June 8, 2014
Romans 5:1-15
“Time to Share :(”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

I don’t like “sharing time.” It’s not that I don’t like to share my things, or my thoughts, or my time. Those moments that come when you are in a group situation and the leader announces we’re going to break into small groups now and have some sharing time. Yeah, that’s the kind of sharing time that makes me anxious. I was at a retreat two weeks ago and one of the co-leaders announced we were going to split up into groups of two and have some sharing time. She called it “pair and share.”  The only reason I didn’t look to go for a walk or pretend to take an important pastoral call on my cell was that I was the other co-leader. Those sort of scripted share something of yourself moments, they can feel forced, or not everyone wants to play, or one person is going to share A LOT. At a recent meeting, I was sitting at a table with several colleagues and we were ask to tell something about ourselves that folks wouldn’t otherwise know. I understood the purpose of the gathering was to build deeper relationships and understanding. When I was asked to go first, I shared some pretty significant vulnerabilities and things I am working on in my vocational life. The next person said she played the accordion, loved baseball, and like to knit. I’m never sure what to do when someone announces it is “time to share.”

Our text from Romans chapter five is one that this year’s Confirmation Class spent some time with; some memorized it. Since we are justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God! Sharing the glory of God. Our hope of sharing the glory of God! Paul announcing that it’s time to share the glory of God. It’s not as much that it makes me anxious; Paul and sharing. I just have no idea what it means. Sharing the glory of God. Do we divvy it up; like slices of pizza so everyone gets a little? God’s glory; have some. Do we invite everyone to join us, like jumping into a refreshing pool on a hot day? The water’s great! God’s glory. Come on in! To we each take turns with it like all the players on the hockey team that wins the Stanley Cup. They each spend time with the cup over the summer. God’s glory! Your turn.

Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. That’s one of Paul’s rhetorical equations; one of Paul’s progressions. At least we know where to start to try to wrap our heard around it. But sharing the glory of God? While we were still weak, at the right Christ died for the ungodly…God proves God’s love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us. Well you don’t get much clearer than that when it comes to a theological foundation for understanding all that Christ has done. We are reconciled to god through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled , will we be saved by his life. Boom ! Got it! But sharing the glory of God?

As it turns out, any worry about trying to figure out what on earth the Apostle Paul meant by sharing, by introducing sharing time, any attempt to try to explain it, it’s all for not. In the Greek text, there is not word here that remotely refers to sharing. There is no verb in this sentence after “boast”.  A closer Greek translation would be “We boast in the hope of God’s glory”. No sharing. We boast in hope of God’s glory. The word sharing comes only in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and a few other modern versions that clearly look to the RSV for help. No sharing here when it came to Paul. I take some solace that the Apostle apparently didn’t like sharing time all that much either. We boast in the hope of God’s glory. Strike “sharing.”

While we’re parsing things here; boast strikes an odd note in the contemporary ear. Boasting. Bragging. Taking pride in. We’ve been taught since we were knee high that nobody likes a bragger. Other translations opt for rejoice or exult. That sounds better to me. We exult in the hope of God’s glory. We also exult in our sufferings. And there at the end of the reading: We even exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. We exult in the hope of God’s glory. According to Paul, it’s who we are. It’s what we do. It’s more than just boasting about it. And for goodness sake, God’s glory is not dependent on our ability to share it. God’s glory is certainly not dependent on how well we brag about. Because of God’s mercy made known to us in Jesus Christ we have been invited into something so great, so huge, so beyond us, so marvelous; into God’s glory. The magnitude of God’s grace is so NOT dependent on us. The reach of God’s mercy, it is so beyond us. This reconciling forgiving, new life giving work of Christ, this glory of God,  yes it is there for us and yet so much greater than us.  More than our ability to talk about it, share it, choose it, spread it…..pretty much all we can do is exult in it. This hope of God’s glory.

