Monthly Archives: December 2009

And When You Least Expect It

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Here are the thoughts that I presented at Tompkins Corners UMC on the 4th Sunday of Advent, 21 December 2003. The scriptures for this Sunday are Micah 5: 2 – 5, Hebrews 10: 5 – 10, and Luke 1: 39 – 45.

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Back in the 1960’s there was a television show called “Candid Camera.” The basic premise of the show, as you all probably recall, was to play some sort of practical joke on someone and watch his or her reaction through a hidden camera. After the person was suitably embarrassed, the jokester would point out the hidden camera and say “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”

And, at the end the show, Allan Funt, the host and developer of the show would always look at the camera and warn us about someone coming up to us when we least expected it and saying the same thing.

It is that least expected part that tends to bother us. Because the things that are the least expected are generally surprises and we do not like surprises, except when someone is giving us something as a gift. Except on those rare occasions, we like to know what is coming.

And that is the way we are taught and that is the way we are expected to act, everything by the book and according to the rules. Everything we do, be it in school or life, is predicated on the idea that things will occur as expected.

And, when in life, when the unexpected happens, we are not usually equipped to deal with the outcome. The events of the past three years only show that we as a country were not prepared to deal with the idea of terrorism striking our homeland and that we still have no idea, even after three years, of how to deal with it.

If we had some idea of how to deal with the unexpected, our lives would probably be better off. Many times, we have seen that the great discoveries of society have all come when the person did not discard the unexpected results or dismiss them as superfluous. Teflon, penicillin, and X-rays are all discoveries that were the result of looking at the anomalous or unexpected results of another experimenter. Joseph Henry, one of America’s first great physicists, once remarked that “the seeds of great discoveries are constantly flowing around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.”

Advent is a season of preparation. It is the preparation for something totally unexpected. It is the birth of a king who came to save us from tyranny and to set us free. Yet it is a birth that will come in the most insignificant manner, to the person whom we least expect and in a place and time that does not benefit the birth of a king. Jesus will not be born the child of rich, famous or powerful people but rather in the most insignificant of surroundings and to the least expected of parents.

Even today, we have problems with the birth of Jesus. We are a society that likes powerful leaders, leaders whose force of personality will keep evil and tyranny away from this country. I have never understood how it is that such people are supposed to do this but it seems to be what we want our leaders to do. And it is the very thing that Jesus will not do.

The prophet Micah tells us that the Messiah will come from the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin was the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons and his tribe was the smallest of the twelve tribes of Israel. If Jesus had been born according to society’s norms, he would have been born to the largest tribe or the tribe of the oldest son. Kings do not come from the smallest tribe or the simplest of surroundings. But Jesus did and that was unexpected.

Mary, Jesus’ mother, was hardly the most likely candidate to be the mother of the Son of God. Her pregnancy was more the subject for the town gossips than it was a cause for celebration. Without belittling the birth of Princes Harry or William of England, one can only remember the joy that spread throughout England when it was learned that Princess Diana was pregnant. And not only was Mary’s pregnancy unexpected and a cause for talk and gossip, so too was the pregnancy of Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin. For Elizabeth was considered well past the age of child bearing when she became pregnant with John the Baptist.

Not much is written about the reason that Mary went to see Elizabeth. Undoubtedly it was to get away from those who would question her morality but it may have also been to help Elizabeth with her own pregnancy. Elizabeth was six months pregnant at the beginning of the Gospel reading for today and Mary stayed for three months, so that may be a reasonable conclusion.

We do not know all that went on when Mary and Elizabeth met, other than the baby John in Elizabeth’s womb jumped when Mary entered the room. But this we do know; both Elizabeth and Mary took great joy in the unexpected changes in their lives. In a society and at a time when pregnancies were a threat to the health and welfare of both the mother and the child, both Elizabeth and Mary should have feared what was coming. Elizabeth because a pregnancy at her age was never easy and Mary because a pregnancy at her age was not proper. Yet, the angels spoke to them of what their sons would do and the change that would come because of their presence on earth. So they sang in joy. (Adapted from “Living by the Word” by Herbert O’Driscoll in Christian Century, December 13, 2003.)

