Acts 2:1-21
David A. Davis
June 9, 2019
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A sound like the rush of a violent wind…..and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them…..and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem, a crowd gathered and bewildered at the sound…..and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Amazed and astonished, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs…..  and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

All were amazed and perplexed because they each could hear them speaking in their own language, telling about all that God had done…. and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. When they listened to Peter preach, when he is preached about how everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved and that the every one should know with certainty that God has made this Jesus both Lord and Messiah, the bible says that they were cut to the heart….and that they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. According to Luke here in Acts, 3,000 people were baptized and added that day, many wonders and signs were done by the apostles, awe came upon everyone…..and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together, they would sell their possessions and goods and share proceeds according to who was in need, they spent much time together in the temple, broke bread in their homes, ate food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people….and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.

I have told you before about the first lecture I heard as a seminary student on the Holy Spirit. It was my introduction to theology class. The professor was David Willis. Dr. Willis often read from his bible in class. Maybe he opened every class with scripture, I can’t quite remember. What I do remember is that when his bible was opened, he would take a 3 by 5 note card and sweep the crumbs from his breakfast off the page. Crumbs of toast and maybe some eggs tossed into the front row. You may hear that and think it sounds kind of gross. Or, you may hear that and think about him reading his bible at breakfast table. At one point during the lecture, Dr. Willis stopped his lecture, looked up from his notes, stepped in front of the lectern, and shouted, “The Holy Spirit matters!” He let out a laugh, and yelled it again. “The Holy Spirit matters! And I mean that in every possible way!” He went on to tell of a fellowship hour conversation with a woman after worship. She was announcing to Dr. Willis, the guest preacher for the day, her disillusionment with her church and the lack of the Holy Spirit. During that conversation, people from the church kept coming up to her and asking for her health, offering a touch on the arm, mentioning they had been praying for her in the aftermath of some illness. Surrounded by the fellowship of the church, the witness of prayer, the touch of concern, the smell of coffee hour, the professor confessed that he found the woman’s take on the Holy Spirit ironic.

Here she was surrounded by what the preacher in the Book of Hebrews calls “ the great cloud of witnesses”. A rag tag, run of the mill, a feeble flock. A group of people that the cynics of the world often refer to as a “church full of hypocrites.” Broken followers of Jesus just trying to devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles, fellowship with one another, the breaking of bread, and prayer. Dr. Willis turned again to the class that morning and bellowed, “The Holy Spirit matters!” And he took his hands and rubbed his fingers together. He might as well have said, “When it comes to the Holy Spirit, lower your expectations”.

In all these years of pastoral ministry, I have long since given up questioning or doubting when someone honors me with the sharing of a profound, inexplicable spiritual experience that has moved them deeply and has great meaning for them.  I just listened to another one Friday morning. To share examples of what folks have shared with me seems like sharing something too intimate, too raw, too confidential. But along with those profound, mystical experiences that stretch the boundaries of comprehension, these years of ministry have also brought me to lower my expectations of the Holy Spirit. I don’t mean that in a diminutive way at all. Rather, it is affirming a role of the Holy Spirit that matters. Or, having the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to believe that God is present and active and moving in the ordinary places of our lives. Or to put in church terms, in our teaching and learning of the gospel, our fellowship, our breaking of bread, and our prayer.

The theologian Karl Barth once wrote that the miracle of preaching is not that the preacher finds something to say each week. The miracle is that people come back week after week expecting to the preacher to have something say. They come each week expecting to hear and experience a word from the Lord. Every preacher knows the experience of standing at the church and having someone say, “pastor, it was like you were speaking directly to me this morning!” The person goes on to reiterate what was heard, what the preacher said. And, of course , in her head the pastor is thinking I don’t recognize a word of what the person thought I just said in that sermon. The Holy Spirit matters.

I have had a similar thing happen to me when I am visiting the hospital far too many times to count. When pastors go to visit someone in the hospital, being able to see family members is as important, sometimes maybe more important than seeing the patient. So it can be a disappointment when those family aren’t there. An example might be when someone is in surgery and the pastor was hoping to sit with a loved one for a while. Or the patient is asleep and there is no one else in the room at the time so you just have to leave a note.  Often when that happens, the pastoral visitor goes looking around just hoping to see a family member. Check the waiting areas. The lobby, Look in the cafeteria or the coffee shop. So, so many times, I don’t find folks in those areas. More often, I turn a corner and they’re walking down the hall. Or the elevator door opens and there they are. Just last Sunday after a visit at Capital Health in Trenton, I was leaving through the lobby after a brief visit to see a church member and the spouse was just walking in. No, I don’t think God and the Holy Spirit give much of a hoot about you finding a parking spot but I do believe the Holy Spirit matters.

I’ve told you before about the lecture from Dr. Willis on the Holy Spirit. I haven’t told you about an upsetting youth group experience of the Holy Spirit I had as a freshman in high school back in 1977. That year several young adult church members were serving as youth group advisors. In my Presbyterian church in the south hills of Pittsburgh there was growing small group that considered itself charismatic and strongly in touch with the Holy Spirit. Two of the youth advisors were part of that small group. One Sunday evening after fellowship, those two advisors, Sue and DJ, asked a few of us in the youth group to stay after for prayer. The youth pastor, I am guessing, had no idea. I know he wasn’t around when we went into the sanctuary. The sanctuary was about this size and it was dark except for the lights turned on in the chancel. We circled up in the split chancel, the pulpit on one side, a lectern on the other. We circled up for prayer. The young adults explained to us that they were going to pray over each of us one at a time so that we might receive the Holy Spirit’s gift of speaking in tongues.

We took turns in the center of the circle with everyone else laying hands on us. The older folks prayed out loud. When DJ prayed, he spoke words that made no sense. Words that  didn’t sound like a language. I figured that he was speaking in tongues. I had heard about it, read about from the Apostle Paul, but never heard it or anything like it. For what seemed like a long, long time we were there in that chancel. As far as I could tell, none of the Youth Group members received the gift of tongues that night. The reaction from the advisors was a mixture of disappointment and “we’ll try again later”. The Holy Spirit just didn’t come this time was their conclusion. I went home convinced I wasn’t good enough and wondering why the Holy Spirit wouldn’t come that night.