Last March our family went to visit our daughter Hannah in Salzburg, Austria. One afternoon we took a tour of a salt mine. I discovered in the movie “The Monuments Men” that the Nazi’s hid all of the stolen art during the war in salt mines there in the region. That wasn’t mentioned on the tour. As part of the tour, everyone has to put on these thick coveralls. Even a little toddler, not more than 3, she was waddling around in the same outfit that her grandmother was wearing; and that we all wore. We boarded this little tram car with 25 or so of our non-English speaking friends from around the world and headed into this mountain. It didn’t take long to realize this mountain, this mine, this experience was a whole lot deeper, bigger, older, than any of us could really fathom. There was really no way to conceive where we were in terms of Google Earth or even a map of the mine. At one point the four of us were sliding down a two story slide, screaming with laughter like little kids. (I have been told there is, or there was a picture on Facebook). The Cook Davis family, the four of us, it was a moment of unrestrained joy for us deep inside something we really couldn’t define.

We exult in the hope of God’s glory. According to the Apostle Paul, for the followers of Jesus, that’s who we are. It’s what we do. And to you members of the Confirmation Class this year at Nassau Church, to the extent that any of this; the time you have spent together, the faith formation, the relationship building, the learning, the mentoring, the preparation of faith statements, the meeting with the elders, to the extent that any of this has just felt like “sharing time” to you, let me offer an apology. The language of joining the church; that’s not quite right either. It’s accurate in terms of voting at church meetings and being able to be an elder or deacon, what it takes to keep things moving around here. What this is, what all of this is, what a public affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ is all about, is an opportunity to exult in the hope of God’s glory. To express unrestrained joy deep inside something so big, so marvelous, so beyond us, we really can’t define it. And when the church reduces baptizing in the name of Jesus and affirming faith in what Christ has done, when the church reduces all of this to joining, like joining the National Honor Society, or joining the Debate team, or joining the Rotary, or joining a sorority, well it just makes it feel like sharing time and it can’t be all that pleasing to God.

Exulting in the hope of God’s glory is so much more than us; more than Nassau Presbyterian Church, more than this. life in a congregation like this has its ups and downs… but a taste of the indescribable magnitude of God’s mercy is everlasting. Folks find all sorts of reasons to fall away from church; they don’t like me, they don’t like the music, life is too busy, their kids are no grown, church is so yesterday….but just a snippet of the knowledge deep within that God loves you; words will never do justice to how important that is to take with you. If you judge a successful confirmation by 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’somethings and their ongoing participation in a congregation’s life somewhere, if that is the metric, the church isn’t doing so well. But the measure, the metric, the takeaway, the prayer, is that each would know all the days of your life, that nothing in life or in death can separate you from the love of God made known to us in Christ Jesus (Rom 8), and that there is no where you can go to flee from God’s presence; from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell, the right hand of God will be there to hold you (Psalm 139). Or in the words of the Confirmation Prayer that is to come, that you would know yourself to be God’s…..forever.

Back in the early spring I received an email out of the blue from a college student whose roots in faith are here at Nassau. Not long ago that college kid sat where you are sitting during confirmation…

Hi Pastor Dave

I just wanted to take a quick second to thank you for helping me establish a foundation for my faith all these years.

Though my walk with God has been turbulent at times, He surprises me every day in new and enlightening ways.

I still have the stone the church gave out after a service, probably when I was 8 or 9, and I usually carry it everywhere I go. 

I came across it doing laundry today and I thought you might like to know.

 

God surprises me every day…..or ….Exulting in the hope of God’s glory….

 

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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May 25, 2014
Acts 17:22-34
“We Will Hear You Again About This”
Rev. Joyce MacKichan Walker

 

Stories from The Acts of the Apostles don’t come up very often in the list of preaching texts shared by many denominations. They do appear now – between Easter and Pentecost. And I admit I first latched onto this text more because it was from Acts than for the particular story. Here’s why.

This past semester I taught Presbyterian Polity at the seminary. Polity is simply a form or system of government – how a city, a state, a society, in this case a church – the Presbyterian Church (USA) – governs itself. Children – polity is like the big rules at school that hardly ever change. Polity could be a code of conduct for a soccer team; or the bylaws for a corporation.

Polity is actually a pretty big deal in the Presbyterian Church. We call it “church order.” We have this book – a Constitution. That’s half of our Constitution actually – this Book of Confessions goes with it – together they’re the Constitution of the PC(USA). Church order. Teaching elders (Ministers of the Word and Sacrament), ruling elders who serve on the session,deacons who offer care to the congregation – those are all called “ordered ministries.” Order matters to Presbyterians.

