The Light of Epiphany

The Light of Epiphany
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
January 23, 2011

After our return from Alaska, I have decided never to take for granted the beauty of the light of day. After trying to adjust to days with less than four hours of seeming twilight surrounded by long periods of darkness, the sheer thrill of a sunshiny winter’s morning at anything warmer than twenty-below-zero has become grand enough to send my heart racing. We 21st-century folk often forget that it is only recently that people have acquired the ability to illuminate their lives by anything beyond a candle light or two. It was only a little over a hundred years ago, for instance, that the electric light displays at the World’s Fairs in Chicago and Buffalo set the entire country abuzz with news of this technological marvel which literally changed the way Americans thought about their day. As a result, most of us no longer live in fear whenever we start to see the sun dip below the horizon. But, this morning I’d like for us to spend just a few moments trying to forget the relatively new reality of perpetual light with which we live and consider the symbolic meaning of light piercing the darkness as a way of thinking about our journey with God and through the rhythms of this particular time of year.

This season of Epiphany within which we find ourselves is a relative newcomer to the liturgical calendar. Its origins lie somewhere in the fourth century, beginning with a feast which celebrated Christ’s baptism. But over a period of time it came to be associated with Jesus’manifestation to the Gentiles, and the Magi in Matthew’s gospel, in particular. So it is that over a period of anywhere from four to six weeks we go on a pilgrimage that begins with the baptism of Jesus and ends with the story of his transfiguration before his disciples. And, even more importantly for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, this particular stretch of narratives takes place during the coldest and the darkest time of the year—what we might call, using the hymn writer’s language, the “bleak midwinter.”

So, here we are smack dab in the middle of the time when Christina Rossetti reminds us of “frosty wind, snow on snow, earth standing hard as iron, and water like a stone”—appealing images aren’t they? They conjure up for me a couple of winters spent in England where, though it usually doesn’t get as cold as it does here in the American Midwest, the winter dampness seems to penetrate into one’s very bones, creating a perpetual chill. One gains very little solace from centuries-old houses without insulation or central heating. It was in such an environment that I walked into a small village parish church one morning to see the vicar before service furiously hacking away at the frozen ice standing in the baptismal font. I have thought often since then that the poor child who was welcomed into the Kingdom that day probably was forever traumatized by the event and, most likely, turned his back early on both the church and the cold of winter!

These images of darkness, cold, and perpetual dampness need to be seared into our senses in order for us to come even close to the power of our opening lessons. For, when Isaiah says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” or when the Psalmist proclaims, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” we shouldn’t imagine a world like the one we know but, rather, one in which any illumination or warmth was seen as nothing less than a gift of God, a marvel beyond belief. In the Old Testament lesson, in particular, these wondrously warm and evocative phrases are set next to contrasting ones of “deep darkness” and “gloom.” They conjure up a world of bitter cold and harsh realities—something like the infamous NFL “Ice Bowl” game of 1967 from my childhood when Dallas squared off against Green Bay and frostbite plagued both sides of the field as Hall-of-Fame coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry prowled the sidelines. This is still the way Canadians play football when the Grey Cup is hosted in the tundra of northern Saskatchewan where the wind chill approaches 40- or 50-below and the receivers slam into the turf, only to bounce quickly back up (like a rubber ball). It’s the way championship football should be played—without long silly commercials, specially-insulated boxes for the rich and famous, and certainly without the comforts of some dome in California, Florida, or Texas. For it is then, and only then, when you see beards caked in frost, frozen limbs snapping in the cold air, and spittle freezing on impact that you can appreciate players who lay their bodies out as a living sacrifice to the game.

This theme of not being able to truly appreciate the joys and comforts of life until we have experienced their opposite is not only illustrated by the biblical writers through the use of contrasting images but through the very choice of allusions. But, again, we oftentimes misinterpret them. For instance, when the Psalmist says that his one desire is to live in the temple “all the days of my life,” many of us euphemize or spiritualize the meaning, trying to force it to say something like “going to heaven, “ or “being with God.” But, “in ancient Israel, those who lived in the temple precincts were fugitives fleeing from opponents or persons given to the temple,” (Craddock, Preaching the New Common Lectionary, Epiphany Year A, 133). The dwelling place of God, then, was understood to be a place of refuge when none else was available or of providing a sense of vocation, as with the prophet, Samuel. As the lamp stands were lit each evening in the sanctuary, the light projected out into the temple precincts would have been interpreted as a beacon of hope to the hopeless and a place of safety and protection for the weary traveler and pilgrim.

While we might not break forth in rhapsodic lovelorn joy with Romeo to say, “What light through yonder window breaks?” perhaps you have experienced the comfort of arriving at your destination after unanticipated challenges along the way. At such times, the soft glow of the kitchen light back at home can be a welcoming sign to all those tired and worn out—a modern version of the Victorian “light left in the window.” This is the backdrop for understanding the gospel writer’s use of the familiar Old Testament passage as Jesus officially launches out on his ministry on the heels of his temptation in the wilderness. Unlike the Hebrews who also faced trials in the desert, Jesus successfully navigated his way into the new “Promised Land” and the time was, indeed, fulfilled in what the Gospel writer calls the “Galilee of the Gentiles.” For Matthew, Jesus has become the living presence of the reign of God. As “light of the world” (to use the Evangelist John’s phrase) Jesus beckons others to follow him, beginning with two sets of brothers employed in their everyday work of mending nets. Somehow, they recognize in this Galilean those qualities that we associate with light—illumination, hope, refuge, and a sense of comfort and joy.

But, while light carries with it all of these benevolent connotations, there are malevolent ones to bear in mind, as well. And all it takes to remind us is turning on the evening news to hear another heartbreaking story of someone who has employed an aging space heater in an attempt to find warmth and has wound up dying in the process from the accidental fire created by it. Since time immemorial, fire has also been seen as both purgative and destructive. For Elizabethan church goers, with whom I am familiar, their eyes were literally seared with John Foxe’s almost-pornographic images of the death of the martyrs. Dr. Rowland Taylor was saying the 51st Psalm as he made his way towards his death, using the English version provided in Cranmer’s Prayer Book. For not saying it in Latin, the accompanying justice, Sir John Shelton struck him boldly across the mouth. Ironically enough, the Psalm text reads: “For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee; but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.”

But on this day, Dr. Taylor was to indeed be burnt on the rough ground outside of his parish along what is now Angel Street. Emerging from the depths of a pitch barrel which was to act as an accelerant, the minister received a deadly blow from the local drunkard to whom he had given his boots but minutes before as an act of charity. His brain matter still staining the ground beneath him, he was lifted into the fire kindled with faggots “cut from the hedgerows and copses he had passed on his walks. The greasy smoke could have drifted down into his own rectory garden,” says Ronald Blythe (Divine Landscapes, 70). As his corpse was rendered slowly into ash, the sizeable audience which perhaps consisted of the entire population of his little parish went from crying to somber reflection rendering the execution into something of a prayer-meeting. Like the other 231 Marian burnings documented by Foxe, Taylor’s willingness to “give his body to be burned” (in the words of the apostle Paul) rendered him famous in a way probably impossible in an age when death was as common as a text message in ours. Latimer’s challenge to Ridley that their funeral pyres would set all of England ablaze took on a sense of permanence, thanks to an act of Parliament which ordered a copy of Foxe to be purchased and placed in the narthex of every church throughout the land.

If, as Matthew suggests, Jesus’ announcement was something of a continuation of John the Baptist’s preaching, then it contained not only an element of hope but one of warning, as well. Jesus here takes up the Baptist’s baton like something of a tag-team preacher and proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” (4:17). In John’s rendition of the message, that call had been bathed in the fires not of warmth but of purgation. The stubble-burning imagery which he had conjured up was meant to awaken an audience—not comfort it. Likewise, the candles which we light so serenely in our beautiful Advent wreaths carry a kind of double-entendre: bringing hope, yes, but also whipping up the sights and smells of fire in an attempt to awaken us from our nocturnal sleep.

On that beloved isle to which my mind so often turns, this was the purpose of the coastal watch which went back all the way to the days of Roman Britain. There, scattered along the dips and dives of Kentish countryside, fresh kindling lay always at the ready for the torch which would announce the coming of an invasion. All along the promontory, at every small hill and extended elevation, the fires would be lit like an ancient telegraph line to warn those up and down the countryside that the foreigner was at the gates and that all should be watchful and ready. These small warning fires were meant to jerk villagers from their lethargy lest larger fires of perdition descend on them from an invading Gaul, Viking, or Norman.

Likewise, today’s texts beckon us away from the familiarity of the gospel narratives which dot Matthew’s introduction to Jesus’ ministry proper. We are moving away, now, from the infant Jesus sought by the Magi and even the transitional Jesus of the temptation narrative who is in preparation for a ministry yet to come. With the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, our story is firmly underway and, whether we like it or not, we being propelled with Jesus towards the crowds that await him and ultimately will turn on him at his death. And, temporally, though the memories of the Christmas and New Year’s just past remain firmly imbedded in our minds, we are no longer knee-deep in holidays and the turning of the New Year. No, 2011 is firmly begun and, as those of us who teach at the college are well aware, Interterm has come to an end and this week starts what we call the “spring” term.

It has been weeks now since we passed the shortest day of the year and according to British psychologist Cliff Arnall this past week we made our way through Blue Monday, the most miserable day of the year. According to the Guardian, Blue Monday is “the most depressing day of the year, a terrible day to start a new job, try anything productive or do anything other than go back to bed and wait for it to pass.” But pass it has and we’ve only a couple more weeks to get to the Transfiguration. And then, of course, we’re on to Lent and fish fries and a couple more hours of daylight. And before you know it, the purples and yellows of crocuses will be upon us and the vernal equinox will announce that all is right with the world yet again.