Decades later, college, graduate school, years of ministry later. Countless small groups, prayers groups, clergy groups later. Years of ministry, several spiritual directors later. Having told that story many, many times, it was only a few years ago, when someone, I can’t remember who, when someone heard that story from me gave a response I never considered. Instead of lamenting with me over what I have sometimes described as “spiritual abuse”, or giving me the proverbial pat on the back about an upsetting memory I can recall in such vivid detail, the person said, “well, clearly that prayer was answered.”  The look on my face must have indicated I didn’t understand so there was a follow up. “Well, you’ve been preaching for what, 25, 30 years? And your pretty good at it. That sounds like tongues to me.” Or in other words, the Holy Spirit matters.

When I teach over at the seminary or grab coffee with a student who wants to talk about preaching, inevitably the questions turn to the process of sermon preparation, sermon writing, sermon delivery. Amid all the technical question, a bigger question in play. “How do you it every week?” My answer is always the same. I’ve been doing this a long time, and week after week after week, God has never, ever, ever let me down. Certainly every sermon is not great but there has always been a word and you always come back. Some of you always come back. I’ve never had to say, “This morning we’re going to have a hymn sing”. A lot of Sundays, a lot, and God is faithful…..still. And I have learned that the Holy Spirit matters.

Every time I remember the confidence I have, the certainty I have that God will meet me here, that God is present with us here, that the Holy Spirit is here, then comes the prayer, my prayer, our prayer, that God will give us that confidence, that certainty, that assurance that God will meet us out there. That God is present with us out there. That the Holy Spirit is out there.

That God will fill our hearts with knowledge and the comfort that the Holy Spirit surely matters.

 

Romans 5:1-5
David A. Davis
June 16, 2019
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Always? “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” Always? “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” Never? “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” 100? 100%? 100% of the time? Hope does not disappoint? “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us???” Ever?

Last week I stood before you on Pentecost Sunday and told you that when it comes to the weekly sabbath rhythm of my preaching life, God has never, ever, ever let me down when it comes to having a word to offer on Sunday morning and that it is a testament to the grace of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This morning I stand before you with these words of Paul: “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us”. And I am not at all as sure. Always? It’s sort of like hearing someone try to drop the mic with Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” And the reaction, the voice in the head, the first thought is “all things?’ Really? Always?

Our partners at the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church long ago shared with us a congregational response of praise deeply ingrained in their worship life. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. We just want to thank you Lord.” The second verse is “Been so good” repeated just like “thank you, Lord”. We sing it here every now and then as our response of praise. We probably sing it  every time we worship together with Witherspoon Street Church. One Sunday at the church door, a visitor came through and with her first words said to me: “you know it hasn’t been good!” I had no idea what she meant, what she was saying. But there was tone of frustration, maybe a bit of anger. “It hasn’t been so good. It is NOT SO good.” And she turned and walked down the steps before I could say another word. I was sort of speechless anyway (which doesn’t happen to me all that often.) Maybe I I should have said “It was just a song!” That would have upset the musicians I work with and the choir would stop speaking to me. Or maybe I should have called to her down the steps, “You’re right, you know”.

“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” Always? The Apostle Paul, ever the poet, the lyricist, the hymn writer, putting to text the aspirations and the longings of the Christian life. Painting with words the promised landscape of life in Christ.  Just a song?

You will remember that some of the Apostle Paul’s best stuff, the most memorable phrases, the most powerful scripture comes when he is writing in the first person. “I  have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2) “ I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (I Corinthians 2) “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3) Paul use of the plural pronoun here  in the memorable, poetic verses of Romans 5 ought not be missed. The “we” is important; Paul’s theological pronoun choice. “We are justified by faith. We have peace with God. This grace in which we stand. We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.”

The hope and promise of sharing the glory of God. It is hope and promise to and for the body of Christ. It’s a collective, fellowship, community, group effort kind of thing. Every Sunday when we gather here you should look around take in the collective hurt, struggle and suffering in the room. You don’t have stand here where I stand to be struck by the collective pastoral concern. Take a moment to try to fathom the collective endurance in the room. You ought to be inspired by the collective character in the room. Allow your own heart to soak up the collective hope that is in the room. Because when the suffering is on one side of the room on a Sunday, the hope might be on the other side. When the struggle is so very real, so is the endurance….when we’re together. No, not all suffering is for good. Using theological language, not all suffering is redemptive. Suffering is not what God intends. Here in the body of Christ, the call is to care for those who suffer. Your character may be shaped when you sit with the broken-hearted, when you visit the sick, when you work to eliminate the cause of another’s suffering, when you advocate for the long suffering. For the people of God, for the followers of Jesus, for the body of Christ, according to Paul, hope? Our hope? Our hope is in the sharing of the glory of God.

“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” Always? I don’t know about you, but the only way for me to wrap my head around it, is to try to do it, try to live into it, try to proclaim it…..together with you.

Over the years hear at Nassau Church, one of my faculty mentors at the seminary kept giving me books by Nicholas Wolterstorff who taught theology and philosophy at Yale for a long time. I realize now that my teacher and friend knew that reading Wolterstoff would make me a better pastor. Even after my encourager retired, the Wolterstorff books kept coming. One, entitled “Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church, and the World” came in Lent 2012 with the inscription, not from Wolterstorff, but from my teacher, “with deep appreciation for your call to Nassau Church.”

In the preface to that collection of essays, Wolterstorff shares his spiritual autobiography in a short piece entitled “The Grace that Shaped my Life.” With honest and moving prose, the author tells of how his understanding of God and the grace that shaped his life changed in the aftermath of the tragic and accidental death of his son. “God was always majesty for me, indescribable majesty” Wolterstorff writes, “and graciousness, goodness; God is the one who blesses, a blessing calling for gratitude. To be human is to be that point in the cosmos where God’s goodness is meant to find its answer in gratitude. John Calvin told me that” he writes. You see his point, the grace that shapes us, to stand in grace is to be up to your eyeballs in gratitude. Suffering, endurance, character, hope….. and you darn well ought to be thankful through it all.

But then everything was different, the author goes on. When he could see no majesty. When, in his grief, he could see nothing at all, nothing but dark clouds hiding the face of God. Then when clouds started to lift, only slowly lift, “what I saw then” he writes,  “was tears, a weeping God, suffering over my suffering. I had not realized that if God loves this world, God suffers. I had thoughtlessly supposed that God loved without suffering. …..I do not  know what to make of this; it is for me a mystery….The gospel has never been presented to me as best explanation, most complete account….life eternal doesn’t depend on getting all the questions answered.” Standing in grace for Wolterstorf no longer meant being a pillar, an exclamation point for gratitude. Rather, it meant being washed, being filled with the love of God. “I knew that divine love was the key. But I had not realized that the love that is the key… is suffering love.”