Don’t worry – I’m not going to preach about PC(USA) polity. But I am going to notice out loud something about The Acts of the Apostles and polity. Presbyterian polity didn’t evolve from early church reformers wanting to be known as    people who did things decently and in order. John Calvin and John Knox didn’t go seeking a reputation that would result in us eventually being called “The Frozen Chosen!” (If you google “The Frozen Chosen,” do you know who comes up in The Dictionary of Christianese, The Urban Dictionary, and Wikipedia? Presbyterians!)

Polity wasn’t just – made up! Presbyterian polity comes from scripture – not just our polity but the polity of other Christian denominations too, and here’s where Acts comes in. A lot of how we “order” our ministry comes from The Acts of the Apostles.

Take the story of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. The disciples are all together, hanging out getting organized to tell people about Jesus. Rushing wind and tongues of fire fill the house and they all begin to speak in different languages. It’s the baptism of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised. The Holy Spirit fills them with power for their task. And that’s where Pentecostals get their name and their insistence that to be Christian means to be baptized by the Holy Spirit.

Then we come to the stories of believers all sharing everything they have with each other in Acts 2 and 4. Some Christian groups point to those stories as              the model for their organization as communities that support one another in everything, including pooled possessions. Toys are shared, bicycles and cars are used by the group, meals are multi-family, even housing can be communal. It’s their polity, and they get it from Acts.

The Roman Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession –  the belief that bishops are in a direct line of succession from the first apostles – that idea comes from Acts. Witness to Jesus Christ is passed from one generation to the next, from one bishop to the next bishop. It’s their polity.

For Presbyterians, the first selection of deacons is described in Acts 6 – seven “men of good standing, full of wisdom…faith and the Holy Spirit,” are chosen to serve the community. The apostles pray for them and lay their hands on them – a sign of blessing. A sign of taking up an ordered ministry in the church. When Nassau ordains and installs our “ordered ministers” in early September – new members of the session and of the Board of Deacons, we’ll do it the way it’s described in Acts. It’s our polity.

Being the church is a hard sell right now. “Irrelevance,” “major change,” all those “nones” – people who have no desire to check off any box indicating a religious preference, churches leaving the PC(USA) for other denominations more committed to the “basic tenets” of the faith. How should the church order its ministry in these days? I was happy to see Acts as today’s text. Acts will have a gem or two for us. And Lauren McFeaters is going to General Assembly as a voting delegate from our Presbytery in three weeks – representing us in ordered ministry. If I have an Acts text, the sermon will proclaim what the church should do to be a faithful witness to Jesus Christ in these days. How to “order” our ministry.

And when I looked at today’s story I wasn’t disappointed. Our story does offer testimony for the ordering of the church of Jesus Christ. But it’s not about “how.” It’s about “who”.

Paul in Athens is a master of reading a situation, taking stock, recognizing the danger, thinking on his feet, and inviting people to see things in a new way. He doesn’t condemn the Athenians for all the idols in the marketplace. He doesn’t say, “You’ve got it all wrong.” He doesn’t ridicule their fickleness, or even their attempt to cover all their bases with one altar to a god they might have missed!

Paul instead praises them for noticing they might have missed one. Paul praises them for worshiping the one who is unknown to them. Paul holds this altar up – “To an unknown God” and says let’s talk about this one. I actually know this one and you do too! We’re alike in this.        This God made the world and everything in it. This God is the Lord of heaven and earth. This God made all the nations that inhabit the whole earth. This God brings us all together. And this God wants us to be seeking, working at it, trying to find God. Searching is a good thing. And the best news, says Paul – This God is reachable, within our grasp, within our ability to recognize. Why? Because this God made us! We live and move and are because of this God!

Paul drives the message home: This God is a living God. Not gold. Not silver. Not stone.  Not something we create.  This God made us in God’s image. We are all God’s children – you and me. We belong to God; to this God.

Acts does indeed help us know how to order ministry in the church, but here, Paul is telling us who has already created the order that gives us life. It’s the God we are searching for. The God who made us searchers. The God we know but haven’t named. The God we have named but seek to know more. The God who is so close – within our reach, always eager to be found. Always knowing us. Always knowing where we are. Always finding us.