But for now, perhaps it is fitting to not only say good-bye to Interterm and the Christmas holidays which presaged it, but to contemplate as Colleen Carroll Campbell did in Thursday’s Post-Dispatch just how we might engage all of this time that lies ahead of us in view of the light of Epiphany. Interestingly, she cites a recent interview by the journalist Greta Van Susteren with 92-year-old Billy Graham, now thoroughly in the winter days of his life. The evangelist who gained fame by preaching to millions, apparently surprised the vaunted interviewer by saying that he wished to “pray more, travel less, take less speaking engagements. . . If I had it do over again, I’d spend more time in meditation and prayer.” His junior partner in religious leadership, the more youthful 83-year-old Pope Benedict XVI sounded a similar note in his interview with German journalist Peter Seewald. When the enthusiastic newsman complimented him on his prolific publishing career and energetic schedule, the Pope said he wished he had cultivated “discretion, deeper examination, time for interior pondering, vision. . . and meditating about God.” He went on to say that “one should not feel obliged to work ceaselessly,” but instead to concentrate on “his inner view of the whole, his interior recollection, from which the view of what is essential can proceed.”

In her column, Campbell suggests that “our postmodern fixation on round-the-clock productivity and constant communication may be making our winter blues a year-round affair. Several studies,” she says, “have linked multi-tasking—especially the electronic sort—to increased stress and diminished concentration.” She even cites Eric Brende’s book, Better Off, in which he recounts “his journey with his wife from MIT to an Amish-type community and, eventually, a low-tech life as a rickshaw driver, soapmaker and homeschooling-father in St. Louis.” While few of us might wish to follow this kind of radical turnaround in life, it does shine a light on the nefariousness and subtle nature of how we can become encumbered by all around us to an extent that we fail to focus on the most important things in life.

So, this morning’s texts have attempted to illuminate something of the darkness around us, to offer us words of hope, to warn us of getting too near the fires of cultural death and destruction, and to begin to pay attention to the journey which lies yet ahead towards life, death, and resurrection. This, my friends, is the perpetual light of Epiphany which shines for all those with eyes to see. May God grant us wisdom as we join with those first disciples in following Jesus on life’s journey.

Paying Attention to the Landscapes of our Life in Christ

Paying Attention to the Landscapes of our Life in Christ
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Greenville College Chapel
September 6, 2010

Some of you this morning are adjusting to a new life lived at a distance from loved ones for the first time. I can still vividly remember that hot August day 35 years ago when my parents drove the 550 miles from Oklahoma City to deposit me, my typewriter, my filing cabinet, and my drums outside of Joy Hall. It would be at least three months before I would see them again and, in those days without cell phones, we were dependent primarily on the Postal Service in order to remain in regular contact. It was a bit different when our own daughters decided to go to Greenville since they only resided a few blocks away. Nevertheless, my wife wept copiously at the Covenant Communion service as we walked away from them during Freshman Orientation.

This summer, though, was a bit different as we loaded our younger daughter’s belongings, including her car, onto a large transport truck before she boarded a plane to take up a new kindergarten teaching job in Fairbanks, Alaska—some 3,500 miles away. A graduate of GC’s class of 2007, she decided after three years of teaching in Illinois that she was ready for a new adventure in life. And so, this young woman whom I walked to her first day of school in Toronto—wasn’t that only yesterday?—is now a proud resident of our northernmost state where she is learning to split wood, ride snow machines, and field dress a moose carcass. In fact, she took great joy in reporting to me her surprise a few days ago when she looked up and suddenly realized that the birches along the roadside were already resplendent in their golden-spangled glory. She knows that my favorite season is fall, so she had fun rubbing it in that in this, as in most other cases involving nature, Alaska supersedes the autumnal beauty of the lower forty-eight.

That conversation got me to thinking about how little most of us pay attention to what is going on around us these days. As I walk out of the classroom, I am always somewhat startled at the number of folks who are on their cell phones. I am something of a latecomer to the cell phone phenomenon myself, having grudgingly secured one for my last sabbatical when I was ensconced in a monastic setting in north central Minnesota. It took me the better part of a year to figure out that I didn’t have to punch in the full phone number whenever I called my wife. And, the people at ATT were somewhat befuddled when I asked them to turn off everything except the ability to make and receive telephone calls. I have no idea how to text and, as Chaplain Gaffner can attest, I didn’t even know that the phone could be turned on and off when I first got it—resulting in an embarrassing incident when we were at a chaplains’ conference together and I went running from the room as the ring tone exploded at full volume. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate modern technology and love the convenience of not having to look for a pay phone in order to make a telephone call like I used to when I was a student. But the sheer ubiquity of this technology has become so invasive that I find myself oftentimes making a Faustian bargain when I take my laptop computer home. With all of the world that it puts at my finger tips, I am concerned that I am not paying attention to my surroundings as much as I used to. Whether it is the changing of the leaves or the sound of my wife’s voice, it becomes easier to be walled off or to simply ignore the beauty of all that is around me.

Now, I think that there is a principle at work here that is central to those of us who make up the Christian community. And that is that each of us is called to learn to pay attention to the landscapes of that common life. But the fact of the matter is that we are oftentimes so absorbed by our attempts at multitasking that we miss out on the here and now—or, as my colleague, Dr. McPeak, oftentimes puts it, we fail to be “fully present” to one another or to God. In his case, this may result in my no longer seeing him as primarily Rick, my good friend and colleague, but reducing him to friend #138 on my Facebook page. (Read text: Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

As the people of Israel prepared to come into the Promised Land after their long decades of wandering in the wilderness, the Scriptures suggest that Moses, too, worried about whether they would remain attentive to God. After all, God had just spent the last forty years making sure that they were paying attention. The desert was a wonderful place for this lesson to be learned. As some of you know, when we are in the desert we must be clearly focused on the environment around us. Cinematographers have oftentimes played on this fact—whether in such films as “Lawrence of Arabia” or “The English Patient.” In both of these classic movies, the desert takes on an identity unto itself and reminds us of the harsh reality of what happens to those who find themselves captivated by anything other than surviving the sand and sun.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is pictured as delivering to the chosen people a series of messages which call them to not forget the lessons learned in the desert. None is more captivating than the instructions given in chapters 6 through 8 where nothing less than disciplined devotion to God is demanded. In the Jewish liturgy, the beginning of this passage is known as the Shema. This word, which begins the reading, is in the imperative and calls the people to listen up, to “hear.” And, alongside the levitical call to love one’s neighbor, Jesus affirms what we have here as the heart of the so-called “Great Commandment.” So, whether in the Jewish or the Christian tradition, this passage is central to our understanding of what it means to be a person of faith. We are called to pay attention, to listen and to hear.

Unfortunately, like the people of Israel, we tend to get sidetracked and pay little attention to God or to others—until some kind of crisis happens in our lives. When that happens, when all the props in our lives are knocked out from under us, then, and only then, do we find ourselves turning to God and asking for help. So, in the few minutes that we have remaining this morning, I’d like for us to key in on four verbal imperatives that jump off the page from this text and explore what they might mean in a 21st-century context as a means of grappling with living out our call to Christian community as faculty, staff, and students.

For the Hebrews, the heart was not seen primarily as the organ of emotion but the seat of identity and decision-making. So, when Moses says, “keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart,” he is not talking about some sentimental Valentine’s Day card. Instead, he is positing that the land where they are heading will be filled with peoples who have a very different worldview and a different set of orienting values. The challenge for them will be to remember the lessons they learned in the wilderness and to let those memories become their central orienting compass—particularly when challenged by a different set of presuppositions. In retrospect, it is clear that it was the loss of this memory and their adaptation to other cultural values (what religious scholars call “syncretism”) that particularly plagued the house of Israel.

As a community with its primary allegiance to the God of Israel, we, too, must find ways of keeping our hearts set on our collective memory. This is where regular attendance at worship, regular reading of Scripture, regular reception of the sacraments, and regular private and corporate prayer become all important. In an American culture which is largely committed to consumerist values built around entertainment, popular culture, and nationalism, keeping our hearts centered on the Christian narrative can be quite difficult. For instance, spending ten hours a week in front of an X-box while we spend one hour in worship and a few minutes in prayer or Bible study, will most probably yield a stronger commitment to the cult of entertainment than becoming a servant of Jesus Christ.

That is why the second command is one of recitation. This creating of an individual memory is understood here in a corporate, largely liturgical, context. It is no surprise that when Israel wished to enter into covenant with God it recited the narrative of God’s mighty acts in history. And this has been the task of the church throughout history—particularly in the context of worship. In worship, we come together not primarily to “feel good” or to participate in Christian forms of entertainment, but to retell the grand narrative of God’s gracious acts throughout all of salvation history—particularly as made known in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Unfortunately, the temptation in our age is to “water down” this narrative or as Regent College professor, Marva Dawn, puts it in the titles of her books: to attempt to reach out by dumbing down without remembering that worship is primarily “a royal waste of time.” In an age primarily concerned with efficiency accompanied by “lights, cameras, action,” we may be tempted to remove the holy silences and mystery from our worship and to recite, not the story of Zion, but the story of “same time next week.” The center of what we are called to demands that we continually tell and rehearse the Gospel story and that we not sell it for a mess of culturally-relevant, but severely malnourishing, mess of pottage.

