Each year during Lent, Nassau Presbyterian Church joins with thousands of Presbyterian congregations across the country in receiving the One Great Hour of Sharing offering. This offering is the single, largest way that Presbyterians come together to share God’s love with our neighbors in need around the world.
Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing support three vital ministries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.):
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance — Responding quickly to natural and human-caused disasters, both in the U.S. and internationally, to help communities rebuild and recover.
Presbyterian Hunger Program — Working to alleviate hunger and eliminate its root causes through sustainable development and advocacy.
Self-Development of People — Partnering with communities experiencing oppression, poverty, and injustice to support their efforts to create lasting change.
Together, these ministries address the most pressing needs in our world—providing relief, hope, and dignity in the face of hardship.
We invite you to participate in this year’s offering by giving generously during worship on Sunday, April 13. Special envelopes will be available in the pews, and you may also give online through the church website by selecting “One Great Hour of Sharing” from the donation options.
Let us join hands in love and service, embodying the spirit of Matthew 25 and living out the hope we proclaim in the resurrection.
“Now Herod the ruler, the tetrarch, heard all that had taken place, and he was perplexed.” Herod was perplexed. Herod was confused. A possible translation of the Greek is that Herod “was at a loss.” These few verses go on to explain that he was perplexed because some were saying John the Baptist had been raised from the dead or Elijah or some other ancient prophet had appeared. “Now Herod the tetrarch heard all that had taken place.” Herod the most powerful man in the land heard all that had taken place. One should assume that hearing it all means hearing it all. Indeed, back to John the Baptist. Luke chapter 3: “So with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by John because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.” Oh, yes! Herod heard it all.
He heard about a man named Jesus standing up in a synagogue in Nazareth and reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Herod heard about Jesus sitting down and saying “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” and how they tossed him out of his hometown trying to hurl him off a cliff. He heard about Jesus teaching on the sabbath, healing people tormented by demons, and his followers catching great hauls of fish. Herod heard about people healed of their diseases, lame folks walking, a tax collector leaving his job to go with Jesus, and Jesus plucking grain on the Sabbath. Herod heard it all.
That sermon from Jesus was full of blessings and woes favoring the poor and the hungry and the weeping. Threatening the rich and all who had so much. He heard about that too. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…Give to anyone who begs…do to others as you would have them do to you…Be merciful just as your Father is merciful…The good person out of good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evo;; for it is out of abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” Herod heard about the healing of the centurion’s servant and the widow of Nain. The scandal of the woman anointing Jesus’ feet in the Pharisee’s house. The parable of the sower. The stir Jesus caused in the country of the Gerasenes by healing a tormented man and sending all the pigs to their death in the sea. Jesus stopping to heal the woman who touched his outer garment. They raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead. And yes, Jesus sent the disciples to the villages “curing diseases everywhere.” The most powerful and feared man in the land had the sources, the resources, and the connections to have heard it ALL. And he was perplexed. He was confused. Herod was at a loss not just because of the rumors surrounding John the Baptist, Elijah, or a prophet. Herod was perplexed by it all.
Jesus gathered the twelve and bestowed on them the power and authority to do what he had been doing. To do what Herod heard Jesus was doing. Send out demons. Cure diseases. Proclaim the kingdom of God and heal people. Jesus sent them out on the journey to the villages with nothing: no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no change of clothes. Find a house where folks will take you in and stay there. Stay in their home until you leave the village. If no one welcomes you, move on. Shake the dust. It’s their loss. The gospel is not something to be imposed, mandated, forced, legislated, ordered, or nationalized.
Take nothing. The evangelism, the mission, and the ministry of those who follow Jesus begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in God and God alone. The ministry of those who follow Jesus also begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in the hospitality of others. The only way this was going to work was if others offered the disciples a place to stay in their homes. If others gave the disciples something to eat and drink. If others offered to share some extra clothing with the disciples. The disciples could not have done anything with their Jesus-gifted power and authority without the help of others. According to Luke the twelve were “bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.” It never would have happened without the others. A divine miracle story all its’ own that begins with bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing acts of hospitality and kindness. The ministry of those who follow Jesus is defined by, dependent on, not possible without a reliance on and a relationship with others.
