Monthly Archives: July 2009

It’s The Little Things

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This is the message that I gave on the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, 30 July 2000, at Walker Valley United Methodist Church, Walker Valley, NY.  The Scriptures for that Sunday were 2 Samuel 11: 1 – 15, Ephesians 3:14 – 21, and John 6: 1 – 21.

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The Star Trek movie “The Voyage Home” has two lines that I think are very memorable. The first occurred when the crew had landed in the San Francisco park and where off to find the whales and the materials needed to return home. Kirk told the crew “Remember where we parked,” a line we have all said at one time or another to our children or have been told by our parents.

The second line was when they rescued Chekov from the hospital. When they entered the operating room, it was Kirk, McCoy, and the whale biologists. When they left, it was Kirk, McCoy, the biologist pushing the cart with Chekov on the cart. When the guard noticed this minor discrepancy, Kirk mumbled, “One little mistake.

Life is based a lot of times on the little things. Bill Walton noted that one of the first things he was taught at UCLA was how to put his shoes and socks on. As John Wooden himself later wrote,

This may seem like a nuisance, trivial, but I had a very practical reason for being meticulous about this. Wrinkles, folds, and creases can cause blisters. Blisters interfere with performance during practice and games. Since there was a way to reduce blisters, something the player and I could control, it was our responsibility to do it. Otherwise we would not be doing everything possible to prepare in the best way.” (“Wooden — A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court”, John Wooden with Steve Jamison.)

John Wooden further wrote

“These seemingly trivial matters, taken together and added to many, many other so-called trivial matters build into something very big: namely, your success.”1

David’s downfall as King of Israel began when he failed to keep in mind that it was the attention to the little things that mattered most. Granted, the little things that he failed to remember were the Ten Commandments, of which I think he broke at least three in the passage from the Old Testament we read today. But in reading this passage, you get the feeling that David was beginning to think that he was above the common folk and that being king made him above the little things.

David used his authority as king to take advantage of Uriah’s wife Bathsheba while Uriah was fighting a war for Israel. As a result of David’s sins, Bathsheba became pregnant. David attempted to cover up things by calling Uriah home from battle. In that way, people might think that Bathsheba’s child was Uriah’s.

But Uriah, the ever-dedicated soldier, refused to enjoy the comforts of home while his comrades were still on the battlefield. In doing this, Uriah showed that he was perhaps more righteous than David. It should be noted that while David was the Lord’s anointed, the regent of God on earth, Uriah was a convert to Judaism, not born of the faith. Uriah’s words in 11:11 must have really stung David’s conscience.

“The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” (2 Samuel 11: 11)

Uriah was telling David that he would not neglect his duty, as perhaps he knew David had neglected his own. Moreover, David had stolen the wife of one Israel’s best soldiers while his army was risking their lives for the kingdom and their king. Yet David persisted in covering up his sin; he attempted to break Uriah’s resolve by giving him too much to drink. But this was to no avail, as Uriah would not succumb to the temptation.

Failing to cover up his sin, David plotted Uriah’s death. There is no telling why David would do this. Perhaps he could not face the shame of seeing Uriah after he, Uriah, learned that David had slept with wife. As Uriah returned to the battlefront, he carried the very orders that would ultimately lead to his death.

After Uriah’s death, David quickly married Bathsheba in an attempt to make the child legitimate. However, “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” (2 Samuel 11: 27) And while David was able to conceal his sin from the people of Israel, he could not conceal it from God. Later, in the twelfth chapter of 2 Samuel, David will receive his punishment from God.

Not paying attention to the little things is what caused David to lose favor with God. But I am not saying that the Ten Commandments are little things. There are the keystone for our society and the basis upon which society operates. But if you treat the commandments lightly, you are likely to get into deep trouble.

Success depends on the little things. When you ignore the little things, you get into trouble. When you take into consideration the little things success comes easily. The question for us today is how we see the little things. The simple things that we do each day are often times the little things that make a difference in someone’s life.

The money for the first parsonage at Grace Church in Minnesota came from the estate of a person who had only visited the church once. But because the reception that person received had such an impact on them, when they died, they left a substantial gift to the church. No one in the church knew who had made the impression or when; all the letter said was, in essence, “Thank you.”

Jesus was always looking out for and protecting the little ones. He took the time to see the people in the shadows, the wallflowers, the lepers, and the ones nobody wanted to dance with. It could be that Jesus was sensitive to the unlovely and unloved because he knew what it was like to be considered an outsider. He knew what it felt like to be spit at, mislabeled, verbally and physically abused. He knew what it was to be treated like a king one day and a criminal the next.

His compassion for the little ones of society was seen in the beginning of the Gospel reading for today. The thousands who came to hear him came because he was healing the sick.

But were it not for the boy in the Gospel reading today making the offer is his small lunch, then the multitudes would not have been feed. And while the multiplication of the loaves and fishes are a clear sign of Jesus’ deity, it should be noted that he could not have done the miracle without somebody offering the loaves and fishes in the first place.

