Ephesians 2:1-22
David A. Davis
September 18, 2016

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” It’s a difficult piece of scripture to read out loud. It’s a long sentence. The sentence actually continues one more verse: “so that in in the ages to come God might show the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus… But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in in the ages to come God might show the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” The length isn’t the tough part; it’s that abrupt insertion, that phrase that interrupts the grammar, that affirmation that Paul seems to blurt out in the text. How are you supposed to vocalize that?

By grace you have been saved. Stuck right in there in the middle of that long sentence. It’s not just awkward to read out lout, it’s kind of awkward period. Clunky, jarring. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” The New Revised Standard Version that I read to you uses punctuation marks for assistance to the reader. A dash before and after to set the phrase apart. Other translations use parentheses. One breaks up the long sentence, uses an exclamation point, and makes it an imperative: You have been saved by God’s grace! One of my living, breathing sources down the street assures me that that grammar in Greek doesn’t make it any easier. While it doesn’t seem to be the case that some later author or scribe came along and inserted the phrase or transcribed it in the wrong place, it is nonetheless abrupt in the Greek text as well. In fact the Greek has the dashes as well. By grace you have been saved (with a yell). By grace you have been saved (with a whisper). By grace you have been saved (slowly).

Think how a composer, a playwright, a novelist, a poet may tag or foreshadow something important early in a piece of work. An image is casually introduced only to become fraught with meaning as the play moves on, the narrative develops, the poem peaks. The cellos play just a few bars that stand out early but that tune comes back to dominate the melody and moves through the orchestra the rest of the way. Perhaps what we have here in Ephesians is Paul’s offering of a theological foreshadowing. It’s a tag, a teaser for what comes more beautifully, and a whole lot smoother, a verse later: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God… It’s just that there’s nothing all that subtle or artful about how Paul introduces it here in Ephesians 2. By grace you have been saved.

Imagine the father who takes his child along on a shopping trip to prepare for mom’s birthday. Cards, a cake, some presents from both husband and daughter. On the way home they talk about keeping the secret until the birthday dinner the next day when Grandma was coming over. That excited four-year-old doesn’t get two steps into the house before she shouts out, “Mommy, mommy we got you a watch for your birthday!” Excitement can be better than surprise. Maybe the Apostle Paul just couldn’t hold back when it came to that theological exclamation that rests at the core of the gospel. By grace you have been saved.

Or think of two falling in love. It’s one of those “O.R. conversations,” as in “our relationship.” Amid the back and forth and circling around and attempts to clarify feelings and stomach knots and butterflies in the heart, one of the two says it, kinds of sneaks it in, less like a blurting out, more like air squeaking out of a balloon: “I, I love you.” Maybe Paul was searching for the right phrase, stumbling for the right way to say it, trying to describe all that God has done for us in Christ. By grace you have been saved. Yes, yes, I said. That’s right. So he comes back to it with confidence. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Paul drops it in here in the middle of that thought, that long sentence about the great love with which God loved us. But he could have interrupted a whole lot of other places too. God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made Christ the head of over all things for the church — by grace you have been saved — which is body, the fullness of him who fills all in all… But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ — by grace you have been saved… For Christ is our peace… In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord — by grace you have been saved — in whom you also were built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Maybe Paul was introducing the memorable phrase as a refrain of the faith, a rallying cry, a chant to pass on to your children. Like “USA, USA” or “JETS” or “Bruuuuce,” as in Bruce Springsteen. Passing that kind of stuff on to your kids. It’s just good parenting. “Saved by grace. Saved by grace. Saved by grace.” Of if your texting, “SBG”!

You remember that the Apostle Paul is the one who crafted the most complex and coherent of theological arguments in Romans. And the Apostle Paul is the one who created the beautiful ode to love in I Corinthians (though it had nothing to do with marriage). Paul made those list of spiritual gifts and the sins of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. And he so artfully describes his own struggle, and his own faith, and his own conversion. In the annals of New Testament criticism, scholars have debated whether Paul wrote Ephesians or whether it was one his followers. Here this morning the intrigue is much simpler. It’s about these awkward, dropped in, abrupt, urgent, parenthetical few words that ought to at least give us pause. By grace you have been saved.

Presbyterians have forever run their meetings and process discussions and decision-making by Robert’s Rules. When calling for the vote, the moderator says, “All in favor, please say, ‘Aye.’” It’s a simple way to offer an affirmation, to say yes. “Aye.” It’s a common answer in a crossword puzzle that links saying yes with Scottish, Celtic heritage. There’s nothing like several weeks on the Island of Islay in Scotland to change forever how you think, how you hear, how you experience a simple “aye.” To say that it is a common expression among those we talked to on Islay would be an understatement. To conclude that it is a synonym for “yes” is just not enough. It is “yes” and “excuse me” and “you bet” and “of course” and “what” and “awesome” and “dude” and “mate” and “I can help you” and “over here” and “please” and “thank you” all rolled into one. Whenever I was struggling to understand in a conversation after church or at the pub or in the checkout line, I always knew what someone meant when they said “aye”… even though it means so much and so many things. Maybe I’m all wrong but it seems like an expression that comes from a deeper place, deeper within, deeper in culture, deeper in context.