A few days ago, I went over to the Seminary Chapel to hear our resident guest preacher Jess Winderweedle preach at daily morning worship on campus. As you would expect, Jess preached a powerful and memorable sermon. After chapel, I told Jess she is the most subtly subversive preacher I have listen to. There was one riff I kept coming back to in preparation for this morning. As I pondered Jesus telling the disciples to take nothing. Jess was preaching about Paul ending up in prison after sending a spirit of divination out of a slave girl who was likely then in great danger since her owners made lots of money off her and that spirit. “Here in this chance encounter” Jess proclaimed, “their precarities- his perhaps unexpected and hers a tale as old as time—their precarities were revealed to be inextricable from one another….I want to imagine” Jess went on, “that Paul, there in prison couldn’t stop thinking about liberation, and about how getting free isn’t always as simple as we want it to be, nor is it ever an individual endeavor…There is no way of salvation that any one of us can walk alone, and no real liberation in which we can be preciously selective about who will walk with us.”
Our life in Jesus and our way of salvation and the first disciples’ journey, it doesn’t happen alone. As Carol Wehrheim notes in our Lenten study guide “Recognizing and accepting our interdependence might not be so easy for a nation that claims to be built on rugged individualism”. As Nate Stucky has been teaching all these Sundays in Lent, the idolatry of autonomy is struck down again and again in scripture. The beginning of ministry in Jesus’ name here in Luke strikes a blow to the myth of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It forever slays the go-it-alone, self-made human success narratives. Serving in Jesus’ name can’t be any more different than all the rich and powerful with such influence in the world who start on third base and think they have hit a triple. The gospel we learn from the lips of Jesus and the testimony of his life is so perplexing to the world and its powers and principalities. The world and its tetrarchs and tyrants.
Which brings us back to Herod. Herod was perplexed about the one whom he was hearing about. He had beheaded John. The conjecture among the crowds about whether it was John, Elijah, or another one of the ancient prophets. That conjecture is messianic conjecture. That’s wondering about whether this person saying and doing all that Herod heard was indeed the Messiah. What Herod is hearing is messiah talk. And as Luke writes “he tried to see him.” Herod tried to see Jesus.
It might be a no-brainer but it seems to me that if Herod, the most powerful man in the land with all the sources, resources, and connections wanted to see Jesus, it would not have been all that difficult to arrange. Have your people contact his people. Send some armed guards with face coverings to go round him up off the street. Tell your staff to go hang out the next time there is a crowd gathered and bring the one doing all the talking and healing back to your fortress. Before the disciples hid in the Upper Room after Herod’s empire tortured and murdered Jesus, Jesus, and his disciples were hardly staying under the radar. Send a Zoom invitation for goodness sake. If Herod wanted to physically see Jesus, there is little doubt he could work something out to see Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son, Mary’s child.
“He tried to see him” It has to be more than getting a meeting. Herod was perplexed, confused, and lost. He couldn’t wrap his head or his heart around ALL that Jesus was teaching and ALL that Jesus was doing. Herod couldn’t see the Messiah and the messianic world he was painting. Like Pharoah before him, his heart was hardened. Herod was never going to see a messiah who was a servant. A messiah who claimed the great must become the least to follow him. Herod would always be perplexed, confused, and lost when it came to the gospel teaching about caring for the poor, the orphans, and the widows. Herod was always going to be perplexed, confused, and lost when it came to a journey of proclaiming and healing that depended on acts of love and kindness. Herod was always going to be perplexed, confused, and lost when there was “no way of salvation that any one of us can walk alone and no real liberation in which we can be preciously selective about who will walk with us.” Herod tried to see Jesus but he was incapable of seeing Jesus and the way of the gospel.
The tetrarchs and tyrants, the forces of empires, the powers and principalities of the world’s darkness are incapable of seeing Jesus and the kingdom he brings. They have no vision for a world where the last will be first, the poor will have favored status, and the common good that builds community will be prioritized. They can’t look at the most vulnerable in the world and see the face of Jesus. They can’t see a world where love is stronger than hate, where welcoming the stranger is an act of faith and gives glory to God. Where doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God is an aspirational way of life. Where justice can roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
It is still true. The witness of those who follow Jesus begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in God and God alone. The witness of those who follow Jesus begins with a bold, courageous, beyond-the-pale, perplexing trust in the hospitality of others. The only way the powers and principalities of this world are going to see Jesus and the kingdom he brings, the beloved community he intends, is when disciples, when followers, when simple folk like you and me, find a way to show them. I’m in. You?