It was joy because there was a promise. It was a promise that things would be different, that the ways of society would change. Mary sings of a new king, one who will bring the mighty and high down low. It is a statement and prayer for all those who feel forgotten in this world.

It was a promise that God has chosen to reach us in the most unexpected of ways. It is a way that tells us that no matter who we are or what our place in society might be, God has not forgotten us.

It is also a statement that God’s love for us is constant, even when our own love for God may not be. It is a statement that says that God’s love is not based on societal or economic values. And that is the other unexpected result of Christ’s birth.

This very fact is hard for many people to accept because they are so used to the idea that it is power, economic status, and the place that you live that determines what you will be.

But because God’s grace and love are given freely, because Christ was born in such an unexpected manner, so too must we respond in unexpected ways. No longer can we respond to the threats and problems of the world, generally caused by the abuse of power and money, with more power and more money. If we do not have either, we feel that we are powerless and unable to act. Paul asks us, as he asked the Colossians, to show the love that Christ had for us through the way we live our lives. He exhorts us to make Christ’s presence in our lives more than simply a statement.

In John’s Gospel, Nicodemus comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to be saved?” Jesus didn’t get bogged down with one specific evil. He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He did not say, “You cannot lie or cheat or steal.” He said, “You must be born again.” Jesus simply said, “You must change the whole structure of your life.” (Adapted from an article written by Stewart Burns concerning Martin Luther King in the January, 2004 issue of Sojourners.)

Paul exhorts us to show the same love that Christ showed for us. He exhorts us to live a life that says to others “Christ is alive in me.” And he does so because he knows that there will come a time when we will encounter Jesus.

But we will not encounter the Jesus of the Bible, walking along the road in sandals and robes. Rather, like the author Laurie Beth Jones wrote it is likely that we will encounter Jesus in blue jeans or a three-piece suit or dressed as anyone we might encounter in our daily lives. This encounter will be totally unexpected and if we do not prepare for that encounter now, we will not know what to do when it does come.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus and the coming of the Messiah. But it is a birth that came in an unexpected place and to people who we would not expect. The message of Christ as King is not the message that we expect from a king but it is a message more powerful than any earthly king or leader could ever pronounce. And someday, when you least expect it, Christ will come to you and ask you what you have done to help Him in this world. What will you say?


The Grinch In The Classroom

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Yea, I thought about naming it something more seasonally appropriate but this piece has nothing to do with Christmas but everything to do with the classroom.

It seems as if the Federal Government wants to give local school districts a very large amount of money to improve education but it is tying it to teacher evaluations and teacher performance. Now, I am all for monies being poured into the local schools. Lord knows, they need it (in my state of New York, the governor announced today that school funding and many other agencies would be cut by 10% to stave off the impending financial doom facing the state). But, tying the money to teacher evaluations and teacher performance is not going to do it.

It isn’t that teachers shouldn’t be evaluated but the present evaluation models favor teachers who “soften” the material. In many school systems, you are considered a great teacher if the parents don’t complain and all the students are getting good grades. Knowledge of the subject and teaching students how to think have absolutely nothing to do with how well one is evaluated.

I know that there are teachers out there who are excellent and who get good reviews but they are the exception to the rule. In 1986, the National Science Teachers Association made an effort to identify such teachers but I don’t know if there have been any follow-up studies in this regard.

What I do know is this – with the present “No Child Left Behind” legislation, we spend most of our time testing our students and we test them at the wrong time. If we decide to use teacher performance as the criteria for funding, then those tests are going to increase in number and value for the evaluation process.

When I wrote about the crisis in science and mathematics education in 1990 (see “The Crisis in Science and Mathematics (1990)”) I identified two articles in the Wall Street Journal that pointed out the fallacy of that approach. One of the articles mentioned at that time discussed the abuse that occurred. The abuse in that instance was that one instructor not only taught her students the test, she gave them the test to study and practice on. The pressure was on the teacher to have her students succeed and her solution was to give the students the test before hand.

The present approach will do nothing more than make that more common place. We are already wasting valuable parts of the school year with the tests mandated by the NCLB legislation and more time as the teachers teach their students how to take those tests.