I was standing with the funeral director next to the open grave as the bap piper started to play. He had led us from the church up the hill to the cemetery as we followed the casket. Now the committal was finished and he was playing again as folks shared hugs and tears all around. He was a very young piper and close to the family. I learned later it was his first time playing at a funeral. As I watched and listened, I realized he was crying. He was playing the bagpipes through tears. I said to the funeral director in a soft voice, “Have you ever seen a piper cry like that?” He shook his head no, never took his eyes off the young man, never looked at me, and said, “Aye.” It was like he was saying “my, my, my” or “Lord have mercy.” Aye.

God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. An affirmation for Paul that wells up inside, comes from deeper, ignores the rules of grammar. Rather than blurting it out, or sneaking it in or dropping the mic, what if it’s more like a surprising groan, a kind of guttural affirmation about God’s love and mercy that comes from deep within, one of those expressions that leaves the lips and someone says, “You know I can hear you, right?” By grace you have been saved. Kind of prayer-like. Aye.

Princeton, West Windsor, Montgomery, Bucks County, the University, the Seminary. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you and I live in communities where there is no shortage of opinion about pretty much everything. When we first moved to Princeton, I coached Little League with a guy who told me “Princeton is a town where people have lots of opinions and the time and inclination to express them.” Most of us, if we’re honest, fit right in. And we could all benefit from a rule-breaking, grammar-shaking reminder that it is only by God’s grace, that it is nothing other than God’s grace, that without God’s grace… by grace you have been saved. Aye.

It’s not only the new students around here that bask in the glow of an admissions office stamp of approval. Every one of us walks the campus of our lives trying to be smart enough, rich enough, connected enough, fit enough, hip enough, liberal enough, conservative enough, organic enough. We could all benefit from an abrupt, guttural reminder that it is only by God’s grace, that it is nothing other than God’s grace, that without God’s grace… by grace you have been saved. Aye.

An urgent, interrupting, intrusive, disturbing, awkward groan that attests to God’s mercy and love for you. You don’t have to understand it, or figure it out, or explain it. You don’t have to be right, or particularly pious, or sign on the dotted line of beliefs A to Z. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. You and I, living to God’ glory. And it is only by God’s grace, it is nothing other than God’s grace, without God’s grace… by grace you have been saved. Aye.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Ephesians 1:15-23
David A. Davis
September 11, 2016

September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday. That first Sunday after, September 16, of course we were in here for worship. I wrote about that remarkable Lord’s Day worship years ago and I described it like this: “It looked like Easter morning at the church that Sunday. There were no extra flowers but the pews were packed. People went looking for a church that morning. It was like Easter without the trumpets. Joy was nowhere to be found. The events of the Tuesday before turned that Lord’s Day into something like the dark side of Easter, not quite the antithesis of Easter. But it was Good Friday content with Easter Sunday crowds.” People weren’t just looking for a church, they were searching for some comfort, looking for a place to weep, trying to make some sense, find some sense where there was none to be found. Nobody came for answers, they came to pray, to be together, to remember, to try to sing, and to be anointed within by the very tears of God. September 16, 2001, we came here searching with our hearts, looking with our hearts, the eyes of our hearts.

So when the Apostle Paul gifts the reader of Ephesians chapter one with the poetic image of “the eyes of the heart” — I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you – when Paul writes about “the eyes of your heart,” you don’t have to be a biblical scholar to grasp, to get, to sort of know deep down what it means — that your heart has eyes.

Ephesians 1:18 is the only time the expression appears in scripture. The eyes of your heart. For some the notion of a heart with eyes, that wisdom and revelation and enlightening would be a matter of the heart rather than the mind must be unsettling. The King James translates it “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” Another contemporary translation puts it like this, “May God enlighten the eyes of your mind.” One New Testament scholar offers his own translation in his commentary: “May your spiritual eyesight be enlightened.” Spiritual eyesight? Really? You don’t have to know Greek to read opthalmous and cardias in the passage. It is the eyes of your heart. Eyes and heart. Perhaps Professor Clifton Black puts it best, “so that the eyes of your heart may light up.”

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, as the eyes of your heart light up, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power.” That you may know, with the eyes of your heart, God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power. God put this power to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. Paul’s just singing now. It’s a hymn here in Ephesians chapter 1. Just like Colossians — He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Just like Philippians — therefore God has highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. In the middle of the Apostle’s prayer for the faithful at Ephesus, in the middle of his pastor prayer, as he prays for their hearts to have eyes, he starts to sing the doxology.

And God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made Christ the head over all things for the church, which is Christ’s body, the fullness of Christ, who fills all in all. The last line in the hymn of praise. Christ’s feet, Christ’s head, Christ’s body. As one commentator puts it, Christ who is over the church is also in it and fills it. The fullness of God resides in him, and from him the Body of Christ is constantly supplied with and by Christ’s presence. As Professor Black puts its, “Christians [as the body of Christ] are conduits of Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power: the church is the very body of his fullness that fills all things with loving goodness.”