The Mass Incarceration Task Force is motivated by the deep conviction that every human being is a beloved child of God. Join us on Monday, April 7 at 7:00 pm to learn about volunteering and advocacy opportunities. In addition to hearing updates from our Action Groups, we will be discussing how the current cuts to the federal government are impacting non-profit organizations working to support wrongly convicted and incarcerated persons and their families. All are welcome, including people without a religious affiliation.
Contact Anne Kuhn (email)to receive the Zoom link.
The images above are from Humanize the Numbers, a collaborative photography project bringing together men incarcerated within the Michigan Department of Corrections and students from the University of Michigan. See more at humanizethenumbers.com
This is my first memory of listening to a sermon. I was sitting in the sanctuary of the church I grew up in during worship with my parents. Sermons were at the very end of the service just before the final hymn. When it came time for the sermon, the sanctuary lights would dim and the spotlights would go up on elevated pulpit at the front left side of the chancel. I don’t know how old I was when I heard this in a sermon but I know that pastor left to serve a congregation in Michigan when I was in elementary school. His name was Kirk Hudson. In Pittsburgh at the time there was a fast-food burger chain called “Winky’s”. Winky’s slogan in signage and advertising was “Winky’s makes you happy to be hungry.” I don’t remember anything else about that sermon except this. At some point, this distinguished formal pulpiteer wearing a Geneva gown with a clergy collar and tabs absolutely shouted with what I remember must have been the very top of his lungs. “Nobody is EVER happy to be hungry.”
Bernie Flynn, the CEO of Mercer Street Friends, shared sobering news this week with various non-profit partners throughout Mercer County who operate hunger, housing, and anti-poverty programs. The federal government has cut $26 million from the grants and funding that come to the state of New Jersey, much of which is intended for social services. There have been significant cuts to Feeding America which supplies the bulk of food distributed from food banks. There is a continuing resolution before Congress to cut SNAP benefits significantly. For every 10 charitable meals provided in this country, 9 of them come through SNAP. You may have read that there is also a proposal to raise the qualifying threshold for publicly funded breakfasts and lunches at public schools drastically reducing the number of eligible students. “Nobody is EVER happy to be hungry.”
One of the tasks of a preacher week in and week out is to bring the world to bear on unsuspecting biblical texts. Rather than attempt to translate the strange old world of the bible for the contemporary listener, a preacher who brings the world to bear on the text is seeking that living word for both the preacher and the hearers of the word. With that in mind, and mindful of all going on in the country and in the world, I don’t see how we can read Exodus 16 as the same old, same old. In my past reading of the story of manna from heaven, my eye has typically been drawn to the complaint. “On the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron.” The word in Hebrew is more like “murmured”. Some scholars write about “the murmuring motif” or the “murmuring tradition.” But then “Nobody is EVER happy to be hungry.”
The Lord hears the people murmuring. When they are thirsty in the next chapter, Moses goes to the Lord on behalf of the murmuring people. Here in chapter 16, the Lord makes the first move in response to the people’s hunger. God tells Moses that bread will rain from heaven and the people will gather enough for the day. Twice as much on the sixth day. Moses and Aaron then gather all the people. “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord…” As Aaron spoke the people look toward the wilderness and see the glory of the Lord appear in the cloud. The Lord tells Moses, “At twilight you shall eat meat and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”
That evening the quail came in abundance. The next morning the people awoke to “A fine flaky substance as fine as frost on the ground.” At the dawn of the day, no one knew what it was. Moses told the people of Israel, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.” Or as Moses and Aaron told them the day before, “in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord because the Lord has heard your murmuring.” What is described next by the narrator is so easy to miss when your eye is on the complaining. “Gather as much of it as each of you needs….some gathering more, some gathering less…those who gathered much had nothing left over and those who gathered little had no shortage.” Here in Exodus 16 there is a “loaves and fishes” kind of moment going on. Not the twelve baskets full left over but the “All ate and were filled” Part. Here in Exodus 16, there is an Acts chapter 2, post-Pentecost kind of moment going on. A community taking care of one another. All have enough. The evening quail. The morning glory bread. Just enough for all. Gathering as much as each one needed. Twice as much on the sixth day. The people resting on the seventh day. Forty years of meat and bread in the wilderness. Forty years of God hearing. Forty years of God providing. Right here at the beginning just a glimpse of life together for the people of God. The life together for the people of God that God intends. God and God’s beloved on the way to the promised land.