In the Epistle reading for today, Paul writes that Christ’s love passes all our knowledge and that God’s ability to do things goes beyond anything we can say or do or imagine. Still I think that the mystery of God’s grace is very simple. As long as we are on this earth, we will never know nor should we desire to know why God cared enough for each of us to send us his Son, who by his death and resurrection would save us from sin and death.

It can be that little thing wasn’t that little after all. But when you stop to think about it, anything we do in this world is little when compared to that.

That is the challenge for us this day. We can never know when it is that what we will do will make an impact on someone; when the one act of simply saying hello to a stranger will make a difference in that person’s life. For the players of the countless teams coached by John Wooden, it was a little thing to put their socks on in a prescribed manner, but the results were the beginning of championships. Having been saved by Christ, what little thing will you do this week that shows others?

What We Receive

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This is the message that I am presenting at Gaylordsville United Methodist Church on July 12th.  The Scriptures for that Sunday were 2 Samuel 6: 1 – 5, 12 – 19; Ephesians 1:3 – 14; and Mark 6: 14 -29

I will also be at Gaylordsville next week; services are at 9:30 and you are welcome to attend.

This has been edited since first posted.

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Why did you come to church this morning? Perhaps you had heard from someone that there was going to be an interesting speaker and you wanted to see or hear for yourself what you friends had said was true. Maybe you are here this morning because you have to be here; you have the keys to the building and if you aren’t here, people will come looking for you. Then again, you are here today because you didn’t have a choice, your mother or father told you that you had to come.

It is entirely possible, of course that you came to church this morning out of habit. For my family, church was part of the Sunday routine, along with pancakes and bacon for breakfast, Southern-fried chicken for supper and perhaps a pizza for dinner.

But even that routine became sadly boring and I found myself fighting tedium, boredom, and apathy during the service; so much so that my mother would routinely elbow me in order to keep me awake. And while I can’t remember who was preaching, I do know that even hellfire and damnation preachers have the extraordinary power to put me to sleep in church.

What were you expecting to receive from your relatively limited time here this morning? For too many people the answer to this question is they want is for church to be a microcosm of society. They want an hour or so (and really not more than an hour) away from the problems of the world; they want very simple topics and nothing that requires them to think or respond; and they want God to give them the solutions rather than being asked to solve the problems of the world.

And fair warning, if that is what you expect this morning, it is not what you are going to get. For every two or three people out there for whom Sunday and church are a limited amount of time that could be spent better elsewhere there is at least one person who is desperately searching for the answers to questions buried deep within their soul. These questions are so deep in their soul that most people cannot even say what the question might be; they only know that something is missing in their life and perhaps, just perhaps, the church can tell them what it is.

I can empathize with these people because there have periods in my life where I knew that something was missing. But for me, I knew what was missing; there are many out there who do not know what it is they are missing.

I have often said that I came to know Christ through the power of my mother’s elbow as she constantly poked me to stay awake as we sat in the pew of 1st Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. To get away from her elbowing me, I would sit in a pew myself; and for whatever reason, I began to think about pursuing the God and Country award in the Boy Scouts.

With my father’s transfer to Lowry Air Force Base and our move to the Denver area, I found myself attending the 1st Evangelical United Brethren Church in Aurora, Colorado. The pastor of this church was George Edie and while I am not sure if he understood what the God and Country award meant, he agreed to guide myself and two others in the process of earning this award.

The one thing that you have to understand about this award is that it is an award that one seeks out of something internal, not external. Advancement in the Scouts does not require this award and this award is the only one that can be earned regardless on one’s Scouting rank. Those who seek the award as a “trophy” will find themselves falling short of the goal.

Somewhere in that period of growing up, going to church every Sunday, and working through the God and Country award, I came to know who Christ was. And while I may not have understood back in 1965 what this award really meant, other than it was a decision that I made on my own, the training and classes that I attended, the duties that I performed and what I learned kept me alive during the times that I have come to call the wilderness of my life.

And when I started to college and had the opportunity to no longer go to church if I didn’t want to, I found myself still going. But it wasn’t out of habit that I went to church; I found that if I didn’t go to church I was missing something that was a part of me and my life..

It may be that is why you are here today. You are seeking something, something that cannot be described or defined. It is something that cannot be physically felt but only be determined through the experience that comes with worship on Sunday mornings. The freedom of having Sunday morning open didn’t fill the void and I came to understand that what transpired on Sunday morning was a very necessary and important part of my life.

There are many today who have the same feeling, the same emptiness in their lives that I felt. But they don’t know where to turn; they don’t know who has the answers to the questions that they aren’t even capable of asking. There is something missing in their lives but they don’t know where to turn.

They may feel that the church is the place to find the answer. But how can the church help? They know of the Bible and they know who Jesus Christ was, but they see their knowledge in terms of the past, not the present.