“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” Always? We may never figure it out. But suffering, endurance, character and hope, before it has anything to do with us, it has everything to do with God. The God we know in and through the love, compassion, and suffering of Jesus Christ. The suffering of Jesus Christ and the suffering of God.

God’s suffering love, to use Paul’s language, poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. God’s suffering love, not just sprinkled, or infused, or sprayed, or dabbed, but poured, poured into our hearts. When there are no answers, and the explanations won’t do, how about just the promise of God’s love pouring. God’s suffering love pouring, drenched with tears.

“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hopes does not disappoint us” Always? The Apostle Paul. Sometimes he reads like a drill sergeant (put on the whole armor of God), or a coach (press on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus), or a revival preacher (death where is your victory, O grave where is your sting) or a motivational speaker (therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the works of the Lord, knowing in the Lord, your labor is never in vain). Paul can be, Paul is all of that. And today, here in Romans 5, maybe more like a poet, or a well-worn member of the body of Christ, or just like one of us, any one of whose been through a lot, a whole lot when it comes to God and life and suffering and endurance and character and hope, just one of us who wants to find a way to say to you and to me: “you don’t have to it figure out, and you don’t have to take me at my word, I’m not explaining, I’m just telling you, that for me, that for us, that’s how it is when the love of God just pours into your heart.”

 

 

 

Acts 16:16-34
David A. Davis
June 2, 2019
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Early on in the Gospel of Luke, a synagogue leader named Jairus comes to Jesus, falls at his feet and begs him to come to his house and heal his twelve year old daughter who is dying. When Jesus and Jairus get to the house, they are told that the daughter had died. Jesus says, “Do not fear. Only believe, and she will be saved.” Jesus goes into the house with only Peter, John, and James. He takes her by the hand and he calls out to the girl, “Child, get up!” As Luke tells it, her spirit returns and she gets up. Jesus tells them all to give her something to eat.

Only a few verses later in Luke, the crowds following Jesus find out he is near the city of Bethsaida. They all come to see him and Luke records that Jesus welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed any who needed it. At the end of the day the disciples come to Jesus and tell him to send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and towns and find a place to stay and get something to eat. Jesus says to the twelve “You give them something to eat”. And that’s when he fed thousands with five loaves and two fish with twelve baskets of leftovers.

The story of Mary and Martha is in Luke. Some will remember that back in Lent, I strongly suggested that Jesus didn’t rebuke Martha when she was preparing a meal for him. He was offering a word of encouragement. A promise. A plea. That amid her welcoming and serving him, that she would not lose sight, not be distracted, not forget, not lose sight of…him. It was not a rebuke of her kindness. Because also in Luke, Jesus has strong words for Simon the Pharisee who condemned the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet. “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.” 

In Luke, when Jesus calls Zacchaeus out of the tree and tells Zacchaeus that he is coming to his house today, Luke writes that “Zacchaeus hurried down and was happy to welcome Jesus.” It is in Luke that Jesus tells of the Samaritan who offered care to the man who had been beaten and robbed and left in a ditch to die. Luke says “he took care of him”. The father who calls for the greatest of feasts when his lost son comes home, Jesus tells that one in Luke. At the end of the first resurrection day in Luke, the Risen Jesus walks a long way with the two travelers who do not recognize him. They walk long enough and far enough for Jesus to tell them “all the things about himself in all the scriptures.” And even before they know it is him, at the end of the day and at the end of the long, hot, dusty walk, Luke tells that two “urged Jesus strongly, saying ‘stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’”

            And yes, on the night of his betrayal and arrest, Jesus gathers is disciples around the table to share in a meal. When Matthew and Mark tell of that table moment, Jesus gets right to the “one of you will be betray me tonight” part. Those are his first words at the table recorded by Matthew and Mark. But in Luke, before Jesus calls out the betrayal, before Jesus shares the bread and the cup, Jesus says to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” That is Jesus saying to the disciples, I so want to share this meal with you. I am so looking forward to having dinner with you.

The Gospel of Luke and the hospitality of faith. The scholarly tradition affirms that Luke is the writer of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. In arrangement of the canon of the New Testament, John’s gospel is tucked in between Luke and Acts. But an accepted short hand reference to the two, the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostle, is simply Luke-Acts.  So the reader who has soaked in Luke and the hospitality of faith all through the gospel is not surprised by Luke’s description in Acts of the Christian community after Pentecost. Luke’s snapshot of life for the people of the Way. “Day by day”, Luke writes, “as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”

            All of which, all of it, all the preparing and sharing of meals and serving one another and the welcome offered and the tending to hurts, it all brings us to a reading of the text offered for your hearing this morning; Paul, Silas and the baptism of the jailer and his whole household. Paul and Silas are heading to the place of prayer when they meet a young slave girl who is a fortune teller. In the language of scripture, “she had a spirit of divination”. The slave owners made money off of her by forcing her to tell others their future. Paul calls out her spirit for apparently no other reason than that she keeps following them around and shouting that they are proclaiming a way of salvation. Her shouting, her following, her presence is annoying to Paul so he calls out her spirit. Whatever and however our post-modern minds are to think about all of it, the point is that Paul took away income from her slave owners. Even in the bible, it’s always about the money. They are arrested, beaten and tossed in prison.

Late at night there in their cell, Paul and Silas are praying and singing. They are worshiping together loud enough for all the other prisoners to hear. Then comes an earthquake that rattles the prison doors open and makes the chains fall off. The jailer wakes up, assumes that all the prisoners are gone and draws his sword to kill himself rather than face the wrath of the authorities sure to come. “Do not harm yourself, we are all here”, Paul shouts. The jailer takes them outside, calls for some lights and asks “What must I do be saved?” Paul and Silas answer him, “Believe on the Lord Jesus,  and you will be saved, you and your household.” They then spent some time teaching and proclaiming the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in the house. He didn’t just take them outside, he took them to his house. And that same hour, right away, just after they were done sharing the gospel with him, “he took them and washed their wounds; then…. then the jailer and his entire family were baptized without delay.” Presumably with the same water the jailer fetched to wash their wounds. “The jailer brought them up into the house and set food before them; and his and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.”