The church as Christ body bearing the fullness of his love to the world. Even as Paul breaks into song, his prayer for the body of Christ continues. Yes, it’s doxology but it’s also discipleship. His song, his prayer, is praise and it is praxis. Singing, praying, promising that the body of Christ would carry his fullness into the world. When the eyes of your heart light up with God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, according to Paul, as the follower of Christ so transformed by his fullness, how can you not turn and baptize the world with his grace and mercy. The fullness of him who fills all in all. Christ alone is head of the church and he also fills it. It is one thing to give up on trying to wrap your head around the world and its seemingly never-ending chaos, but with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you can still give a witness to the wonders of his love, you can still pass forward the selflessness of his compassion, you can still bear his light every day in your corner of life. It’s the discipleship in doxology, knowing that when it comes to God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, and the very fullness of Christ, you and I actually have a part to play.

Just this week I was taking my dog out for a walk on what was yet another sweltering early evening. I ran into one of our next-door neighbors. I hadn’t seen him since we had returned after being out of the country for two months. It was clear right away he didn’t know we had been gone. After I told him, he said, “So you have missed this unbearable summer.” I thought he was talking about current events, the news, all that has been going on since I have been away from you. He was actually talking about the weather, the heat, the humidity. When the confusion became clear to both of us, he responded with a wave of his hand and a wipe of his brow, “Ah, the news, we will always have the news,” he sighed. His was a tone of resignation, even detachment. Maybe that was his only means of coping with the sweltering tensions and the tragic grief and the terror unleashed and the disheartening partisanship of the summer of 2016. At some point this summer I imagined standing before you on this morning and making a lighthearted reference about “not much going on while I was away.” The problem, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing lighthearted about it, about any of it.

Some will know that one of Nassau’s members, Dave Kershner, was in charge of the development of the One World Observatory that now stands at the top of One World Trade Center. The exhibit begins in the lobby of that skyscraper as you pass through video presentations of those who built the new building and you see displays of the rock foundation upon which the structure was built. In the moving voices and tears of architects and iron-workers and carpenters, a visitor can’t miss the symbolism of strength, determination, honor, spirit, hope, and life rising out of despair and death, one person, one heart, one voice, one life at a time. Of the many, many things the fifteenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, means for us, and for families that still grieve, and for this nation, and for the world, maybe one piece is that today can also serve to lend a perspective to the oppressive summer of 2016, that from a firm foundation new understandings can arise and that hope can still rise out of despair and that unity among our leaders doesn’t have to be lost forever.

When I think back to this summer of reading the news and being so far away from you, it wasn’t the preaching that I missed. I preached the whole month of July in Scotland. Honestly, some of those other Sundays I was quite relieved to not have to stand up here and offer a gospel word. “Ah, the news, we will always have the news.” For the Christian, that resignation, that detachment, that defeatism in the face of the world’s darkness isn’t really an option… Because of the fullness of Christ and his promise that our hearts would see his light, that the darkness shall never overcome that light, that our hearts would see our salvation, which God has prepared in the presence of all people, that our hearts would see the very face of Jesus in hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, that our hearts would see what the Apostle Paul called “a more excellent way”.

What I missed this summer was you and I putting our hearts together, searching, looking, with the eyes of our hearts. Because God has promised us that Christ is here above us, here with us, here within us, in all of his fullness. And that we, the Body of Christ, shall always be anointed, comforted, fed, and sent by that same fullness. That the eyes of our hearts will light up with God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power. It’s not just that God has promised us; it’s that we’ve experienced it. Over and over again. Right here, when we are together, in worship, in this place.

One Sunday after worship in one of the congregations I served this summer, a big burly man came up to me. He had a wonderful flow of white hair, a beard, and this weather-worn red face. He had to be either a sea captain or Santa Claus. He took both my hands in his and as he thanked me for the service, for the sermon, he said, “Now could you please just talk slower and use less words. You’re American, you know.” Then he got teary and with his voice breaking, he said, “There’s just so much there, you have to give us time to take it all in.” He wasn’t talking just about the sermon, of course. He was talking about the gospel. He was talking about God’s grace. He was talking about the fullness of Christ. God’s hope. God’s glory. God’s power. And one man’s yearning for the eyes of his heart to light up again and again and again.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Lauren J. McFeaters
September 4, 2016

Freedom comes in many shapes and sizes. Madeleine L’Engle tells an old legend about Judas, that after his death, Judas found himself at the bottom of a deep and slimy pit.

For thousands of years he wept his repentance, and when the tears were finally spent, he looked up, and saw, far into the distance, a tiny glimmer of light.

After a time, he began to climb up toward the light. The walls of the pit were dark and wet, and time and time again he kept slipping back down.

But finally, after great effort, he reached the top and as he dragged himself into a room; he saw it was an upper room; and he saw people, people he knew, people seated around a table.