Third, the people of Israel were commanded to “talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise,” (6:7). One of my favorite preachers, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, claims that we live in an age when words are cheap and numerous. Everywhere we go we hear words—particularly consumerist messages through the electronic media to which we remain tethered much of the time. The Rev. Taylor suggests that this inundation of information has literally made us “hard of hearing,” and created a culture that no longer knows how to listen.

In the midst of this cultural reality we serve the God who spoke creation into being and whose son is boldly proclaimed as “The Word.” The suggestion here in Deuteronomy is that we become, to some extent, that which we pronounce. To those who spend time pronouncing blessings, they hold the potential to be a blessing to others. But to those who spend their time cursing the darkness, they, too, are in danger of getting wrapped up in their negative language. This morning there are probably numerous friends and relatives who could benefit from your words of encouragement set loose upon this community and the world. What difference would it make if you made it a priority to begin to look for ways of speaking God’s goodness and blessing into the mess that we call life? What might happen if you would unplug from your IPOD as you walk across campus and greet others with a smile and a word of kindness?

This issue of language becomes especially crucial as we come to God in prayer. Learning to pray is not easy and requires our immersion in the scriptures and in the liturgy of the church. I have learned so much from others, particularly from the Psalmist and the saints of God who have labored over finding the right language for addressing God. I collect prayer books and never cease to be amazed at the schooling that language provides in helping me better understand who God is and what God desires of God’s people. As I labor through words of prayerful repentance and join the chorus of sinners, I am better prepared to join the throngs in thanksgiving at the end of my time of prayer. Oftentimes I will take that time and write a note or two to someone who is on my heart and mind—hoping that the note will become a means of encouragement to him or her.

This is certainly nothing original with me—I have had to learn the importance of it for not only reshaping my thinking but of trying to speak forth the gospel, a “good word,” to others. Like many of you, I was the recipient of older mentors who taught me the power of this practice. As I undertook graduate study at Princeton, my faculty advisor here, Dr. Mac, would oftentimes send me the most magnificent words of joy and prayerful praise on my behalf. And, there was an elderly couple in our congregation, Rev. A. R. Martin and his wife, Blanche, who would occasionally tuck a five-dollar bill in with their note of encouragement. But no one was a better model of this for me than was Dr. Robert E. “Ish” Smith, past president of the college. Ish literally has friends all around the world and was largely responsible for getting the sport of baseball into the Olympics. I am convinced that no small part of his influence on others comes from the way he holds them up as better than himself and continually writes words of encouragement that spread the love of Jesus around the globe. Continually living in a state of repentance and offering words of thankfulness to God and to others, morning and night, has the potential to form you into people more like the Master.

As we prepare to enter the High Holy Days of the Jewish calendar, our Jewish friends give themselves over to a number of ancient practices. One of those practices is the hanging of mezuzot on the doorposts of their homes. Oftentimes it is these very verses that we are considering that are carefully inscribed on a slip of manuscript, placed in a protective case, and hung where they can be seen. Before the item is hung, one is commanded to say: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha-olam, asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu likbo-a mezuzah. “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, Who sanctifies us with holy commandments and commands us to fix a mezuzah.” This act of both inscribing and hanging offers the supplicant a very concrete and kinesthetic way of entering into the binding/fixing/writing imperative of this verse. In this way, it is possible to reenact the redemption of the world in God as we literally reclaim territory in God’s name.

This final act reveals a rather audacious theology of which we were reminded by our convocation speaker, Dr. Witherington: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” What might happen if we were to see the world in the words of John Calvin as the “theatre of God’s glory.” Much of the current dispensationalist language would deny this fact and boldly proclaims that “Satan is alive and well on planet earth.” In this worldview, there is a demon behind every door that needs casting out and the earth is “going to hell in a handbasket.” The only possible redemption is some kind of rapture where the believers in Christ are somehow jerked away to a private nirvana while the rest of God’s creation is left to fry in torment. But we dare to sing, “This is my Father’s world!” and to proclaim that the God of all creation is in the process of redeeming the entirety of the cosmos. And if that is the case, there are no boundary restrictions, there are no limitations on the scope of God’s economy (Telford Work, Deuteronomy, 97). So, just as we begin by referring to the past as we remember, keep, and recite, we end by referring to the future as we bind, fix, and write the whole earth into God’s redemptive order. And the wonder of it all is that we are invited to participate in this redemptive work.

So, as you go out today I would encourage you to begin to look around, to notice your surroundings, and to embrace the whole world as God’s. Like Thomas Hardy’s character, Jude, do not be afraid to see the academic world as one that you, too, can begin to feel at home in. And in those moments when you are missing the ones you love—whether they are a few miles or thousands of miles away—remember that this is the place to which God has brought you and that He longs for you to simply wake up and pay attention to what He is already doing. May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob go before you, and may His face shine upon you and give you peace. Amen.

An Alternative Kingdom Vision

An Alternative Kingdom Vision
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Proper 14, Year C
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
August 8, 2010

For a good portion of the summer I have found myself immersed in sixteenth-century documents which provide many of the mundane details of worship in her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth’s court. There are battles over music—whether it is appropriate to include instruments like viols and sackbuts on special occasions. There are squabbles over the behavior of the choir boys. And, in particular, there is the give and take regarding who is most appropriate to preach before the Queen during the annual Lenten round of sermons, as her advisers look for those young men who are articulate and promising but who won’t attract the ire of a monarch known for her willingness to call speakers out whom she deemed to be abusing their preaching privileges. But perhaps the question that has dogged me the most as I have tried to stitch together the various fragments of theological, historical, and sociological data is the relationship between this beautiful daily round of worship and the very real problems that dogged the decades of the mid- and later-sixteenth-century Englishman as he sought to eke out an existence in a rather precarious time and place.

For instance, the year 1563 was the worst year of the plague in London with thousands dying in the capital and thousands more throughout the country side. As priests lit the torches that lined the urban squalor to try and burn away the miasma that it was believed caused the sickness, the Chapel Royal continued its regular round of daily prayer with young lads sounding forth in their most beautiful voices the words of the Te Deum or the Sanctus. And while rumors of excommunication swirled throughout the city, the Queen continued on about her regular duties dealing with both domestic and international crises, pausing occasionally for private prayer in her chambers or public prayer with her court. The political climate was rife with bad news, both at home and abroad, and yet people continued to gather to worship and to pray—especially the Crown, as if to suggest that immersing one’s self in worship were, at best, an antidote and, at worst, a panacea to the ugliness of life taking place on the street.

Suffice it to say that I have come to believe that one of the most important roles of Christian worship is to offer us an alternative vision of the Kingdom—perhaps most importantly during those times of deepest and darkest personal or corporate darkness. This extends beyond the typical verbiage we use when talking about whether we were “fed” by a service or whether, as many churches today might put it, we “had our needs met” by a particular Sunday worship service. This way of thinking, while perhaps partially perceptive in terms of what it means for us to be human, actually subjects God to our way of thinking—to our human categories. No, what I am talking about is God’s inviting us into a new and different way of seeing the world—of offering up for us a different language and a different set of lenses for thinking about whose and who we are. And, I would like to suggest that today’s Scripture texts partake of this alternative vision.

In our opening lesson, the problem is one of total disjunction between worship and the hearers’ way of life in the world. Unfortunately, the hyperbolic language used here by the prophet is oftentimes misread out of its historical and cultural context in a very literalistic way that would suggest that worship is somehow unimportant. But we know from the biblical canon that a great deal of time and attention is paid throughout the first Testament to the niceties of the priestly ritual. Anyone who has gotten bogged down in the later chapters of Exodus or the lengthy descriptive sections in Leviticus or Numbers can’t help but wonder why so much time is spent on the description of worship furniture!

No, the problem here is not with the act of worship itself but with its disjuncture from a life of corporate integrity before the Lord God of Israel. The people had come to see worship on Mt. Zion as protection against their enemies—as a sign that God was always on their side. Yet, as Christopher Seitz points out in his article on Isaiah, “Zion is not an inviolable fortress offering sure defense against all foes. Zion is God’s own abode,” (Anchor Bible Dictionary 3: 487). And, as “God’s own abode,” the priestly worship was meant to beckon its hearers to a new way of living, a change in their orientation, not only towards God, but towards their neighbors, as well. That is why the middle section of the opening salvo in this book is a call for the people to not only ceremonially “wash themselves,” but to also “remove the evil of your doings” and to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow,” (Isaiah 1:16-17). Instead of living in two different worlds, the people are being called to live one integrated life where what they see, do, and practice on the Temple mount provokes them to a different way of living out their everyday lives.

This vision of faithful living is perhaps best summed up in our second lesson from Hebrews, where faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (1:1). In a recent article in the New York Times, Gary Cutting, who teaches at Notre Dame, points out that many of his students see faith as something of a “trump card”—they view religion as a comfort and believe that having faith means “never having to explain why,” (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/philosophy-and-faith/). But that is most certainly not what the author has in mind here. In fact, the word he uses which gets translated as “assurance” is hypostasis—perhaps one of the most heavily-debated words in the early church during the formulation of its creeds in the fourth and fifth centuries. Philip Hughes writing in his commentary describes this powerful word as “something that underlies visible conditions and guarantees a future possession.” He goes on to contend that “in striking contrast to the man whose values are entirely those of this present world, the Christian is animated by the conviction that it is the very things which are not (yet) seen, those things which he appropriates by faith, that are real and permanent,” (A Commentary on Hebrews, 440-441).