            So much scripture worthy stuff to catch the eye, spark the imagination, and qualify the story of Paul, Silas, and the jailer’s conversion for a spot there on the memorable bible story shelf.  Conversion, baptism, violent earthquake, angry mob, slave girl crying out, hymns, prayers, spirit of divination, word of the Lord, flogging, midnight prison worship, doors flung open, chains falling off, sword drawn,  household baptism, rejoicing, believing in God, and a memory verse too! “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” But there is an essential piece, a Lucan touch, a not minor detail that should not be overshadowed by an earthquake, a prison break, and even a conversion. A piece Luke wouldn’t want the reader to miss.

“He took them and washed their wounds….He brought them up into the house and set food before them.”  A careful reader of Luke cannot just pass that by. When you read Luke you can’t miss the care, the servant-hood, the generosity, the most basic of human dignity, respect, and kindness. Before the jailer was even baptized he washed the wounds. In the aftermath of listening to Paul and Silas speak the word of the Lord, he washed their wounds. In the wake of a violent earthquake that shook the jailer to his very core, he washed their wounds and gave them something to eat. In what is clearly portrayed and understood as a divine liberation, not just the liberation of Paul and Silas from a prison cell but the jailer’s liberation unto salvation, he washed their wounds, took them up into his house, and set food before them. The jailer’s conversation to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, it comes with, it is synonymous with, it is intertwined with his caring, serving, and being kind. For Luke, the baptism of the jailer and his whole household cannot be separated from the hospitality of faith.  Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will love your neighbor as yourself.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”  I never understood the choice for and English translation “believe on” instead of “believe in”. It’s the same preposition in Greek: in/on. “Believe on” sounds strange and doesn’t make sense. But it does makes it more memorable. Many, many years ago I was meeting with a family to prepare for the funeral of a husband and father and grandfather. They weren’t members and I had never met them before. The first thing his widow said to me was that we was not a church going man but faith was important to him. Every Thanksgiving, he would say the same prayer before dinner, she said. And the whole family said together, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” During the conversation I asked the kind of questions I always ask. “Tell me what you remember about your father.” “What was he like?” “What do want to make sure is said about him?” And for the longest time, there was a long awkward silence. Question after question and nothing. Finally, his daughter said something like, “To be honest, Reverend, my father was just not a very nice man. He was always critical of my mom, he was mean to us, and he didn’t have anytime for his grandchildren. He didn’t have much good to say about anyone or anything.”

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and know that the gospel has everything to do with how you treat other people. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and for his sake, be kind, and loving, and welcoming, and serving. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and remember that, in fact, the little things make a difference. It’s not just the Gospel of Luke and the hospitality of faith. It’s the gospel and the hospitality of faith. It’s the teaching of Jesus and the hospitality of faith.

There is so much hatred, and bitterness, and bigotry, and nastiness, and yelling, and name calling. And while so many are so busy arguing with and at each other, another killer walks into an office and kills twelve people who are just trying to do their jobs and serve a local community. I’ve long since grown weary of standing before you after another mass shooting and trying to have something to say. And I sort of feel the same way about trying to find words about the mind blowing and heart wrenching rise of weaponizing hate and mean-spirited rhetoric. But I will never grow weary, never stop, never give up proclaiming to you that gospel of Jesus Christ is telling you to be kind, and loving and that we absolutely have to make a difference in the world and model for our children and our grandchildren the more excellent way. You and I, the body of Christ at Nassau Church and the hospitality of faith.

Believe on the Lord Jesus and live like it. Live like it makes a difference….for you.

Acts 16:9-15
Andrew Scales
May 26, 2019
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Audio Only.

Revelation 21:1-7
Mark Edwards
May 19, 2019
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We don’t talk much about monsters here at Nassau Presbyterian Church.

The Book of Revelation, which we’ve been selectively reading and preaching from this past month, and from which I have just read, has some fantastic monsters in it.  It tells of a “great beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads” (13:1). It tells of a “great red dragon” with a tail that “swept down a third of the stars in the heavens” (12:3-4).   It tells of “another beast that rose out of the earth” with “horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon” (13:11).  This latter beast is the infamous beast numbered “six hundred sixty six” (12:18).  Interestingly, given that the original languages that John, the author of Revelation, had access to and likely employed- Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew—given that these languages did not use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc), each letter in the alphabet also has a numerical value. Thus “666” could be another way of referencing the Caesar Nero whose numerical total in Hebrew is “666.”^[1] We don’t talk much about Nero.

 

The OT book of Isaiah has some beautiful monsters in it: the Seraphim that Isaiah sees flying around the throne of God: they have six wings and cover their feet and faces (Is. 6:2).  These are the monsters that sing “Holy, Holy, Holy (6:3)”  We like that part, but we don’t talk much about the monsters. In Revelation, when these creatures reappear, their faces are uncovered and they have heads of different animals, and they are full of eyes all around their heads- they see everything. Again they are singing, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY.”  If were were medieval Christians living in Constantinople, now Istanbul, worshiping at the Hagia Sophia (built in 537!)- one of the great masterpieces of world architecture (and in fact the world’s largest building at the time), we’d have these mysterious and bizarre seraphim right above our heads on the four main pillars of the church, holding up the massive dome. But here, now, we are Presbyterians and we don’t talk too much about monsters.  We don’t decorate our sanctuary with them, instead choosing the proclamation of the Word of God, which is 1. Jesus,  2. The Bible, & 3. Faithful preaching. We paint pictures with words, not with plaster.

 

When you were a child, maybe you read this book- Where the Wild Things Are.^[2] It has great monsters who “roar their terrible roars, gnash their terrible teeth, roll their terrible eyes, and show their terrible claws.”  And then Max says “Let the Wild Rumpus Start” and he becomes the most wild thing of all.  But then you come to church and we talk about Bible stories with sandals and brown robes, right?

 

When you were in Middle School, maybe you read Harry Potter with basilisks, werewolves, that thing that guards the Chamber of Secrets.  There are so many Fantastic Beasts.  But then you come to Sunday School and we mostly talk about the New Testament and church history.

 

Maybe some of you are into Lord of the Rings. It has Nazgul, Mountain Trolls, Uruk-hai, and of course, the  dragon Smog.  These are the best monsters ever.  But then you come to Fellowship and we are all about Questioning Jesus, stories from prison, and Stupid Stunts. No monsters.  Of course, there is the Grog, the legendary feared creature of late night Fellowship- but you all know that I’m the best Grog and I’m not that scary.

 

At Nassau, we don’t talk much about Monsters.