Justin Chambers is a Young Adult Volunteer Nassau supports in a congregation in Atlanta that ministers to many who are homeless. He heard the story of a woman who spent 7 months in prison, instead of the 7 days to which she was sentenced – simply because she got lost in the system. It started him on his journey of advocating for those who have no one. A few weeks ago Justin stood in a courtroom before a judge on behalf of a man who had been picked up for loitering. Yes, for “just hanging around, for doing nothing.” Then they discovered he had failed to appear on a previous charge,  and he hadn’t been checking in with his parole officer. When Justin was asked by the judge why he was there he said, “Your honor; I have had the pleasure of being with my friend for the past two years. I know he is not perfect, and he has a long way to go. But I ask that you remember in sentencing him that he is chronically homeless. Loitering is his life sentence. He also struggles with addiction, and mental illness that has gone untreated for many years.”

As Justin told me the story on Wednesday of this week, he recalled, “I felt powerless. He was sentenced to six months. I feel in the midst of my powerlessness I found the truest sense of my call. I was not the prosecutor, there to get a conviction. Nor the defense, seeking to get him off. I was not the judge there to sentence him. I was simply there to be with him, to walk beside him. I don’t know what I will do after this service year, that’s kind of scary. Whatever I do in the future, I want it to be grounded and rooted in the intentional act of walking with the marginalized.

Justin’s story was all wrapped up in his struggle to discern what comes next in his own life. He’s all of 23. Will he follow his parents’ dreams for him and become a lawyer? Will he try to stay connected to this prison ministry –         which captures his heart but completely drains his emotions and resources? How will he discern God’s call while looking for a paying job, a car, and health insurance? Justin is keenly aware that he is searching mightily for God. God rejoices in Justin’s searching. God has already found Justin.

A woman who lives in Trenton, who went to Guatemala on Nassau’s Mission trip to the school we support, was completely mesmerized by the beauty of the Guatemalan women’s weaving. She took pictures of the street artists, after grace-filled conversation and respectful requests for permission to do so. The following year she returned with 8½x11 color photos of the women and their work. Everywhere she went she showed her pictures, asked about the women, and delivered as many of the prints as she could to those in the photographs. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to use what she had experienced, to enrich the lives of the Guatemalan immigrants in Trenton. She herself was an artist, and a self-proclaimed seeker of the divine through many avenues I neither knew nor understood. She volunteered for years as an artist mentor in the immigrant community. Finally, this past Friday, the culmination of her dream was displayed. The parents of 20 second-grade students viewed a photo-essay of a 12- week, weaving workshop with a master weaver from Guatemala who now lives in Hopewell. She sent this notice to companions on her early trips to Guatemala:

“You are responsible for my introduction to Guatemalan culture which I have treasured ever since our visits years ago. I have finally managed to do something of significance for the Guatemalan community here in Trenton — a small beginning.”

She has been seeking God for years – searching mightily for a way to translate what she so clearly saw as divine gifts of artistry in these Guatemalan women and in herself, into service that would honor a craft and a people and a local immigrant community. God, by whatever name, rejoiced in her seeking.              God has already found Beth.

I really miss Beverly Gaventa. A New Testament professor at Princeton Seminary, she moved to Texas in 2013. Beverly was a member of this church, and, in ordered ministry, served on our session as a ruling elder. She said yes a multitude of times to teaching adult education Bible classes, and every chance I got I listened and wondered and pondered and went away both enlightened, and challenged to discover more. When I was teaching a Thursday morning class on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, she came and talked with us about all the things she was discovering about Romans while writing a new commentary on it. I miss picking up the telephone and saying, “Beverly, what’s the deal with this searching and finding thing with God in Acts?” I didn’t need to call her this week. She helped me sort out the whole “order” thing in her commentary on Acts:

These are Beverly’s words:

“Acts might be more for the church than a fund out of which to draw elements of church order. Acts might remind the church,   especially in times of malaise or crisis, that it does not belong to itself, but to the God of Israel, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and the God whose witness continues within, outside, and even in spite of the church.”[1]

Thanks for that, Beverly. And thanks Paul. We are searching. “We will hear you again about this.” So that we might live as Christians already found by God; as Presbyterians even, who do things “decently and in order.”

