David A. Davis
James 1:17-27
August 30, 2015

A long time ago I was meeting with a couple to plan their wedding. They were a bit older and it wasn’t their first marriage. They were very clear on their intentions for the ceremony and expressed some firm opinions. “It’s just going to us and our children” she said. “No flowers, no processing, no photographer, none of that.” They told me if they could all fit, they just assume get married there in my office instead of the sanctuary. Too big. Too formal. “Now for the service” he said, “you won’t have to preach or anything. I just want you to read from James.” And he handed me a list of verses, all from James. He smiled at me and said, “I know there’s not much Jesus in James, but there’s a whole lot of gospel.”

Just this summer I sat with a family to plan a memorial service. As we came to the specifics about remembrances and music and scripture, they had come prepared and had all the choices ready. As for scripture, one of the readings was from James. The rationale, the explanation for the James choice as it related to the family member who had died, as one of them put it, “Well, she wasn’t all that religious but she lived a life of service. She lived the gospel.”

James at a wedding. James at a funeral. James at a whole lot of places in between. With no sermon required (except today!)

“Do not be deceived, my beloved. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, come down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of God’s own purpose, God gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we could become a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures.”

James at a baptism. The community of faith gathered not just here at the fount but gathered at the edge of God’s flowing river of promise. Celebrating life and birth and rebirth. As we dip again and again into the life-giving and life-sustaining waters of God’s grace. It is a sacramental pause of gratitude. Yes, this morning for Abrianna. Thanks be to God. But for all of us. To remember your baptism, to sense that mark, to know you have been sealed in God’s love, it is before all else, an act of gratitude to God. “I’ve been baptized”! It’s a synonym for “thanks be to God!” Here according to James, to be one of God’s first fruits, to be first among all that God created, it is to live a life defined by gratitude and generosity. Every generous act of giving, every perfect gift it comes from above and multiplies through the first fruits of those born by the word of truth. A baptismal prayer for Abrianna, for all the baptized, that God would be made known in the world through the gratitude and generosity of your life.

“You must understand this, my beloved; let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. James for a presidential election. James, not just for candidates, and pundits but for you and me. James for times like now when the decibel level of the rhetoric in the public square includes such hatred and disdain for the other, when there is such a sordidness to the way people talk about those who they disagree with, when what should be a robust debate about complex international policies and a treaty is reduced to name calling and questioning someone’s heritage, when the presidential election is still more than year away and the absence of civility will continue to tramp on any hope for the common good, as “trickle down” becomes less of an economic descriptor and more of an apt phrase for the nastiness that can so infect and spread among people, not just those who act out in horrible ways, not just in those who make the news, but in people just like us.

James, no not just for politics and the world out there. It’s not that easy. Only a few weeks ago I was standing at a site in Northern Israel, in the Golan Heights, not far from Lebanon and Syria. It is the site that tradition names as Caesarea Philippi; that location described in the gospels where Jesus asked the disciples “who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and “Who do you say that I am?’ There are also springs there coming out of Mt. Hermon that flow into the Jordan River and there is archeological evidence of pagan worship. It’s a multi-faith site and on the day we were there it was very crowded with Christians, and Jews, and Muslims. There was a group of big strapping in shape college kids from the U.S. traveling with the Fellowship of Christian athletes. There were several groups of Jewish college kids from the U.S. traveling with Israel’s birthright program. A few groups of Muslim families were picnicking along the water.

As I was waited my turn next to some steps that led up to one of the informational signs in front of some ruins, another college group from the U.S. was walking by. A few young men from that group stopped right next to me, sort of fell out of line from their group and they were arguing. I mean they were really arguing. It was about something their trip leader had said just moments before as he taught from scripture. It had to do with the gospels and the Apostle Paul and the inerrancy of scripture. One of the guys was really revved up and they were going at it for all to hear. I took my turn in front of the sign, worked my way around to a dozen more or so around the site and when I came back to those same steps, they were still there arguing in full voice about scripture.

It was not lost, the irony. Those college kids may never get back there again, there in front of God and Christians and Jews and Muslims, at the site where Jesus asked the disciples “Who do you say that I am”, all those guys could do was argue. You would be happy to know, as my kids are always happy to know, I didn’t say anything. Though, in hindsight, maybe I could have said, “guys, guys…James.” James for the church. Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. For your anger does not produce the righteousness of God.

“Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.”

James for dropping a child off at college. James for starting life together on a campus. James for a new school year. Doers of the word. Not forgetting. Persevering. Blessed in the doing. It sort of sounds like a version of parent launching a child and saying, “Remember who you are.” Or the saintly grandmother rocking a child and whispering “now you, you never forget where you belong.” Or the preacher standing before her congregation week after week just before giving the benediction, “Remember who you are, whose you are, and to whom you belong.” Not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts.

It won’t be a surprise to you but in my job I don’t travel all that much. When I do travel I often find myself thinking about the challenges and for those who travel all the time. Yes, I watch with envy as everyone else gets on the plane and I am in group 72. But then I remind myself how wearing it all must be, all the travel. Part of the misery, part of it that I never hear any one talk about is the tyranny and oppression and insult of the hotel room mirrors. They are big and they are everywhere. No one has mirrors like that at home because it is like looking at yourself first thing in the morning on a high definition screen. Those mirrors scrape at your confidence and sense of self, bit by bit. If it is only you and a mirror, maybe its better to forget!

