Mark 6:1–13
Len Scales
August 12, 2018
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Earlier this summer, Andrew and I had the opportunity to travel with a group of graduate students as a part of Princeton Presbyterians to worship, work, and study with the Taizé Community in France. God brought our group together from different parts of the country and world—Detroit and Miami and Tennessee and Zambia via New York City and New Jersey and Indiana. We came from different denominational backgrounds to Princeton and together onward to Taizé.

And we met others at Taizé from across the world—Kenya, Germany, Palestine, Korea, South Africa, to name a few. Anywhere from 1,000 to 8,000 young people gather each week during the summer in a very small town in the Burgundy Countryside. The Taizé Community began with 3 brothers in the early 1940s committed to prayer and welcome, and has grown to around 100 brothers from Protestant and Catholic backgrounds and strong friendships with Greek Orthodox tradition. Around a dozen brothers live elsewhere in the world among impoverished people, 2 to 4 of them together in a place. Wherever the brothers are, they extend love, solidarity, and welcome to their neighbors.

Princeton Presbyterians, the campus ministry Nassau supports, looks to Taizé as a model of hospitality and attentiveness to the Holy Spirit.

While we were there, one of the Scripture readings we studied was the Luke version of this story in Mark about Jesus going to his hometown.

Jesus comes to Nazareth after healing and teaching powerfully. But once in familiar territory, he is confronted with hostility from his childhood neighbors. In Luke’s telling, the people of Jesus’ hometown get so agitated, they even try to hurl him off a cliff! Jesus escapes. He moves on, and in Mark, he sends his disciples two-by-two to heal and preach the Good News further afield.

What made these hometown friends so mad at Jesus in the first place? In Luke’s version of the story, we hear a little bit more about what Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. Jesus reads from the Prophet Isaiah—The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.^[1]

These are powerful words. They continue to give hope to Christians today, as we look around our world and see suffering and fear, and are weary from trying to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. We long for these words to be made manifest in our midst.

Imagine though if you heard those words being spoken by someone who used to be the squirrelly kid at the family reunion?^[2] Someone who grew up next door, and played soccer with your kids or your grandkids? Eugene Boring, in his commentary on Mark, says Jesus’ hometown crowd looks at him as “Mary’s boy from down the street?”^[3]

Would he seem believable to you? Do those words sound feasible for you today, even hearing them from the pulpit? Maybe especially hearing them from the pulpit?

It is understandable, even easy, to find ourselves acting like the people from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth—filled with doubt, maybe despair, and even annoyance at someone who seems to cling to an unimaginable ideal.

But is there a way for us to have faith in those ancient words? How do we hold to the promises of God written in the book of Isaiah, repeated by Jesus?

Maybe we do identify with the doubt of the people of Nazareth, but can we pause and hold off from acting on that doubt, even for a moment?

Today I suggest one place to allow ourselves to envision possibility of goodness and freedom is in silence.

A significant part of prayer three times a day at Taizé is about 10 minutes of silence after the Scripture reading. It is a time of communication, even as words are not being spoken aloud. It is a time to hear from God.

There is much to listen to in the silence: the words of one of the simple chants that continues to repeat in one’s mind; a phrase or an image from the Scripture reading that stands out. Sometimes the sounds are a little more external: hearing, noticing the breathing of everyone around you, the shifting of legs on the floor, the rumbling of someone’s stomach (maybe your own stomach), the curious small voice of a child at the side of the sanctuary. There are many things that come to one’s attention during the silence of Taizé, both external and internal.

Even in silence there can be a lot of noise. Maybe some of it is worth focusing on, but much of it is only worth acknowledging and moving on from. I think this is part of why the brothers recommend coming to Taizé for an entire week. The first few days allow someone to orient to the newness of everything, the middle of the week really opens up space for things that have been buried deep within due to the busyness of life to surface, and the last couple days provide opportunity to actually hear and leave open the possibility, maybe even believe, have faith, that something new is possible.^[4]

We are going to undertake the practice of silence today, though more briefly than in Taizé. We will listen to the words from Isaiah Jesus taught in the synagogue, and sit with them. I won’t force 10 minutes of silence this morning, but I do want to challenge us to rest in one minute of silence.