C. S. Lewis wrote

… Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of a map. But the map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God – experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you or I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion – all about feeling God in nature, and so on – is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map. (From The Joyful Christian by C. S. Lewis)

What Lewis is saying is that without the real experience of God in one’s life, it is impossible to turn book learning into real Christianity. We might feel that we are Christians because we have studied the Bible and know about Christ. But until you experience Christ as your own personal Savior, all that training and study are no more than what Peter would call “cleverly invented stories” (2 Peter 1: 16).

But where do you come into contact with Christ? Where do you receive that one little spark that transforms Christ from the person revealed in the history books into the individual who transcends time and place?

The problem is that the church, at times, seems out of touch with today, speaking in a language from the 17th century; other times behaving as if this were the 19th century instead the 21st century. And when the words of the church do not reflect the words of the Bible or when the words of the Bible do not reflect the words of society, those who seek answers to questions that they do not understand will go elsewhere to find the answers.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that God will understand those who speak in tongues but no one else will know what they are saying. But when one proclaims the truth in everyday speech, then others can begin to know the truth. (1 Corinthians 3: 2, 4)

Church is no longer a worship experience, a time to recharge the soul but a momentary point in time required by society. It is no longer the place for the soul but a place for society. And in a society where it seems that every minute of the day and the week is to be blocked out and accounted for, time on Sunday morning to be in worship gets shunted aside.

To be sure, many in the church today are aware of the gap that exists between those who are in church and those outside. And they are working on reducing that divide. But I am afraid that the methods that are being used are more in line with society’s methods than they are with God’s methods.

If you will allow me the analogy, the church’s response in this day and age is like Herod’s promise to his daughter. The church willingly makes a deal that pleases society but compromises its soul. And in the end, the deal that is made is destructive to all parties. To bring people into the church requires more than simply responding to the needs of society. It must be willing to set itself apart from society so that people understand what is happening.

The Old Testament reading for this Sunday (2 Samuel 6: 1 – 5 and 12 – 19) is about the triumphal entry of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. In the second portion of the reading, David dances in joy in front of the procession but David’s joy brings anger to the heart of Michal, the daughter of Saul and sister of Jonathan. There is more to that story which we will save for a later date.

It is the first part of this Scripture that we must focus on in the context of what the church is trying to do. In verses 1 – 5, we read

They placed the Chest of God on a brand-new oxcart and removed it from Abinadab’s house on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, Abinadab’s sons, were driving the new cart loaded with the Chest of God, Ahio in the lead and Uzzah alongside the Chest. David and the whole company of Israel were in the parade, singing at the top of their lungs and playing mandolins, harps, tambourines, castanets, and cymbals. When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, the oxen stumbled, so Uzzah reached out and grabbed the Chest of God. God blazed in anger against Uzzah and struck him hard because he had profaned the Chest. Uzzah died on the spot, right alongside the Chest.

Now, this is one of those passages that critics of the church probably love, for it doesn’t make any sense that God would kill someone who was trying to protect the Ark of the Covenant. But the Ark was being transported on a cart, not carried as prescribed in Exodus 25: 14 and Numbers 3: 30 – 31; the Philistines had captured the ark and placed it on a cart to be carried away as a war prize, not as essential part of the worship service.

And David, as we would be, was angry at God for killing Uzzah because Uzzah’s actions were unintentional. But God had told the people what the penalty for failing to respect the Ark would be; it was not Uzzah’s attempt to keep the Ark from touching the ground that was the problem, it was the fact that when the Israelites had recovered the Ark and failed to respect its sacredness that caused his death.

And what the church has done today is remove the sacredness from the service in order to say to society, “look, we’re cool, we’re hip, we understand what you want.”

When we remove the sacredness from our worship service in an effort to bring people in, we end up losing more people than we gain. When you remove the sacredness you remove the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to be a part of the service and if the Holy Spirit is not part of the service, it is not possible to answer those questions that so trouble you.

Sacredness is not a set of rules but an attitude, one of respect and thoughtfulness. Sacredness is not found in the traditions of worship but the reasons for worship. There are many ways of holding worship, from the place it is held to the music that is sung.

I have held worship services outside in the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains that were as meaningful as a formal, high church service in a elaborate and ornate sanctuary. When I started really lay speaking, driving some 185 miles on a Sunday to preach at three years in southwest Kansas, I would listen to a radio broadcast of hymns and praise from London that was transmitted over the local NPR station. It was a quiet and peaceful way to begin that day’s work. And even know, I am able to listen to WFUV, Fordham University’s radio station. Before service is a time of quiet and what I call folk music; afterwards, the station broadcasts the mass and it gives me the opportunity to reflect on the message that I prepared as well as listen to someone else’s interpretation of the Scriptures for that Sunday.

My wife and I are hosting a Friday night vesper service in the gardens of our church (“Friday Night Vespers in the Garden”) and while the numbers may not be what we would have liked them to be, it is clear that the Holy Spirit is present with those who have gathered together.