And Jesus said to Judas,

“We’ve been waiting for you, Judas.”

“We couldn’t begin until you arrived.” (1)

Freedom in Christ sets us free.

For Judas, freedom came in the form of Love, a Love that liberated with forgiveness, lifted restraints, set at liberty a life, and gave him joy.

Today we travel to the Galatians: New Christians for whom Christ’s love has liberated with forgiveness, lifted restraints, set at liberty life, but who find no joy in their freedom.

Instead the Galatians are held captive by unending arguments about the law and food and circumcision – all outward skirmishes taking a lead over inward peace with Christ – all biting and devouring one another rather than living in the commandment they have yet to accept: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

For Paul, whose Gospel message is the unbound and unrestrained life lived in our Lord, the Galatians’ fighting is the outward and visible sign of their ongoing captivity.(2)

Freedom comes in many shapes and sizes. Paul knows freedom in Christ. Perhaps more than most. He’s lost physical freedom many times. He says:

• I’ve been imprisoned in toil and hardship, hunger and thirst, cold and exposure.
• Five times I have received forty lashes less one.
• Once I was trampled with stones.
• Three times I have been shipwrecked.
• I’ve been in danger from rivers … robbers … my own people.(3)
• I’ve known the incarceration of illness, ill-health, and disease.(4)

The wonder of Paul is his ability to find liberty in Christ in the midst of captivity.

Frederick Buechner puts it like this: There was hardly a whistle-stop in the Mediterranean world that Paul didn’t make it to eventually. He planted churches the way Johnny Appleseed planted trees. And whenever he had ten minutes to spare, he wrote letters.

He browbeat, coaxed, comforted, and cursed. He bared his soul. He ruminated and complained. He theologized and arbitrated. He inspired and gloried. And everything he said, wrote, did (from the Damascus Road on) was an attempt to bowl over the human race as he’d been bowled over.(5) The day Paul found freedom in Christ was the day nothing became impossible.

And this is why he is so distraught over his beloved Galatian Church. They’ve taken the gift of salvation and turned it into a reason for self-indulgence and immaturity. For freedom Christ has set us free, yet we, insist on our own way.

It’s obvious what happens to our lives when we try to get our own way all the time; when our wills run riot, and our pleasure-seeking knows no bounds. Without living in Christ and through Christ, our days turn into one big roulette wheel of “Choose Your Fortune!” Paul lays it out for us – what we become without freedom leading the way:

• A stinking accumulator of mental and emotional garbage
• A cheater for grades and advancement
• A selfish grabber of attention and limelight
• An instigator of crisis and drama

How about our:

• Trusting in cutthroat competition and magic-show religion
• Or our vicious tempers and frozen hearts
• Our withholding of encouragement and praise
• Unrestrained need for judgment, gossip, and slander.(6)

But freedom comes in many shapes and sizes. What happens when we set aside our burdens and live as those set free? Why God grants such calm and simplicity, such serenity, much the same way fruit appears on a tree. Amazing things happen, in the blink of an eye we grow up and mature. We gain:

• An affection for others and a willingness to stick with things
• Acts of compassion trip from our hearts
• We cultivate a conviction that holiness permeates all people and conflicts have resolutions
• We find ourselves with loyal friends and we become healthier companions
• Our manipulation and over-control fades away and we’re trustworthy, honorable, and dependable
• We have no need to force our way into other’s lives
• And our ability to forgive ripens to overflowing (7)

You see, for those who belong to Christ, there’s not one detail of life that he will not set free so that we might belong to God body and soul. Living our days in that kind of freedom is like:

• Looking up and seeing (far in the distance) a glimmer of light
• And climbing up to light,
• And when we reach the top,
• We find ourselves at the Table,
• With people we know,
• And Jesus turns and looks at us and says:

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“And we couldn’t begin until you arrived.”(8)

1. Madeleine L’Engle as cited by James T. Moor. A Place of Welcome. Luke 7:36-50. Day1, A division of the Alliance for Christian Media, Atlanta, Georgia, June 17, 2007.
2. J. William Harkins. Feasting on the Word:  Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Vol. 3. Eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, 186.
3. 2 Corinthians 11:24-27.
4. 2 Corinthians 12:7.
5. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.
6. Galatians 5: 19-21 adapted from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993.
7. Galatians 5: 22-25 adapted from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993.
8. Madeleine L’Engle as cited by James T. Moor. A Place of Welcome. Luke 7:36-50. Day1, A division of the Alliance for Christian Media, Atlanta, Georgia, June 17, 2007.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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II Timothy 4:6-13, 21a
J. Thomas Kort
August 21, 2016

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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John 15:12
J. Thomas Kort
August 14, 2016

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Philippians 4:13
Lisa Nichols Hickman
July 24, 2016

A Post-Modern Life Cycle?