When we hear again those words in Isaiah, may find ourselves aligning with Jesus’ hometown neighbors more than with the twelve at first. We are uncertain and surprised and not ready to slow down enough to listen and change directions. But what if we held off from asking judgmental questions, stopped ourselves from tossing Jesus to the side, and, instead, simply paused to listen?

Let us do that now, by hearing these words of Scripture: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.^[5]

[1 minute of silence]^[6]

What if that is true? I imagine we are in worship today because we at least want it to be true or we love someone who believes it to be true.

Jesus calls you, calls us, to hold out hope—that there really is good news for the poor, release for the captives, healing is possible, freedom is real, and the Lord really does love you and all of creation.

Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, not alone, but with a partner. Someone could confirm for others and remind their partner, when needed, the kingdom is possible, and we are called to work toward realizing it together.^[7]

Who has Jesus given you as a partner in ministry?

We are not alone in worship this morning. We are gathered as Nassau Presbyterian Church. Who are your fellow followers of Jesus at either side of you, in front of you, behind you? Look around and see them.

Now, everyone on Princeton Presbyterians’ trip to Taizé was tired after a long academic year, many having recently experienced deep grief, pain, and challenges.

I encouraged everyone to be open to surprise while on the trip, acknowledge expectations and to also attempt to set those expectations aside.

One surprise happened in a quiet garden. A trip member was taking some time in silence for reflection. She was able to name for herself some of the real struggles she had been carrying over the last couple years of seminary—lots of questions of where to go next, but also a question of was God in this mess of life and ministry at all? She was asking common questions. Somewhat like the folks from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. It was in the silence that God communicated through the beauty, seen and heard in nature—a surprising chorus of frogs came from the silence, ringing over the pond and across the field, breaking through the questions. Could that be a sign she was not alone? She could have easily disregarded the frogs.

But, not only did she experience the moment, but someone else in our group happened to be in the same area at the same time and later asked—did you hear those frogs? It was then she was able to acknowledge the reality before her, which often goes unseen—God had not left her and neither had community.

At the end of our journey, over dinner, I asked everyone to summarize their experience with the Taizé Community in one word. The words were: reassurance, freedom, surprise, permission, patience, simplicity, and humility.

The question before our group now, is what are we going to do with those words? How will our experience in silence and community continue to form us? Will we take time to listen now as we prepare for a new semester? Where are we being sent together?

I ask you, Nassau Presbyterian Church, similar questions—where is Jesus calling us to proclaim release to the captives, freedom for the oppressed, and good news to the poor today and every day? Amen.

^[1] adapted from Luke 4:18-19

^[2] inspired from Christoph’s comment from my Taizé small group on knowing Jesus from neighborhood BBQ’s

^[3] M. Eugene Boring, Mark, The New Testament Library, p.165

^[4] “something new is possible” from Brother Emile

^[5] adapted from Luke 4:18-19

^[6] inspired by the practices of Taizé and Mr. Rogers commencement address at Dartmouth College in 2002 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=907yEkALaAY

^[7] see M. Eugene Boring, Mark, The New Testament Library, p.174

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Joshua 3:1-17
David A. Davis
July 22, 2018
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Before I read the second scripture lesson, I want to share with you two biblical conundrums that I am very aware of this week. Well, there’s a whole more than two that plague me on a regular basis but two that are relevant to the Book of Joshua. I’m preaching four sermons this summer from the Book of Joshua. Those four selected passages may be the only four in the Book of Joshua that are not full of descriptions of battle, destruction, and lots of death. I just want to own up to it, my pastoral preacher’s choice and be honest with those of you who may choose to keep reading from the book during the rest of the sermon. Also, a few weeks ago I preached on the story of Rahab and the deal she struck with the spies she hid from the king. I highlighted the concluding almost passing comment in the book on Rahab: that Rahab, a non-Jew and her family have lived in Israel ever since. Then here in the story of the Jordan crossing that you are about to hear, the reader comes upon Joshua’s exhortation for the people to know the presence of the living God. That exhortation comes with a list of tribes and peoples that will be driven out, that will be excluded. The promise is that God will provide the land just for them. The lasting promise of God vis a vis the land of Israel and the radical command to welcome the stranger and embrace the foreigner forever embodied by the Samaritan that tradition calls good.  A textual, biblical, theological, geo-political contradiction that, like Rahab and her family, has pretty much been around ever since. So there you have it. Anyone wanting me to further address those two biblical knots is about to be, at least for today, disappointed.