No matter where you might hold a church service, if it is done with respect, it will be a time when the Holy Spirit comes down and is part of the service.

The same can be said about the music played in a church service. I don’t mind variations on traditional church music. After all, I once proposed a worship service that focused on the music of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Cream (“A Rock And Roll Revival”). As I fiddled with this “modern” service I discovered that an order of worship involving the music of the group U2 has also been created (see “Rock and Revival Revisited”; it should also be noted that this is a particular order of worship to be used for a specific service). Even Duke Ellington has written a number of liturgical pieces. To me, if the music moves your soul, then it has a place in the worship service.

But when we get away from sacredness of the service; when things are done because it is the easy way or that’s way it has always been done, then we begin to lose the meaning of the moment. And for those who need that moment, it is often the time that they turn away from the church. Note that I am not talking about the seriousness of the moment. It is quite easy to have fun while worshipping and celebrating the presence of Christ and God in our lives. Should we not sound the trumpets and bang the cymbals? But, in the words of the Preacher, “there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 4). There is also a time to tear down and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak (Ecclesiastes 3: 7).

This is a great time for the church, if we would but take it. We live in a time when mankind has the power to master the world, even destroy it. It may not be through nuclear war, as it was for so many of us who grew up in 1950’s and 1960’s but the crisis of weather, the crisis of money, the crisis of belief are all things which can lead to the destruction of the world. And the answers that many people are giving in response are far too simple and far too shallow to adequately explain and predict what we must do as individuals and as a society.

The church as a denomination, as a group, and individually must be there to help people answer the questions that they seek answers for. We must be the church that we once were, not the church we are today.

Christ once said that we need to seek the truth and the truth shall set us free. And that is what so many people want, the truth and the freedom. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul points out that we have gained that freedom through Christ. The question then is how we as individuals, as a single church, a denomination, and as Christian respond to the needs and desires of those who do not know Christ but seek answers to the questions deep within their lives?

We have seen that the traditional evangelical response of telling people that the answer lies in Christ and if they don’t accept Christ as their Savior then they are doomed doesn’t work. You cannot ask someone to follow Christ without first showing them how Christ is at work in the world. You cannot call someone to conversion without enabling them to see how Christ calls each one of us to repent of our prejudices and to be open to the fullness of life in which there is no black or white, no rich or poor, no free or slave? To do otherwise is practice an evangelism that is a false witness – a religious escape from Christ’s demands.

What we are called to do today is an evangelism in which a call for Christ is related to a decision in Christ; to a call to be free for the presence with Christ within the struggles of our time. It is not an easy task. The death of John the Baptist was put into Mark’s Gospel as a reminder that Jesus’ own ministry was not going to be an easy one.

In coming to Christ, we have received the gift of life, a life free from slavery to sin and death. And having received that gift, we know must go out into the world and share that gift through our words, our thoughts, and our actions.

On a Mission From God

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Here is the 3rd of the Friday Night in the Garden Vespers series.

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My first thoughts when I read the Scripture reading for this evening was the comment made by Jake and Elwood Blues in the movie “The Blues Brothers” that they were on a mission from God. As we read today’s scripture, we hear Jesus speaking of the Holy Spirit watching over His disciples and followers and those who will follow them.

In the verses before this prayer, Jesus has spoken of the mission and the sanctification of his followers. He is confident that they will spread the Gospel and His prayer is for all those, present and future, who believe. It is interesting to note that He is also praying for the unity of the believers, for it will be this unity that will show those who hear the message of its validity. Jesus’ prayer is a rebuke of the groundless and often bitter divisions between believers.

But the church today has taken this unity to the extreme. Instead of being the church for all believers, it is the church for only selected believers. When a church decides that it is more important to take care of what is in the present or the past, it has no vision for the future. Instead of the mission being the spread of the Gospel, the mission has become one of using the Gospel to decide who may become part of the church.

Jesus, in His prayer, speaks of the Father dwelling in the Son and the Son dwelling in those who believe in the Son. Because the latter is a reality the former can take place as well. And in this unity of the believers, the mission of the church can be completed successfully. For some the mission of the church is to tell the people about the Gospel but the Gospel has no meaning if it is not lived in the words and deeds of those who tell the message. When we look at this garden, we are reminded of the efforts that have gone into and continue to go into its care and upkeep. So too is the mission of the Gospel not completed unless it is taught and explained; you cannot accept the Gospel message unless you know what it is and it has no meaning if those who speak and teach the Gospel message also live the Gospel message.

The prophetic tradition of the Bible speaks in both broad and narrow terms. It broadly condemns the oppression of the poor and the needy, and it expresses outrage at the abuse of the specific individuals. The Gospel message speaks of bringing healing to the sick and invalid, of sight to the blind, of sounds to the deaf, and voice to those who cannot speak physically or through society. We are asked to continue this message and this tradition; we are on a mission from God.