I second that. All in favor, say “Aye.”

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Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

May 18, 2014
I Peter 2:1-10
“Spiritual, Spiritual, Spiritual”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

            “I’m a spiritual person, just not very religious.”  Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (I Peter 2:1-5). “I am very spiritual, it’s the church that’s not for me, and all those rules” Long for the pure spiritual milk…let yourselves be built into a spiritual house….offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. “I spent some time last summer out in the Rockies, out there in Glacier National Park. It was one of the most spiritual places I have ever been.” Spiritual milk. Spiritual House. Spiritual sacrifices. “I know you didn’t know my father, but before you do his service, I want you to know he was the most spiritual person I ever met. He wasn’t much for church and stuff, but there was this groundedness, this aura, this spirit about him.”  Spiritual. Spiritual. Spiritual.

            Now, I know it is something of a job reality for me, an occupational hazard, it sort of comes with the territory of my life’s work, but I can’t be the only one here this morning constantly hearing from folks who try desperately to make a distinction between their spirituality and everything that goes on in a place like this, everything that happens when we gather here, everything that is us. It must happen at social gatherings for other professions and areas of life too. Someone going up to a conductor at a party and saying , “I am a very musical person, I just can’t stand orchestras.” Or to a banker: “You know, I really love money, I’m just not into institutions. I keep it all at my house.” Or to an educator, “I am really into learning, but the classroom, not so much.”  I guess people think and say such things all the time. I hear from a whole lot of people in all sorts of places who have come to the conclusion that spirituality is such a solitary thing.

Obviously the Christian Church does not hold the corner on the market of things “spiritual”. But more often than not, when it comes to the New Testament, reference to “spiritual” and “spiritual gifts” and things spiritual has an implication that relates to the collective; to more than just one. Paul writing in the beginning of Romans, For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Rom 1:11-12). Spiritual. Or in a more familiar way, Paul in I Corinthians 12 on spiritual gifts: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. Spiritual. Near the end of the Letter to the Galatians, Paul describes those who are spiritual as restoring someone at fault with a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted Paul writes, and Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Spiritual. And then, of course, in this morning’s text from I Peter. Spiritual milk. Spiritual house. Spiritual sacrifices.

Spiritual. Spiritual. Spiritual. The first use of the term comes in the reference to the pure milk of the gospel that provides the nurture of growing into salvation. At this point in the Greek, the word for spiritual never occurs. It is as if the translators were looking to “clarify” the earthy imagery of a baby nursing at the mother’s breast. So the milk isn’t just pure, its spiritual. When it comes to the spiritual house, a closer translation points to a present tense, a declarative, assertive connotation; not “let yourselves be built” but “you yourselves are being built”; you are being built like living stones into a spiritual house.  And as for what on earth “spiritual sacrifices” might mean; this paraphrase helps, “you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives to God.” The offering of your life, the very fullness of your life lived as Christ lived his, in service to God and in service to others. Spiritual sacrifices/

If you have tasted that the Lord is good, if you have had just a sip of the life Christ offers, then your longing for the pure milk of his gospel will so nurture you in the way of salvation, that you, as the very Beloved of God, you will find yourself being built, living, breathing stones, being built into a spiritual house. It’s like a holy priesthood, not this priest or that priest, but together, the followers of Christ Jesus, a holy priesthood, offering themselves in service to others and to God, offering themselves as Christ offered himself, together as spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

And the purpose of the house? The reason you are being built? The reason God has called you as God’s own people? It’s not that you might have a place of comfort, a spiritual spa for your soul. It’s not that you might have place to hunker down and be protected from all that the world sends your way; a spiritual hideaway. It’s not that you might have a familiar place to return to week after week, or month after month, or year after year, a spiritual campus that keeps drawing you back to what feels like home. According to the New Testament witness of the first followers of Jesus makes it very clear that “spiritual” is hardly a solitary thing.