What does water look like when it stands in a single heap? “The waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.” The description of the single heap of water occurs twice here in Joshua 3. As the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant dipped into the edge of the Jordan River “the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off.” The heap of water was upstream at the city of Adam, about 18 miles north of Jericho. So Joshua and the priests and the entire nation of Israel crossing over into the Promised Land didn’t get to see the heap of water. They didn’t get to see what a single heap of water looked like either. Only the water flowing away to the south and the dry river bed beneath their feet.

There are places today in Israel/Palestine where the Jordan River is more like a trickling stream. It must have been more robust in antiquity but probably not a river akin to the “Mighty Mississippi,” even if the text does refer to the Jordan overflowing at the time of the harvest. Nonetheless, when it comes to this Jordan River crossing into the Promised Land, the ears of tradition are obviously supposed to perk up and recall the salvation story of Moses and the people crossing the Red Sea; that story of the saving act of God. It is never to be forgotten by God’s people. The next chapter in Joshua tells of twelve stones being gathered and placed to commemorate the crossing and twice Joshua tells the people to tell their children for generations to come about the twelve stones and the Jordon River crossing. “The Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea.” The crossing of the sea out of Egypt and the crossing of the river into the Promised Land.  Both never to be forgotten.

Here in Joshua chapter 3 the remembering part is clearly more important than the miracle part. Yes, there is that puzzling image of a standing, single heap of water and the river quickly running dry as the priests carrying the ark just start to dip their toes in the water. But the “main character” in the crossing over is the Ark of the Covenant. The chapter is filled with instructions related to the Ark and seeing it and following it and bearing it. “By this you shall know that among you is the living God,” Joshua said to the people. When the people crossed over, they couldn’t see the water all heaped up. What they saw was the Ark, on dry ground, in the middle of the Jordan. The Ark held there for all to see while they entered the Promised Land. The Ark standing watch as the people passed by. As the people passed by that sign, that symbol, that ark bearing the presence of the Living God. It was just a river crossing. It was a liturgical procession. Here in Joshua chapter 3, it’s more liturgy than it is miracle. A liturgy intended for remembrance.

I went to see the documentary film this week “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” that tells of the life, career, and ministry of Mr. Rogers. It is a behind the scenes look at him and his television show on public television that ran for decades starting in 1968. You may have read that the movie is surpassing all expectations. It is quite a balm of kindness for these days. I grew up with the early Mr. Rogers. I knew he was a Presbyterian minister, but I thought it was only a Pittsburgh thing. A local show on channel 13.  There were other things back then that I thought were only in Pittsburgh, like Heinz ketchup and Super Bowl trophies. I learned a lot from the movie. I enjoyed listening to the Pittsburgh accents from Fred Rogers wife and the others interviewed. I only teared up about six times, not because of memories but because of his gospel of kindness, and self-acceptance, and loving one another, and welcoming all children. I never knew that Mr. Rogers was ordained by the presbytery of Pittsburgh to be an evangelist of all things. And when you stop and think about, he really was. Through that show preaching Christ’s gospel of kindness and love without ever mentioning his name.