When it comes to being a faithful doer of the word, if left to yourself, I’m not sure a mirror and the law of liberty is enough. Any confidence in doing, in living the faith, it so easy droops and sags and dries up. Philosophers write about how you can’t really have a sense of self without a sense of the other. You can see a part of me that I cannot see. My sense of self is not fully complete and you help me to see all of me and I help you to see all of you. One philosopher calls it “the surplus of seeing”. The “whole of me” requires a surplus of seeing. In other words, a mirror is not enough. Or in terms of the life of faith, for doers of the word, a mirror and a bible is not enough. There has to be this surplus of seeing, there has to be others. Doers of the word, it requires that sense of others. That’s why doers of the word go to church. Not because their all that religious but because it is a way to see., to more fully see, to better know your whole self as child of God. The congregation, the community, the body of Christ is the mirror. Or as Tara Woodard Lehman put it in an essay on the Huffington Post, “I go to church because I have a really bad memory…I forget who I am and who God is.” By the grace of God, we’re not called to look in the mirror by ourselves.

One of the occupational hazards of ministry is that when you meet people anytime, anywhere, there is an almost compulsive need to share all that they think is wrong with religion, with the church, with the congregation they just left, with clergy. Folks forget that their aren’t many who understand the underbelly of church life better than pastors. Instead of just listening and nodding my head, maybe next time I ought to pull out a mirror. The people of God will always need prophets, saints, and martyrs who teach, challenge, and lead us. Those names recorded in scripture and in history. But along this journey of faith to which we have been called, when I look in the mirror, when my sense of self is complete with a surplus of seeing, what I see around me in the reflection is a sea of faces whose names are known only to me, and some of them to you, the faces of those who have been and are and will be blessed in their…doing.

“If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Oh, yes. No sermon required.

© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Luke 9:10-13a
Rev. Dr. Robert Dykstra
July 19, 2015

“To be ashamed of oneself is to be in a state of total conviction,” writes British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (Equals, New York: Basic Books, 2002, p. 94). While religious communities often press their members for states of greater conviction, the experience of achieving total conviction in shame might give us pause in this.

The conviction in shame involves the total self, even one’s body self; it floods the self, raises one’s blood pressure, flushes the skin, makes us want to avert our eyes, hide our face, sink into the floor, imprisoned in humiliation and self-loathing. Total conviction may not be all it’s cracked up to be, not exactly a goal the religiously predisposed may want to pursue. We get a little nervous, and rightly so, when we see someone acting out of total conviction, religious or otherwise, in the news these days, and more often than not, I’m pretty sure, such acting out stems from an accumulation of personal or communal shame.

Perhaps we religious types, inclined to states of greater conviction, are more susceptible to shame than others, but everyone knows shame, everyone has felt it. Your earliest memories of childhood are ones likely infused with shame (Note to self: Why wouldn’t my kindergarten teacher allow me to choose the color of finger paint I preferred? I still don’t get it). Shame is sticky that way. It’s hard to peel it off once you get wrapped up in it. Effective shame-removal products or strategies are hard to come by, few and far between, though we keep searching them out: whether by losing ourselves in shopping, in electronic screens, in addictions of every flavor, maybe in writing sermons, even running for President in Donald Trump’s case – all of these incapable of ridding us of shame’s dreadful effects.

The experience of shame threatens our sense of hope for the future, my colleague Donald Capps suggests, threatens our sense that the future holds something worth looking forward to. Shame experiences always come unexpected; they surprise us, catch us off-guard and make painfully clear, Capps observes, “that what [we] wanted [to happen] did not happen, in spite of the fact that [we] fully expected [it] to.” Thus in shame we discover that not just our hopes but that we ourselves were misguided, “that we have been,” Capps says, “the victims of self-illusion” (Donald Capps, Agents of Hope: A Pastoral Psychology, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995, p. 123). Shame is the devastating conviction that our hopes were in vain, our expectations, our very selves deluded and untrustworthy.

Someone ran into our car while it was parked on the seminary campus last week. When I mentioned to the guy at the repair shop that whoever did it hadn’t left a note, he replied, “No one ever leaves a note anymore.” I felt a minor twinge of shame, I think it was, that I didn’t know this, that my expectations, my hopes for the world (or, at least, for the seminary community) were deluded. While sometimes the total conviction of shame washes over us in a big way, in a tsunami-like wave, as for the entire nation in the September 11 attacks, even little micro-threats to hope–learning that people don’t leave notes anymore–can add up over time.

And increasing doubts about a hoped-for future translate into increasing anxiety–less future means more anxiety–another familiar state of total conviction.

*******

All kinds of people, apparently thousands of them in our text today, a set-up for the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, are flocking to Jesus–and “flocking” may be the best way to put it, given that we are told in the Gospel of Mark’s version of these events that Jesus had compassion on seeing them “because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). An accumulation over time of little microbot attacks of personal shame, maybe accompanied by tsunami-like waves of national shame at being an occupied territory, diminishing hopes, their anxiety about the future, and ways these experiences of mind and soul had come negatively to impact the health even of their physical bodies: something like all of this propels them by the thousands to Jesus, as though they sense in him some alternative means of freeing themselves from the stickiness of shame and anxiety, from their states of total conviction.