Friday Night Vespers in the Garden

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Over the past three years, my wife has worked to changed parts of the church property into two gardens. The first garden was put in corner of the church building and has become a place of prayer and meditation.

The second was begun in a plot of land next to the church that no one knew was church property. (It is amazing what happens when you put up a fence.) The first nine pictures are pictures of the Children’s Garden; the second set of nine are pictures of the prayer garden.

The back portion of this plot is now planted with green beans, red and green peppers, Italian parsley, cucumbers, green and yellow squash, basil, tomatoes, eggplant, and collard greens. When it is time to harvest these vegetables, they will be donated to our church’s food bank for distribution.

And starting tonight and continuing each Friday, we are going to have a short Vespers service. Each service will have a theme and a selected Scripture reading. Lay speakers and musicians from our church and other churches in the district will provide the message and music.

The schedule for this summer is

Date Theme Scripture
June 26, 2009 “The Cost of Servanthood” 2 Corinthians 13: 5 – 10
July 3, 2009 “The Power of the Gospel” 1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 31
July 10, 2009 “The Church For Others” John 17:20 – 26
July 17, 2009 “Patience” Luke 8: 11 – 15
July 24, 2009 “God, Our Source of Hope” 1 Corinthians 1: 9
July 31, 2009 “God’s Abundant Provision” Colossians 1: 1 – 14
August 7, 2009 “Prayers and Promises” Acts 12: 1 – 11
August 14, 2009 “The Kingdom Comes” Matthew 4: 18 – 25
August 21, 2009 “Jesus Is The Way” Luke 5: 27 – 39
August 28, 2009 “True Greatness” Matthew 5: 1 – 11
September 4, 2009 “Forgiveness” Luke 6: 37 – 42

The vespers start at 7 and you are welcome to attend if you are in the neighborhood. Grace United Methodist Church is at 468 Broadway, Newburgh, NY 12550 ( MAP).

What Did We Learn?

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If you are of my generation, then 1) you remember “The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam” and 2) you knew who Robert McNamara was.

The Moratorium was held on October 15, 1969 and by some accounts was the largest nationwide anti-war demonstration in the country. Whether or not it had any affect on the outcome of the war is anyone’s guess. Richard Nixon indicated that it would not have any effect on his policies.

That particular time period is somewhat of a blur for me as I struggled with college and my own expectations (some of which are documented in “Our Father’s House”). I should feel lucky because I am certain that others struggled and lost their struggles. I was not doing well in college and the draft seemed a certainty in a life full of uncertainties.

The one thing that I did not like then (and which I am opposed to today) was the draft. I would have almost certainly joined the Air Force and followed in the footsteps of my father and grandfather but the specter of a process that took away my choice to do just that never set right with me. My participation in the Moratorium was as much my own statement about the inequities of the draft as it was against the war.

It was about protesting a system that sent too many young men off to war who, because of their economic status, could not escape the draft by enrolling in college or use their “daddy’s” influence to get an appointment into the National Guard. (One of my roommates that year, on the verge of flunking out of school, was able to obtain a slot in his hometown’s local Guard unit, with the help of his family, and spent his military career safely ensconced at an Army base in Germany.)

It was protesting a system that continued to send young men off to war and saying that we were winning the war. But we kept sending more troops overseas and it looked like some sort of Kafkaesque bottomless pit. And it did not help, when Richard Nixon, a master of the system if there ever was one, said that our protests did not matter.

I was saddened to hear of Secretary McNamara’s death. For many, the Viet Nam War was “his” war; I saw it more as Lyndon Johnson’s war. I just wish that his protests and thoughts about the war had come a little sooner and a little more loudly. Perhaps, it would have changed the course of the war.

But in the course of what he has said and written since then, in the course of what he said in the private councils of war, maybe we will learn something about war and its futility.

Mr. McNamara noted that Curtis LeMay, commander of the XXI Bomber Command, once said, in reference to the firebombing of Tokyo, that “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” McNamara said “And I think he’s right. He – and I’d say I – were behaving as war criminals.” McNamara also asked “What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” He could not answer that question, a question that the leaders of all countries should consider. It is a question that we all must consider as well.

There are two other insights from Robert McNamara’s life that we need to learn. He pointed out that the greatest lesson that we can learn from war and about war is the need to know who the enemy is. We must put ourselves in our enemies’ place and empathize with them. The failure in Viet Nam can be seen in our failure to understand the enemy we were fighting, the failure to see the limits of high-tech weaponry, a failure to tell the truth to the American people and a failure to grasp the nature of the threat to which we were responding. While for Mr. McNamara, that threat was communism, the points still bear true today.

If we do not understand who we are fighting, if we feel that our technology can do things that it really can’t, if we do not understand the threat, and if we do not tell the American people the truth, then we will not win any war in which we engage our military today.