Faith, then, is not really a “trump card,” but something of a second sense which allows us to see and understand the world in a different way than our secular counterparts. F. F. Bruce claims that “physical eyesight produces conviction or evidence of visible things; faith is the organ which enables people to see the invisible order,” (The Epistle to the Hebrews, 279). In contrast to our penchant for thinking in terms of “blind faith,” there is actually a strong systemic foundation that underlies the way Christians see the world that should form the basis on which we make choices. When we are called upon to make difficult decisions, we do not do so irrationally—we do so based on a set of foundational principles which underlie our entire orientation towards the world. These principles claim that there is a god and that that which he created is good. They also suggest that this god is not simply a giant clockmaker in the sky but continues to remain intimately involved in the world, calling people into fellowship with God’s self and into fellowship with one another through God’s primary instrument of redemption, the church.

The paradigmatic example which the writer uses here is Abraham whose entire life was built around a set of principles quite different from those of his contemporaries. He stood out not because he made irrational choices, but because he chose to build his life around a set of principles quite countercultural. His eyes, according to the book of Hebrews, were firmly fixed on a heavenly city and, as a result, he found himself something of a wandering nomad without a place of fixed residence and loyalties. In the stories that surround his life, we see him holding attachment to places rather lightly while his attachment to God grows ever stronger.

What animated Abraham was his longing for and commitment to “a better country.” When the author says that “he set out, not knowing where he was going,” he is not describing some character in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Instead, he is describing someone whose entire life was centered around a godly vision based on a reality hidden deep within the created order. For Abraham, faith was not a “thing,” a noun; no, for him, faith was a verb, something that demanded action—yielding to critical and somewhat difficult choices, in his everyday life. Yet, in a culture caught up with instant gratification, we are told that he “died in faith without having receiving the promises,” (11:13). His life ended, then, based on this set of principles and beliefs that were yet to come to full fruition.

In Jesus’ commands for preparation in today’s gospel lesson we can hear some of this same desire to attach our lives to something of worth that may yet lie in the future. His command to sell possessions fits with the scriptures from the previous two Sundays which have called upon us to hold our material goods lightly. But today, we are given the further insight that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” (Luke 12:34). As I turn a year older here quite soon, I have begun to realize just how quickly the sands of time are draining away. We Baby Boomers have this tendency to believe that we will remain forever young, but mortality creeps up on us just as it has on previous generations. And like those previous generations we must begin to ask what kind of legacy we wish to leave behind.

One possibility is the commitment to hedonism and pleasure which I heard voiced last Sunday in an interview with Hugh Hefner, now 84 years of age. Clothed in his signature silk robe and surrounded by Playboy bunnies, he nevertheless is beginning to show his age. An icon to a certain set of presuppositions which challenged our culture a half century ago, he said, “I’d like to be remembered as someone who played an important part in changing the social-sexual values of my time.” And, his dogged pursuit of those values remains his animating purpose in life as strongly at 84 as they did at 34.

I wonder if we, the followers of the one who walked the way of the cross, can be said to have lived our lives with as much singularity of purpose? What vision guides us, not just on those days when the sun shines brightly and all seems well with the world—but on those days when our world seems to be caving in and the corpses line the streets? What I have learned from my studies this summer and over the course of the last decade or so is the need for an alternate vision for God’s people through our worship and through our everyday choices that we make throughout the day. Though we may not be Elizabethans, we, too, are called upon to choose how we will live our lives each and every day. What role will prayer play? How often will we gather together? To what vocation and meaningful work are we called? How will we invest our resources of time, money, and focus? The drip, drip, of time marches on and each day we awaken to the beauty of a new dawn we have less time than we did the day before.

The temptations for conformity to this world and its all-too-apparent values can seem overwhelming. The calling to become, in the words of the writer to the Hebrews, “strangers and foreigners on the earth,” has little appeal to most of us. But, as Jesus reminds us: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And, though worship may not be the only place we learn to realign our priorities, it has historically been the time and the space where we experience how God intends to “make right” the world. Every morning at prayer we learn that this begins with confession and repentance and concludes with thanksgiving. Letting these words roll off our tongues and conforming our bodies to these liturgical actions begins to shape us anew into people of faith, people whose hearts are fastened on those things “not seen.”

In his magisterial study, The Cult of the Saints, written two decades ago now, Peter Brown pointed out that the early church posited an entirely different understanding of the city than had the Romans. For the latter, there were tightly drawn parameters that separated men from women, slaves from free, and the living from the dead. But by late antiquity the emerging Christian society had provided access for women to positions of power as benefactors, leaders, and ascetics. In the pilgrimages that were beginning to places like Jerusalem, all classes of people freely mingled, breaking down previous social barriers. And bishops like Ambrose brought the bodies of the saints into the church, literally building places of worship over their bones and forever linking together heaven and earth in a new worldview previously unknown throughout the ancient world.

These Christians challenged the present order based on the hope rooted in their crucified and resurrected Lord. They were unafraid to confront the powers that be with a new vision, a heavenly vision, based on the principles of their Christian hope. Though their lives were lived in very concrete places which called for their very real attention and commitment to ministry, their vocation was predicated on the reality of a heavenly city. “All these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. . . they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them,” (Hebrews 11: 13, 16). The question is are our eyes fastened on that same city? Are we motivated by an alternative vision different from the one predicated by our culture? May God grant that it would be so and that, we, too, might have the courage to embark on the journey of faith, “not knowing where we are going.”

Tuttle-Tomaschke Wedding Homily

Wedding Homily for Patrick Tomaschke and Kristin Tuttle
Song of Songs 2:10-13, 8:6-7; Ephesians 3:14-19; John 17:20-26
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
July 31, 2010

Well, here we are at long last. If you’re like me, you are not at all surprised that we have gathered to celebrate the joining together of Patrick and Kristin. About five years ago when they took their first class together with me, they were oftentimes the last two to leave the classroom. Not because they stayed for each other but because they each demonstrated what teachers love to see in their charges—a desire to learn, a willingness to ask questions, a passion to better understand the world and all that is in it. In a class packed with wonderfully bright students, Kristin and Patrick were perhaps the most intense, the most diligent in seeking out answers to their questions. Oftentimes it would be necessary to continue the conversation outside in the shadow of old Hogue Hall or later in my office. In would walk the girl with the nose stud and road-weary running shoes, followed close behind by the rangy young man with curly chestnut hair. They would pepper me with questions, sometimes working as a tag-team. And I began to notice something: if Patrick thought that I was mishandling a question from Kristin, he would quickly come to her defense—much like a knight might have hundreds of years ago for the sake of a damsel in distress. But Kristin was an “equal opportunity employer” and, not to be outdone by her male sidekick, would do the same if she thought I was somehow short-changing Patrick.

These two seemed to be passionate about many of the same things but I’m not sure they quite recognized at the time how that passion would kindle a mutual interest in one another. I oftentimes thought to myself that if they could only turn half of the intensity they brought to the classroom towards something of a mutual understanding they would set off fireworks enough for all of us! So, over the past few years what began as a smoldering fire has emerged into something of a conflagration today and I, for one, feel privileged to simply be here to watch the fireworks go off. And, though I’ve never been much of a prognosticator, I would predict that the energy and passion for life and for service to Christ that the Tuttle-Tomaschkes will bring to the table holds the potential to enlighten and enliven not just their own lives but that of all those who will surround them—those of us standing her this afternoon, included.

But, as good students of my course on Christian Worship, Patrick and Kristin know that today is not really about them at all. In a culture obsessed with all things nuptial, I was once told by a photographer that weddings are all about the bride. To which I was quick to respond, “No, Christian weddings are all about God.” So before you take these time-honored vows today, my dearest Kristin and Patrick, I want to remind you and all of us of why you are here together in a public space dedicated to the worship of God to say these few words.

You are here both in protest and in affirmation. Now, anyone who knows Kristin should not be surprised about the former. For months she has wrestled with the words of the wedding liturgy to make sure that she can fully own them. In a world filled with sappy lyrics about love, today’s texts and service speak of a commitment to lifetime fidelity in the midst of the hard reality of pain, sacrifice, and, ultimately, death. It is no coincidence that both of our New Testament texts which soar so beautifully into rhapsodic prose are couched in the context of suffering. Throughout chapter three of Ephesians the apostle speaks of the difficulties that have dogged his ministry, while Jesus’ so-called “high-priestly” prayer is spoken on the cusp of his arrest, passion, and death. As Christians, we embrace a worldview that is not primarily about a picture-perfect day and tens of thousands of dollars expended on such niceties as the release of pigeons into the air for the cameras.

We know that life is hard and oftentimes filled with uncertainties. In fact, one of the tasks for those of you who are parents and grandparents here today is to remind Patrick and Kristin that life may not go exactly the way they have planned. Your task is to share openly and honestly about the tough times that you have faced—“in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow,” so that they might have a realistic understanding of both the highs and the lows of marriage. In such a way, we stand together in protest against the miasma of “they lived happily ever after” fairy-tale like lies that the culture would have us believe, when all around us are people who are struggling to keep households together in the wake of the late terrible recession.

But we stand here not only in protest, but in affirmation, as well. We affirm with Paul that though the phrase “wedded bliss” may be somewhat oxymoronic, that a life of committed love brought together under the lordship of Christ remains a mystery—something that transcends our human categories. And, while today’s liturgy is littered with legal language with phrases like, “to have and to hold,” and, “till death us do part,” we affirm that for those of us who claim Christ as both Savior and Lord, today’s ceremony extends beyond a legal contract (complete with witnesses) to incorporate the covenantal understanding embedded in the gospel.