 

Maybe as you grow up, you will  be convinced that the scariest things in the world aren’t monsters, but the systemic evils, thoughtless prejudices, and oppressive practices that prey on the vulnerable, the poor, and those already scared into submission.

 

Maybe you’ll read Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusualem”— I hope you will. Maybe she’ll convince you that real evil is located not in grandiose figures of wickedly epic proportions, with telltale horns, claws, and big sharp scary teeth, but in the mindless bureaucracies that entrench senseless structures of incarceration, that institute dehumanizing programs of family separation and deportation, that care only for the financial optimization of the spreadsheet, regardless of the lives those numbers represent.  Why bother with fake monsters, many would say, when there are monstrous acts of racial bigotry, of active shooters, or of economic collapse in countries we are trying to muster the energy to care about?

 

I can understand why we don’t talk about Monsters. Maybe we don’t want to scare the kids. Maybe we don’t want to scare the adults. Maybe we don’t want to offend the intellectuals. Maybe we simply prefer to talk about policy, ethics, politics, & engagement.

 

I’ll tell you why I don’t talk much about monsters.  It’s because of the hope that gets talked about here. It’s because of the trust in Jesus that is manifested. It’s because Jesus will outlast all the monsters.  For you see, if we are lost among the monsters, “it is only for a little while.”^[3]  Someday all the monsters, at least the bad ones, will pass away.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.

God will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God’s —-self will be with them;

[and] God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.”

 

The horrific and monstrous? They are among those ‘first things’ to pass away.  They have no future. They will not be.  Their ability to destroy will itself be destroyed. All those consumed, will be made new again.

 

The seven headed monsters, and the dragons, and the cave trolls and all of the terrors they represent? The cruelty of Nero-.  The murderous treacheries of Herod-.  The captivity of the innocents-.   In those ‘last days’ these are all among the “first things” that will pass away.

 

But you know what won’t pass away? This faith that you all are coming here to profess.  I say that to these confirmands, but I also say it to the whole congregation.  These first things, these early steps of faith- these initial promises to understand our lives in light of Christ’s redemptive love, this ‘willingness to follow Jesus a little farther.’ This is something that will continue to happen, and grow, and be built up to that last day, but then, can continue even again.   These beautiful Statements of Faith, which the Session and staff have read, yes, perhaps some of the typos and stories about dropping your brother on his head will pass away, but the one in whom you all are professing your faith? Jesus Christ? Jesus will not pass away.  Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”  And the one you are beginning to see now, Jesus, is the one you will fully know then.  Because the great revelation amidst all the other visions and revelations that are seen by John, is that Jesus is the one who’s says “I am the first and the last (1:17).  Jesus is the one who is the great Son of Man, the ransomed Lamb (5:9), the victorious rider on the White Horse (19:11). He is the one who says “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (21:6).

 

Jesus is, as I hope you’ve learned this year in Confirmation,  the very first “first thing” the first born over all creation, the Word who was in the beginning and who in that beginning was already heading toward God; Christ, the firstborn from the dead; the one whose name will be glorified first above all other names (Col. 2:9). Jesus Christ, the first to love you and form you and redeem you and guide you. This is the great Revelation of the whole bible: that “God was in Christ reconciling God’s self to the world” (1 Cor. 5:19).

 

And your faith in Christ, now in its first things, however small,  it can grow and deepen, and get toughened up, can whimper and fail, and can get kick-started again by acts of kindness, compassion, or plain old I-can’t-account-for-it-any-other-way-except-by-divine miracle.  Christ’s faithfulness to you will lead right up to those last things, so that you are there when Satan, death and Hades is zipped up, when the monsters at the end of this book vanish, and when the final credits role.  Many things in this world will pass away, but these waters of baptism, these lives of faith,  will keep flowing clear and strong:

 

 

Then [the one seated on the throne] said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

 

After all, even Max sails back “over a year, in and out of weeks, and through a day’ to find his way back home where his hot supper is waiting for him.

 

AMEN.

 

^[1] See, for instance, commentary on 13:18 in New Interpreter’s Study Bible (New Revised Standard Version).

^[2] Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (New York: Harper & Row, 1963)

^[3] “Monsters” by Band of Horses. Songwriters: Benjamin Bridwell / Christopher Early / Timothy Ian Meinig © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

 

Revelation 7:9-17
David A. Davis
May 12, 2019
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I wonder what the elder there in John’s vision from the 7^th chapter of the Book of Revelation, I wonder what the elder didn’t tell John. I wonder what more he could have told John about that heavenly crowds no one could count. John tells of “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes, and peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”. He sees the great multitude dressed in while and waving branches, shouting and singing praise, shouting and singing the faith, shouting and singing in a way even you and I would recognize. There are angels, elders, and four living creatures. Then John describes for the reader how one of the elders asked him about this great multitude and where they came from. But John replies he doesn’t know; how could he know? The elder would be the one who knows.

That’s when the elder tells him, “these are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The elder keeps going, the elder goes on to explain to John, the elder gives John a bit more of the picture. The elder expands on the vision. “for this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship God day and night within God’s temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more, the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Last year around this time, I was with a group of pastors who visited the Cloisters up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan up above the Hudson River. We took along Professor Paul Rorem, professor of Medieval history over at Princeton Theological Seminary. Professor Rorem was our docent for the day as we explored that part of the Metropolitan Museum so full of religious art and artifacts. I’m not sure “docent” is a strong enough word to describe the expertise Dr. Rorem brings to a tour of the Cloisters. I have made the trip several times with him now and he always has to make some choices about what to show us, what to talk about. There is always free time to explore everything but only a limited amount of group time for explanation, for teaching, for expanding the vision of the untrained eye. I’m always struck when Professor Rorem directs your eye to something in a work of art before you; he uses his pinky finger; the smallest of means and the least intrusive to the painting. Last year when he was helping to see details in a particular sculpture of Christ on the Cross that was high up toward the ceiling, he got in a bit of trouble with security for using a pointer. But like the entire museum, when looking at one piece, the teacher looks to direct the eye to find meaning and learning and appreciation for the beauty.

I have read John’s vision from the 7^th chapter of revelation and elder’s words to him more often than I could ever count. Mostly, I have read it in cemeteries and at memorial services. In that setting, my oral interpretation of the text, like a pinky on the hand, naturally points to the Lamb at the center of the throne, the Shepherd guiding them to springs of living water, and of course, most importantly, the promise that God will wipe away every tear from their eye.