I conclude with the closing paragraphs of the New York Times obituary:

“What makes us omniscient?” he asked in “The Fog of War,” released at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“We are the strongest nation in the world today,” he said. “I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better re-examine our reasoning.”

“War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” Mr. McNamara concluded. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

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Build It and They Will Come

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This is the message that I gave on the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, 20 July 2003, at Tompkins Corners United Methodist Church, Putnam Valley, NY.  The Scriptures for that Sunday were 2 Samuel 7: 1 – 14, Ephesians 2: 11 – 22, and Mark 6: 30-34, 53 – 56.

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It is one of those little bits of trivia that even though I claim Memphis, Tennessee as my home, I have only been to Graceland when forced to go or by accident. If you were to ask me how to get there, I honestly could not tell you. Similarly, even though I have ties to Iowa, I have no idea where the “Field of Dreams” is located. It does exist and it is in Iowa but that is all I know.

The problem with certain locations or certain phrases is that they become a part of our lives whether we want them to or without any encouragement on our part. The phrase “build it and they will come” was the cornerstone of the movie to build a ball field in the cornfields of Iowa so ball players of the past could come back to life and play baseball. It is now a phrase that is used to justify almost any project in which we want people to come.

David wanted to build a temple for God, a place to house the Ark of the Covenant. There is, to some extent, some logic to David’s thoughts and desires. After all, he was living in a fine palace while the Ark was still housed in a tent. And if you are a leader whose position is ordained by God, shouldn’t God’s house be a better place to live than the one you live in?

But God, through Nathan, indicated that He was quite satisfied with the arrangements. After all, over the past years, the Ark had been housed in a tent among the people and nothing had been said then. So why worry about it now? God, again through Nathan, points out that the only house that really matters is the house of David and God promised to insure that house would live for a long time.

God wasn’t so much interested in the physical building as much as He was in those who live there. And I think that is a most important idea. It is not where the message of the Gospel is heard but if the message is heard. We need to know that when the Methodist revival was in its infancy, the Anglican Church barred its leaders, including Wesley, from preaching in the Anglican churches of the time. So they moved to the fields and preached to the people there. And because the laws barred them from meeting in churches, they created meeting houses and had class meetings rather than worship services to get around the law. There is a need to send the presence of God during worship and that comes from within the people, not from within the building.

There is no doubt that we need to have some place to worship. As soon as stable congregations formed, Methodists built houses of worship. These early meeting houses were simple structures, without ornamentation and designed to accommodate as many people as possible. The Book of Discipline from the first conference of 1784 stated, “Let all our chapels be built plain and decent; but not more expensive than is absolutely unavoidable: otherwise the necessity of raising money will make rich men necessary to us. But if so, we must be dependent upon them, yea; and governed by them. And then farewell to the Methodist discipline, if not doctrine too.”

The rationale for this approach was that expensive churches required money that could be used for better purposes. And early Methodists also feared that extravagantly constructed churches would lead to pride and vanity and lower the spiritual tone of the church. In addition, many of the early Methodists were poor and could not afford nor would they feel at home in elaborate buildings.

From my own experience, I know that when a church is more concerned with its appearance and its physical plant, its concern for the people comes second. Now, there is no doubt that we need to have a good building to hold our services in but we need to focus on what transpires in the meeting, not where the meeting is held. I have preached at the Stone Church over in Cragsmoor, near Ellenville, and it is a lovely old stone church built in the late 1800’s. It had fallen on hard times and had begun to fall apart. Even the Episcopal Church had written it off, saying it was not worth the time and effort to assign a pastor to that area. But a number of people felt that its heritage and beauty were too great to let go and have worked diligently over the years to bring it back. And they have succeeded.

Regular services are held with pastors of the local churches providing the worship leadership. And they have opened the church to couples seeking a spot for a wedding. The couples must do everything including providing for the preacher to hold the service. A reasonable fee is charged to hold the service on the grounds of the church. But having the wedding in the Stone Church is no guarantee that the marriage will be successful. The success of a marriage is found not in where the marriage is held but what is in the marriage. Just because a marriage ceremony was performed in a beautiful old church or the expanse of a broad field in a park will not make the marriage work; it will be the desires of those in the marriage who make it work. The setting will make it that much better.

It is not the building that makes a church successful; it is the people inside the church. Paul’s words to the church at Ephesus are meant as a reminder that there was a time when members of the church would not have been welcome in the tabernacle. He wanted people to remember that there was a time of exclusion and discrimination in the church. There was a time when those called the “uncircumcised” were derided and ridiculed.

This was in part because there was a membership requirement to enter the temple or the tabernacle. And that membership requirement separated you from God. But through Jesus, that membership requirement was removed and there was no separation between individuals, no barrier preventing you from coming to Christ.

Unfortunately, despite this message of inclusion, there are many churches in this country today who forget that all who believe in Christ have equal access to Christ and that there is no membership requirement. I have seen too many churches that are more of a country club than a church. Membership is dictated by what you have, not who you are. And the members are quick to remind you, perhaps in unstated ways, that you are not welcome.