At the heart of this covenantal picture stands Christ himself whose self-giving love is meant to be a model for the Tuttle-Tomaschkes as they work out their salvation together. They are not simply embarking on a legalistic journey but they are covenanting that this relationship will be permanent, exclusive, faithful, and long-suffering—the one to the other. Like the apostle in today’s text from Ephesians, they will come to understand and know the love of Christ best as they wrestle and work out what this means in the context of the crucible of their very lives. The longing echoed in today’s reading from the Song of Songs in which the male first beckons to his lover and she then responds, declaring the fierce power of her love, may be what brings them together, but it is Jesus’ prayer, offered not only for his disciples but for the entire church, which will keep them together.

And, can you imagine the passionate exchanges that will take place around their dinner table? If the past few years are any indication of what the future holds, theirs will be household filled with great passion, fierce struggle with the meaning of the Gospel, and an intensity for service that will make of their house a home in which the stranger will be welcomed and the young child embraced—perhaps even a few of their own! And, in so doing, the blessing that we offer here today will find its meaning, not just in their own lives, but in the life of their family, their church, their community, and in the larger Kingdom of God.

Patrick and Kristin, in closing, I want to remind you of our visit to St. Meinrad’s Monastery a few years ago where we spent some time talking together in the cemetery. If you remember, we spoke of the service that demarcates a Benedictine’s final vows during which he gives himself wholeheartedly to the community and lies prostrate over the patch of earth in which he will be buried while the bells symbolically toll out his death. Well, I want you to think of this place and the words you are about to speak to one another in a similar vein. While it is not true that you, individually, will die today, it is true that you take on a new identity this afternoon as husband and wife. You will no longer be simply Kristin or Patrick, but you will be Patrick and Kristin Tuttle-Tomaschke, together. And, just as the monk rises to a new identity and renewed commitment to the community, you two will now have something of a new identity with a renewed commitment to a lifetime together.

Our prayer is that these vows and this lifetime covenant will not only bring love, hope, and peace to you, but to the broken world to which you will give yourselves, as well. God’s blessings on you as you go forth in service to Him. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lessons in Spiritual Formation

Lessons in Spiritual Formation
1 Kings 19:1-15a; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39
St. Paul’s FM Church
June 20, 2010

Thirty years ago this spring I stood before the Oklahoma Conference to be ordained a minister in the Free Methodist Church. In many ways, I viewed that day as the end of a long process during which I had been interviewed, probed, and mentored to see whether I had the makings of someone fit for pastoral ministry. In other words, I thought that I was celebrating the culmination of years of hard work. But looking back now, it is clear to me that what I viewed as the end of a lengthy process was really but the beginning of a much longer journey of spiritual formation. For, in the thirty years since then, not only have I grown older but along the way I have been privileged to baptize, bury, and minister to countless individuals and families who have forever changed the way I think about God and the journey of faith. In short, what I thought of at the time as an ending was really only a beginning.

Today’s texts all share a similar theme stretching from the story of Elijah, to the musings of Paul, and concluding with the wonderful healing narrative of the Gerasene demoniac. In each case, the individual involved believed that he had reached a terminus in life, only to be confronted by God with a very different understanding that opened up a new chapter in vocation. And, not only are these stories interesting artistically as a result of this epiphany but I think that they reveal to us something about the very nature of our life in God. That is, they tell us that what we oftentimes tend to reduce to an accomplishment, an event, or a destination, is to misunderstand what it means to follow Jesus. Instead, we are challenged to view our life, not as a series of achievements, but as an opportunity to move ever more deeply into the very heart of God. What we are provided with this morning are some crucial lessons, then, in spiritual formation.

No one had more reason to celebrate a lifetime accomplishment than did Elijah here in I Kings. Just prior to today’s text he has routed 450 priests of Baal at Mt. Carmel. He, and he alone, had stood up to Queen Jezebel and her coterie of temple priests who had danced in a frenzy to produce a religious experience that would have made our student Vespers service pale in comparison. Their Baalistic theology of worship through self-expression whose canons, Eugene Peterson says, “are that it be interesting, relevant, and exciting—that I ‘get something out of it,’” (The Jesus Way, 110), had run head-on into Yahweh and His demand that worship is not something we experience but something that we do, “regardless of how we feel about it or whether we feel anything at all,” (Peterson, 111). On that day on top of the mountain, Baal was shown to be an illusion and Yahweh as the one true God. Elijah’s willingness to stand in the gap was rewarded, the 450 priests slaughtered, and the elaborate Baal myth totally deconstructed.

But Queen Jezebel was a sore loser. Elijah had dared to defy the powers that be, those in charge as Ben and Ruth have reminded us over the last few weeks, and the prophet of God is as good as dead. He decides to leave her jurisdiction in Israel and hightail it south of the border to Beersheba. In a rather short period of time he goes from being conquering hero to pursued fugitive. The journey that ensues covers close to a hundred miles and leaves him exhausted and ready to die. Twice he is fortified by heavenly visitors as he makes his way into the desolate Sinai on a pilgrimage that takes him from the heights of victory on Mount Carmel to the depths of prophetic desolation on Mount Horeb. At the end, he finds himself in a dark cave, which surely must serve as a symbol of all that Israel’s greatest prophet had so far endured. And when he emerges from that cave to confront the God of Hosts he is accosted by wind, earthquake, and fire—“not unlike the thunder, lightning, fire, smoke and trumpet blasts that Moses met on this same mountain,” (Peterson, 118). And, perhaps like Moses, he expected God to reveal Himself in a mighty peal of thunder and lightning (Exodus 19:19), much like the one that recently struck and melted the 62-foot “Touchdown Jesus” outside an Ohio megachurch--lighting up the sky all along Interstate 75.

But, instead, the revelation of God for which the great prophet has been longing comes in quiet inarticulate breathing. The Hebrew phrasing here, as Peterson says, “is tantalizingly elusive,” (118)—qol d’mamah daqqah. The old King James had translated it as “a still small voice,” which the NIV here renders as “a gentle whisper.” God is not to be discovered in some chaotic frenzied ecstasy the writer seems to suggest, but in the bowels of nothingness—what the NRSV calls, “sheer silence.” The climax of Elijah’s story, you see, is not in the noisy victory on Mt. Carmel, but in the quiet vocational renewal discovered at Mt. Horeb. Elijah, like many of us, had thought that he had accomplished something in front of those 450 priests, but today’s story reminds us that this is but prelude to the true revelation of God. This new prophetic understanding emerges out of the boundless nothingness of the Sinai desert to break forth in the silence of the God of All Creation who restores to Elijah his prophetic breath. Elijah, this man who lived life on the margins, not only challenges the powers of the world, but suggests an entirely different orientation towards that world run by the mighty and powerful and what truly counts in God’s counter-cultural Kingdom.

In Galatians, we read of another man who, according to chapter one, was “advanced in Judaism” and “violently persecuting the church of God and trying to destroy it,” (1:13). But, confronted by the same God in Christ on his way to Damascus, he, like Elijah, withdrew into the deserts of Arabia. This man, one Saul of Tarsus, had believed that accomplishment was to be discovered in meeting the demands of Torah—what gets translated here most often with the word, “law.” A version of this was now being preached in Galatia by those sometimes called “Judaizers,” provoking Paul to say at the beginning of chapter 3, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (3:1). Torah, he claims in today’s passage, does play an important role in our journey of faith. He calls it here “our disciplinarian until Christ came,” (3:24). The Greek used here, paidagogos, is the root for our English word, pedagogy, and comes from the experience that many wealthy young Greeks had of an older, wiser, male teacher who served to guide them through their education and prepare them for living out their calling in the adult world. One thinks immediately here of the philosopher, Aristotle, mentoring the young Alexander for his future role as world conqueror and benefactor of the Hellenistic way of life.

The key principle here, though, is that what Paul once thought of as the goal of life (service to the law) was but a preparation for the life of faith in Jesus Christ which was yet to come. Tutors provided a very important service in the ancient world. They helped to prepare their charges for what they would have to face as adults. But once one became a full citizen it became imperative that one move from the needs of childhood to the embrace of one’s life’s calling. Paul reminds the Galatians that they have now been baptized into Christ and, as such, have taken on the life of faith—a life in which racial identity, economic status, and even gender identification no longer are relevant. To continue to find one’s primary identity through such markers is to mistake calling for privilege, the journey of faith for a string of accomplishments. And for Paul, this was no abstract concept but a calling to the cruciform life which would lead to his own martyrdom years later in Rome. One born to Roman citizenship and Jewish privilege voluntarily gave himself over to the margins of life when he discovered and embraced his new identity as “apostle to the Gentiles” and “servant of Jesus Christ.”

But no one is better at highlighting the place of the marginalized than is the writer of Luke’s gospel. Time and time again he uses as his main cast those who would have been considered outside the boundaries of God’s grace. And no one is more isolated than is this Gerasene demoniac who is portrayed in today’s text as naked and making his life “in the tombs.” According to Jewish law, such a man was not to be looked at, let alone touched. And to further indicate just how far removed we are from Jewish respectability, the story moves next to swine herders—Gentiles who made their living off of meat that was considered unclean by the people of God. Jesus’ entry into the narrative clearly shows that he has crossed numerous boundaries as the man’s first words are, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (Luke 8:28).

I think the key to understanding the power of this particular story is the contrast of the man’s appearance at the beginning of the narrative with the characterization in verse 35: “they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” In the course of a few words, the gospel writer manages to elicit for us the power of healing and transformation wrought by Jesus and the fear experienced by Elijah in our first lesson is here shared by the citizens of this Gentile territory—so much so that they ask Jesus to leave them (8:37). The restored man, however, thought that he had now discovered his lot in life—to sit at the feet of Jesus, to join him and his merry band of disciples. His healing had been accomplished and now he was to be afforded the opportunity to enjoy his newfound status as a disciple of the master.