Today, in worship, I want us to consider the various ages and stages of a life-cycle. Now, maybe you studied Eric Ericson in college, maybe you picture that when you consider a life-cycle, his very traditional view of a life-cycle. There are some who are saying that view no longer works because our world is changing is so much. Childhood is changing. Teenage life is changing. Teenagers are entering puberty earlier and earlier because of changes of chemicals and estrogens in our environment. The job market is changing. College students are graduating and sometimes moving home, gaining strength and support there before going back out to the world. And retirement is changing. We have longer and longer life-cycles and this is a good thing, but it takes some planning.

So maybe our life-cycle is changing. Can any of us relate to these changes in the life-cycle? We all are going through these. Because of these changes, some scholars are saying we need a post-modern view of the life-cycle that does not simplify life into childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and instead allows for some nuances in between.

I care about this today because I care about the church and I care about Christian ministry and I believe that paying attention to what is changing in the life-cycle might better help us with Christian formation beyond Confirmation class, for better pastoral care in the various ages and stages of life, for evangelism and the ways we reach out into the world, and in light of the big prayers in our world, maybe help put us back together as Christians so we can go out into the world and serve.

Maybe you have read a news article about this. College students at Washington University in St. Louis were asked this past year to take a very interesting course, and the course was titled “When I’m 64.” We got it, the Beatles. I am sure there are few Beatles fans in here. Required curriculum that asked the students to think about the changing nature of the life-cycle.

50% of college freshmen will live to be 100 years old. And so the course invites them to start thinking when they are 18 about how to have a meaningful life, a meaningful retirement, how to plan financially and vocationally and spiritually for ten decades of life.

I wonder if it would be helpful for the church to consider such a course, the changing nature of the life-cycle. So much of our faith formation goes into that first two decades, compressing spirituality and service and social justice and mission trips and scripture learning into Sunday school, Confirmation, and mission trips. All before age 18.

But if we change attention a changing life-cycle in those ten decades, then maybe the church is called to think creatively about ways to minister to people across the life span.

Philippians 4:13

Now this one scholar, Frederick Schweitzer, says we need a post-modern view of the life-cycle. But what I want to say, pushing back, is that we do not need a post-modern view because we have Philippians 4:13. Everything we need for wisdom and strength is right here.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now this is Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, written while he was in prison. I appreciate my mother-in-law, who makes me appreciate Paul and who says he had so much energy and he was stuck and confined and he could not get the word out and here is this beautiful letter where he talks about “rejoicing the Lord” and “whatever is honorable and true and just, think about these things,” and “I have learned to be content in all circumstances.” Incredible wisdom and joy, topped only by this ten-word phrase, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

For Every Age and Stage of Life…

I believe these ten words reflect every age and stage of life, from that first word “I” to the last word “me.” “I” describes that first glimpse of that new child. When Leah was born out in Tuscon, Arizona, it was the best day of our lives. “I” — the unique identity and the miraculous life, knit together in the mother’s womb, blessed here in the waters of baptism. “I” is the beginning stage of the life cycle.

Then we get that great word, “can.” This is a toddler’s first steps, first words, first tumbles. It is why this church is so grateful when space is precious here in Princeton to have that playground right here because toddlers can do great things on that playground. “I can.”

Then we get the word “do.” And when I think about “do,” I think about my time here in youth ministry and all the amazing things our young people can do. They are creative, dramatic, athletic, faithful, and smart. They inspire our best leadership. Three thousand, 5,000, young people just met at Purdue, at Triennium, to think about what they can do in the life of the church in their communities.

As the life cycle moves on, we get to the word “all.” I think about our idealistic young adult days when all things are possible. The world is wide open, no constraints, a future to live into with hope and not cynicism, which comes sometimes in adulthood. Maybe that is why we all love to listen to commencement speeches, because it kindles that hope of all good things within us. Maybe that is why we love living in a place like Princeton where there is a university and a seminary where all things are possible.

I can do all “things.” “Things” might be what happens when you get married, when you have a full-time job, when the calendar starts to fill up, whether it is a written calendar or your digital calendar in your phone. Maybe things are the laundry basket or the routine. Things that take us from the extraordinary parts of life to the ordinary. Maybe technology and our iPhones add to that sense of the things.

Then we get to the fifth word of this life cycle from Philippians 4:13, that word “through.” I can do all things through. “Through” reminds of the resilience by which we get through the tough parts of life. Thanks to friends and churches and prayer we get through cancer treatment, we get through lay offs, we get through addiction, we get through the funeral, we get through relationships where alienation is painful and reconciliation impossible. I heard that prayer for “through” in that beautiful hymn of the psalm.

I think about getting through things when I think of “Going on a Bear Hunt” – I am going on a bear hunt, you can’t go under it, can’t go around it – you gotta go through it.

Thank God for the church, through whom we get strength in that time, in those places of difficult journey.

That’s when we need that next word, “Christ.” The only way we can get through all of that is through Christ who strengthens us, who saves us, who is a companion to us, who is redeemer to us, friend, nourisher, healer, teacher, who is with us to the very end.