Of course over and over again in the movie there were clips of him coming into the house, taking off his jacket, putting on the sweater, changing his shoes, feeding the fish. Young Mr. Rogers. Old Mr. Rogers. Sure it was kitchy, but the movie affirms there was always a method and purpose behind everything Mr. Rogers did and said. Even that opening routine, that same introductory routine helped a child know what to expect, to remember what was coming, and to enter into a time of watching, listening, learning. I don’t know how often I watched him make that entrance when I was very young. But there was something about it that is etched deep within me. It is like there was liturgy to that show. Somehow rooting love and kindness and self-worth in generations of children.

The Lord told Joshua that this was the day that the people would begin to see that God was with him like God was with Moses. Joshua told the people that this was a day to know that God is present and is living among them. All of the instructions related to the crossing and the memorializing of it were intended to help the people know and celebrate and remember that God was with them. The Lord, through Joshua, was designing a liturgy to attest to God’s saving act, God’s saving grace, God in and among God’s people. Rooting awareness of and gratitude for God and God’s presence in generations yet to come.

The word “liturgy” technically means the work of the people. God’s people and the work of acknowledging all that God has done. Etching deep within not just gratitude for God’s presence but a longing to never forget that presence. Planting deep within not just a sure and certain comfort of resting in God but a yearning to see over and over again sure and certain signs of God’s saving grace in the world around. Nurturing deep within not simply a satisfaction or a joy in ritual or things spiritual but stirring a holy confidence that a life filled with radiant kindness, love, and grace actually represents the very presence of God to others. Not just this service of worship or that, not just this holiday or that, not just this order or that rite, but liturgy that is life. When life becomes liturgy.

In one of her books on preaching, Barbara Brown Taylor describes the work of the preacher as being a “detective of divinity.” It is the task of helping people to look into their very ordinary lives and still see the extraordinary presence of God. In her book An Altar in the World, she calls it “the practice of waking up to God.” She makes the argument that the Bible is full of people who “encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up,” she writes, “in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for the pay.” Barbara Brown Taylor is describing an awareness and a gratitude for God’s presence and God’s grace. An awareness and gratitude so rooted within that you carry it with you. She is describing the liturgy of life. God’s people and the work of learning, remembering, celebrating all that God has done.

A while back I had met a young university graduate who stayed here in town and took a job on campus. He didn’t worship here but our paths happened to cross from time to time over the span of a few months on the street, at a few gatherings, and even a meeting or two. One day he invited me to grab a coffee. When we got together he asked for my help. A college friend was getting married and they asked him to get ordained online for the occasion so he could officiate. “So what do I do?” he asked. He had no idea where to start, what to say, how to go about it. He had googled already: “How to officiate a wedding.” He didn’t think to do what one online ordained officiant did recently. One of you told me about the wedding where the person bragged about learning what to do and what to say for the occasion by watching TED talks. I will spare you my riff about not going to a dentist who got licensed online for the occasion of my cleaning. And I tell seminarians in worship class that when it comes to marriage the church has been in service to the civil authorities since the very beginning. So we shouldn’t kid ourselves or think we have the corner on the market.

My point is less whiny and more subtle. It has to do with the church teaching, modeling, shaping, passing on to each generation, a liturgy of life. Most couples are surprised when at some point in the conversation and planning I point out to them that “it’s really not all about you.” It’s not about an occasion, it’s about life. And when it comes to love and relationship and forgiveness and grace and family and getting old and being a spouse and being a parent and falling down and getting up and dusting your life off and saying you’re sorry and in sickness and in health, and in joy and in sorrow and trying to figure this all out, all this life and death stuff… you can’t just do it by yourself. We’re not that good. None of us is that good at it. I don’t know about you, I tell them, but I don’t know how you can do it without God’s help, God’s presence, God’s grace, God’s wisdom, and the hope of God’s future.

The “occasions” for which a community of faith provides a liturgy (at the time of baptism, at the time of confirmation, at the time of marriage, at the time of death, Easter, Christmas, each Lord’s Day for that matter), the occasional liturgy is intended to provide a kind of template for the liturgy of your life. To root deep within you an awareness and gratitude for God and God’s presence for all of your days. To take with you. To save it for later. To have it when you need it. It’s never been about perfect attendance here. It is about knowing God out there. Passing on to our children, not a perfect creed, or right doctrine, or dusty tradition, but some notion, way deep within, far beyond words, that God is in them and will never forsake them. Etching, planting, nurturing deep within the awe and wonder of God’s love. “By this you shall know that among you is the living God.”