But like Elijah in the first story standing in triumph at Mt. Carmel or Saul wrapping himself in Torah righteousness, this newly-healed man misunderstood his calling in life. He was not healed to enjoy the triumphs of basking in the accomplishment of a redeemed life with infinite promise; he was healed in order to return and to bear witness to the goodness and power of God. The end of the story, like so many of the Gospel lessons, is not the building of booths as the disciples had hoped in the wake of the Transfiguration so that they could live their lives in peace and harmony up on the mountain. No, Jesus says, our calling in life is to come down from the mountain to bear witness, to proclaim, what God has done, is doing, and yet desires to do.

This worldview stands in stark contrast to much of what is preached and practiced in 21st century American Evangelicalism. Worship services in many of our churches bear more resemblance to the cutting-and-dancing priests of Baal than they do to the retreat into the wilderness to listen for the voice of God. In the midst of our “culture of distraction,” many churches simply wish to offer a bolder, brasher, more mesmerizing event to counter the bells and whistles of the secular culture. That is, we simply want to dress up a “Christian version” of our secular counterpart. We have no desire to preach the hard truth of a God who calls us to sacrificial service, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer labeled the “cost of discipleship.” We simply want to offer attractive “Christian desserts” alongside worldly ones in what the Canadian sociologist, Reginald Bibby, labels “religion a la carte.”

But today’s texts speak of something else—an entirely different orientation towards our life and God’s calling on it. Instead of spiritual experiences they call us to a life of Christian spiritual formation, that which the Book of Common Prayer labels “the process of allowing God to bring our ‘unruly wills and affections’ into order with what is healthful to our spirits and to the spirits and lives of those around us,” (David A deSilva, Sacramental Life, 2008). In his recent book, Sacramental Life: Spiritual Formation through the Book of Common Prayer, Dave deSilva calls this “the process by which Christ’s mind takes shape within us. . . it involves learning to love what God commands and to desire what God promises. . . it is to come to the place where to do what God wishes is our pleasure and desire,” (Introduction). Those of us who have grown up in the Holiness tradition recognize something of this language because it goes to the heart of what we have believed that salvation is much more “fully orbed” than a get-into-heaven pass. We have traditionally preached, practiced, and believed that God is interested in all of creation, in all of us, and in all (not just part) of our lives.

Today’s scriptures tell us the story of three men who would have been considered rather peculiar in their time. Eugene Peterson says that Elijah “took the marginal way. He held no position, lived a solitary life in obscurity, appeared from time to time without fanfare and disappeared from public view without notice,” (The Way of Jesus, 125). He modeled the quintessential life of the prophets who, Frederick Buechner reminds us, “were drunk on God and in the presence of their terrible tipsiness no one was ever comfortable,” (Wishful Thinking, 74-75). Buechner goes on to say of Paul that “his mads were madder and his blues bluer, his pride prouder and his humbleness humbler, his strengths stronger and his weaknesses weaker than almost anybody else’s you’d be apt to think of; and the splash he made when he fell for Christ is audible still,” (67). He made plenty of enemies who “accused him of being insincere, crooked, yellow, physically repulsive, unclean, bumbling, and off his rocker,” (68). And yet, he was willing to set aside whatever pretensions he had in order to follow in the wake of the crucified Christ. Marginalized by much of the eastern church, beat up, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and hauled halfway across the Roman empire, he came to understand that the calling to follow Jesus was not a one time moment of salvation made on the road to Damascus, but a lifetime of service and of making hard choices to become more like his master over the course of the rest of his life.

That is why this morning we need to come to understand that the good news is not about the absence of anxiety, but the realization that we are not alone. That is why we are not called to an everyday experience of spiritual ecstasy, but a growing trust amidst the whisper of a still, small voice. And that is also why we are not offered freedom from our bodily existence, but a growing sense of Christ at work within all of creation. This, my friends, is the true nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ which reminds us that God still continues to beckon us from the safety of our fearful hovels to the road that leads we know not where. Elijah, Paul, and the unnamed Gerasene demoniac demonstrate for us something of that life of faithfulness. All that remains for us is the choice of whether to join in their company.

A Change of Itinerary

A Change of Itinerary
Sixth Sunday of Easter C
Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 5:1-9
St. Paul’s Free Methodist Church
May 9, 2010

One of my favorite activities is the planning of a family vacation. Mind you, these days we don’t take them as often as we used to when the girls were younger and lived at home with us. In those days, when time was short and money was tighter, making sure we got maximum “bang for the buck” was absolutely essential. So, for instance, when we flew to Seattle in the summer of 2000, I figured that since we were going so far west we needed to take in as much as possible. So it was that I meticulously put together a ten-day adventure that took us not just to Seattle, but to Portland, Vancouver, Victoria, via the Columbia River, various and sundry ferries, a jaunt into the British Columbia wilderness and even the more arid eastern part of Washington. In order to accomplish this, every minute had to be scheduled, every penny accounted for, and reservations secured well ahead of time.

My family somehow put up with my anal-retentive approach to discovering vacation bliss but they have never let me forget how exhausting it all was. I doubt that I would have remained as cool and collected as the Apostle Paul in Acts 16 who wound up in Philippi only because he had been forbidden entry into Bithynia. In fact, the story as it is told in the verses just preceding today’s opening lesson is one of doors slammed shut and continual frustration for the apostle to the Gentiles. Having just come away from the infamous Apostolic Council in Jerusalem where he had received official permission to continue his ministry to Gentiles, he found himself losing his traveling companion, Barnabas, in a tiff over the head-strong Timothy and then confronted with continuing issues whenever he tried to follow his prescribed itinerary. Finally, according to the text, he has this rather strange dream of a man from Macedonia who asks for help. From this point on, Paul’s willingness to change his itinerary will not only make a difference in his ministry but will impact, I would like to suggest, all of Christian history.

First, Paul crosses the Aegean from Troas to the island of Samothrace, to the port city of Neapolis, to the Roman colony at Philippi. Though this may not seem much different from many of Paul’s other travel narratives, we should note that this marks the point at which the gospel officially moves from Asia to Europe. Grammatically, this shift is all too apparent in the text as we move from third-person to first-person narrative, but historically the shift is even more important. In short, without this hop-skip-and-a-jump, those of us who are descendants of European immigrants might very well not even be Christians today.

Second, there is a curious shift in missiological strategy in our passage that often goes unnoticed by preachers. Up until this time, Paul’s approach has been to go looking for the synagogue on the Sabbath as a springboard for Christian evangelism. But, remember, that the narrative suggests that he is coming fresh from the Apostolic Council back in Jerusalem where, with a few provisional agreements, he has been “released for denominational service” outside of the Jewish community. So, whether it is the fact that Philippi simply doesn’t have a synagogue or because Paul is intentionally changing his approach, on this particular Sabbath the text says, “we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer,” (Acts 16:13). In all the previous accounts of Paul’s ministry he has gone to the sunagoge, but this day he finds himself at the proseuke. Instead of joining his brother Jews in a house of worship, he finds himself perhaps out in the open air “outside the city gates.” Now, later in the sermon I want to come back to this description of ministry near the city gate, but for now it is important that we simply be aware that there is this second “sea change” afoot as he not only moves outside of his planned itinerary in Asia Minor into Europe, but moves, as well, from the synagogue to a place of gathering near the entrance to the city of Philippi.

And this then leads us to a third interesting shift. Had he gone to a synagogue, he would have been seated, no doubt, on the “male side” with a bunch of bearded guys who smelled of testosterone. But, here in Philippi, he must do the unthinkable as a Jewish man and begin a conversation with a group of women. In an article written almost forty years ago now in the British periodical, The Expository Times, Derek Thomas suggested that this initial contact with Lydia “points to a new status for women, a new estimate of the value and place of woman in the purpose of God,” (“The Place of Women in the Church at Philippi,” 118). While I think that perhaps the Rev. Thomas waxes a bit overly hyperbolic here, it is the case that women played a key role in the leadership of the early church as is made clear by the numerous references throughout the Pauline literature.

But women seemed to have been absolutely front and center in the church in Philippi. In fact two of them, Euodia and Syntyche, seemed to have undergone something of a falling out that spilled over into the larger church body. While Paul never discloses the nature of their disagreement, that he includes a personal appeal in a letter sent to the entire church suggests that this went beyond a mere difference of opinion. In fact, the majority of scholars believe that this may well suggest that these two women were openly expressing their views in the church and because they were probably in positions of leadership it may have had a deleterious effect on the larger congregation.

Now, all of this is well and good, providing interesting little insights into our opening text, but what of the larger context in which we find ourselves on this Sixth Sunday of Easter as we prepare for the Ascension of Christ in a few days and the celebration of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, which is yet to follow? I would like to suggest that the travel itinerary from the book of the Acts of the Apostles is something of a miniature of the radical healing or therapeusis which lies behind all of today’s readings. For, if you look closely at the texts which follow from both the Revelation of the Elder John and the narrative with which we are provided in John’s gospel, we are confronted with pictures of healing and redemption—both of which take place near the city gates.

In the case of the former, it is a vision of great hope. But much of the imagery we get in the Bible is quite pastoral—that is, we are used to hearing of green swards, rustic shepherds, and the clean smell of the great outdoors. But this vision, this dream, which captures the imagination is set in a city. And the curious thing is that normally one would look for an element of health and redemption in the precincts of the synagogue, or temple. But notice what the writer says: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb,” (Rev. 21:22). And, then, just a few short verses later we hear of this great heavenly city, that “its gates will never be shut by day,” (Rev. 21:25). This is a place of vast hospitality where fear is not the order of the day but openness which involves vulnerability to all that many might consider “diseased”—since disease is what is classically defined as that which comes from outside and infects the body.