Of course there are sometimes in a Christian journey, and we wouldn’t be faithful if we didn’t say this, when we even question who Christ is. I can do all things through Christ, who? Who is this savior? Who is he calling me to be? Is he at work in this broken world today?

This is the place where we pray for belief beyond our doubt. We pray through our struggles and our questions and those places where God is working within us to form us deeper in our life of faith, even in the midst of our doubts and our questions.

Thank God for word number nine, I can do all things through Christ who “strengthens” me. We are allowed us to look back on a life’s journey and see the saving grace of Christ along the way who brings strength to sustain all things. This is the down in your bones faith – deeply engrained even in the strain of circumstance.

Finally, the tenth word comes full circle back to “me.” Our identity is made complete from womb to grave by the presence of Christ who continually saves. But here is where I want to be crystal clear. This is not a journey that is culminated in “me.” This journey is not ultimately about me. This journey is about Christ who calls each one of us into our very best selves so we can serve the gospel and bring about his kingdom. So we are turned loose in this broken world.

Maybe when you are thinking about this text today or on a walk or if you are exercising, if you are driving to the shore, if you are enjoying a quiet moment on a hot day in a hammock, Maybe if you are thinking about these ten words, you might say them slowly to yourself, and pay attention to where you pause. What word catches you today? Because I don’t think life is a linear journey. I think we keep cycling through. There are sometimes when we find ourselves journeying back to “all” or “can” or “I” and finding renewed strength there to continue along with this journey.

 

Power, The Life Cycle and Dunamis…

In any of those ten places along life’s journey the key word to remember is the word strength. In Greek the word is DUNAMIS. It is like dynamite. The Greek is explosive with what that power of Jesus’ strength means when it intersects a life. It literally means to intensify the sharing power and strength of that new ability Jesus Christ imparts to us. It is bursting forth. That dunamis strengthens every moment along life’s way. Not in a self-serving way, but in a self-sacrificing way, so we have the power to serve in Christ’s strength.

Christian Praxis

The prayer for the church is then is to contemplate the changing nature of the life cycle. I was thinking about this when I was sitting last week at my church, First Presbyterian Church of Sharon, sitting next a mom whose youngest daughter was entering high school senior year. I think that mom was a little fragile. I think about that when I think about the retirees who live in New Wilmington. So many of them live into their 90s, even 100, and they are thinking about ways to stay meaningful and connected to the life of the church and Christian community and being of service in this world.

And so it is a question that people might contemplate in a Christian Ed committee meetings and Session and worship committee, deacon meetings, and staff meetings, how are we reaching out to people and offering this dunamis of Jesus at every age and stage of life in our changing world? It is a prayer. It is a great question to wrestle with.

Confronted with the Strength of Christ

I want to close with one story introducing you to a great lady named Margaret Courtwright. Margaret Courtwright lives in New Wilmington. She is a 96 years old. She goes for her walk every day through town and if I haven’t had my walk that day, I go and put my shoes on, because Margaret has been out walking. Margaret grew up in India. Her parents were Presbyterian medical missionaries and she went to the Woodstock School and because that was such an excellent school Margaret had an unusual life cycle and instead of graduating at age 18, she graduated when she was 16 years old. She left India with a nanny, traveled by boat to London and then to New York City and then by train to Ohio, where she started college at Muskingham University.

Now before I tell you the really important part of Margaret’s story I want to set the picture of how cool Margaret is. So when Margaret is 16 and she gets to Muskingham and she unpacks her trunk from India, she pulls out a zebra skin and lays it out on the dorm room floor. She pulls out an alligator head and a snakeskin and hangs all of that on the wall. And one day after freshman orientation she is coming back into the room and she is opening the door and she can see her roommate there — and this is back in the ’20s — and her roommate is squirting something. I don’t know if they had Febreze back then, but she was spraying everything just to make sure.

You can only imagine how terrified Margaret was to make that journey from India to London to Ohio. And she tells the story of arriving in London on her sixteenth birthday — and this is now 80 years ago — and walking into the National Gallery with her nanny. They walked around, they had a lovely day. And perhaps you can picture Margaret back in the day. She was dressed in gloves and hat and skirt and heels, and they were out on the town. And when she tells of that day and how scared she was, she says that she turned a corner and encountered a painting. And the painting was called “Jesus Before the High Priest” by Gerrit van Honthorst. And when Margaret tells of that moment, she says, Jesus caught my eye that day and he has never let me go since.

If you met Margaret today, she would open her Bible and out would fall a postcard of that painting. It has carried her along in all of the changing ages and stages of her life cycle, for 80 years. What I appreciate about that moment in Margaret’s life stories is that it is really a call for us to keep thinking about the ways we put that Christ before all people. For Margaret it happened in a holy and spontaneous and an answer-to-prayer moment. It has blessed her along life’s way.

I think the work of the church, our call to us, is to think about that dunamis, that saving power of Christ and how that can enter in for anyone who is at that moment of a life cycle journeying through “I can do all things.” So that is my challenge and call to you this day. That you will prayerfully think about, as a church, how you might reach different folks in different places as this crazy world unfolds and as that affects the very nature of our lives.