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Ephesians 1:3-14
Andrew Scales
July 15, 2018
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge and seal of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

“Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness.” That’s one of the prayers that Brother Roger of the Taizé Community in France used to offer during their daily worship services. Sometimes he prayed it in English, or German, or French, or Spanish, or Polish. The prayer was somehow always a request to God, as well as a reassurance to everyone gathered around him. The way Brother Roger said it, it was as if he were asking, “forgive us” to the Lord, and reminding everyone else, “In Christ, you are forgiven.”

It’s a prayer that can almost flit past the ear because of its simplicity, like the table blessing my dad has murmured as a mantra with bowed head and folded hands over our family dinners my entire life: “Blessthisfoodtoouruseandustothyserviceandmakeusevermindfuloftheneedsofothersamen.”

But, like those words of grace that some of you may also know bone-deep, Brother Roger’s prayer says something that’s as powerful as it is familiar. Listen to it again: “Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness.”

That prayer has been on my mind because Len and I recently returned with a group of graduate students from a week in Taizé, France. The Taizé Community is an ecumenical monastery of brothers that welcomes pilgrims to worship and work together toward Christ’s reconciliation and peace. Last June, we arrived in the hillsides of Burgundy to spend a week with the brothers of Taizé and a little under a thousand pilgrims from around the world. Some of us were from the United States, others from Germany, Palestine, Kenya, South Korea. We gathered for daily Bible study in a small group with a dozen other adults to read Scripture together. In that group, we worked through language barriers, and sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way with different theological perspectives.

As the week went on at Taizé, despite the close living quarters and our significant differences, we came to love each other. We learned how to live with and for one another as fellow Christians. The give and take of common life together in meals and worship made us into a community where we had once been strangers. At the center of that life was a common ground: we had come to Taizé to spend time with Jesus, to see what he would do with all these people from all over the world.

“Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness.” That simple prayer is similar to what Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, too. Paul’s opening words to this early Christian community say that God has blessed the entire world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus’ forgiveness of our sins, the redemption through his blood that reconciles us to God. Forgiveness is the way that God saves the whole world in Jesus Christ.

What a lovely idea: forgiveness is at the heart of our salvation. Like Brother Roger’s prayer, we can listen to words like that and nod our heads but still let them pass by without sinking in. Yes, it’s true, and yet, it sounds vaguely true. The words, on their own, stand high up in the heavenly realms when they’re detached from any context. We crane our necks to look at them, like the billboards that shout “JESUS SAVES” in white letters against a black background over the open cornfields along I-70 where I grew up in Indiana. True, Jesus saves. But whom? When? Today? Forgiveness is at the heart of our salvation. For whom? When? Today?

Maybe the word “forgiveness” is what throws us off. Forgiveness sounds strange, lofty, alien, because it is so rare in our daily lives. Forgiveness seldom intrudes into the real life of loud neighbors and backstabbing coworkers and family members whose phone calls you’ve been letting go to voicemail for the last month or so.

If you asked me at the door after worship, “Do you think forgiveness is an important part of the Christian life?” I would say, “Oh, yes, it’s at the heart of the Gospel.” But, as I was writing this sermon earlier this week, I tried to imagine someone coming up to me on the street and asking me point blank, “Question one: When’s the last time you forgave someone when they really hurt you? Question two: When’s the last time you asked someone to forgive you when you really hurt them?” I’d look around wildeyed for a Starbucks or something, anything to duck into and hide.

Forgiveness doesn’t fit into our plans for the day. My to-do list is: gotta run to Target, pick up my dry cleaning. But forgiving someone isn’t on my list! Because when we are wounded, we run away. When we wound someone else, we give reasons why being cruel was the reasonable thing to do. Our unwillingness to forgive and be forgiven hardens us, it cuts us off from one another. And now, especially now, when everyone is shouting at each other about our country’s future and tearing one another apart, forgiveness seems impossible.