But if the interpreter, the Teacher, the docent of John’s divine vision of that great multitude that no one could number is not the reader of the passage but the heavenly elder. The elder who addressed John with the question, “Who are these…” That elder who told John who they were and said, “for this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship God day and night….”  The elder is the one direct John’s eye to find meaning and learning and appreciation for the kingdom of God, the throne of God’s grace, the beauty of the very heart of God. And I wonder what more the elder could have told him, could have pointed to with his pinky.

No one expects that these visions and how they are described, described by John or by the elder are exhaustive, complete, the final, only, last word on a vision of the kingdom of heaven. No one would suggest that the Apostle Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians is exhaustive or complete: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Think selflessness, honesty, persistence, hope, You will remember that the holy scripture is full of other details, visions, depictions of the kingdom of heaven, neither of them are exhaustive either. Rather, they are snippets to piece together, patches to be sewn in that come from the Hebrew prophets, from the teaching of Jesus, from elsewhere in the Apocalypse to John. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth….God will dwell with them as their God and they will be God’s peoples, … God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21). “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another one eat, for like the days of the tree shall my people be…the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain” (Isaiah 65).  Matthew 25: the hungry fed, the thirsty given something to drink, the stranger welcomed, the naked clothed, the sick and imprisoned visited. You know I could point to more, and so could that elder in Revelation. A lot more, much more in the beautiful vision that is the kingdom of heaven and that great multitude that no one could count.

Swords into plowshares. Learning war no more. A little child shall lead them. Justice that rolls down like waters, Righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  Every valley lifted up. Everyone mountain made low. All the rough places plain. The powerful brought down from their thrones. The lowly lifted up. The hungry filled with good things. The rich sent away empty. The oppressed set free. Sight given to the blind. Good news brought to the poor. The poor in Spirit. Those who mourn. The meek. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The merciful. The pure in heart. The peacemakers. Those persecuted for the sake of righteousness. All of them being blessed.

The beautiful vision that is the kingdom of heaven in scripture and beyond. Death not having the last word. Light forever conquering the darkness. Love overcoming hate. Love that is stronger than death. Bodies. Minds, Souls restored. Little girls and little boys of every color, of every race, of every nation joining hands as siblings one with another. Schools. Mosques. Synagogues. Campuses. Homes. All safe from violence. No active shooter. No high school, no college hero giving a life to save others at the end of gun. No more guns. No raging floods, only living water.  No more words like Stage IV or metastatic. No one unjustly convicted. No enemies, no threat level, no terror. No fear. Only lasting peace and unbridled joy and feasts and sonatas that last forever and glorious views of creation. Only beauty there in the heart of God. Think how much more the elder could have told John about the beautiful vision that is the kingdom of the heaven. How much more the elder could have said about that great multitude that no one could count.

My first experience in coaching one of our kids was T-ball: four, maybe five year old boys and girls on a little field out to have fun, put on a hat and t-shirt uniform, and maybe learn a few things about baseball. I remember watching kids swing the bat and barely dribble the ball off the tee and then they would run right to the pitcher’s mound, or to third base, once in a while even to first base. Fielders not paying one iota of attention when a ball might roll their direction. The hats, the gloves, they were all way too big for the kids. Of course, you had to go for ice cream after the game. That’s part of baseball. That and learning to spit. It did not take long that season of T-ball for those 4 and 5 year olds to figure out how to keep score, how to figure out who might be winning and who might be losing, This was in T-ball, where no one was allowed to keep score of runs. No run really ever crossed home plate. But if by chance, the ball went right to a fielder, and the fielder could run right to tag first base while the batter decided whether to run, well, it was an out. They had to learn about outs. Everybody in the lineup got to bat each inning, so it wasn’t about getting three outs. But the kids started keeping score, not with runs, but with outs. The figured out pretty quickly, without any coach’s help, that the team that got more outs was winning. It didn’t take long for the 4 and 5 year olds to keep count. It’s almost innate, the desire to keep score. And it never goes away, even in the church, even for the followers of Jesus, that human drive to always count.

What John sees is “a great multitude which no could count, from every nation, from all tribes, and peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”  No one could count. No one. And yet, so many in the faith, so much of the Christian tradition, so many us, pretty much like 4 and 5 year old T-ball players can’t stop counting. Being charge. Deciding who is in and who is not. Making sure we always have more outs. More runs. More truth.

Think of what a different world it would be, what the church of Jesus Christ would be, what the communities where we live and work, what our lives would look like, what life for a follower of Jesus would like it, if we would all stop counting, stop counting and start serving, looking for, building, claiming, pointing to, living into and helping everyone else, everyone else see the beautiful vision that is the kingdom of heaven.

 

 

Acts 9:1-6
David A. Davis
May 5, 2019
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“I am Jesus”, the voice said. A light from heaven flashed around Saul, he fell to the ground, and a voice said “I am Jesus”. Saul, who was soon to be the Apostle Paul, Saul who would soon go from “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” to an instrument chosen by God to bring the name of Jesus before the Gentiles, Saul heard the voice say “I am Jesus.” “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Saul asked, ‘Who are you. Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, who you are persecuting.’” I am Jesus.

It is the only time he said it, said to anyone. It’s the only time recorded in scripture that he said, “I am Jesus”. The Risen, now ascended into heaven Jesus and the voice said to Saul, “I am Jesus.” You will remember that the gospel of John is full of “I am” statements from the lips of Jesus. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the gate. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I am the vine. But not “I am Jesus”. The Risen Christ doesn’t say it to Mary in the empty tomb when she doesn’t recognize him. He didn’t have to. He just said, “Mary”. He doesn’t say, “I am Jesus”. He doesn’t say it to Thomas either. He showed him his hands and his feet. No “I am Jesus”. He doesn’t say it in Luke to the two men along the Emmaus Road who didn’t recognize him that first Easter afternoon. “He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened and he recognized him.” But he doesn’t say, “I am Jesus.” Only here in the 9th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He says it to Saul somewhere along the Damascus Road. “I am Jesus….whom you are persecuting.”

The biblical account of Saul’s transformation is iconic, biblical hall of fame worthy. A disciple in Damascus named Ananias also hears a voice. Ananias had heard how much evil Saul had done to the believers in Jerusalem but the voice from heaven told him to go and find Saul whose eyes were blinded back there along the road. “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” As Luke writes in Acts, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes and he could see. Saul got up and was baptized. After taking some food and regaining his strength, he started proclaiming Jesus in the synagogue as the Son of God. The telling of the Apostle Paul’s conversion is epic. It’s foundational. So important to the New Testament Church and the Apostle evangelizing ministry among the Gentiles that Paul himself tells it again in Acts twice. He preaches about it, almost word for word, twice. He records it in the beginning of his Letter to the Galatians.