  *******

In his book Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, Mark Edmundson, a literature professor at the University of Virginia, comments on the frenetic activities of his undergraduate students, who jet around the globe to accumulate exotic experiences, a lifestyle pace he attributes to anxiety in the wake of the “near-American Apocalypse” of September 11. “No one,” he says, believes that the whole [American] edifice is likely to topple down around us soon. But everyone now lives with the knowledge that today, tomorrow, next week, we can suffer an event that will change everything drastically . . . . Tomorrow the deck may be shuffled and recut by the devil’s hand. So what shall we do now?

The answer of Edmundson’s students, it strikes him, appears to be: Live, live, before the bombs go off in San Francisco or the water goes vile in New York . . . . On that bad day there will be, at the very least, the start of a comprehensive closing down. There will be no more free travel, no more easy money, and much less loose talk. . . . There’s a humane hunger to my students’ hustle for more life–but I think it’s possible that down below bubbles a fear. Do it now, for later may be too late. (Edmundson, Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, New York: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 34-35)

The Times reported a few weeks ago that university counseling centers are seeing sharp increases in the number of students seeking help–a 15% rise last year at the University of Central Florida, as one example, where supply closets are being converted into therapist’s offices. “Anxiety has surpassed depression as the most common mental health diagnosis among college students,” The Times notes, though depression is holding its own just fine (Jan Hoffman, “Anxious Students Strain College Mental Health Centers,” New York Times, May 27, 2015). These developments are mirrored by students in the seminary across the street, as no doubt at the schoolhouse in this church’s back lot. Who says young people today are incapable of conviction? And it’s not as if they and the rest of us don’t have reason to be anxious. They do, and we are. No one, besides the occasional terrorist, leaves a note anymore.

 *******

 Jesus had compassion for them, these anxious throngs, Mark writes, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus welcomed them, is the way Luke puts it, even though Jesus had hoped for a time to get away from it all, to get away from those very crowds. “On their return [from the mission of the twelve] the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.”

Jesus’ disciples have just been promoted here to “apostles,” meaning “the sent ones,” on returning from their first solo mission trip, which appears to have gone very well. They’re excited, eager to tell him all about it, the youth group just back from Montreat, from backpacking in British Columbia. And Jesus wants to hear about it. He is the kind of leader who cares to hear about what they’ve seen and accomplished, who wants to listen to them, who takes pride in them and their gifts.

To do this, to give them and their holy exploits full attention, he proposes to take them on a retreat, wants to get away. Like men in a bar after the big game or like superhero fans at Comic-Con, he wants to hear all about it, wants a play-by-play, a blow-by-blow, a frame-by-frame, wants to know how it all went down. A small act of kindness, a teacher who pulls them aside, who gives them space, who attends with interest, who wants to know.

But you remember that saying about our best-laid plans? The retreat comes crashing to a halt even before it begins when the crowds get wind of it and rush to get there before him, these sheep without a shepherd, so great their weariness and need. Jesus responds to this interruption not in the way I would likely respond, not by rolling his eyes but by rolling up his sleeves, not by wondering why a guy can’t catch a break but instead by digging down deep and catching a second wind.

“He had compassion for them,” Mark writes; “He welcomed them,” Luke says, “and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured,” the exact same things, it’s worth pointing out, that he instructed his disciples to do as he sent them on the mission of the twelve: welcoming the anxious, speaking of the kingdom of God, healing those who need to be cured is what he wanted his followers to do, too. And on their return they couldn’t wait to tell him that they actually did, that they actually could.

This compassion, this welcome, this empathy, this grace when we least expect it, is the only remedy of which I’m aware for our states of total conviction, for our hopelessness, anxiety, and shame: a face that shines upon us in our moment of vulnerability and need.

It’s something that can be taught, something that can be learned. Jesus wants to teach us how.

******* 

Two days after the murders of nine parishioners at a Bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston last month, family members of the victims lined up in a courtroom to confront the man who killed their loved ones. Again and again in this instance the message they delivered to Dylann Roof was the completely unexpected “Forgive You”: “‘You took something very precious away from me,’ said Nadine Collier, daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance, her voice rising in anguish. ‘I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul’” (Nikita Stewart and Richard Pérez-Peña, “In Charleston, Raw Emotion at Hearing Suspect in Church Shooting,” New York Times, June 19, 2015). Over and over again compassion and welcome when least expected, and we who were watching in awe and disbelief wondered if the world was about to turn.

Then just two days after that, on a Sunday when I expected that church’s doors to be bolted shut, maybe forever (“They may have to tear down the church,” I’d thought, “like Newtown’s elementary school, and we would understand if they did”), Emmanuel’s faithful instead flung them wide and poured through by the hundreds, nearly two thousand, filling every pew, overflowing even into the basement room where the shootings occurred four days before, and into the public square, with the rest of us watching those faithful dig down deep to discover a second wind of compassion and welcome as the only possible antidote for our terrible states of total conviction. And the world was about to turn.