But forgiveness is not impossible. Well, maybe it’s impossible if we’re really on our own; but Jesus says in the Gospels that with God, all things are possible. When I was a pastor in North Carolina, I learned about a church tradition called Homecoming Sunday. Homecoming in the South is when a congregation makes a special point to open its doors wide and invite people back to church whom they haven’t seen in a while. It’s a time when former pastors are invited back to worship. Church members invite neighbors as a way of letting them see what the community’s all about. But especially, Homecoming is a time when former members who maybe have stopped coming and feel a little embarrassed or bashful have a graceful opportunity to come back to the community. Plus, there’s fried chicken, so some people just show up for that…

I didn’t understand what Homecoming was until I was a pastor in the South, it’s kind of a regional thing, but it was a major theme on the hit TV show on Netflix called Queer Eye. The episode “God Bless Gay” in the new season of Queer Eye is set in a tiny town called Gay, Georgia, and it focuses on an African American congregation just before the church’s homecoming service. One of the mothers of the church, Tammye, is planning Homecoming Sunday, and she desperately hopes that her adult son Myles will come to church. Myles had grown distant over the years since he came out as gay, and faced rejection from his family and church afterward.

Because Queer Eye is a reality makeover show, there’s lots of big reveals of new outfits, a remodeled community center, moments of being seen and heard between people who haven’t spoken in years. There’s one moment in the episode that I find particularly beautiful, when Tammye tells the group at her kitchen table about a moment she and Myles had a few years ago. She sat Myles down and said, “Baby, Mama needs to apologize because Mama hasn’t loved you unconditionally.” The remembering of that moment between mother and son is a catalyst for Myles to think about coming back to church. On Homecoming Sunday, Miles finds that not only has he changed, his home church community has become a congregation that can welcome and love him as he is. The acts of asking for forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, and then working at loving each other transforms the whole body of believers in this small town.

“Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness.” Ephesians reminds us that forgiveness is the way that God opens the door to a new Creation. When we make room for forgiving and asking for forgiveness, we discover that God has already been at work doing something new. God surprises us in the face of the other when we give and receive this love; love that is possible where there was only animosity, separation, even hatred beforehand.

What would happen if we saw forgiveness as the difficult and life-giving road to work through the crises that we’re experiencing together as a Church, as a nation? I believe that we are living through a time when we must continue to grow into the miracle of Christ’s constant forgiveness.

 

Because I look at the pictures in the newspaper of small children in detention centers: behind chain-link barriers, sleeping in flimsy foil blankets, crying out for their moms and dads, and I can’t help but think that what we’re doing to these children is beyond forgiveness. And if we are beyond forgiveness, I fear we may be beyond redemption as well.

So I search. I search for a word of comfort for myself late at night, while I’m lying in my bed at home, and those children are crammed together on a concrete floor beside armed guards. The words that come to my mind are not Brother Roger’s prayer, but the warning of the modern prophet Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. When a grave evil arises in our midst, Heschel says that few are guilty, but all are responsible.

It is at this here, at this time, when the prayer of Brother Roger becomes an invitation for this day. “Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness.” It is again the call to discipleship, to a costly grace where Jesus asks for everything that we have, everything we are, to follow him. We are his witnesses, that in Christ, God has forgiven our sins, and gathered up all things in him with the promise of redemption.

Redemption! A word that, like forgiveness, must not, cannot stand detached from this world, high on a billboard above us, hanging in the air without ever touching down in our lives. No! It is a word of freedom, in the heavenly realms and for today, this day, in real life of flesh and blood, in the lives of every frightened child in a detention center. In Christ we call for freedom for the captives today, a day for oppressed people to go free, a demand that this day these children be set free and united with their parents.

