vision) the people cast off restraint.” Modifying “vision” with “prophetic” is a critical distinction because short-sighted goals that favor the bottom line at all costs are still visions, but they lead to long-term disaster. Faithful, prophetic visions however take into consideration both the short-term and long-term consequences of our decisions for the well-being of all God’s children, even those yet to be born.

Two word-study comments are in order: “Prophesy” in biblical terms is often confused with simply foretelling the future, but that key theological concept is far more complicated that simple crystal-ball gazing. The Hebrew prophets were not psychics but those anointed by God to speak God’s word of truth to those who need to but usually do not want to hear it. A common phrase in the Hebrew Scriptures is “the law and the prophets” indicating both the need to know God’s laws and codes of behavior represented by such passages as the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20), but also the practical interpretation and application of those general rules for living to specific circumstances. The latter critical thinking is what prophets do. The second phrase in Proverbs 29:18 that is worthy of comment is “the people cast off restraint.” The other use of that phrase in the Hebrew Scriptures occurs in Exodus 32:25 where the Hebrew people make and worship a golden calf even while Moses is on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments. The Hebrew words there are translated as describing the Hebrew condition as “total loss of social order,” “out of control,” or “laughingstock.” It seems to me those terms could easily be applied to the polarized political situation in the U.S. today.

Here’s my latest take on the common problem on both sides of the political debate, i.e. short-sightedness or lack of prophetic vision. On one side we have the simple mathematical facts that (1) spending billions more than we have is a sure-fire formula for disaster and (2) our current system of providing resources for our increasingly older population, i.e. Social Security and Medicare, is not sustainable unless it is reformed. Everyone acknowledges those elephants are in the room and getting bigger every day, but no one so far is willing to pay the political price of picking up that hot potato and making the painful decisions necessary to address the problems. “Kicking the can down the road” has become the catch phrase for passing the buck, which means visiting the consequences of our short-sighted denial of these problems onto the 3rd or 4th generation.

Another major issue demanding solution is the environmental survival vs. economic growth impasse. This issue is so critical for humankind that it cannot be an either/or partisan debate that results in stubborn refusal on both sides to do anything or we will indeed perish as Proverbs predicts. Prophetic vision demands courage on both sides of the political spectrum to lead us out of denial to a willingness to make whatever political and economic sacrifices must be made that will not be popular with anyone but are necessary for the long-term survival of our nation and our planet.

For Christians this season of Lent is a perfect time to reflect upon the necessity of sacrificial living. None of our current societal problems can be solved with a competitive win-lose mind set. Every citizen and political faction must be willing to compromise and find common ground instead of the perpetual electioneering we now have. The Hebrew prophets can serve as models for that kind of servant leadership. Biblical prophets never won any popularity contests or elections because they spoke truth instead of party platitudes or ideology. They put integrity and facing uncomfortable truths ahead of personal goals and comfort. Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, and we need leaders today who are willing to do the same today before it’s too late.

Jesus followed in the footsteps of those Hebrew prophets. He took upon himself the role of suffering servant and prophet described centuries earlier by the anonymous prophet known as Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55). Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem in the final months of his life and nothing could deter or detour him from his destiny on the cross. His disciples repeatedly urged him to bail and take an easier path, but Jesus knew what was required of him and put God’s truth and justice above all thoughts of personal comfort or glory. My prayer is that God will raise up leaders again today with that kind of courage and that all of us will have ears to hear and courage to follow instead of just kicking the can down the road to some other generation.

For this Lent 2013 with sequestration, budget cuts, climate change and a host of other challenges, I find inspiration and guidance in the words of a great hymn by S. Ralph Barlow, “O Young and Fearless Prophet.”

“O young and fearless Prophet of ancient Galilee,
Thy life is still a summons to serve humanity;
To make our thoughts and actions less prone to please the crowd,
To stand with humble courage for truth with hearts uncowed.

We marvel at the purpose that held Thee to Thy course
While ever on the hilltop before Thee loomed the cross;
Thy steadfast face set forward where love and duty shone,
While we betray so quickly and leave Thee there alone.