*******

In an essay entitled “The Importance of Individuals,” published in 1897, William James (James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosphy, New York: Dover Publications, 1956, p. 261), America’s first and arguably still greatest psychologist, makes a case for the importance of our having heroes whom we strive to emulate, but also therefore for the necessity of choosing wisely just who our heroes will be. It matters, it makes a concrete difference in terms of what we value and how we order our lives, what heroes we choose. He writes, “What animal, domestic or wild, will call it a matter of no moment that scarce a word of sympathy with brutes should have survived from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth?”

I understand all too well how naive it seems to suggest, as I am trying to suggest, that compassion and welcome could ever suffice in response to the devastating shame and increasing anxiety we experience in this era of near-American apocalypse. How could empathy and grace ever be enough to counter our terrible states, our terrorist states, of total conviction?

But if our hero is Jesus of Nazareth, of whom “scarce a word of sympathy with brutes should have survived,” if Jesus is Lord, then compassion and welcome is our secret superhero power, then empathy and grace the remedy entrusted to us.

*******

A former seminary student of mine is the son of a tall-steeple Baptist minister from a southern state. The student was open about being a gay man on our campus at a time not long ago when such candor was not common. He had come out to his conservative parents as a teenager many years earlier. Learning of his sexual orientation was not something they had wanted to hear from him. In the initial aftermath of his revelation, both sides maintained radio silence concerning his sexuality. Eventually, however, Tim decided to make a point of bringing up his orientation, to his parents’ discomfort, each time he went home for holidays or school breaks. He refused to allow them to ignore this important part of who he was.

His parents remained entrenched in their opposition long past his graduation from the seminary and for years into his first professional position as a non-ordained but openly gay youth minister in a working-class Presbyterian congregation, itself not entirely supportive of gay rights, in urban New England. Meanwhile, he began the process of preparing for a day when he might be allowed to be ordained as an “out” gay minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

That day finally arrived, as Presbyterians voted in 2012 to allow for the ordination of gay and lesbian persons. Tim asked his minister father not only to attend his ordination but, if he were willing, to offer the customary scriptural “charge” to the newly ordained minister. To his surprise, his father agreed. Likewise, though such an ordination strained the belief system of the little congregation with which Tim had been working, parishioners nonetheless rallied in their historic role and witness in hosting the ceremony.

A year or so after the fact, I received an email from Tim telling of his ordination service. He said, “My father gave the charge, which was truly an amazing moment. For me, it would have been enough if he had simply read the phone book, but he gave a beautiful charge and thanked the church for ‘being there for our son when our family was not.’ Not an accolade the [Presbyterian] church often receives,” Tim said, “but there were a lot of tears” (personal correspondence, May 6, 2013; see Robert C. Dykstra, “Zombie Alleluias: Learning to Live in the Space Between Worlds,” Pastoral Psychology, 63:5/6, December 2014, pp. 611-624).

Compassion and welcome when we least expect it, the only sure remedy for our anxiety and shame, and the world is about to turn.

*******

When Jesus saw the crowds, “he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.” That’s it. That’s all. That’s enough. That’s who Jesus is. That’s what he does. That’s what he taught his disciples to do, what I’m wagering he wants us to do. A face to shine upon us, we sheep without a shepherd; our faces to shine upon others’, our modest superpower antidote for anxiety and shame.

© 2015, Property of Rev. Dr. Robert Dykstra
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

March 15, 2015
Mark 6:35-44

Youth Preachers: Alex Martin, Lily Olsen, Nikhil Pulimood

 

Text not available.

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Romans 8:12-17
Dr. Mark Edwards
May 31, 2015

Text is not available at this time

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I John 5:1-6
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
May 10, 2015

             Part of one’s education, at any level really, is learning how to take notes. Some teachers ask students to turn in their notes as a way to both monitor a student’s diligence and provide some coaching about how to be efficient and effective in the art of taking notes. I had some good teachers early on and I became a pretty good note taker in high school. So much so that many friends and classmates started asking to see my notes. Now, in a moment of confession and acknowledging my less than Christian behavior, I will tell you that my awful handwriting today is a result of intentionally making my handwriting unintelligible so folks would stop asking to see my notes!

So I’m a pretty good note taker. But everyone now then one comes upon a teacher, a professor, a lecturer whose style, organization, presentation, and communication of content makes note taking really difficult; almost impossible. There were one or two back in the 80’s at Princeton Seminary but its too risky for me to name names. I will tell you, however, that the most difficult professor to annotate in college was Robert Coles. He was a professor of psychiatry teaching an undergraduate course entitled “The Literature of Christian Reflection.” We read some incredible stuff: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Simone Weil, Flannery O,Conner. Professor Coles would come into the lecture hall all rumpled wearing a sweater with holes in the elbows and just start to talk about the reading, the author, the context. Eventually, as a listener, you put your pen down, sit back and take it all in. Not because the lectures weren’t helpful. They were actually remarkable and memorable. Rather than taking notes and dissecting point by point, you had to sort of live into the moment and hang on to, file away, a takeaway or two. Some of those takeaways, I still carry 35 years later. Robert Coles and “The Literature of Christian Reflection.”