People come to a church because they are searching, searching for that something that will bring peace to their lives. They will not come to places were they are not welcome or where barriers are placed in their way.

The people came to Jesus no matter where he was. As it stated in Mark, wherever Jesus went, the people brought their sick friends so that they could be healed. Jesus did not establish barriers; He broke them down. He extended God’s mercy to all the people, not just a select few.

The saying goes that if we build it they will come and that is certainly true. But if the people are not made to feel wanted, they will not come a second time. I think that one of the reasons that many of the main-line denominations have shown a loss in membership over the past years is that they no longer make people welcome. They no longer remember the days when they were the ones on the outside looking in. It is not what we did that brought us to Christ but rather what God did for us.

If in building our church, we put up barriers we will most certainly keep people out. And that is not what the church, whether a fancy building or simple shack, is about. It is about bringing the people in, of being able to give the Gospel message to all whom would here it. The barriers may not be that visible; they may be in the way we greet someone or talk with someone. It may be in how we react to what someone says to us.

The people will come but will they stay? The people came to hear Jesus, to be in his presence no matter where He was that day. And God is quite content to be among the people, no matter where that might be. But we should remember what Paul wrote, that once we were the ones on the outside and barred from ever coming in. Shall we put up barriers that keep people away or shall we extend the spirit of Christ, just as it once was extended to us?

By Whose Authority?

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This is the message that I am presenting at Gaylordsville United Methodist Church on July 5th.  The Scriptures for that Sunday were 2 Samuel 5: 1- 9, 9 – 10, 2 Corinthians 12: 2 – 10, and Mark 6: 1- 13.

I will be at Gaylordsville for the next three weeks; services are at 9:30 and you are welcome to attend.

And on a personal note, this marks the start of my 4th year of blogging; today’s post is my 500th post.

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When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

With these words, Thomas Jefferson began the Declaration of Independence, the singular most important political protest document of all time. While there is no doubt about the political significance of this document, there remains to this day some question about the role that God played in all of this.

To hear some people, these words are equivalent to many passages in the Bible. These people speak of a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles but which has fallen from being the greatest because it has left those principles behind.

But which God are we talking about? Are we talking about a God who would give absolute authority to a monarch, to rule over a people as He would see fit; or are we talking about a God who would empower the people to think and be creative and find a way to bring equality and hope to the world?

At the time of the American Revolution, most monarchs believed that they had been given the power to govern directly from God and that to question that authority was to question God Himself. It is a feeling that many politicians, in this country and in other countries around the world, still feel today. And the people have allowed that, in part because they are more willing to let someone else lead them than bring about questions of why or how.

We live in a world that believes more in the power of the gun and the checkbook than in the power of the mind. We are more willing to consider the color of a person’s skin, their economic status, or their lifestyle than we are with the content of their character. We no longer demand quality in our work and we quite willingly accept mediocrity as quality; we prefer instantaneous response and sound bites over thoughtful consideration.

This is true in the church today. We are told that the Bible is, in effect, the exact words of God and they are not to be questioned. Any words that contradict the Bible are to be considered heretical and banned; any one who thinks in a different manner from the prescribed orthodoxy is to be expelled. But what do you do when the evidence suggest otherwise? Do you continue to own slaves and subjugate individuals because that’s what is written in the Bible? Shall we continue to solve our problems through force and warfare simply because force and warfare are written in the Bible?

If that is the case, where do we find the strength to fight against the sickness and death that stalks the world today? Where do we find the strength to speak out and act against injustice in this world today? Where is the power to change the course of history in the simple good works of people? Where did Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the others in Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s find the strength to stand up against injustice and oppression when all the other people could not? Where did the young people of Birmingham find the strength they needed to withstand the torrents of water and the dogs when they sought equality some forty years ago?

I do not deny the Bible; I cannot deny the Bible for it tells me the struggle of a people to find their own identity. It tells me of a people who time and time again traveled the world on their own, only to become lost in the wilderness. And it tells me of a God who loved His creation so much that He would send His Son to save it. It tells me of Jesus Christ who would empower His disciples and His followers to go out into the world healing the sick, giving vision to the blind and bringing hope to the oppressed and forgotten.

Robin Meyers, author of “Saving Jesus from the Church”, stated that “It is not the case that faith is more pure when it is uninformed or when it turns away from critical thinking and sound reasoning as threats to the life of the spirit.” He also states that science and faith can work together, not against each other. The two things that most threaten faith today are the fear of what can be known and the fear of searching to know more. (Connections, July 2009)

The American Revolution began because our ancestors could not blindly accept the dictates of a king thousand miles away. In an age when individuals spoke of a God who created the world and gave them the power to think and reason, it no longer made sense to blindly accept the authority of an absent king.