When it comes to what goes on in place like this, what happens when we gather here, everything that is spiritual about us, it is in order that you may proclaim the might acts of the One who called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. That you PLURAL may proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you PLURAL out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. You are being built into a spiritual house in order to proclaim with the servanthood of your lives, the mighty works of God who called you from darkness into the everlasting, life-giving, resurrection-victorious marvelous light of God. Spiritual. Spiritual. Spiritual.

Last fall, one of the activities surrounding the inauguration of Craig Barnes as President of Princeton Theological Seminary was a lecture given here in our sanctuary by University Professor Robert Wuthnow. The title of the lecture was “Faith Communities and the Challenge of Contemporary Culture.” Near the end of his presentation Dr. Wuthnow raised significant questions about the image, the characterization, the metaphor of the church as community. He argued that studies show that understandings of, the experience of, the practice of community is dramatically changing. He challenged some of his colleagues in sociology who argue for the decline or the end of community (Re: Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone.) Wuthnow contends that the evidence shows community isn’t gone, it is, especially for younger and next generations, it’s just different. Folks experience in different ways, they find it different ways, including electronically and virtually. So the church ought to acknowledge that offering community will not be, if you will excuse the expression, in the core of the business model moving forward. In a kind of provocative way, Wuthnow challenged all the pastors in the room to place a moratorium on the use of the term community. His take was in the world in which we live people are finding it elsewhere and frankly you don’t do it so well anyway….offer community.

Not surprisingly, during the question and answer period, it was that section of the lecture that came up. The seminary alums who spoke resonated with the argument about the church and community. You can understand why; in many congregations, in many parts of the country, the nature of fellowship and care and time spent and personal investment and community is not the same as it once was in the church. Pastors respond affirmatively to the independent sociological evidence because that’s what they have experience and when church members and church shoppers and church leavers lament that things ain’t what they used to be, it’s very often the pastor’s fault.

But here’s the pushback to Professor Wuthnow on the church and community: maybe the community stuff will never be the same; the fellowship, the coffee hours, the potluck suppers, the everybody knows your name part, the 50 year members raised your kids together, that 3 generation families group that still gets together here at Nassau, maybe they will have trouble finding their next participant. But when it comes to everything that goes on in a place like this, everything that happens when we gather here, everything that is us; there is still an essential  collective aspect to what this is. There is still something that goes on here when we are together that you can’t do by yourself. It has to do with a New Testament understanding of being spiritual. A New Testament understanding of being built into a spiritual house. A New Testament understanding of our proclamation: in order that you may proclaim the might acts of the One who called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. 

Proclaiming with the servanthood of our lives the mighty works of God. The reason it works better when we are together is not simply because many voices make for more volume. The theory here about group proclamation is not an exponential one; it’s not about multiplying our witness into a bigger witness. It’s much more of a tag-team approach, or an “I have your back approach” or a redundancy built in approach. You know this because you have seen it, you have experienced it. Some days, some Sundays, some weeks, some months, some whole seasons of life, when it comes to proclaiming and serving and glorifying, there is someone else doing the heavy lifting. And then there are those times when you are bringing it for someone else. As sure as I am standing here before you, I can tell you that someone here this morning has no breath of praise in them, no drop of joy deep down in their heart, and we’re still going to sing for them. Someone here who gave of themselves in service to others for more years than we can count, and darn it, they just aren’t sure if they have the strength to make it down the hall to lunch tomorrow. So, it’s our turn to serve for them. There is someone whose faith is slipping and they will tell me and you that when it comes to God, or prayer, or salvation, or meaning, today…not so much. So we’re going belief for them, bring them along with us, carry them with us, proclaim for them. Maybe it’s not community; but it’s church.

I don’t want you to misunderstand my point as it comes to things spiritual. My conversations with my spiritual director about my life in God, they are a life line to my soul. But when it comes to glorifying and proclaiming all that God has done, I can’t do that without you.  A weekend silent retreat up at the monastery on the Hudson may be an essential when it comes to your walk with God, but when it comes to glorifying and proclaiming all that God has done, we can’t do it without you. The morning prayer, the mountain climb, the trip to Iona, the desert walk, the Labyrinth, the meditation, the yoga, the breath prayer, all of what you may do to nurture the deepest part of your relationship to God, all of it is in service to glorifying God! And when it comes to glorifying and proclaiming all that God has done, we absolutely need each other. Because it is so much bigger than us.