When you get into the heart of the Epistle of I John, you sort have to put your pen down, stop taking notes, lean back, and look for the takeaways. Unlike the linear, rhetorical argument style of the Apostle Paul, I John, it’s less an argument to follow and more of a sermon to take in. Lots of repetition, layers of meaning, circling back again and again to theme. I John, it comes with the sense that it is more pleasing to listen to than to read. It’s just hard to diagram it all. Just here in the few verses of the fifth chapter that I offered for your hearing; belief in Jesus Christ, born of God, love of God, love the parent love the child, obeying God’s commandments, conquering the world, victory over the world, believing Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus Christ made known in water and the blood. The Spirt is truth. Amid the swirl of familiar terms and themes, the reader tries to follow the thread, jot down the notes, connect the dots, keep up with the preacher, all the while wanting to interrupt the unrelenting pace of the material with a clarifying, even halting question. “Excuse me!”

Take “conquering and victory” for instance. “Conquering and victory” here in I John. You remember Paul uses the term “conquerors”. The memorable concluding verses to Romans 8: “In all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” More than conquerors. And victory. There’s victory all through the scripture in the narratives of the Old Testament. But also in Psalm 98: “O sing to the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done marvelous things. God’s right hand and God’s holy arm have gotten him victory. The Lord has made known his victory….All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” And again with the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 15. You won’t forget Paul on victory: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Victory. Conquering. In the witness of scripture “conquering and victory” belongs to God and the work of Jesus Christ.

So when the preacher in I John drops some victory language in the sermon, the listener knows what to expect. “And this is the victory that conquers the world” Yes, preacher, bring it on. Here we go! “This is the victory that conquers… that conquers the world….our faith. This is the victory that conquers the world, our faith” Woe, woe, woe! And all the pens in the room drop, and the hands go up? Excuse me? Our faith. Our faith conquers the world? My faith conquers the world? That’s not where I thought you were going? Because if it is up to my faith, our faith, the world is going to win every time. And by the way, I John preacher, have you looked around lately?

A sharp pencil approach, it doesn’t work so well with I John. Sit back and listen for the takeaway. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey God’s commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey God’s commandments. And God’s commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.”

How about this takeaway: The Spirit is at work in those claimed by the saving grace of Jesus Christ calling us to a life of faithfulness and commitment best defined by love. That love has been revealed to us first and foremost in the life, suffering, and death of Jesus. When the followers of Jesus live in obedience, ordained by the water of his baptism and forever drawn to the blood of his selfless love, God’s love works to overcome the world. How about this takeway? The victory of our obedience furthers the work of God’s love in the world. Not just a takeaway but a promise from God about God’s love works.

This week I was in Atlanta with a peer group of pastors I meet with regularly. We went to the Civil Rights Museum one morning with what seemed like every third grader in the metro Atlanta area. Walking through the history of civil rights in this spring of 2015 surrounded by crowds of elementary school students of all races, talk about living into the moment? At one point several of us were standing in front of the surround sound film clips of “The March on Washington”. You couldn’t miss the faith leaders there in the front alongside Dr. King. And of course at one point the film showed the crowd, with interlocking arms, all singing. The volume on the presentation turned up at that point. I looked around at my colleagues, four or five of us standing with all these kids who came up to our waist. The pastors, we were all singing along. Some of the kids, they heard us and were looking up and giggling at us. My faith leader colleagues, they couldn’t take their eyes off the march. The kids didn’t know what do think of us, but we kept singing along with those in the film. You know what we were singing….”We Shall Overcome”. “Whoever is born of God overcomes the world.” I John.

Many of the children were moving through the museum with clipboards and an assignment page. You know how it works. They were assigned particular people to find in the various exhibits. At one point as I stood before a wall of leaders, pictures, dates, and names, a little girl stood next to me looking way up at this mountain of people. “Can I help you find someone?” “Yes” she said. “I’m looking for Ruby Bridges.” Well, the first person to tell me about Ruby Bridges was Robert Coles in my freshman year of college in a course entitled “The Literature of Christian Reflection.” I leaned over to give a hint, “let’s look for the picture of a girl who was even younger than you.” Ruby Bridges was the first African American girl to integrate a school in New Orleans in 1960. She was in kindergarten and had to be escorted by her mother and law enforcement officers every day to school.

One of those days her teacher, Mrs. Henry, thought she saw Ruby talking to the crowds along the sidewalk who were shouting mean and horrible things to her. The teacher asked Ruby about it. “I wasn’t talking to them, Mrs. Henry. I was praying for them. Usually I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I’d forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I’d asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” The 3^rd grader and I, we found Ruby Bridges on the wall in Atlanta on Monday. When she read about her, she was reading about one little girl’s faith overcoming the world.

Later that night one of our colleagues told of remarkable conversation with a church member last week, The member is pretty sick and has been battling for a long time. During the conversation, the member told the pastor about difficult but important conversations with children and grandchildren. The member said “I wouldn’t be able to have those conversation if it hadn’t been for your visit to me the last time I was in the hospital.” The pastor wasn’t following and didn’t know what the member meant. “When you prayed with me that day, something happened. A peace came over me like I have never felt. God’s love poured out on me. Your prayer. It made me a believer. My faith was like it was brand new. My life changed right then and I am no longer afraid.”

Overcoming the world. It takes all shapes and sizes. And it happens all the time.

That’s how God’s love works. That’s God’s promise.

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I John 4:7-21
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
May 3, 2015

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way….