There at that first manna breakfast, Moses gave some further instruction. It doesn’t say whether Moses spoke before, during, or after breakfast. I imagine that Moses spoke again before everyone began to eat. “Moses said to them, ‘Let no one leave any of it over until morning.’” You get the gist, right? Give us today our daily bread. Don’t worry about tomorrow, let’s today’s worry be enough for today. No squirreling away. No hoarding. No storing up treasure. No pulling down barns just to build larger ones. No sneaking more so others have less. No messing with the loaves and fishes balance. No putting self above the community. No forgetting of the most vulnerable. No serving God and mammon because you will be devoted to one and despise the other. No turning from the face of Jesus in the face of the least of these. “Let no one leave any of it until morning.”
“But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning.” They did not listen and some left part of it until morning. Strange way to say it there in the text. They and some. They did not listen makes it sound like “all” did not listen. But only “some” tried to save some for later. But the manna didn’t keep. “It bred worms and became foul. And Moses was angry with them.” When it came to gathering twice as much on the sixth day so you can rest on the sabbath, later in the chapter again it is “some.” “Some of the people went to gather and found none. The Lord said to Moses, how long will you refuse to keep my commandments and instructions?!” I don’t know, Lord. It was only some, not all the people. Maybe some were still so hungry they had trouble listening. Here in Exodus 16, not only a glimpse of the community of faith God intends for God’s people but also a lasting image of what it means to be human and how hard it is fully trust in God. How easy it is to for the old sinful self to run over the new self God desires. The manna bred worms and became foul. That’s just nasty.
The takeaway this week is not the murmuring. God hears the people and responds with a promise. “At twilight you shall eat meat and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” The takeaway is more about the old self. Humanity’s ever-present sinfulness. Some but not all turn from God’s commands and threaten the community of kindness and concern that God intends. Threatening the community God calls us to be. God invites us to be. Seeing visions of God’s justice, yet some but not all repeatedly return to a care only for self. Hearing of God’s expectation of care for all while some but not all work to cause division and spark mistrust; watching as kingdom life turns afoul. Receiving the gospel promise of life eternal and life abundant and then some but not all wrongly concluding that salvation is just about their seat at the banquet table. Hearing about the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus call to go and do likewise and then some but not all demonizing nameless immigrant workers, faceless federal employees, and lab-coated researchers.
Maybe the takeaway is how quickly visions of the kingdom life God intends can be torn apart by the some but not all who want to save more for themselves rather than making sure everyone had their fill. Feasting on the words of the Apostle Paul, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, and then some but not all drawing boundary lines that perpetuate stereotypes and prolong bigotry and pass hate to yet another generation. Saying “Amen” when the words of the prophet Amos are read on Sunday, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”, and then some but not all on Monday doing absolutely everything to preserve their own power and privilege. Setting aside manna for themselves, a lot more manna than just for the next day.
It’s not about the complaint. You and I, we rise each day feasting afresh on God’s glory, knowing that the Lord requires us to do justice and to love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, only to realize sometime after breakfast how easy it is to melt into a world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, a world full of empires and voices that try to convince us that we had better grab all the stuff that we can so we can save it for the morning.
Manna from heaven. It’s a glimpse of the community God intends. A testimony to how God hears and God provides. It’s not about the complaint. It’s about how easy it is to breed worms.
Adam, Eve, the apple, the snake. Genesis 3. The Hebrew bible’s account of the fall. A .story most of us have been told, heard, and read as long as we can remember. One cannot approach Genesis 3 apart from all the chaff that comes with it. The swirling history of use, misuse, and abuse that comes with Genesis 3. It’s not like we just come to a whiteboard this morning with a dry eraser and start over. Rather, we bring it all with us, and by God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit we humbly seek a word, a living Word. We dare to yearn for what God might have to say to us through this first and oldest story of faith, boundaries, rules, and our relationship with the Creator God.