But something even more profound, more foundational, more theologically epic has already happened prior to Paul’s conversion. So easy to miss, easy to skip over, easy to underestimate there along the Damascus Road. As earth shaking as a bright light from heaven flashing. More essential to Paul’s preaching and teaching then maybe even his own baptism. As crucial to the followers of Jesus, the men and women of the way, to the disciples of the Lord as the Apostle Paul’s call, transformation, conversion, and his own proclamation of the gospel. It’s already happened and everyone who takes the name of Christian ought to stop right here and ponder the overwhelming, wondrous, mysterious, lasting revelation of it all. “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Saul asked, ‘Who are you. Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, who you are persecuting.’” The women and men of the Way, the disciples in Jerusalem, the followers of Jesus are already the Body of Christ. “I am Jesus….whom you are persecuting.”

Yes, prior to the Damascus Road. Before Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it,” before Paul tells the Ephesians about the gifts of the Spirit that are intended “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of come to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ”, before the preacher in Hebrews describes being “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” before our fore bearers in faith celebrated the Lord’s Supper and began to pray “Gracious God pour out your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts of bread and wine that they may be for us the body and blood Christ so that we may be his body for the world, before all of that when his crucifixion and his resurrection still seemed like it was just yesterday, the followers of Jesus were already his body. The body of Christ in and for the world.

Easter morning just past didn’t start for me with a rush of joy and spirit and enthusiasm. Early that morning, when it was still dark, I confess to you that I wasn’t feeling it. It wasn’t because I was up early. It wasn’t because I wasn’t prepared. It wasn’t because I wasn’t looking forward to Easter. No, it was because the day before, that Saturday had some bumps along the way in the Cook David household. Saturday afternoon Cathy and I were both in the kitchen preparing the fixings for an Easter dinner for 25 folks who were coming to our house early Sunday afternoon after worship. We had some last minute shopping to do, some cooking to do, and some cleaning to do.

A couple of hours into the preparation of our feast, I noticed the refrigerator didn’t seem as cold as it should be. We figure it was from the door opening and closing and from some of the warm food we were putting in. But then it just kept getting warmer. I pulled the appliance out from the wall and went and grabbed the vacuum cleaner to clean up all the dirt and dust behind thinking the necessary air movement wasn’t happening. It didn’t make a difference. The digital temperature display just kept rising. I went online and called 24/7 emergency appliance repair places. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones having an appliance crisis the day before Easter. On the third try and with a bit of begging, I was able to schedule a visit. The really nice repairman showed up around 6:30 in the evening and quickly pronounced the fridge dead and unfix-able. We went to some version of plan B, C, and D and everything worked out for our celebration the next day. Just a bit of aggravation and inconvenience.

So yeah, at 5 the next morning when I was about leave the house, I wasn’t in the greatest of moods for preaching and proclaiming “Christ is Risen!” As I headed out the door before dawn, just for the heck of it, I opened the now empty fridge. It was cold again. Our refrigerator had an Easter morning resurrection. I was so offended by that metaphor and by my refrigerator taunting me, that I grumbled and shook my head all the way to the Sunrise Service in Princeton Cemetery. But then something happened that morning. Len Scales and I were the first to arrive in the cemetery, having walked down from here. We walked in the gate on Witherspoon Street just near the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church and we waited; sort of keeping our voices low there, still in the dark. Then people started to arrive. First Pastor Mjumbe from Witherspoon. Then someone with a head lamp bringing carrier chairs. And then more, and more, and more. Just as day was breaking you could start to see across the cemetery and back to road, you could see the people coming. From all directions; some from the cemetery parking area, some walking along the cemetery drive, others coming on the grass through the stones, some from cars parked out on Witherspoon Street, students walking from campuses, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50….they just kept coming. As the light continued to come, you could then start see faces coming. People I recognized from our congregation. People I recognized from Witherspoon. Students I recognized. And some folks I had never seen before. As the hour drew near, folks were moving quicker to get there. One saint, with other saints on either side, struggled on a walker through the dark, on the bumpy, wet terrain. In fact, people kept arriving through the whole 45 minute service. A few just for the benediction.

Every Easter Sunday, I lift the blinds in my office just to watch the crowds coming to worship at 9:00 and 11:00. Children, families, out of town friends, folks I have not seen for a while. I just stand in my office and watch folks coming in all their Easter finest. But I have to tell you, that sunrise experience was different. that Easter morning, my soul was lifted, hope just sort of filled me, the light of joy sparked inside me. I got a bit teary. Not because it was such a great turnout, indeed it was. What moved me as the light conquered the darkness, what struck me right then, was that I was seeing the Body of Christ come from every direction, from east, and west, from north, and south to whisper together that Christ is Risen. The people of the resurrection, surrounded by all the trappings of death, rushing to the grave to proclaim together that Christ is Risen. No stone rolled away down there. No grave clothes rolled up in a ball in a corner down there. No bright light or voice from heaven down there. But his body, Christ’s body, it was there. It is here.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you.” He said it them, to us, to all who would then be his body in the world. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” I can’t tell you over the years how many people have asked me about “the bodily resurrection”, as in “I believe in the resurrection of the body”. His body? Our body? It is, as we say in the communion prayer, part of the mystery of our faith. I guess people will always ask about it. Scholars will always write about it. We will always disagree about it, doubt it, discuss it, argue about it. What on earth it all means. Christ is Risen. How on earth it all means. Christ is Risen. But now, and for a long time, we I say “I believe in the resurrection of the body”, I’m going to remember, I am going to think, I am going to see again in my mind, that Easter Sunrise Service at Princeton Cemetery.

The body of Christ rushing from every direction, rushing to the grave, to proclaim, Christ is Risen. You and I and the followers of Jesus, we are his body in the world. What calling, what a humbling responsibility, what a challenge, what a gift.
Christ is Risen! So we better get going.

John 20:19-31 [i]
Lauren J. McFeaters
April 28, 2019
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Forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but some of you may have heard me say, I grew up in a Presbyterian Church that didn’t go to hell. That is, we didn’t go to hell in the Apostles’ Creed. Every week we affirmed our faith with the words of the Apostles’ Creed. We said:

 

He was crucified, dead and buried.