O help us stand unswerving against war’s bloody way,
Where hate and lust and falsehood hold back Christ’s holy sway;
Forbid false love of country that blinds us to His call,
Who lifts above the nations the unity of all.

Stir up in us a protest against our greed for wealth,
While others starve and hunger and plead for work and health;
Where homes with little children cry out for lack of bread,
Who live their years sore burdened beneath a gloomy dread.

Create in us the splendor that dawns when hearts are kind,
That knows not race nor station as boundaries of the mind;
That learns to value beauty, in heart, or brain, or soul,
And longs to bind God’s children into one perfect whole.

O young and fearless Prophet, we need Thy presence here,
Amid our pride and glory to see Thy face appear;
Once more to hear Thy challenge above our noisy day,
Again to lead us forward along God’s holy way.”

At Home in the Universe, II Corinthians 5:6-6:2

March 1, 2013November 16, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Lectionary Texts

Do you remember what it was like to be at summer camp or some other foreign place and be so miserably homesick that you thought, and perhaps wished, that you would die? The gospel song that says, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” describes that horrible feeling for me. And homesickness is not merely a childhood disease. Adolescence, mid-life crises, old age are all life interruptions that are ways of describing recurring outbreaks of homesickness—of feeling broken, alienated and alone in a strange world where we often wonder what we’re doing here?
We try to cure our homesickness with a host of home remedies—large doses of education, exercise—be it running marathons or climbing corporate ladders, accumulating friends and/or lovers who fill our time and the lack of peace we feel. Power, money, prestige, new cars, new clothes, new houses, new jobs, new spouses, booze, beauty treatments, Grecian Formula. We try it all don’t we? And for the most part it is all a huge waste of time and money. Because when we let our defenses down and find ourselves alone with nothing to do—remember those were the times the homesickness got you at camp too? When we’re not too busy to think and feel, then the old feeling sneaks up on us and we start feeling like that motherless child again.
The sad part is that we all feel that lack of peace frequently. But we rarely let anyone know. The world is full of homesick, motherless and fatherless children, and Paul tells us in Corinthians that our job as ambassadors or instruments of peace is to comfort the homesick and assure them they can always come home again—to God, the only reliable true source of peace. The homesick need to hear that word of reconciliation now—to know that peace is not off in the distant future. It didn’t help to have some well-intentioned camp counselor tell me that my parents would pick me up at the end of summer camp on Saturday when it was only Tuesday. I wanted someone to comfort me and hold me right then. I wasn’t sure I would even live till Saturday! That’s why Paul says we are already new creatures in Christ. The day of deliverance has already come in the Prince of Peace from Nazareth.
That’s the good news we need we are to give one another. But as you well know, one homesick kid cannot cure another one. The disease will spread like an epidemic once the tears start to flow. So, if we are to be reconcilers, we need first to be reconciled to God. We need to be at peace ourselves if we have any hope of being peacemakers. We need to be made whole, cured of our own homesickness before we can help others who are lost and afraid.
We need to hear and know that there is only one cure for deep, ontological homesickness, and that cure is faith–faith that is deeper and distinguished from mere belief. Belief is holding certain ideas about something, or about life. Faith, on the other hand, is a more total and deeper response of inner peace and trust. For example, it is one thing to believe a parachute will open properly, to understand the physics of why and how parachutes work. But it is quite another thing to have enough faith or trust in a parachute to strap one on your back and jump out of a plane at 5000 feet.
Faith, according to theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, is “a quality of human living. At its best it has taken the form of serenity and courage and loyalty and service: a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe, and to find meaning in the world and in one’s own life, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and is stable no matter what may happen.”
To be at peace means to “feel at home in the universe,” to know as the “Desiderata” says, that “You are a child of the universe, no less than the rocks the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive God to be….and keep peace with your soul.” To be at peace at home in the universe is to be at peace with oneself and God.