Forgiveness and redemption go together in Christ, they follow one another, the one cannot be true without the other. Because Christ is here in the faces of these children, Christ cries out with their parents who grieve, desperate for reunion. They are members of his Body, no matter how much we lock them away or try to make them disappear. We must seek forgiveness and live out that responsibility through our time, our money, our protest, our civic duties to demand a world where this does not happen. If you are wondering where and how to get involved, I recommend learning about what Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is doing to help families seeking asylum, or LALDEF (Latin American Legal Defense Fund) and its partnership with Nassau, or RAICES, a nonprofit in Texas that works with unaccompanied immigrant children facing trial. There’s no single way to get involved, but the call remains: we have to find a way to love the neighbor together.

It is in this impossible moment—when it seems that whatever we do cannot be enough—that Christ is here, promising a redemption we cannot imagine, speaking his constant call: “Follow me. Follow me through the valley of shadows and into a new world of justice and peace. Follow me and lose your life for my sake, and you will find it.” The transformation we need through forgiveness and redemption is impossible without Christ; with Christ it will surely come.

“Risen Christ, your miracle in us is your constant forgiveness.”

Amen.

 

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7 [i]
Lauren J. McFeaters
July 8, 2018
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Laughter is good medicine.

There are areas of my life where laughter abounds:

• At home – we laugh. A lot.
• With friends – we laugh. A lot.
• At Nassau – we laugh. A lot. And especially when Noel Werner is in the building.

Laughter is good medicine – in good times and in terrible times.

There’s a passage in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning where he tells about an afternoon in the Nazi camp at Terezin. Frankl says he and the other prisoners had tramped back several miles from their work site and were lying exhausted and sick and hungry in their barracks. It was winter; the days were endlessly dark, and they had marched through freezing rain.

Suddenly one of the men burst into the barracks and shouted for the others to come outside. Reluctantly they got up and staggered into the courtyard. The rain had stopped, but a bit; a little bit of sunlight was breaking through the clouds and reflecting off little pools of water on the concrete floor. And there in the midst of their horrifying days was a shimmering pool of light.

“We stood there,” Frankl says, “marveling at the goodness of the creation. We were tired and cold and sick, we were starving to death, we had lost our loved ones and would never see them again, yet there we stood, feeling a sense of reverence as old and formidable as the world itself!” [ii] And we laughed.

Today we meet laughter.

You don’t find all that much laughter in the Bible, but, when it happens, there’s nothing quite like it. Our text lands us in the desert, at the tents of Abraham and Sarah. You remember the story:  God has said to them:

Go! I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God. [iii]

So they journey to the desert and they face difficult days of intrigue and mischief:

• Abraham tells Sarah to pretend to be his sister;
• Plagues arrive;
• Ishmael is born;
• There’s so much marital conflict and maneuvering Abraham and Sarah almost forfeit God’s call and fumble the promise. [iv]

You might expect the writer of Genesis to paint the First Family ten feet tall with several coats of gold leaf. But the more we get to know them, the more inelegantly their humanity shows. [v]

So today we meet a man and a woman being unnervingly human. We’re dropped into the text just as Abraham’s nap is interrupted by God who makes a visit with a couple of angel friends. Abraham runs to them, bows before them, extends hospitality in a way that only a Bedouin sheik can: everyone gets a wash-up, takes a rest, and platters of food are brought forth – fantastic breads, luxurious meats, and out-of-this-world yogurt smoothies.

With the preliminaries out of the way, God makes a big announcement; a new promise:  Sarah will have a baby. God insists they’d better:

• dip into their pensions to build a nursery;
• pick some new paint colors;
• plan a baby shower;
• purchase a Pack ‘n Play.

And then they can’t help themselves, Abraham falls on his face; Sarah stands cackling behind the tent door. What could be more comical? [vi]

God says a baby is to be born. “Really,” Sarah thinks; “me, a postmenopausal woman – by three and a half decades – giving birth to a son?” Unless ninety is the new thirty it’s never going to happen – so she hoots and snorts, she giggles and chuckles because nothing could be more preposterous. It’s a joke.