The mountains and the hills bursting into song. The trees of the field clapping their hands. (Isaiah). The stones themselves starting to shout (Jesus). A great multitude that no one can count, from every tribe and people and language standing before the Lord and starting to sing (Revelation). And you and I here, now… being built like living stones into a spiritual house.

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

May 4, 2014
Luke 24:13-35
“Take. Bless. Break. Give”
David A. Davis

Take. Bless. Break. Give. According to Luke, when the Risen Lord was at table with his disciples, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Take. Bless. Break Give. In the 9^th chapter, Luke tells of the feeding of the 5,000. The twelve came to Jesus and told him to send the crowds away so that they could find lodging and food. “This place is too deserted”, they said to Jesus. You remember that Jesus told the disciples to give them something to eat. So, there with five loaves and two fish and a crowd of 5,000 sitting in groups of about 50, Jesus took the loaves and the fish, and blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. Take. Bless. Break. Give. Of course that was before the night when, as Luke puts it, “the hour came, and he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him.” That night, after he took a cup and gave thanks and told the disciples to divide it among themselves, Luke records that “Jesus took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” Take. Bless. Break. Give.

It would be difficult for even casual readers of the gospel to miss the intentional repetition of the four-fold action of Jesus. Take. Bless. Break. Give. The language, the description of the action, every time you come upon it, it suggests holy communion, Lord’s Supper, eucharist. Take. Bless. Break. Give. When you hear it, you ought to think, Lord’s Supper. It is as if the words are communion’s theme song. Or we could take the four words and make them into a creative logo for a Eucharistic service. Take. Bless. Break. Give. Many would argue that when the church gathers at the Lord’s Table, those words and that action, they rest at the very heart of the sacrament. The four words and the symbolic actions that go with it. Theologian Michael Welker argues that word and element (bread, wine) aren’t enough to define the sacrament; but word, element and symbolic action constitute the sacrament. Take. Bless. Break. Give.

So it is easy to understand how the tradition of the church defines the Emmaus Road as a Eucharistic, Holy Communion, Lord’s Supper like appearance of the Risen Christ. In our communion practice here at Nassau Church, the most repeated invitation, most by far, is the direct quote from here in Luke 24, the Emmaus Road: “According to Luke, when the Risen Lord was at table with his disciples, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.”  Notice how the liturgy never includes, “and he vanished from their sight” At the Lord’s Table we rarely, if ever point out that after the Risen Jesus came near and went with the two, as their eyes were kept from recognizing him and he asked about what they were discussing along the way, you don’t much hear about how they stood still, looking sad. With all of the attention paid to “Take. Bless. Break. Give” there’s no way we’re going hear much about how those two disciples said to the Risen Jesus, “We had hoped that he was the One”.  Had hoped.  As in no longer hoping. “Had hoped” can’t really compete for the church’s attention, can’t compete  with “Take. Bless. Break. Give”. Had hoped. It is what one writer calls a “painfully imperfect tense” because it confirms that for those two, the events of the last few days had “brought an end to the habit of hoping.”

It’s not that the Emmaus Road account in Luke doesn’t just drip with the all the communion imagery one can squeeze out it. It’s all there. As Luke puts it, “Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” But the Emmaus Road., it would seem, ought to be something other than an overly romanticized communion story, something other than a warm and fuzzy telling of a resurrection appearance of Jesus that is used to bolster our piety and keep the  Easter mojo going. Those two, Cleopas and the other one, they were going to Emmaus because they were done. They had had it. They were giving up. Looking sad and with no hope. They were throwing in the towel, leaving Jerusalem, picking up their marbles and going home.

I was teaching a class in Presbyterian Reformed worship over at the seminary a few years back. One morning we were discussing a Presbyterian understanding of  the Lord’s Supper and how it informs both faith and practice. One of the students shared that some of the most powerful experiences of Christ’s presence came not in church but around a table with good friends and fellow believers, great conversation, a lot of love, a bottle of wine; one of those meals you never want to end. The question was why should the sacrament be restricted to the church or to the clergy or to the liturgy. A good conversation followed and I tried to distinguish between a sacrament and things sacramental; the ordinary in life made holy by the presence of Christ. Another thought occurred to me this week as I remembered that classroom discussion and thought more about the Emmaus Road.  The “Take. Bless. Break. Give” gospel accounts that I described earlier, could not be more different than a wonderful evening among friends. 5,000 hungry people in a place too deserted. A night of betrayal. And a post-crucifixion walk of despair where, even if in fleeting way, the sad and hopeless disciples experienced the Risen Christ just enough to be able to return and tell the others, “He has risen indeed!”