After the serpent successfully tempts Adam and Eve to eat the apple and they cobble some fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, God is taking a stroll through the garden as evening falls. God sees the two of them and their silly outfits. An awkward conversation ensues. Adam throws Eve under the bus. Eve throws the snake under the bus. God then responds that the tradition tends to label “the curse”. Unlike the last few Sundays when we read the entire portion of both creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, I will read only a small snippet of Genesis 3. It’s God’s response to Adam.
Genesis 3:17-19
“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The last few words of God’s response to the serpent, to Eve, and to Adam. The last words of God’s curse after the fall. Curse. It is important to note that the word “cursed” comes only in God’s response to the snake and then again as God speaks to Adam. “Cursed” is not directed at Adam but at the ground. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” “Cursed” is never used directly in reference to Eve or to Adam. Yes, their garden days are over but in Genesis 2, God told Adam if he ate of that tree of good and Evil, “you shall die.” Here in the Genesis account of the fall, they don’t die. Yes, of course, Adam and Eve eventually die. But here in the story of the first and oldest lesson about boundaries, rules, and a life in relationship to God, amid language of temptation, fall, death, and expulsion, God’s grace and love abound.
Last weekend I had a conversation with our soon to be four year old granddaughter Franny. For a few precious moments, we were the only ones in the room sitting on the couch. I asked her about her school. She named some of her friends. She told me how they share chores. Each day, each student has a responsibility. Franny’s favorites are collecting the trash and giving the weather report. I asked about her teachers and Franny told me all of four of their names. No Miss or Mr, just names. I asked if she had a favorite.
“I like Anna. She is our art teacher.” “Is art your favorite part?” “Yes, Pop. And I am good at following Anna’s rules. Well, pretty good”. “Well, that’s good. I bet Anna likes it when you follow her rules.” Franny nodded her head. Then there was a pause. Not a long pause but you could see Franny was thinking about something. “Pop, I am gooder at following Anna’s rules than I am Mommy and Daddy’s rules.” “Following rules can be hard, Franny, don’t you think?” Franny nodded yes again. “And Mommy and Daddy love you even when it’s hard to follow the rules!” I thought about telling Franny that her Mommy and Daddy love her even more when she doesn’t follow the rules. But I thought that might be risky.
It doesn’t take long, does it? For a child of God to learn perhaps the first and oldest lesson of life about boundaries and rules. It is part of growing up. The metaphor of “growing up” is how one scholar of the Hebrew Bible ends his commentary chapter on Genesis 3. Professor Sib Towner taught the Old Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA for a generation. “What Genesis 3 gives us is a paradigm,” Dr. Towner writes. “ A story about every human being rebelling against the commandments of God…It is a powerful, primitive rendition of a reality all of us know full well—the truth that life is a pilgrimage from innocence to maturity, through a land fraught with the dangers of loving and hating, growing powerful and cowering in humiliation, living and finally dying. It is a story about God too, whose name is not only Yahweh, but also Emmanuel, and who will not leave God’s own beloved creatures to their fates even when they defy him to his face or thrust a spear in his side. Genesis 3”, the professor concludes, “is a story of growing up.”
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
“Almighty God, in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, we comment this your beloved child to you. These remains we commit to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They will rest from their labors for their works shall follow them.” Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I scoured the bible this week trying to find the phrase I have read out loud in a cemetery way too many times in the last 40 years. Well, the phrase in that form isn’t in the bible. The phrase is from the earliest versions of the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer from the Church of England. “For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear departed, we, therefore, commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.” That’s the closest the bible comes to “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. When it comes to the New Testament, well the New Testament isn’t very dusty. The only dust that shows up in the New Testament is when Jesus tells the disciples to shake the dust of their sandals and move on when folks reject them and the gospel. The liturgy at the grave that affirms our resurrection hope has to be rooted here in Genesis 3. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” But when you are getting dirt and mud on your shoes around an open grave and you say ashes to ashes, dust to dust while loved ones are trying not to look at you, I am just not sure it sounds all that much like a promise. If I am honest, in that context, it sounds more like a stark reminder. Less of a trumpet blast of resurrection hope and more of a cymbal crash reminder of human mortality. Yes, that committal service liturgy quickly arrives at the Apostle Paul’s riff on resurrection hope. “Behold, we will not all die but we will be changed.” But “dust to dust” doesn’t sound like much of a promise.