But here’s what’s laughable.

When all the future generations of Israel rest on Sarah and Abraham having a baby, these two are not offered as examples of faith – they’re offered, as examples of disbelief. They have an incapacity to accept God’s covenant. Our text lays out the difficulties of a life of faith.

• The life of faith is a roller-coaster ride.
• The life of faith is not a reasonable act which fits into a quiet, sturdy life.
• The life of faith does not bring us a noiseless and stable life.
• The life of faith requires the shattering and crushing of what we assume is God’s will for us.
• The life of faith requires an acceptance, that as people of God, we hand God over our will and our living.

Abraham and Sarah might think they know what’s ahead, but they have no idea. They have given up on the dream to become parents. They are resigned. Laughing at the ludicrous seems the only response. In the loss of their dream: crying hasn’t worked; shouting hasn’t helped, desperation’s old school. So God meets them with a question: “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord? Anything too hard, too tough, too daunting, too difficult?

Walter Brueggemann puts it this way:  God doesn’t offer a proposition, a proposal, a bargain. In the midst of the laughter, God offers a question, because, God requires a decision. And that decision cannot be given from above. It must come from Abraham and Sarah themselves.

“Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” It’s a question each of us has to answer. And how it’s answered determines everything else.

Is anything too wonderful? I hope not.

This God of ours opens our futures and it does not depend on our readiness, or willingness, or strength of faith. God’s decision to open the future has to do with a choice:

• do I surrender myself and my will and become obedient, OR
• do I clutch to myself one more day to hold-out, to withdraw, to resist, and not fully surrender to the God who loves us. [vii]

One day, a long time ago, two people surrendered to God’s will and it changed the course of all of our lives.

And of course, in the end, Isaac’s birth requires Abraham and Sarah to act. Can’t you see them?

• old beyond their years,
• getting undressed as the stars begin to twinkle;
• slipping into bed, they kiss; they hold each other,
• they find passion –
• and guess what happened next, I bet they laughed,
• a laughter of healing,
• a laughter of what on earth are we doing,
• a laughter of wonder,
• a laughter that pours forth when you trust that nothing is too wonderful for God. [viii]

Our passage has a post-script; an endnote if you will:

The Lord dealt with Sarah as the Lord had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as the Lord had promised. Sarah conceived and bore a son. When the baby finally came, they named him Laughter —which is what Isaac means in Hebrew— Laughter,because obviously no other name would do. Abraham was a hundred years old; Sarah ninety. Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with and for me. Who would ever have said that I, Sarah, would nurse a child? Yet I have borne a son.” [ix] And I laugh. Laugh with me. Laugh.

[i]   Scripture Lesson:  Genesis 18:1-15. The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, Abraham ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. Abraham said, “My LORD, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.  Let me bring a little bread that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.”  So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. God said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.” This is the Word of our Lord. Thanks be to God.

[ii]  John Killinger. Sermon: “Of Rainbows, Geese and Wildflowers.” 30 Good Minutes ~ The Chicago Sunday Evening Club, Program 3816, January 22, 1995. Quoting Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Washington Square Press, 1959.

[iii]  Genesis 17: 7-8

[iv]   Frederick Buechner. Peculiar Treasures:  A Biblical Who’s Who. New York:  Harper & Row Publishers, 1979, 152-153.

[v]   Bill Moyers’ Genesis: A Living Conversation. Produced by Public Affairs Television, Inc., and presented on PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York. Producer/Director: Catherine Tatge, 1997.

[vi]   Frederick Buechner. Peculiar Treasures:  A Biblical Who’s Who. New York:  Harper & Row Publishers, 1979, 152-153.

[vii]   Walter Brueggemann. Genesis. Atlanta:  John Knox Press, 1982, 158-162.

[viii]  Terry Thomas Primer. “Aging with Hope and Wonder” in Aging: Christian Reflection. The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2003, 65-69. And quoting Nahum M. Sarna, ed., Genesis, The JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989, 130.

[ix]  Genesis 21:1-7

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