We know where success in the classroom lies; we have seen it in the past. It is the involvement of the student in the learning process. This means more than simply memorizing fact after fact but applying the facts to situations and using situations to obtain the facts. It means teaching students how to think critically in relation to the subject being taught. This is not something done only or solely at the higher grade levels either; there is ample research data to support the statement that students in the early elementary grades (and even kindergarten) can take an active role in learning.

First, let’s differentiate between teaching and learning. Teaching is a directed experience, from the teacher to the student. Learning is two-dimensional and interactive. We do a lot of teaching these days but there isn’t much learning taking place. Our students are able to do well on all the exams they take because they have been taught how to take the exam. But have they learned anything? I doubt it.

There is nothing more curious than a two-year old; yet, many high school seniors have no curiosity. What happened to it? The learning process took it away. And I am reminded of the song by Supertramp, “The Logical Song”.

Please don’t tell me that our students are some of the most technologically literate people on the planet. Oh yes, they know how to “tweet” and set up a Facebook account; but does that help them write literate sentences and think creatively? I can guarantee that it doesn’t.

Do the majority of the American people really understand the issue behind climate change and intelligent design? Not really. And why should they? Schools haven’t dealt with critical thinking issues (and may be afraid to) so we are not equipped to determine the validity or credibility of any claims; which would go a long way in explaining why people buy footpads to clean the toxic chemicals out of their bodies.

The evidence is there to say that our schools aren’t working (see the reference to “Clueless in America” in my piece “The Bottom Line”). Our schools are broken (Bill Gates said that they were obsolete) and desperately need to be fixed. BUT NOT IN THE MANNER THAT IS BEING PROPOSED!

I would like to think that there is a quick and easy way to measure how well students are learning and how well teachers are doing their jobs. Unfortunately, there isn’t. The only way you are going to know if a student has learned the material is to watch them use the material later, not three weeks after it was taught. And the only way that we will ever know if the teachers have done their jobs properly and effectively is a long time after the job is over.

Let’s start by making sure that our teachers know the subject and know how to teach it. Subject mastery without pedagogical mastery is meaningless when it comes to teaching. The record also shows that the excellent teachers are the ones who have been in teaching through all the hard times and the good times. The 1986 NSTA study showed quite conclusively that the excellent teachers had been in the classroom for long periods of time.

But we often times move such teachers into administrative posts and take them away from what they are good at. Second, it is becoming quite clear that many who could be excellent teachers are leaving the field because of the way education is run and the pay that they receive (see the comment to my piece “Have we learned anything?”). A radical thought would also be to revamp the pay scales of many school systems so that it is the teachers who receive the major salaries and not the administrators.

Then, we have to make sure that our classes are equipped, not for today’s situations, but for tomorrow’s situations. We need to make sure that the most recent computers with the most recent software are in our schools today and in all of the classrooms, not just one classroom shared by all the students. But many of these schools don’t even have computers in their classrooms because the wiring is inadequate for the load. We should rightly spend some of the money on new buildings, but let’s build them to be useful in terms of energy and space, not just a copy of a tried and true blueprint from the past.

Let’s make sure that the classroom sizes are reasonable. As a chemist, I can make the argument for no more than 24 in a lab for safety reasons (and nothing scares an administrator more than the threat of a law suit because of safety problems). But we also know that lab-oriented courses don’t exist in many high schools and that administrators routinely increase the number of students in a classroom to compensate for the lack of teaching staff due to cost-.

The best learning occurs on a one-to-one basis. It seems reasonable to assume that if you increase the student to teacher ratio that learning will be reduced. Monies allocated to school systems should and must go to teacher salaries, teacher preparation, and classroom materials.

Our textbooks are often outdated and lab equipment, if it exists, is limited in scope. The one thing that we learned from the 1960s was that classes equipped to do experiments showed real gains and the gains slowed when the funding was cut off.

The problems with American education are not going to be fixed overnight. They are not going to be fixed with new school buildings if what goes on in those buildings is the same old, out-dated policies that went on in the old school buildings. The problems are not going to be fixed if the monies given to school systems get lost in bureaucratic overhead and administrator salaries.