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.” With his leadership at adult education and our series entitled “Called to the Impossible; Life through Death,” Dr. Nate Stucky is inviting us to reclaim the invitation and promise of dust. (If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the audio recordings of Nate’s weekly conversation with us, I invite you to do so on the adult education tab on our website). In Genesis 2, God creates Adam from the dust of the fertile soul. “The Lord God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Rather than bind dust to dust to that singular, once, and for all experience of life and of death, Nate Stucky the farmer theologian suggests linking it first to the promise, gift, and rhythms of the creation stories. In sending Adam out from the garden to the very world we know as real, God reminds Adam that he came from the dust of the fertile soil. An invitation to return to the dust perhaps can be understood as an invitation to repentance and a renewed experience of the life God creates. A life defined by death and resurrection over and over and over again. Yes, this side of heaven too.
That historic liturgy that ends with “dust to dust” begins with these words, “In the midst of life, we are in death. From whence does our help come? Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” In the midst of our everyday lives, we are surrounded by the promise, the gift, and the rhythm of God’s creation. God’s gift of grace comes as we experience life and death, death and resurrection. And also as we experience sin, repentance, forgiveness, new life, God’s “no” and God’s “yes” in the day-to-day. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Everyday. From dust to dust as God continues to breathe God’s spirit of life into our nostrils. Maybe, just maybe, with the gift of breath, of Spirit, in Hebrew, ruah, God also gives us eyes to see and lips to bear witness to all our creating God has done. Death and resurrection not just with a capital D and capital R. But God’s love, grace, and rhythm of creating. Creating all that is very good. And continuing to create each one of us as one of God’s own beloved.
When in the midst of this life we are in death and chaos and kindness and compassion seem too hard to find. When war and rumors of war abound, when leaders rage, when government shakes and institutions teeter and markets tremble, when the most vulnerable among us and around the world are threatened by the decisions of the most powerful, I wonder if we are being called to pay attention to our experience of the extraordinary presence of God in the most ordinary places of our lives. In Luke, in what scholars describe as “the little apocalypse”, Jesus says “This will be a time for you to bear testimony”. Maybe, just maybe paying attention, bearing witness, and sharing our testimony to our experience of the Holy Dust moments of our lives past and present is at least one way to strive to be faithful these days.
Perhaps an example of what I am trying to describe would be helpful. In the fall of 1999, I was in the third year of the PhD program in homiletics in the seminary. I discovered that one of the aspects of teaching I enjoyed most was listening to a student preach and then gathering the class together and leading the discussion about the strengths of the sermon and how that sermon might be improved. I fully expected back then that I would become a teacher of preaching. Some of my classmates were getting jobs prior to finishing their dissertations at various Presbyterian seminaries. A position was posted at Pittsburgh Seminary. I applied. I networked. I scored a breakfast at the Academy of Homiletics with the Dean of the Faculty at Pittsburgh Seminary. I was born and raised there. My parents were still alive and living there. Okay, this it God! I didn’t even get an interview.
Disappointment wasn’t a strong enough word. A few months later over on the seminary campus, I heard how the search committee at Nassau Presbyterian Church down on Palmer Square had been left at the altar by a candidate who said no after saying yes. The candidate was a professor of preaching who had no congregational experience. I said to a friend who had some connections at the church that if Nassau Church was willing to call a pastor with a PhD in preaching who had never moderated a Session meeting, maybe they would be willing to talk to a pastor who had been serving for 12 years at that point and would eventually have a PhD in preaching.
In April and May of 2000, members of the search committee from Nassau Church came in small groups for six Sundays in a row to hear me preach and lead worship in the 250-member congregation I served. And in May, the congregation called my 38-year-old self to the ministry God had in store. Something beyond what I would have thought impossible. Serving as a pastor and preacher in a university town and routinely teaching as a visiting lecturer. 24 years later, through that experience of life out of death, in that holy dust experience, God taught me what God already knew. I am not a frustrated scholar who couldn’t get a job and so went to serve a congregation. I am a pastor who enjoys sharing my love of preaching with others.
How about you and I, how about we pay attention, bear witness, and share our testimony with one another to the holy dust moments of our lives? I think we could use some of it these days. And remember what Jesus said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Nassau is a proud Mission Partner of Johnsonburg Camp & Retreat Center which has offered outdoors-based programming in New Jersey since 1960. This Summer Jburg is offering 5-day overnight camps with date options ranging from the last week of June to the first week of August for students from 1st to 12th grade.