I have cherished a very powerful and concrete image of what it means to be at home in the universe since shortly after the space shuttle Challenger explosion in early 1986. Part of being at peace is an ability to find meaning and truth in unexpected and even tragic circumstances. For me, the final words from Commander Dick Scobee before the explosion have become a mantra for me of peaceful living. About sixty seconds after blast off Mission Control informed the Challenger crew that they were going back to full power, and Commander Scobee’s confident reply was, “Roger, Go With Full Throttle Up.”
When we are at peace we dare to live life with full throttle up, knowing as those astronauts did that there are serious risks in living. We know also that there are far more serious risks in refusing to face life’s challenges honestly and courageously. Chuck Yeager, a test pilot famous for his description of those early space pioneers who had “All the Right Stuff,” said after the Challenger explosion that “every astronaut and test pilot knows that such a tragedy can happen anytime you go up. But you can’t dwell on the danger or you would not be able to do your job.” Then he added, “There’s not much you can do about it anyway.”
Life is like that. We are all travelers on spaceship Earth, and like the Challenger 7, we are all sitting on enough firepower to blow us all to kingdom come several times over. That’s enough in itself to make us a little queasy, a little homesick, isn’t it? Even if we didn’t have to cope with the routine hassles of living—the doubts, the fears, the guilt, and the disappointments. But we all do have to cope with those things every day. And we all need a faith that will help us feel more at home and at peace in the midst of our hectic and often chaotic lives.
When I was 6 or 7 years old I discovered one sneaky cure for homesickness. I remember coming home with my family from a visit to my grandparents’ farm or my aunt and uncle’s house late in the evening. I would often fall asleep in the back seat of the car after a hard day of playing with my cousins, but I would wake up when the car pulled into our driveway. Sometimes I would pretend I was still asleep because I knew that if I did, one of my parents would carry me into the house and tuck me into my bed. It felt so good to be held in those strong, l loving arms. I felt so secure, the direct opposite of homesick. Don’t’ we all long for that kind of security and closeness at every age?
Then we grow up. We lose that peace in our necessary attempts to establish our independence. We move away, physically and intellectually from the simple belief structures that once made sense of life for us. We become, for better or worse, independent, responsible adults. And with that independence often comes the feeling of homesickness.
How do we get in that situation? It’s like a conversation I overheard between my in-laws several years ago. They were talking about how my mother-in-law used to sit right next to Dad in the car before they were married. This was in the days before bucket seats, of course. My mother-in-law was asking why that changed after they got married. My father-in-law finally just smiled and said, “Well, I’m not the one who moved.”
So it is with our human and heavenly parents. We are the ones who think we want distance and freedom. And that’s OK. We are the ones who get embarrassed when our parents want to hug and kiss us in public, and we’re much too grown up for that kid stuff. And that’s OK too. It’s all part of growing up. And we’re the ones who think God’s rules for living are too confining, too old-fashioned, and certainly our parents are. We are very sure we can do much better on our own. And that’s OK too. So we go out on our own and we blow it, not once, but several times, and that’s also OK. We learn from those experiences. But what isn’t OK is when we are too proud or guilty to admit that we were wrong or that we really do need help.
It’s hard to admit we’re wrong. People just love to say, “I told you so,” don’t they? So we don’t even try to be reconciled with family or friends or even with God because we’re afraid we’ll be rejected or ridiculed. Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians and us that just isn’t so in this passage from II Corinthians 5. “God does not hold our misdeeds against us.” We are forgiven and loved by the essence of Being itself. “The day of deliverance has already dawned.” Peace is here, now, for those who humbly accept it.
Jesus told a story once about a very homesick young man. You know the story from Luke’s Gospel (15:11-32), but you haven’t heard the letter I found recently from that young man to his father. Strangely enough, it was postmarked in Chicago. Listen:

Dear Dad,
I’m sorry it’s been so long. You’ve probably been worried sick about me, haven’t you? Well, I’ve been meaning to write, but I didn’t have any good news, and I didn’t want to worry you. I was in Florida for a year after I left home. I lost the money you gave me on some bad investments. I got mixed up in some drug dealing and spent some time in jail. Please don’t tell Mom. I’ve been bumming around the country doing odd jobs and stuff since I got out of the joint. I was living in a half-way house here in Chicago for several months till I got into a fight with one of the supervisors last week. They kicked me out.
Things are bad here, no jobs, no money. I’ve been living on the streets, eating at soup kitchens or anywhere I can find a meal. It’s a lousy way to live. But I guess I don’t deserve any better. I know now that you were right about staying in school. I’d sure do things different if I had it to do over.
I’m real sorry I hurt you and Mom. I’m embarrassed to ask this. I’ll understand if you don’t ever want to see me again. But I’m sick and cold and would appreciate it if I could come home, for just a little while. Just till I can find a job. I’ll pay you back for my room and board as soon as I can, I promise.
Your son, John

By overnight special delivery, John got a plane ticket and a letter from his father that simply said:

Dear John,
You can always come home, anytime.
I love you,
Dad

(This sermon is included in my book, “Building Peace from the Inside Out: Stories for Peacemakers and Peace Seekers,” chapter 12)

Transfiguration, Matthew 17:1-8

February 16, 2013February 16, 2013 by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Lectionary Texts

The transfiguration story is one of my favorite Gospel scriptures, but that was not always the case. For a long time this story of Jesus talking to two dead guys seemed a little weird to me. What are we sophisticated, rational, scientific 21st century people supposed to do with this ghost story?

The breakthrough for me and this text came when I was able to suspend my literal questions of what and how and look at this story instead through theological lenses. That ah hah moment happened for me when, after preaching for several years, it finally dawned on me that this transfiguration story in one of the Gospels shows up every year in the same place in the church lectionary. And it is always on the Sunday before Lent begins at a major turning point in the Christian year. We have just come through the joy and light of Christmas and Epiphany and now stand on the brink of the somber dark purples and blacks of Lent. The transfiguration story, this mountain top experience, stands right in the middle of all that, between Bethlehem and Calvary

Matthew 17 begins with the phrase “six days later.” What does that mean? When we hear things like that inquiring minds immediately ask, “What happened six days earlier?” If you read Matthew 16 you find that what happened six days earlier was a “come to Jesus” meeting where Jesus asks the disciples some important questions about what people were thinking and saying about who Jesus is. The final and most important question Jesus put to the disciples (and therefore to us) was, “Who do you say that I am?” Good old Peter of course is eager to answer. “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” he proudly blurts out. And he’s right of course. Like us, he knows the right answer on this test, but as the ensuing verses of chapter 16 show, he and the other disciples really don’t know it means. He knows who Jesus is, but he doesn’t REALLY know.

So in the transfiguration story and the verses just before it Jesus addresses that problem. He is preparing his disciples for what is to come in Jerusalem and beyond, just as Lent is a time of spiritual growth and preparation for us as well. In chapter 16 Jesus has tried to tell them about his coming death and resurrection, and they don’t get it. Peter answers the question correctly about who Jesus is, but he doesn’t really understand or accept the cost of discipleship.

So six days later Jesus tries again. He and his three key disciples have a mountain top experience. Like all mountain top experiences, this one is short-lived. There’s no video, no crowds or witnesses – just three scared fishermen and Jesus in a powerful encounter with God.

At first Peter, James and John love it up there. The view is fantastic, it’s peaceful and quiet – they have a moving experience, probably feeling closer to God than ever before in their lives. So quite naturally they want that glorious moment to last as long as possible. They want to stay on the mountain and live the good life away from all the problems and clamoring crowds in the valley below.

John Ortberg in his book and DVD series, “It All Goes back in the Box,” describes the most dangerous object in our homes. It’s not the power tools or the kitchen knives. He says the most dangerous item in our houses is the EZ chair. We even call them La-Z Boys! They seduce us into object lessons of inertia, don’t they? You remember, “An object at rest tends to stay at rest?” That’s not to say we don’t need moments of rest and relaxation. Many of us are so busy “doing” all the time that we don’t make time to simply “be.” We need time in the EZ chair; we just can’t make that our permanent residence.