How can we keep putting before folks that dunamis of Jesus?

© 2016
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Luke 10:25-37
Cynthia Jarvis
July 10, 2016

“‘Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hand of robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Needless to say, we have endured yet another week when the quality of mercy has been strained to the point of breaking by the inequality of power and fear and race and death over our common life. Lest we be tempted, once again, to walk on by the beaten, the stripped, the abandoned, and the half dead by the side of the road when we leave this temple, Jesus told a parable about the one who showed mercy.

The Greek word translated as pity or compassion or mercy in the New Testament is curiously a word used only of Jesus himself and of three familiar characters in Jesus’ parables: the father of the prodigal, the magnanimous king who has mercy toward a hopeless debtor, and the Samaritan. This is not the mercy or pity or compassion that corresponds to the movements of our merely human hearts. This is a movement in the bowels of God — a movement of the innermost being of God, a movement that is the movement of God toward us in Jesus Christ.

Of God’s mercy, Karl Barth writes: “[God] does not merely help from without…standing alongside, making a contribution and then withdrawing again and leaving [us] to [our] selves until further help is perhaps required. [Rather in Jesus Christ] he interposes himself for [us], he gives himself to [us]… he puts himself in [our] place… he makes [our] state and fate his own cause, so that it is no longer [ours] but his…” This sounds to me, for all the world, like the Samaritan in the story!

But God is merciful not only in relation to us: the God who is merciful is merciful from all eternity. God is merciful in God’s self. “God who is rich in mercy,” I often declare when I am privileged to pronounce the promise of the gospel; or “God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”; or “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.” God’s very being is mercy. How do we know this? Barth admits that “When we confess God to be merciful, it is not even remotely possible to demonstrate this as a logically deducible truth.” We can only confess that God has given Himself to be known by us as merciful in the name of Jesus Christ. We can only try to recognize the reality of the mercy of God in his name.

The story before us has something to do with recognizing the reality of the mercy of God on the road going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Interrupting a private conversation Jesus is having with the seventy just returned from their first missionary journey, the lawyer asks Jesus, in order to test him, “Good teacher, what I must do to inherit eternal life?” Contained in his question are assumptions about God and about eternal life that we would do well to examine.

There are, Robert Jenson says, “as many eternities as there are… cultures and faiths, but most eternities can be divided into two sorts.” The first sort is secured by law and the second is confessed by promise. The first, secured by law, is the eternity of persistence. “The average God,” Jenson says, “is eternal in this way.” This is the God of religion — “the universal Conserver… the Rock of Ages, the Sheltering Arms, the transcendent Security Blanket” — who “can both guarantee the barns that defend our status quo; and provide a refuge when the status quo becomes too threatening.” In this eternity of timelessness, “the Immutability [the unchangability] of the past settles what can come of the future and so rules time as God: because of what I have accomplished, I can count securely on such-and-such, or because of what I have done, guilt closes such-and-such doorways.” In other words, this average God eternally “guarantees our securities and assigns our guilt; [God is]… the super Bookkeeper who will let us ‘into heaven’ if only we do our best, and are sincerely sorry and try harder from now on.”

The dead giveaway that the lawyer had the average God in mind when he came to test Jesus was the verb he used in his question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do to be given eternal life as my secure possession? The average God acts to assure the lawyer on the basis of the law as gospel that his status eternally, for good or for ill, depends on his immutable past.

The second sort of eternity is confessed by promise and anticipated in hope. In this eternity the “future [of the God who is rich in mercy] endlessly overcomes all bondage to the past… it is the eternity in which [you and I] are free, exactly in and by what [we] already are, for what [we] are not yet. The God of Israel and of Jesus’ resurrection is eternal in this way,” Jenson says. In God’s eternity of mercy, God even uses the guilt we hold on to from our past as the occasion to do a new thing; and God scandalously uses hope to undo the other eternity’s timeless stasis of good and bad, in and out, justice and injustice, Jew and Samaritan.

Therefore to the lawyer’s question concerning what he must do to secure the eternal life of the average God, Jesus counters with a question concerning the lawyer’s future with the God of mercy. Citing the summary of the law in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the lawyer says he is to love God with all of his heart and soul and strength and mind and his neighbor as himself. “Right you are!” says Jesus. “Do this and you will live.” “Do exactly what?” the lawyer still wants to know. What is the more and the less he must do in order to assure the average God that I have done what is necessary. “Precisely which ones must I love?”

In response, Jesus answers a question the lawyer did not have it in him to ask. To wit: Who will he finally become? Who will he be in the eternity of the God who is mercy? To answer this question, Jesus abandons abstract principles for a story that turns out to be about mercy: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,” it begins. No telling who this man is, what tribe he belongs to, what God he worships or what characterizes his human condition other than the vulnerability written all over his face that is written over ours as well. Stripped, beaten, left for dead, he is at the mercy of everyone who passes by. If you are black and male in this nation, every road is the Jericho road. Think Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Laquan MacDonald, Tamir Rice, Antonio Zambrona-Montes, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, to name a few.