If God gave mankind the ability to think and reason, then He gave mankind the authority to make decisions. In the Old Testament reading for today (2 Samuel 5: 1 – 5) the leaders of Israel, while recognizing that God had chosen David as the one to replace Saul, made a covenant with David to accept his leadership. It was not a blind acceptance of God’s command.

We are not called this day to blindly obey God; rather, we are to make that decision openly and of our own accord. The consequences of such blind obedience are all around us. We see a church that is no longer a church for all the people but only for some. Instead of challenging society to do what is right, it mirrors society and closes its doors to anyone who would challenge its authority in this world.

We have created a vision of the church that is elitist, exclusionary, and condemning and we expect people to accept this vision. The church today claims the power to judge and condemn even when such powers are counter to the thoughts and words of the original church. Society has, in effect, said we do not want the church. And people who were raised in the church all their lives are leaving because the power and the authority of the church are directed inwards and towards the maintenance of the status quo.

In essence, that is what Paul wrote to the people of Corinth. Paul could have clearly boasted of what he had done and how his life had changed but he chose not to do so. He was not the message but the messenger. We are not to look at the church but its message and too many churches today miss that point. Jesus brought the message of the Gospel, the Good News, to the people of Nazareth but they could not hear it because they only saw the son of Joseph and Mary. And because of their vision (or the lack of it), they could not experience what the Gospel truly is.

The church needs to move outward, to again be a place of free and fearless inquiry, a place of radical hospitality and spiritual sustenance. There is no doubt that Jesus gave His disciples some authority but it was the authority to change the world, not control it. He gave them the authority to heal the sick and drive out demons. And when they returned, they rejoiced for they had done things that even they could not have imagined.

They had sensed a power and an authority they never could have imagined. It was something counter to the thoughts and preferences of society; it brought hope to the people, it brought people in rather than cast them aside. It was a power and an authority not to be held over people but a power and authority to share with people in order to bring change.

We have an opportunity today to do the same thing, to bring about change in this world. But we must make a choice? Shall we accept the authority of this world, which believes in the gun and material wealth? We have seen what that authority can do.

Or shall we accept the authority of Jesus Christ, as did His disciples and the seventy-two later on, to take the Gospel message out into the world, not caring about what the world says but caring for the world and bringing hope and freedom to its inhabitants.

On this weekend, when we celebrate our freedom from earthly tyrants, shall we also not celebrate our freedom from the tyranny of sin and death? Whose authority shall we accept?

A Rose By Any Other Name

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Here is the 2nd of the Friday Night in the Garden Vespers series.

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And Juliet spoke, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii).

In Shakespeare’s classical tale of star-crossed lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love. But it is a love doomed from the start as they are members of two warring families. In Act II, scene ii Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to “deny (his) father” and instead be “new baptized” as Juliet’s lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play.

In a similar passage, the physicist Richard Feynman tells a story about naming birds.

The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, “See that bird standing on the stump there? What’s the name of it?”

I said, “I haven’t got the slightest idea.”

He said, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you much about science.”

I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn’t tell me anything about the bird. He taught me “See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird–you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way,” and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on. (from “What is Science?” by Richard Feynman)

We live in a world much like that of the Corinthians two thousand years ago; we want exact names for things, we want a technicolor world but we want it in black-and-white. As the Jews clamored for miraculous demonstrations and the Greeks wanted philosophical wisdom when it came to hearing the Gospel message (1 Corinthians 1: 22), so do we minimalize the impact of the Gospel today.

But where is the power to change the course of history in the simple good works of people? Where did Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the others in Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s find the strength to stand up against injustice and oppression when all the other people could not? Where did the young people of Birmingham find the strength they needed to withstand the torrents of water and the dogs when they sought equality some forty years ago? Where will we find the strength and power to combat hunger and homelessness in a world that has lost its direction today?

When Jesus first proclaimed the Good News some two thousand years ago, he offered healing to those who society said could not be healed, he offered sight to those who could not see, and hope to those who society had cast aside and rejected. But more importantly, He empowered the disciples to do the same thing.

It is the power of the Gospel, the Good News, that enabled first the twelve disciples and the seventy-two to take that message of healing and empowerment through the Galilee. And when they had returned, they told of all that they had done, healing and bringing hope to the people. It was a message that had not been told nor heard for many years. It is a message that we have forgotten as well.

Somewhere in the course of time, we have come to think that power comes from either the barrel of a gun or the size of one’s checkbook. We seek rational and logical explanations. But the power of the Gospel is not found in such things.

The power of the Gospel comes in its message of hope and healing, of justice and freedom. It is found in the ability to change people’s lives. It is certainly not logical or rational because it offers the same for all, no matter who they are, in a society that says who you are, where you were born, the color of your skin, the amount of money in your wallet are what matter.

We are challenged today to see beyond the words, to see the meaning and the Spirit. Remember what Paul told the Corinthians,

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (1 Corinthians 1: 26 – 31)

We are challenged to not hear the Gospel message but to lead the life that comes when one accepts the Gospel message.