Still feeling the inspiration of our younger congregation after Youth Sunday? We invite you to support their upcoming Appalachia Service Project trip this summer, where they will help repair and clean up a community affected by natural disaster and neighbors in need. You can donate to the trip by selecting the “Appalachian Service Trip (ASP)” Fund on MyNassau: nassauchurch.org/giving/give-now.
Mon-Fri, August 10-15, 12:00-4:30 pm, Sunday, August 17, 9:00-11:00 am
For rising grades 3-12, learn and stage a faith-based musical in one week! Perform in worship on Sunday, August 17. Everyone is cast. Friends are welcome!
When you have seen someone stand up to read “Love is patient, love is kind”, I am going to guess that more often than not, it wasn’t a member of the clergy. When you have heard someone read “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”, I am thinking most of the time it was not a Sunday morning. The last time you heard reader conclude with “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love”, I am guessing it was Uncle William or cousin Sandy, or a college friend still in seminary, or younger sister or brother. The reading came after all eyes were on the three-year-old hoping she made it down the aisle. After Pachelbel Canon in D. After the others walked down the aisle. Sometime soon after Trumpet Voluntary and before the two make their solemn vows, someone stands up to read “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love…” The familiar words presume their place, just before the vows, just after the procession.
But in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, the words don’t come after Canon in D or Trumpet Voluntary or The Wedding March. In the letter to the church, the “love part” comes after Paul writes about the varieties of gifts that come from God in the power of the Holy Spirit. The singable phrases about love come after Paul writes about how the church is like a body, how every part, every one in the community is important. Paul writes about God arranging every single part, just as it should be in the body, in the community, in the church. Hands. Ears. Eyes. Feet. Every single part is important. “If one member suffers, all suffer together, if one member is honored, all rejoice together,” Paul writes to the church. These so familiar verses about love come after Paul affirms that everyone has gifts to be used and celebrated in service to the community. “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?….Strive for the greater gifts”. When you read I Corinthians 13 on Sunday morning, you have to start somewhere in chapter 12. You have to at least start with Paul telling the church, I will show you a still more excellent way.”
You will remember that the church founded by Paul there in Corinth was a community of faith that found themselves threatened by allegiances and favored relationships. A community of faith that disagreed about things, some of them really important things. A people of faith wrestling with their own thirst for knowledge, mistakenly thinking that the Word of the Cross, the message of Jesus, was primarily a matter for the mind rather than the heart. People of God trying to hold on to their faith in an ever-challenging secular world. A gathering of God’s people trying to be faithful in their witness to Jesus, in their proclamation of the gospel, and in their desire to live in the power of the resurrection. A fledgling faith community covered in all of the dust of life, trying to be church. Or, in Paul’s language, a community called to live as the Body of Christ in the here and now.
“And I will show you a still more excellent way.” That’s what it follows. The famous chapter on love, the words that sort of create their own atmosphere when they are read into the room, their own aroma of romance. The Apostle Paul on love. It doesn’t come after the wedding march. It comes after this: “I will show you a still more excellent way”. A still more excellent way when it comes to life together. The more excellent way. The Apostle Paul on love in church. “Let me show you”. But Paul doesn’t “show” anything. He keeps writing. The church looks around, but Paul just writes some more. “Let me show you,” and the church forever looks around. Where’s he pointing? Who is he looking at? A picture. A parable. A drawing of the dirt. Anything Paul! But he just kept writing, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love.”
I have told you before about the saint in my first congregation who took me to McDonald’s for breakfast every Tuesday for 14 years. His name was Mark. He joined that church right after he came home from World War II. He landed at Normandy Beach the second day. One morning over an egg McMuffin, I asked him if the war was as bad as the movie “Saving Private Ryan” made it look. He said, “It was much worse, David”. Mark worked in sales for ten or so years. Vacuum cleaners door to door, then caskets to funeral homes. He then worked as a custodian in the local schools. I think he retired before I was born. On more than one occasion, Mark brought home someone who had no place to live. One year, when the church hosted twenty or so unhoused men in the fellowship hall for two weeks, it was Mark who arrived every morning at 4:30 to take one of the men to work who had just landed a job driving a truck. Without knowing it, Mark mentored generation after generation of young men in that church when it came to faith and being a father and a husband, including me.