And let’s face it, school systems located in wealthier districts are going to have to start sharing their funds with school systems in poor districts. I know that there are going to be a lot of screams with that particular statement because no one in an effluent district wants to even think about the other districts. And that is the problem; they don’t want to think.

We will not win the war on terrorism with guns and fancy weapons; we will not win the war on poverty and homelessness with platitudes and food banks. We will win the battles when we can think of new solutions that involve everyone. Right now, we are losing the battles, not because the “other side” is greater but because we think that the only way to win is the same old ways that once worked. They may have worked once but they don’t now and until we come up with new solutions, fostered by educational processes that focus on thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization of countless facts the battles we fight, will never be solved.

In the meantime, I am suggesting that everyone buy their children and grandchildren copies of “Trivial Pursuit”. That will be the best study guide they have for school in the coming years. It might even put curiosity back into learning.

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It’s The Little Things

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Here are the thoughts that I presented at Walker Valley UMC on the 4th Sunday of Advent, 24 December 2000. The scriptures for this Sunday are Micah 5: 2 – 5, Hebrews 10: 5 – 10, and Luke 1: 39 – 45.

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Micah’s prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem is an interesting one. It is the only mention of the Messiah’s birthplace in all of the Old Testament. Why is it that only one prophet, and one of the “minor” prophets at that, the only one to give the location of Jesus’ birth?

Could it be that God wanted to keep this event quiet? Maybe God’s plan was to keep it under wraps and let Israel gradually prepare for their new king? That doesn’t seem to be the case, since the shepherds were told and three wise men from the east came looking for the new child king.

Perhaps God wanted on the Biblical scholars of that time, those who spent all their time studying the scripture, to be the ones who knew of Jesus’ birth. But if that were they case, why were they not the ones who brought the gifts of gold, myrrh, and frankincense? Why did it take them so long to answer the questions from the wise men about the location of this birth?

No, I think the reason for Jesus being born in the little town of Bethlehem was far simpler than that. True, Bethlehem was the city of David and Joseph and Mary, being descendants of David, needed to be there for tax purposes. But Bethlehem was also one of the smaller cities of Judah and by size and location of little importance.

In Jesus’ time, where you were born and who your parents went a long way in deciding what it was that you would do with your life. Your place in society was pretty well established before you were born and society went out of its way to make sure that you knew your boundaries.

Your success in gaining salvation was also determined, in part, by your place in society. How you obeyed the law, the actions of your daily life were the determining factors in your salvation. It was thus that the world around you was ordered. From our viewpoint in history, it is hard to say just how many common folks truly observed the law as the Pharisees established it. No doubt some tried but they probably found it hopeless and gave up. Other probably didn’t even try, knowing that there efforts would be wasted.

By being born in Bethlehem, far from the center of society and outside its boundaries, Jesus established his ministry as an alternative. It is no wonder that people came from far and wide to hear his message. It was a message of hope and promise; it gave light to the darkness of their lives. IT showed that salvation was theirs and that they were not required to follow the dictates of the Pharisees in order to get it.

Jesus’ core message was one of caring and compassion, not compliance. Jesus made clear to the Pharisees and other religious leaders of that day that they were to blame for the people losing hope. These leaders would rather use the law to meet their own goals rather than to show concern for others. It must have really driven them crazy to see Jesus eating with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other notorious sinners. They were the ones excluded by law and the requirements of society, yet they were the ones who needed to hear the words of salvation the most.

And I find it interesting that many contemporary religious leaders of today, including many in the United Methodist Church, did not learn this lesson. For at a time when compassion is most needed, this modern day Pharisees preach condemnation and intolerance.

While Jesus’ ministry was one of inclusion, these preachers preach a gospel of exclusion, shutting the doors in the faces of those who most need to hear the true Gospel and need the presence of Christ in their lives.

What does Christianity mean? To many it is a system of requirements and rewards, not unlike the Jewish society Jesus was born into. But instead of requirements based on what you do, the requirements today are based on belief and behavior. You must believe as your are told to believe; you must behave as you are told to behave. Your rewards will come because how you believe and behave, perhaps in this lifetime, most certainly in the next.