            In my high school years each summer I attended a conference in Western Pennsylvania on the campus of Westminster College called the New Wilmington Missionary Conference. It was there that I heard one of the shortest and most memorable sermons ever. A well-known preacher, a traveling evangelist of sorts, delivered the keynote each morning and the sermon each night. One evening during worship when it came time for the sermon, he stood up, read from somewhere in I John, looked out at the gathered community and said “let us love one another” and he turned and sat down. After an awkward silence, he stood up again and said, “beloved, let us love another” and he sat down again. And then a third time, he stood up at the podium and said “let us love one another.” He sat down. There was a long time for silent reflection and then we were led in song. The shortest and one of the most memorable sermons ever. He made his point. You get his point on the clarity of I John on love.

            God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent God’s only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent God’s Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.  

Perfecting the motion. It is a term in Robert’s Rules. A term for the parliamentary process for a governing body that operates with a moderator who oversees votes, motions, speaking for, speaking against. Perfecting the motion. It is the way the body works a particular motion that is on the table: amending it, amending the amendments, offering substitute motions, debating. The irony, of course, is that the process of perfecting a motion is more often than not an utter and complete mess. A confused moderator, a less than patient parliamentarian, debates that have nothing to do with the prior, main motion, folks yelling out for a point of order and a meeting just on the edge of total chaos. Perfecting? Even with the best effort, it’s a wonder anything gets done. God’s love perfect in us? Even with humanity’s best effort, it’s a wonder. But that’s I John on love.

God’s love is perfected in us….God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as God is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love , but perfect love casts out fear…
I think I have done it wrong for almost thirty years. I’m not sure how many times I have erred in thirty years but that’s because long ago I lost track of how many weddings I have done. The call to worship in a service of Christian marriage, the first words spoken: God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. But just like I Corinthians 13, (love is patient, love is kind) just like I Corinthians 13 has really nothing to do with marriage, weddings, just one couple, it’s pretty clear I John is not about romance. I am not beating myself about my mistake. After all, it’s in the liturgy of the Book of Common Worship of the Presbyterian Church USA, in the liturgy for marriage, the opening sentences, the first word spoken: God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. I didn’t make it up. Reading the text from I John like that at a wedding, at pretty much every wedding. I’m just not sure it’s right. Let me put it this way, I’m not sure it’s the best use of I John on love.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God has first loved us.

It happens over and over again. An old family picture up on the wall. A grandfather as a young man. A great grandmother as a child. Someone looks at one of the newest generation in the family. A child in arms at the holiday meal. A picture on a phone sent from a cousin. Everyone can see it. Two, three generations later in the facial features, the hair, the eyes. She looks just like her great grandmother. He looks just like grandpa when he was in high school. “Well, will you look at that!” First among the distinguishing traits of those referred to in I John as the “beloved”, first among the traits, first in the DNA is love. I John on love. It is the writer of I John pointing to a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall and then looking back to the Beloved. “Hey, look at that”. Sort of like when we find ourselves at this Table remembering, and partaking, and thanking, and tasting, and seeing. God’s love for us. God in Christ in the power of the Spirit, inviting us here. God saying, “well, will you look at that!” The Lord’s Supper. I John…..On love.

Those who say “I love God” and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from God is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Just this last Friday I participated again in a Prayer Walk through the streets of Trenton. Now the second year of an interfaith effort of stopping to pray at every site were someone has been murdered in the city since January. A half dozen or so folks from Nassau came along this year. At several stops we were joined by family members of the men who had been killed. At each spot: silence prayer, spoken pray, maybe a song, an anointing of the ground with oil. In the silence there in front of a home on Pearl Street and then again on Hanover Street I was struck by the spring time that was evident in the color in the trees and the birds I could hear singing and the contrast to the sound of a family member gently weeping the death of a son, a brother, a father. When the family members spoke, each one, they spoke about love. They called for an end to violence. They pled for healing and peace in the city. A gutwrenching call for love. A love that dares to rise out of death. A love that is boldly and courageously at work in places, in people, in relationships where there would otherwise be no love. A love that comes from nowhere but above. A love that overcomes. A I John kind of love

Beloved let us love another…Beloved since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another…God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them…We love because God first loved us…

Of the many heartbreaking, disturbing, and not easily forgettable scenes from Baltimore this week, one was early on when the marches were still peaceful. It was a video of protesters were walking past a bar, an outdoor café kind of place that was full of folks obviously going to the baseball game. They had jerseys on: Baltimore and Boston. There was no audio on the clip but clearly words were exchanged and some pushing and shoving ensued. Later I read about what happened. As the mostly African American marchers passed the bar shouting “No justice, no peace!” and “Black Lives Matter!”, the mostly white ballgame going patrons shouted back, “We don’t care! We don’t care!” And somewhere, someplace, some time, a preacher says to the gathered community and beyond, “let us love one another” and then she turns and sits down.

Which brings me back to where I got it wrong; the wedding thing, I John and those opening sentences. I will quote I John the next time and the time after that. Yes, it is fitting for the promise of nuptial joy. But a I John kind of love, wow, it is so much more than that. So much more prophetic than that. A better use, a more urgent read, a more compelling, convicting, life giving, transforming encounter with I John? It’s in weeks like this one Preachers like me, churches like ours reading, proclaiming, pleading for, praying for, pointing to, working for, living a I John kind of love. “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and God knows everything.” (I John 3).