When the disciples lobby for homesteading on the mountain, Jesus sees a teaching moment. He knows his purpose is not fame and fortune or a comfortable retirement. His is not a theology of glory, but a theology of the cross. God never promised Jesus or us a rose garden – just the garden of Gethsemane. We know that. We’ve seen this movie before, and we know what’s coming next. But every year, isn’t there just a part of us that still would like to think Jesus was wrong. Maybe this year scholars will discover an EZ chair version of this story? One that gets us to Easter without Good Friday.

We know that won’t work, and Lent is time for us to ponder our relationship to that reality. How much are we like the disciples arguing over who gets the EZ chairs next to Jesus in heaven? Can’t we just homestead on the mountain, build little booths for Elijah and Moses and Jesus, and avoid the pain of the valley below. But the full abundant life is not real in isolation. We need regular retreats but not escapes. More than ever before we need regular times to turn off all our electronic gadgets and background noise and be with God. We need times of solitude to renew a right spirit within us, to get a proper perspective so we can see where God is calling us to go next. We just can’t stay there on the mountain top.

We and the disciples aren’t the only ones that want the EZ chair life. The scriptures are full of tales of those who try to run away from God’s call: Jonah called to go preach to the heathens in Nineveh instead boards a ship (hopefully not one of Carnival’s) heading to Tarshish, 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Elijah runs for his life from Queen Jezebel to Mt. Horeb (aka Sinai). These two great stories show us that even if we go to the depths of the sea or to the highest mountain, God will find us and ask what he asked Elijah, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” That’s a great question to ask ourselves every day during this season of Lent: “what are we doing here?” Is it what God is calling us to do or what we want to do?

If you remember the Elijah story from I Kings 19, Elijah doesn’t get to stay on the mountain either – he is called back down into the valley to share God’s word with those desperately needing to hear it and save them from worshiping false gods. But Elijah doesn’t go down alone – God appoints Elisha to partner with him and carry on after Elijah’s death. Jesus can’t go down the mountain alone either. He needs us to carry on God’s work in his stead. Do you hear that call – “This is my son – listen to him,” says the voice of God? Listen, and then follow him, back down into the valley where those who suffer need comfort, where corruption needs to be confronted and corrected–back into the world where Jesus teaches us that the poor will be with us always.

It is not a journey for sissies. Jesus knows it leads to that other mountain he can see in the distance; not one of glory with two saints – but one with crosses and two crooks. None of us like to suffer – it’s scary. No matter how strong our faith, death fills us with some level of anxiety and dread. As comedian Woody Allen so aptly put it, “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t’ want to be there when it happens.”

In the presence of God’s power we all tremble, and the disciples do too. Matthew tells us when they heard the voice of God they fell on their faces – ouch, and not a good position to do much from either. And then listen what happens – Jesus came and touched them and their fear is gone. They are transfigured, changed, and “when they looked up they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.”

Jesus alone is all we need to see us through the dark valleys. If we let him he provides us with the courage to overcome our fears – to come out of hiding, off our mountains of pride and comfort and live in the real world. Jesus speaks to us calmly about real life – joy, suffering, death and resurrection, and because he’s been there and done that – we know we can too.

Lent and especially Ash Wednesday calls us to affirm all of life – the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat – to embrace not only the joy of Easter but the passion of the journey that takes us there. That journey begins again tonight, and in the transfiguration story we get a glimpse of the glory of God that is revealed in its fullness on Easter morning.

I would encourage you to seek mountain top moments this Lent –times when you feel especially close to God. Those moments won’t happen unless we put ourselves in position to witness God’s glory. We don’t have mountain top life-changing experiences unless we take time to climb the mountain. The good news is we don’t need to physically climb a mountain or even a hill. We get close to God through prayer, study, service, fasting or whatever spiritual disciplines work for you.

When we do and take time to listen, God teaches us not to seek only the mountains of glory, but to accept our Calvaries too, our failure, our sin, our mortality – not fearfully and anxiously, but obediently and trusting in the will and redemptive power of God

God’s promise is that on both mountains – the mountain of glory and mountain of the cross–and in the valleys in between – Jesus journeys with us, not just for 40 days plus 6 Sundays. Jesus is with us for the long haul and walks with us “even to the end of the age.”

(Preached Ash Wednesday 2013 at Jerome UMC, Plain City, Ohio)

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