Emmaus Roads don’t start in mountain retreat centers where the faithful go to be refreshed. They don’t start at a coffee shop called Emmaus with a sign that says “the best conversations happen here”. They don’t start where signs say “pilgrimage this way” or you’re your sabbath start here”. Emmaus Roads start amid despair. They come out from places of suffering. Where sadness reigns. Emmaus Roads begin where hope is crushed and questions abound and disappointment carries the day. The promise of the gospel is that along roads like that the Risen Christ draws near and goes with us. That on roads like that the Risen Christ is revealed in the fleeting and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. On roads like that, our hearts burn within, knowing that nothing in life or in death shall be able to separate us from the love of God. Emmaus Roads are the roads where Christ is made known not just in the breaking of the bread, but in the taking, blessing, breaking, giving of our lives; where often with clenched teeth, or tear-filled eyes, or with a shaking fist of determination, or with a bone weary sigh, we still find ourselves moved to say “Christ is Risen”

I found myself on an Emmaus Road just this Thursday night. For some time now, May 1^st has been celebrated as a National Day of Prayer. After a service held on the steps of Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, I joined some of my colleagues in the United Mercer Interfaith Organization in a prayer vigil that moved through the city, stopping at each of the places where the 11 murders in 2014 have occurred. We stopped in front of homes, on street corners, at Liquor stores, convenience stores, and along the canal. We were in every part of the city. We prayed to end the violence. We prayed for victims families and perpetrators and for young people in the city. There were about 12 of us. Half clergy and half women from Shiloh who are the prayer leaders of that congregation. As we walked up Heil Street to make another stop. One of the women asked if we could stop for a moment and she went to knock at a friend’s house. The parents of Cagney Roberts lived there. He was the 19 year old man shot and killed last month in front of a mini mart. It was his funeral disrupted by gun fire outside the church. His parents came outside so that we could pray for them. Neighbors heard us and came to join the prayer circle. We prayed. We sang. Some shouted. Those parents wept and wept and wept. At one point the Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, he worked his way to each of them and he raised his voice above the cacophony of prayer that wasn’t sounding very Episcopalian, and he laid hands on a brokenhearted father and a brokenhearted mother in the name of the Risen Jesus. The only prayer I could muster with words, was to say to myself, pretty much in a whisper, “Christ is Risen!” Yes, it was an Emmaus Road.

What makes the resurrection promise of God so powerful and so real, is that it doesn’t begin here in the sanctuary where we gather to be our Easter best, it doesn’t begin with the symbolic action of our sacramental life, it doesn’t begin with the festival of our praise and worship. No, the resurrection promise of God begins when the Risen Christ comes near and goes along with us. That by his grace, Christ comes near and by his presence makes the earthiness of our lives down right holy. That amid despair and lost hope, Christ is present. That when joy and celebration abound, Christ is present. When the journey of life is grinding way and ordinary comes with a capital “O”, Christ is present. Christ comes near and goes with us; that in bits and pieces, in fits and starts, in fleeting glimpses and with burning hearts, we might be assured again and again of God’s resurrection power. It is a power that shall bring peace out of unending violence, a power that shall bring healing and reconciliation out of a river of bitterness, and hatred, and racism that never seems to subside, a power that shall bring strength and perseverance even when knees are weak and souls are tired, a power that shall allow life, life abundant and life everlasting to rise even where death and darkness rule.

There is an Emmaus Road for you. Yes, because Christ invites you here. Take. Bless. Break. Give. But the Emmaus Road, it starts long before you get here. For the Risen Christ comes near and will walk along with you today, and tomorrow, and forever.

March 2, 2014
Matthew 17:1-13Youth Sunday

Theresa Christensen
Anders Berg
Chandler Windom

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