God is greater than our hearts. God is greater than our feeble efforts to perfect God’s motion; that bold, courageous, prophetic, world changing, I John kind of love. God is greater than our hearts! (Let the church say “Amen!”). I John on love. God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit on love. Inviting us here to this Table to feast on a promise for weeks like this one. Before you voice an opinion on current events in all of their fullness, before you let the angst in your heart turn to a numb not caring anymore, before judgement or anger or guilt or sorrow or righteous indignation rise up within you, before you find yourself overwhelmed by the magnitude of death and suffering in Nepal, or your own paralysis when it comes to what to think or do when it comes to race and reconciliation, or when love seems all together absent or far from perfect in your corner of the world, your corner of the family, your corner of life and faith…Come, here……will you look at that….well, will you look at him

I John on love…..Come, taste, and see.

© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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March 8, 2015
Matthew 13:31-33
“Thy Kingdom Come”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed and a bit of leaven; like the greatest of shrubs and three measures of flour all leavened. The greatest of shrubs, Jesus said. Bible translations try different words to capture the intended image, the twist, even the humor. The greatest of shrubs. The greatest among herbs. The largest of garden plants. The largest of all vegetable plants. The greatest of shrubs. Sort of an oxymoron. Not like the Old Testament: oaks of righteousness and mighty cedars of Lebanon. The greatest of shrubs, Jesus said.

In the high school year book when the senior class votes on most likely to succeed and best athlete and king and queen of the prom and most likely to own her own bio-tech company and who will probably be elected president some day; being voted best date to take home to mom or dad, that’s like being called the greatest of shrubs. The dreaded “back-handed compliment”. The kingdom, Jesus said, looks pretty good….for an herb. When it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

The kingdom, it nests in the most unexpected places, in the most unassuming ways. The kingdom of heaven, it doesn’t soar from the pinnacles of power. It doesn’t ride on the coattails of wealth. It isn’t launched from the hallowed halls of the smartest or even birthed in the practice of the most religious. The kingdom takes root and multiplies among the least, and the last, and the outcast, and the weak. Unnamed and unheralded kingdom bearers who forward grace and make servant-hood contagious and give glory to God with the overwhelming ordinariness of their lives. Bearing witness, allowing the kingdom to stretch, and whether they know it or now, offering a forearm shiver for the kingdom straight into the world’s solar plexus where wealth and power and self-interest and success and violence and hatred all swirl with a life all their own. The kingdom of heaven, it’s like the greatest of shrubs, and all leavened.

Years and years ago Cathy and I were given some Friendship Bread. Someone gives you some batter, some pre-dough, whatever you call it. It takes like ten days. You stir this day. You add something this day, then you split it up all up, give some to friends and bake your own loaf. We were newly married so we took the friendship project very seriously. It all went as smoothly as could be expected. We baked a loaf that was pretty good. Three containers of stuff were ready to pass on to friends; passing friendship forward. We delivered two of the three right away. One bowl of batter, stored in a Cool Whip/plastic ware container, was left on the counter with the lid on to be delivered in the morning. What happened over night could have made one of those old science fiction movies. The next morning the Friendship Bread batter was everywhere. There on the counter, right above the dishwasher that was run at bed time and therefore heated the counter top, the warmed batter pushed the lid off the container and set out to take over the kitchen. It ran off the counter, into the sink, down the front of the dishwasher. The batter was creeping everywhere. Even the dog was frightened. That batter, the beginnings of bread dough, the start of a loaf, it was as the scripture says, “all leavened”.

Kingdom creep. The constant presence and movement of the kingdom of heaven here and now. No, rarely with leaps and bounds. Never with enough flow from the mountaintops of life. Kingdom creep. Once in a while like a march for justice across a bridge. More often with baby steps, one life, one relationship, one voice at a time. And at times far too easy to look around and think that kingdom might be in retreat, or the kingdom was closer back in the day, or the kingdom it thrived at the time of Jesus, or the kingdom peaked that night in Bethlehem or that afternoon at Golgotha or that morning at the tomb. But Jesus taught that the kingdom is on the move, until all of it, all of us, all of this, until all of it is leavened. God at work. Ever-present, ever-moving, with a subtle power that has the potential to knock the lid off this world. The kingdom in our midst, creeping into people’s lives and reaching the world’s darkest corners, offering a life of forgiveness and love, resurrection hope and joy, and future unbound by fear. All of it in the name of and through the work of the One who said “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed and a bit of leaven.”

Just a few weeks ago I was sitting with some clergy friends in a hotel lobby after a day’s worth of meetings that ended with dinner. You’re not going to believe me when I tell you this, but we were sitting there talking about particular verses, particular translations of the New Revised Standard Version of the bible that we find less than satisfying. That’s a rip roaring time, right? The only good news there, is that more often when pastor’s get together they tell funeral stories or just talk about you church folks. So one of my colleagues lamented the lack of poetic license in the NRSV and the perceived rigid commitment to the Greek text. The example given was Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ first words spoken in Mark, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” That’s the NRSV. The argument continued, “In the King James and in the Revised Standard Jesus says “the kingdom of God is at hand”. I get the “come near” is closer to the actual Greek but what the heck does that mean “come near”, my friend pleaded with us. “Don’t we believe the kingdom in and through Christ is something that can be touched; “is at hand”, something that makes a difference all around us, all around here.” It was some preaching going on. Don’t knock sitting around a lobby bar talking bible translation until you’ve tried it! “The kingdom of God is at hand”, Jesus said, “and it is like a mustard seed and a bit of leaven.”