And then in the latter gospel lesson, we find Jesus heading into this very earthly city on the first of several journeys at holiday time. In this respect, John’s gospel is quite different from the other three Synoptic Gospels. For in them, Jesus only goes once to Jerusalem and that is to die. But in this gospel, Jesus is seen striding into the holy city on several different festive occasions. And this time, we are told he finds himself at the Sheep Gate near the pool of Bethesda—an area which many of our students know has recently undergone archaeological preservation. Here, we encounter a diseased man—one of many invalids afflicted with blindness, lameness, or paralysis. As on many occasions, Jesus brings healing to one considered ritually unclean. But what is fascinating about this story is the note on which it ends—a line which we might easily overlook. The gospel writer says simply, “Now that day was a Sabbath,” (John 5:9). Again, the gospel challenges traditional ways of thinking about boundaries between sacred and secular. Just as the gospel has come to the pagan culture of Philippi and to a gender considered second-class, or just as the gates have been left open and no temple necessary in the heavenly city, here Jesus is not in the synagogue as one would expect but at the city gates on the Sabbath healing one who would have been considered ritually unclean. What are we to make of all of this boundary-crossing in three different narratives?

At the heart of the Easter season there stands this curious element of surprise—from Mary waiting outside the tomb, to the disciples on the Emmaus road, to Jesus showing up for a fish breakfast with the disciples. For those of us old enough to remember his voice, in the words of Private Gomer Pyle, the message of Easter is, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” And yet, every year we fail to be surprised by the return of spring, by the next bend in the road, or by the sheer wonder of the sacraments discovered in the mundane as my new friend, Dean Nelson, points out in his book, God Hides in Plain Sight. And, we bring that same failure to pay attention to these familiar texts of scripture so often that we forget that the element of surprise is at the very heart of inductive Bible study.

Perhaps what we need is a change of itinerary—something like that which the apostle Paul experienced in today’s text. But this begins, not by seeing the difficulties in life as God not paying attention to us, but by seeing such times as opportunities to be confronted by a new way of seeing our world and taking a road we had perhaps never thought of before. Like those living in the first century, we may have become accustomed to looking for God in only certain places or in only certain ways. But perhaps God wants to take us out of the church building to the city gates or even, heaven forbid, open the very gates of the city to those whom we have marginalized. What might that look like? Where might such a thing happen?

I want to tell you about a couple of alums from our department who have forced me to rethink my itinerary. Because some of what I want to share is somewhat sensitive, I have chosen not to reveal their real names lest it be embarrassing to them. So, for the sake of today’s narrative I’ll simply call them Moe, Larry, and Curly. These three guys all came to our department a number of years back and were somewhat nondescript. They were, like many of my students, fun-loving, somewhat carefree guys. They had their passions—most of which, I came to believe, were outside the classroom, though their love for Jesus was apparent to anyone who knew them. They enjoyed sparring with Dr. McPeak and myself, but I have to confess, I wasn’t sure if any them would make a big impact on the world because they were “C-level” students who sat in the middle or at the back of the class and didn’t seem to get fired up about spending the evening reading in the library the way I do.

Over the years we have remained in casual contact. And they each have gone their separate ways, all of them eventually getting married. So, I was somewhat surprised to hear a few years ago that two of them had come together to plant a church. They were absolutely convinced that this was what God wanted them to do and they were willing to put their lives on the line for this venture of faith. When they came by to tell me about it, I have to admit that I thought they were a little bit crazy. They told me how they wanted this to be a “safe place” for people and an open space situated near the “city gates” where they lived. They didn’t want to invest a bunch of money in an expensive building, they just wanted to find some space they could rent where they could share the gospel narrative and help people discover Jesus in their everyday lives.

And you know what, that is just what they did. Recently I had occasion to see some of the work they put in to make this church happen. In fact, one of the guys who participated in that new church plant is now a student of mine. And when I watched Curly preach, I sat back in awe at how he took a text from one of Paul’s epistles and made it come alive for a group of people who sat on the edge of their chairs. Were these the same guys who stayed up at night playing video games and fell asleep in my class because of my boring lectures? Were these the guys that I had written off as accumulating too much debt without spending enough time in the library? What had happened to my assumptions that these guys would not leave a mark on the world?

To say that I was surprised would be to put it mildly. I had mistakenly plotted out an itinerary for these students and had been trying to send them to ministry amongst a bunch of Jews when they had been called to a place down by the river. I had all of the costs worked out, but these fellows decided to be more like Jesus and not count the cost. So, this morning, as we prepare for the Ascension of our Lord, comes these gentle reminders that the resurrected Jesus is not to be held onto and touched in our houses of worship but to be discovered outside our doors, perhaps even outside our carefully-drawn boundaries. And maybe next time I need to learn to just get into the car and drive wherever the wind might take Darlene and me. (Well, at least I’ll think about it.) But even more importantly, I invite you to join me in seeing God’s purposes for the redemption of all of creation in each and every person and in each and every place. And, in so doing, our hearts may yet be ready to get just a glimpse of what a change in itinerary can do when we celebrate the birthday of the church on Pentecost. It is to this open-ended journey that God invites us this morning.

God Has a Story, Too

“God Has a Story, Too: Do they all Live Happily Ever After?”
Ruth 4:1-17
Greenville College Chapel
May 3, 2010

Some of us are glad we never have to repeat adolescence. For me, the worst part was trying to figure out how to engage in building a relationship with someone of the opposite sex without falling completely on my face. Somehow or the other the toxic mix of teenage hormones produced a combustible effect whenever I tried to figure out how to be sauve and debonair. That is why I depended on my friends, like Mark Skaggs, to help me by participating in what usually turned out to be disastrous amorous adventures.

Mark and I became friends because we were the two male outsiders in the percussion section of the high school band. The only difference was that I was a complete and utter nerd while Mark could at least fake being cool. On the infamous trip to San Antonio in the spring of 1974, while the rest of the drum section was engaged with a strange smelling weed, downing a variety of hard liquor, and testing out a collection of Cuban cigars, we were simply looking to bag a couple of dates back to our room. This, however, didn’t work out so well since the aforementioned remaining members of the percussion section were busy filling the room with a combination of marijuana and cigar smoke laced with the distinct odor of Jim Beam and Johnny Walker.

So it was that we decided to try again when we returned home and my parents granted me the use of our house for a day while they ventured off to some area minister’s conference. The plan was quite simple: pick up of the ladies in question, followed by a bit of romantic music played our favorite rock group, Chicago, while sitting out on the screened-in porch enjoying grilled burgers and franks. The first part of the plan was sure to impress, given the fact that Skaggs owned a gorgeous 1969 Yellow Mustang, complete with oversized enging. That car looked and sounded of brute male testosterone. When we drove down the street beautiful women would come running out of their houses yelling, “I want to ride! I want to ride!” The second part should have been easy as well. Haul over Mark’s oversize speakers and hook them up to my turntable and, then, get the charcoal going on the grill outside.

The problem was, though, that I had never actually been allowed to start a fire on my father’s precious grill—I had only watched him do it. And I knew that anything that demanded mechanical ability or the use of one’s hands usually ended in disaster for me. So, I decided to make sure that the charcoal would light. I emptied the entirety of a bag under the metal grill and soaked it with a portion of a can of gasoline my dad had out in the garage for use on the mower. As I bent low over the grate to apply the match to about ten pounds of blackened charcoal, I remember hearing this incredible “whoosh” all around my head and literally leaping back from the force of the flames. Fortunately, my oversized aviator glasses protected my eyes. But the first thing I noticed was this incredible stench as Mark came running out of the house and threw a towel over my head. My precious locks of hair that usually fell down over my collar had been deeply singed and were still smoking. Worse yet, my eyebrows were pretty much missing. Not being able to see myself as others might, I couldn’t understand why my friend, Mark, was on the ground laughing like a hyena. “Hartley!” he said. “You were on fire, man! And your hair is a mess.”

What were we to do? We had to pick up the women in a few minutes and I looked like something out of a Boris Karloff horror flick. I will always be grateful to my friend, Mark Skaggs, for his attempt to restore me to manhood. He carefully clipped away my singed hair and even tried to replace my eyebrows with my mother’s meagerly collection of women’s cosmetics. He was laughing so hard, though, that when he tried to redraw my eyebrows with a pencil the line went up and down in dark jagged lines. Even his muscle-car Mustang could not salvage our long-awaited rendezvous with the first-chair clarinetist and flautist. They would spend the evening trying hard not to laugh at me or Mark’s version of how I tried to prepare for our “hot date.”

Well, unlike my experience, Ruth’s story ends, not in disaster, but with its exact opposite: complete and total restoration. Having taken the road less traveled and followed Naomi back to her home in Bethlehem, having slogged away in the field day after day, and having risked everything on the threshing floor, at long last her hopes and dreams were coming true. Perhaps challenged by her courage and his lack of it, Boaz had made his way into town the next morning and confronted a nearer kinsman, much as Ruth had bravely challenged him. Though the unnamed man had been enamored of the opportunity to acquire additional property, when he heard that Ruth was part of the deal, he balked. For the first time in the entire story, a man takes charge, receiving the other’s sandal as a physical representation of agreement to the deal. And, before numerous witnesses, we are told, Boaz proclaimed to all his intention to make Ruth his wife.