When I lived here for fifteen years, twenty years ago, I played a mental game with myself. I drove the streets of Princeton and every time I saw a car stopped by a policeman, I bet myself $1,000 the driver is black. About nine times out of ten, I was right. I still play that game where I live. I live in a suburb of Philadelphia. On my way to church, I go by way of a speed trap and I know to do twenty-five miles per hour. And every time somebody is stopped by the side of the road, I bet myself $1,000 the driver is black. I would say nineteen times out of twenty. Nassau Street is the Jericho Road. Witherspoon Street, the Jericho Road. Bayard Lane, the Jericho Road. Mermaid Lane, Philadelphia, the Jericho Road. Germantown Avenue, where my church sits, is the Jericho Road.

Yet Thursday night was a brutal reminder that those we send out to patrol the Jericho Road daily walk in the valley of the shadow of death where showing mercy seems to be a matter of life and death.

The people passing by are identified, though we do not know why they do what they do. The priest and the Levite see the man and keep on going. The usual excuse given for them — that they are concerned with ritual purity — does not avail because they are going “down” the road and so away from the temple. We simply do not know why they keep going, just as sometimes do we know the same about our own deficit of mercy in the face of the brutality that our common life has become.

The Samaritan sees the man as well. The Samaritans, you may remember, had just refused to receive Jesus in Luke’s last chapter. At this point in the story, Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine insists that “we should think of ourselves as the person in the ditch and then ask, ‘Is there anyone, from any group, about whom we would rather die than acknowledge, ‘She offered help,’ or ‘He showed compassion’?” Likewise, is there any group whose members might rather die than help us? If so, then we know how to find the modern equivalent for the Samaritan.” In this xenophobic time, the candidates are legion. Levine proceeds to be more specific than the lawyer ever imagined when he asked his question of Jesus. Who is the one who proved neighbor — who loved God with heart, soul, strength, mind and the neighbor as the self? For Levine as a Jew it is a member of Hamas who showed mercy. In a lecture on the same parable at Auburn Seminary, I was in an audience filled with people who recently had experienced the horrors of September 11th firsthand when Levine suggested that the one who proved neighbor was a member of Al-Qaeda.

So the Samaritan on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho sees the man as well, but here we come upon the word with which we began. He is moved with pity, with compassion, with mercy: it is the verb that is used only of Jesus, the father of the prodigal, the king of the debtor and now the Samaritan. He not only feels in his bowels, in the deepest part of his being, the misery and distress of this man; he also acts, mercy being an action determined by a feeling. He binds the man’s wounds, pouring oil and wine on them — elements used in the daily temple sacrifice; he puts the man on his own animal in order to bring him to an inn; there he gives the innkeeper enough money to keep him for two months and says, “Take care of him….” To repeat, the Samaritan “does not merely help from without… standing alongside, making a contribution and then withdrawing again… leaving him to himself until further help is perhaps required. [Rather] he interposes himself for the man, he gives himself to him… he puts himself in his place… he makes his state and fate his own cause, so that it is no longer the man’s but his own.”

Then finally, the Samaritan stands for the man’s future freedom. He says, “When I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” As the man had nothing now but what the Samaritan had given him, he could have been “at the mercy” (so to speak) of the innkeeper — a profession with the reputation for dishonesty and violence — who eventually could have enslaved him for any unpaid debt. If it is mercy you mean to show and if it is the eternity of the God who is mercy that you hope to inhabit more than inherit, then as my former New Testament professor John Donahue put it, you “must enter the world of the injured not only with care and compassion but must leave it in such a way that the injured is given freedom.”

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The lawyer said, because he could not bring himself to say Samaritan, “The one who showed him mercy.”

What would it be for those of us in this sanctuary who are white to not only feel in our bowels, in the deepest part of our being, the misery and distress of black men and their mothers and their spouses and their children, but also to act, mercy being an action determined by a feeling. What would it look like for us not merely to help from without… standing alongside, making a contribution and then withdrawing again… leaving our black brothers and sisters to themselves until the next spate of killings. What would be different if we interposed our white selves for black selves, giving ourselves to them… putting ourselves in their place… making their state and fate our own cause, so that it is no longer theirs but our own? What would it be for us to bear witness to the God who enters the world of the injured not only with care and compassion but leaves it in such a way that the injured is given freedom? Who would our future selves be, our future nation be, if we gave ourselves to the God who uses the guilt we hold on to from our past as the occasion to do a new thing. If we gave our racist and xenophobic and fearfully defended selves to the God who scandalously uses hope to undo the timeless stasis of good and bad, in and out, justice and injustice, Jew and Samaritan, black and white, rich and poor, citizen and immigrant, saved and lost?

“Go and do likewise,” Jesus finally said. We do not know what became of the lawyer. We can only ask after the persons we may become in the hands of the God of mercy, beseeching God to have mercy on us. Amen.

© 2016
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.