When Jesus instructs you to pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it’s not a casual choice of words. The words comes with quite a bit of baggage. The petition itself, bears the weight of all the Lord’s teaching on the kingdom of God. Jesus said a whole lot more about the kingdom than he ever said about the church. And you know Jesus practiced what he taught; he prayed what he taught. In the Garden of Gethsemane, that night of his betrayal and arrest, that night of the Last Supper, the night before he was tortured and killed, Jesus prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet, not my will but yours be done.” Pray then like this, Jesus said. Pray then like I will, pray then like I do. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The kingdom. God’s will. Pray it!

On earth as it is in heaven, in heaven where, as John Calvin puts it, “nothing is done apart from God’s good pleasure.” As it is in heaven, because there is no will in heaven other than yours, O God. No other will, no other forces, no one else at work in heaven but God. The reference to heaven, “as it is in heaven”, the connotation is not for the heavenly city to suddenly appear, not for paradise to break out, not even for justice and righteousness to blossom in an end time kind of way that wraps this life up with a bow and calls it a day. No, the plea is for God’s will to unfold unabated; unfettered by the powers and principalities of the world, unencumbered by the world’s present darkness. For God’s will to be at work in the world with a slow and steady kingdom creep to it all. For God’s will to be freed in your life, in mine, God’s will freed even from own selves, our own voice, our own will.

The prayer could not be any further from a social media frenzied world where every voice and opinion is supposed to count. The prayer could not be any more counter-cultural in a day when everyone demands a place at the table. The prayer could not be any more disconcerting in a consumer –driven religious marketplace that sells a whole lot do it yourself, DIY spirituality. The traditional prayer makes a counter-intuitive move; it’s not a centering prayer at all; it is decentering move where as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would put it, Christ is the Center. It’s a self-emptying, not a self-fulfilling prayer. So simple, yet so radical. So easy to miss. The radically God-centered nature of the Lord’s Prayer. Just like in heaven where absolutely everything surrounds the throne of God’s grace, and the One who sits upon the throne, the very Lamb of God, is in the midst of them all, in the center of it all. There where God wipes away every tear from their eyes.

When writing about prayer, the theologian Karl Barth describes it as an essential part of the Christian attitude. By Christian attitude, Barth seems to be describing the qualities, the character traits, the necessary ingredients of the Christian life. It’s sort of interesting to add a contemporary overlay of the usage of the term “attitude” . As in “he’s got quite an attitude” or “you’re going need a better attitude” or “she should lose the attitude” or “what’s with the tude, dude?” Attitude these days seems to imply an edginess or a bit of moxie, unabashed, unfiltered assertiveness. Which actually isn’t all that far from the role, the importance, the essence of prayer according to Barth. For the Christian, before prayer is worship, before it is confession, before it is adoration, prayer, according to Karl Barth, it is unadulterated, honest, authentic petition. Or as he puts it, prayer is simply asking. As in “just asking”. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. I’m just asking, Lord. Just asking. The counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, radical, subversive, not at all passive or naively pious petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Not so much of a complaint or lament as it is a petition with a bit of attitude. An affirmation, a belief, a conviction about the kingdom of heaven. It is so like a mustard seed and a bit of leaven.

Just last night I sat over there listening to the combined choir from Nassau and Trinity sing the Durufle Requiem. It was beautiful. As the choir was singing all these faces started snapping past as I closed my eyes. Sort of like one of those award shows where someone sings and the pictures of those who had died in the last year flash on the screen. I was listening to the Requiem and finding myself freshly surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Thinking about this sermon, I sat there pondering how they shared the kingdom with me, taught the kingdom to me, witnessed the kingdom to me, brought the kingdom to me. Unheralded kingdom bearers who forwarded grace and made servant-hood contagious and gave glory to God with the overwhelming ordinariness of their lives.

One of the faces I saw in my evening prayer was Sam Moffett’s. I’m not sure I could name anyone in my life, in my cloud of witnesses that had a greater impact on the spread of Christianity in the world, a greater impact on the kingdom than Dr. Moffett; his ministry in Korea, his impact on generations of servants sent out to the mission field. But Dr. Moffett’s kingdom sharing with me, it’s going to sound so ordinary. On Sundays at the church door, or back at coffee hour, or over at the Windrows, whenever I would see Dr. Moffett, he would always say to me, “power to you”. If you knew Dr. Moffett you knew what power he was talking about. For all I know Sam Moffett said “power to you” to the mail carrier, the hostess at dinner, and every friend he ever had. But for me, what I heard, what I experienced every time he said it, was his prayer for me as pastor and proclaimer of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that I would be lifted by the very power of God in service to God’s kingdom. That God would bless me to share in a bit of kingdom creep. With all those faces flashing on the screen in my heart and soul last night, I found my shoulders lifting and I was sitting a bit taller, reminded of the kingdom work to which we have all been called. . An affirmation, a belief, a conviction about the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, since you are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, pray then like this…

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

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Luke 2:22-40
December 28, 2014
“With These Hands”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

Text is not available.

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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