The third day he rose again from the dead,

and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

 

So it was a great shock when I first attended a church that used the word hell. Now this was New York City. I was 21 years old. And

I thought, OK, they can do this in New York City. “If you can say it here, you can say it anywhere. It’s up to you NY, NY.” During the Apostles’ Creed we proclaimed:

 

He was crucified, dead and buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead and

 sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

 

To this day I still trip over it. “He descended into hell.” I trip over it every time. I hit a bump in the road of faith. What do you mean Jesus descended into hell? Where did that come from?

 

At Eastertide, it takes on new meaning when we truly consider Jesus’ resurrection was from the Land of the Dead.

• Before the stone is rolled away there is no resting or respite or sleeping.
• Before he is raised, there is no edgy slumber or catatonic dream state.
• He is not reawakened or revived, not revitalized or rejuvenated.
• Jesus is not magically preserved or cryogenically maintained.
• He is dead. Dead in the Land of the Dead. Dead in hell.

 

As we meet Jesus, he comes to stand among his friends on Easter night. He comes through bolted doors to stand among the ones who feel dead themselves; entombed in their own grief; buried in their own hell; interred with their lifeless dreams.

 

Jesus arrives. A tomb can’t keep him in. A bolted door can’t keep him out. He undresses. He reveals his damaged body: his injuries, his lacerations, where he was impaled, torn hands, shredded feet.

 

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says. My shroud is gone, now take off yours. Come out of your cave. No more hiding, no more being locked in, no more burial, no more tomb, no more shame, no more guilt, no more regrets.

 

He waits for the truth to sink in. And it does. And the disciples fall on him weeping, shouting, fainting, roaring, rejoicing, then taking in the breath of life, they receive the Holy Spirit.

 

And Thomas misses the whole darn thing.

 

“We have seen the Lord,” they bellow. But Thomas is not persuaded. Thomas is not convinced. “Unless.” “Unless, I see the mark of the nails in his hands and his side, I won’t believe, cannot believe, refuse to believe. Unless I see. Unless I witness. Unless.”

 

And of course that one statement has landed him the perpetual title of Doubting Thomas,

Mr. Nonbelief, Mr. Cynic,

Prince of Doubt,

Sir Thomas the Skeptic.

But that’s a misnomer. He gets a bad rap, our Thomas. We all need time to recognize the Lord. The disciples themselves didn’t recognize him until he showed hands and side.

 

One preacher puts it like this: Thomas is first and foremost a pragmatist. We forget that when Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you and you know the way to the place where I am going,” it is Thomas the pragmatist, who replies truthfully, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going; how can we know then the way?”

 

We forget, when Jesus speaks of going back to Jerusalem, it is Thomas who knows Jesus’ is going to his death. Thomas is no fool. He counts the cost before opening his mouth. He counts the cost before deciding. He boldly urges the others to follow Jesus: “Let us also,” he says, “go that we may die with him.”

 

Does that sound like a doubter?

 

He’s been toughened by experience. He is, above all else, a realist. And for Thomas reality has never come as close as it has at the cross.[ii] He is above all else a good steward of his discipleship.

 

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in his hands and side, I will not believe.” That’s not doubt:  that’s anguish, that’s torment, that’s pain.

 

Frederick Buechner tells the story of being on retreat with a group of church members in Texas and during his time with them, they asked him to share something of his childhood, something that shaped his Buechner, a Presbyterian minister has spent his vocation writing about faith and life, so he told them about his childhood during the Depression. He says this:

 

I remember in the Depression there wasn’t much money and there was an awful lot of drinking going on in my family. It was an unsettled and unsettling time for a child of ten, which I was.

 

There was a time when my father had come back from somewhere. He had obviously had too much to drink. He was drunk and my mother didn’t want him to go out again and take the car.

 

So she sneaked the car keys and gave them to me and said, “Don’t let you father have these.” “Don’t you dare let your father have these.” I had already gone to bed, he says, so I took the car keys in my fist under the pillow.

 

My father stumbled into my room and somehow knew I had the keys and he bellowed and slurred, “Give me the keys. Give them to me. I’ve got to have them. I’ve got to go some place.”

 

I didn’t know what to say, what to be, or how to react, says  Buechner. I was panicky, sad, and all the rest of it. I lay there and listened to him, pleading, begging really, “Give me the keys.” I pulled the covers over my head to escape the situation and then finally, went to sleep with his voice in my ears.

 

When he finished sharing his story with the group, a man came up and said to Buechner, “You’ve had a fair amount of pain in your life, like everybody else. But you’ve been a good steward of it. You’ve been a good steward of your pain.”

 

That phrase caught Buechner off guard – to be a “Steward of Your Pain.” And he thought a lot about what it could mean. When it comes to human pain, many of us hide it, cover it, diminish it, edit it because it’s just too agonizing to deal with. We eat, drink, lash out over it. Anything not to feel it.

 

But Buechner has come to believe, before anything else, to be a good steward of our pain is to be in touch with it, to be in touch with the sorrowing times, the regrettable times, the grief-stricken times, because that’s when we can be most aware of God’s Resurrection Power to pull us through it, to be in it with us.

 

It’s the cross of Christ that speaks the same word:  that out of that greatest pain, endured in love, comes the greatest beauty, and our greatest hope.[iii]

 

Thomas knows this.

 

He is a great steward of his pain.

 

His “Unless I see,” becomes his testimony. Out of the depths of his anguish comes the purest confession of faith ever proclaimed: My Lord and my God.

 

At the center of the Easter Gospel,

At the core of this New Season,

is the proclamation that Jesus Christ comes looking for us.

• And when we allow ourselves to be found;
• When we take off our shrouds and come out of our graves;
• When we let go of the shame, the guilt, the regret;
• When there’s no more hiding, no more resistance,
• No more being locked in;
• Then the walls come crumbling down;
• And the One who bears our every weakness is there with compassion,
• The Good Shepherd comes to his friends, his sheep, his flock:

 

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

“You are forgiven.”

“You are free.”

 

Thanks be to God.

 

ENDNOTES

[i] John 20:19-31, NRSV: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After Jesus said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas who was called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

 

[ii] David Lose. “Realities Old and New: John 20:24-31.” Day1: A Division of the Alliance for Christian Media, Atlanta, GA, day1.org, March 30, 2008.

 

[iii] Frederick Buechner. Sermon, “The Stewardship of Pain.” 30 Good Minutes: The Chicago Sunday Evening Club, Program 3416. January 27, 1990.