When I arrived as a 24-year-old pastor, it was Mark who took care of me. We talked about everything over the years. One day, we shared our breakfast with a mission co-worker /friend of Mark’s who was on furlough and home visiting friends and family. At breakfast, he expressed his disappointment that we didn’t say grace before the meal. “After all”, he said, “I’m eating with the pastor and an elder”. I wanted to say, “We’re in McDonalds for goodness sake”. I didn’t say it. Mark didn’t miss a beat and, without a hint of judgment or defensiveness, said, “I pray long enough at dinner for all three meals.” I believed him.
Like many seminary graduates and new pastors, I landed in ministry with all kinds of information, ideas, opinions, and critiques of all that the church needs to be. I hit the ground back then, ready to leave my mark on the church. But in the power of the Holy Spirit, and by grace, I was shown a more excellent way. God was pointing at Mark’s life. Mark showed me. Mark taught me more about the gospel, more theology, more about the church than I ever learned in the classroom. Never an unkind word. Always had open arms for those he disagreed with. Unfailing in his care for others. Visiting a dying friend. Laughing with a lonely widower. Constant in prayer for those on his heart. Mark taught me about being a pastor. Mark’s life was a witness to the gospel in so many ways. But especially in the way he showed me the still more excellent way. The love he shared in and through that community of faith. Love in a particular community of faith. Love made very real. Love made very real to me.
“Let me show you,” Paul wrote to the church. And yes, he kept on writing with words, with poetry, that you and I will not soon forget and neither will the church or the world or the romantics, or Hallmark, for that matter. But when you read it, when you hear it on Sunday morning, remember the context, the place, the atmosphere that these familiar words actually presume and create. A community of faith that by God’s grace and as a gift of the Spirit, strives for the “still more excellent way”. Members of the body of Christ here and now who live like and know that “the greatest of these is love”.
A collection of the followers of Jesus Christ who know that when tragedy strikes, when death comes to soon and for too many, the first move is for love because “love never ends”. They know that because they have seen it. They have lived it. God showed them. People of God who believe that in the hardest of seasons and the most difficult of days, the simplicity of the gospel becomes all the more profound. “Love is patient; love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” They believe that because they have seen it. They have lived it. God showed them. A community of God’s people who witness to the clearest and most basic teaching from the bible as the most important, especially when listening to those who choose to contort it and abuse it for their own gain. “Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” They witness it because they have seen it. They have lived it. God showed them. A community of faith who come to understand that the world’s complicated way of being can never erode the lasting power of a timeless teaching like “love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.” They understand it because they have seen it. They have lived it, God showed them.
Before the Apostle Paul wrote, “I will show you a still more excellent way”, God showed that more excellent way: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…full of grace and full of truth.” Before Paul wrote to tell the congregation “I will show you”, Jesus sat at the table with his disciples and said, “This is my body broken for you….This is my blood shed for you.” Jesus pointed. Jesus showed them. Jesus did more than write about the still more excellent way. “Every time you eat this bread, do this in remembrance of me….Every time you drink this cup, do this in remembrance of me.” Yes, Jesus shows us he is the more excellent way.
I don’t often associate coming to the Lord’s Table with the physical, biological yearning to be fed. Though I do love the aroma here at the Table, Yes, yes, I know Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be fed.” But I don’t often experience hunger pangs or a craving for this meal. Maybe that’s because of the Reformed tradition that shaped me without weekly eucharist. Maybe that’s because somewhere deep inside, I always assumed it was more polite to wait for Jesus to invite me through those words of invitation at the start of the communion liturgy.
But then again, some days, some weeks, there is a longing. A desire far beyond words. A need that comes with hunger pangs A longing to feast on Christ’s love like you can never get enough. To rush to the table for the dinner bell of righteousness is being rung. To sit down at this Table of grace even before Jesus says “come and get it”. To sit down and be nourished now and forever, to be encouraged now and forever, to be strengthened now and forever, to be sustained by nothing more than Christ’s righteousness, grace, and love.
The Apostle Paul concluded, “The greatest of these is love”
Come to the Table this morning. Come to be fed and receive the love of God in and through Jesus Christ that we all crave.