Some might be tempted at this point, to view the story as setting to rights the true patriarchal nature of society. How odd it must have seemed to the original readers to have these women as the central actors in this historic narrative. But, now, at long last, has emerged a masculine hero on his white horse. Yet, we are surprised that the narrator frames the ending of the story with as much care as its beginning, choosing to focus on Naomi, instead of Boaz. For this is a story of redemption not only for the younger woman, but primarily for the older one. In fact, we are told that, “Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse.” To which the women in the neighborhood proclaimed not, “A son has been born to Ruth,” but, “a son has been born to Naomi.” This woman who had once self-proclaimed that she was changing her name to Mara (“bitterness”), has now been redeemed and restored, herself.

But even that does not end this rather strange tale, for the narrator concludes of the child: “They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David,” (4:17). And then we are allowed to overhear in a final text which we did not read this morning, a recounting of the connection between this David and the generations extending back to Perez, the child born to Tamar by her father-in-law, Judah. It is almost as if the writer is seeking to reassert the scandalous nature of the connections that bring together these women who have survived by their wits, relying even on sexual craftiness when necessary. Think of it! Because of the role of tracing one’s genealogy in the ancient world, and particularly in Israel where proof of pure blood was considered essential by some, this “ending” to a tale would have been the ultimate insult. That such a book even made its way into the biblical canon must signal something very important to us.

For the reality is that, though unmentioned, the real power behind the scenes, the real director of this story, is none other than YHWH, the God of Israel, himself. That David, the one whom the Bible describes as “a man after God’s own heart,” could have come from such poor and scandalous circumstances surely says something about the way that God works. Ruth, as important as she is to this story, then, is relegated only to the role of lead actress. The curtain rises and each player comes forward to present herself and to bow, linking hands one with the other. But, then, the line parts in the middle and the actors and actresses step to the side as the unseen and unnamed director is acknowledged because, “God has a story, too.”

And the wonder, for those of us who call ourselves Christians, is that the story doesn’t end there: not even with Ruth, not even with David. For linking the Old and New Testaments together is this hinge we call The Gospel according to St. Matthew, chapter 1, in which the scandalous lineage is extended both backwards and forwards to include, not only Ruth and Tamar, but Rahab the harlot and Bathsheeba, one of the victims of David’s greatest abuses of power. And, the gospel writer tells us, from these lives, from these stories, God has woven a tapestry beyond belief. For, you see, Ruth’s story and Rahab’s story and Tamar’s story and Bathsheba’s story lead us invariably to another scandalous young couple in another out-of-the-way place in a world that still believes that God should work amongst the rich and the powerful in spectacular ways for all to see. But there, in Matthew 1:16 we are told that God’s story moves not in palaces of kings but in the midst of the everyday mundane life of a poor peasant girl from Nazareth, whose name was Mary. And, like Ruth, she will have to risk everything whenever she chooses to say “yes” to God. But, my friends, her “yes” will have historic consequences for all of human history. For, when Mary chooses to bear the Christ-child, God’s story intersects with our story.

You know, when Wilson Hogue took the reigns of the new Free Methodist College here in Greenville near the end of the nineteenth century, he knew that perhaps his most important faculty appointment would be the person he chose to head up the Religion Department. For that task, he turned to a poor itinerant pastor out west in Oregon who had taught himself Greek and was hungry to further his education. John LaDue packed his wife and everything he owned to head to the Midwest, where he would have to work harder than any man should on starvation wages. In 1894, he made a total of $400--$300 of which came from his full-time teaching post and the rest from pastoral responsibilities to which he was assigned. Within ten years, he had earned an advanced degree from the famed University of Chicago and began to be called, “Rabbi,” by the many students who sat at his feet and came to love him. In 1918, when the Spanish Influenza swept across this nation, John’s wife died caring for their ailing daughter. Brokenhearted, he dove back into his teaching responsibilities in an attempt to assuage his grief. By 1923, he was worn out, so friends, alumni, and students raised enough money to pay for his way to Palestine, to see the Holy Land, during his lone sabbatical. You can read the journal he kept over in the archives situated in the basement of Ruby Dare Library.
LaDue believed in studying history carefully to see how God was at work in and through the church and he knew that our perspective is oftentimes distorted. He wrote of the First World War which was center-stage for the Greenville community and the rest of the nation for much of the second decade of the twentieth century: “What an end it is towards which the purpose of God is moving. This present colossal European contest with all its mighty implications is but a mere local incident in His all embracing cause.” Though he later would return from the Middle East, his health remained in poor condition and by the mid-twenties, it was clear that someone would have to replace Greenville’s first Religion Professor.

That someone proved to be none other than Wilson R. King, a proud alumnus of G.C. who had won honor as a scholar-athlete. King served with distinction during a time of division and fissure in American Religion. Following in the footsteps of his mentor, he sought to steer a course between the twin specters of theological liberalism and fundamentalism which threatened to engulf Protestants in both open and covert warfare. Calling for a radical combination of a critical, inquiring mind, with a warm and compassionate heart, Dr. King inspired a generation of students through the thirties, forties, and fifties of the last century.

Replacing King, the professor committed to inductive Bible study whose curmudgeonly ways had sustained him when under withering theological attack, would require someone like David, after God’s own heart. So, in 1957, back onto campus walked the winsome, young Jim Reinhard, behind whose eyes framed by those large horn-rimmed glasses, beat the heart of a giant. I can’t imagine anyone not loving the one we called “Jimmy”. He poured himself out for his students and developed with his wife, Marilyn, the COR trip that most of you students have taken. While away on his sabbatical pastoring a church in Evanston in the late seventies, he was tempted not to come back to teach. The people there loved the way he cared for and challenged them to follow the gospel. Teaching large classes here was draining, as John LaDue had learned, and Jim knew there would be a price to pay. But come back he did and poured his heart into every class he taught. And many of my younger colleagues like Brad Shaw, Randy Bergen, Karlene Johnson, and Scott Neumann got to sit under his teaching as a result of that painful decision.

But, on Good Friday, 1993, Dean Richard Holeman called to tell me that Dr. Reinhard had suffered another heart attack and to put him back in the classroom in the fall would be impossible. Would I consider coming back after 14 years away? I was mighty comfortable in Toronto. Life was good. My family was happy. We had what I still think is one of the greatest congregations of loving parishioners, representing over thirty different ethnic groups. Six years in Canada and a year in England had allowed me some distance from the narrow American provincialism I had so longed to leave behind. But, to make a long story short, it quickly became clear that the call of my alma mater was the call of God.

And so, I returned. I was scared to death. When I had arrived on campus as a student in the mid-seventies I was something of a caricature later portrayed best by Dana Carvey with his character, “Garth,” complete with the long hair and the drumsticks protruding from my back pocket. Sitting there in 222 Hogue Hall, I felt like an intruder. That, after all, was Dr. Reinhard’s office and there was a hundred years of teaching in the department to try and live up to. Students quickly learned that I was no Jim Reinhard. I wouldn’t think of trying to skate down the aisle in chapel and I was never known to bring balloons or dress up like a clown.

But, as I reminisce a bit here on this beautiful spring morning, I’m reminded that my former teacher and colleague, Dr. Royal Mulholland, has now been retired long enough that most of you have never had one of his classes. And it was Royal who told me about one of his early chapel addresses which incorporated language which some found offensive and even moved some Board members to call for his firing. But I also know that one of Royal’s students, Aaron Cobb, is taking a job this summer as a Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. And, Aaron got turned on to reading philosophy because of Dr. Mulholland and my former colleague, Dr. Craig Boyd. And, heaven knows, how many other countless alums there are out there because of Royal’s and Craig’s passion for philosophy and the liberal arts. The great Art Holmes, former professor of philosophy at Wheaton College, once said that his goal was to produce a hundred Christian philosophers for the academy and the church and, as a result, his legacy continues on even today. So, I figure if I can just hang in there like Drs. Mulholland and Holmes, something good is bound to happen.

But, in the end, you see, it’s not really about me at all. Because one of these days, even if I stay here for the rest of my career, somebody else is going to inhabit my office and pick up right where I left off and the institution will be better for it. And, I will eventually take my place out there in Montrose Cemetery, a few blocks west of where I currently live. You see, eventually, every professor at Greenville gets a permanent sabbatical and never has to worry about reading a paper ever again. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and someone, maybe you, will occasionally dredge up a story about old Prof. Hartley or maybe my grandson, Tristan, will come back here to try and figure out what attractions this place had for me. I don’t know. But I do know that my story is being carefully interwoven with that of others here, in this place. And when I have a cup of coffee with my friends Joe and Jeff or sit down to discuss literature with Brad or Christina or Lesley, I sense that there is something much bigger at work here than them, or me. Was it simply chance that brought me here or something much greater?

The apostle Paul tells us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. And I happen to believe that this work of reconciliation will go on, whether I am a part of it or not. But, my friends, what a privilege it is to be a part of this cosmic plan and this grand adventure! It’s a story that reaches back into the very mists of time. It’s a story that reaches its zenith in the events which we have so recently celebrated in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, it’s a story that reaches even into the nooks and crannies, the crevices and cracks of a little Midwestern town that fails to register nary a “blip” on the radar of most of the rich and powerful.

So, here we are, headed into the homestretch at the end of another academic year. And I want to encourage you to not be afraid to throw a little gasoline on the academic pyre. Sure it’s risky and sure your hair may catch on fire. But, just like my friend, Mark Skaggs, you’ve got a lot of us in this community who are prepared to douse the over-exuberant flames and to trim the locks of your scorched intellectual head. So, like Ruth, our semester’s heroine and example, commit yourself to the dangerous journey to the threshing floor and the risky business of transformational learning. And don’t worry about the consequences, since God may have something much more exciting in mind than even you can imagine. Because after all: God has a story, too.