And this message is delivered with a smugness and arrogance, as if those who give the message know the answer and you don’t. This is not just a casual comment.

It’s frightening when you are an 18-year old college sophomore struggling with your own identity to be told that your own baptism, 50 years ago this day in Lexington, NC, doesn’t count. Never mind that I was raised in a Christian household or that I have come to know Christ myself. To these critics my baptism as an infant simply doesn’t count. And you can imagine how apoplectic they get when they find that I have never had the mind-blowing experience Saul encountered on the road to Damascus.

But like Elizabeth feeling her baby, the future John the Baptist, kick her when Mary walked into the room, I have felt the presence of Christ in my life. Just like Wesley after that night at Aldersgate, I have known the comforting assurance of Christ’ presence. I don’t need someone telling me how I should feel or act. I have always known that Christ was a part of my life and as I looked at the many times in my life when things could have gone wrong, I realize that Jesus Christ is truly my Savior.

The passage from Hebrews for us tells us that Jesus came and was the single sacrifice necessary for our salvation. The whole passage from Hebrews points out that the work of the earthly priests of that time was never done. But Christ’s sacrifice took away our sins and made it possible for us to come to God without meeting a series of endless requirements or to behave in a particular manner.

Jesus message was a simple one. It was about caring and compassion for the people around you, of respecting people for whom they were. In these little acts, Jesus gave hope to the people when society had forgotten them. Often times, it is the little things that we overlook that turn out to be the greatest things in our lives. Like a baby kicking in the womb, Jesus may come to us.

The Road We Travel

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This is a message that I gave at the Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church in Mason, Tennessee for the 4th Sunday in Advent, 21 December 1997.  I chose to use Matthew 2: 1 – 12 for the Scripture that Sunday instead of the regular lectionary.

As I note in the message, this was last time I would regularly come to the church as I moved to Kentucky the following week.  I would return to Pleasant Grove for the Sunday after Christmas in 1998 but not as part of the rotation.

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I have just begun reading the book "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates. This book, written a couple of years ago, is an attempt to look at the nature of computers and technology in our future. Of course, as we know and as he points out, trying to determine the future is not an easy task. The best that we can do is simply to be prepared for whatever might come around the next turn.

As you have probably heard by now, this is my last Sunday with Pleasant Grove UMC and Alexander Chapel UMC. I have taken a position as an assistant professor of chemistry with Southeast Community College in Whitesburg, KY, starting 2 January. The decision to take this position was done only after careful prayer and consideration. While this does provide the opportunity for me to return to chemistry and teaching, it also means that my ministry here in Memphis must end. But, when the opportunity was presented to me, I knew that God would show me the way and that there would be an opportunity for my ministry when I got to Kentucky.

Three and one-half years ago I stood before a congregation and spoke of being lost, not knowing which direction to take and how Christ offers direction for our lives. At that time, I thought of the poem by Robert Frost that I have always liked, "The Road Not Taken".

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

and sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The simplest way to put it is that once we have meet Christ, once we accept Christ in our lives, the way we travel, the direction we take will not be the way we thought it would be when we started our journey.

In the scripture that I read for this sermon, the Magi had followed one road from the east to Jerusalem where they inquired about the birth of king of the Jews. We know nothing about their origins; who they were or where they came from. There is no indication how many there were; we get the number three from the number of gifts that they gave to Mary and Jesus. All we know is that these men, through their wisdom, knew that Jesus was to be born somewhere in Israel and such an event was worthy of their traveling to that site. The only problem was that they did not know where in Israel the birth was to occur.

Now, we can only imagine what Herod was thinking when these wise men came to him with this request. After all, he was the King of Israel and that implied that he was the king of the Jews. But Herod, like many later in Jesus’ ministry, would confuse the worldly kingdom that they resided in with the Heavenly Kingdom that Jesus would offer.

But Herod had not gotten to his position of power by being dumb either. So he entertained the Magi and asked them to find the new born child and return to him so that he too could worship this new-born king.

Now, we have to wonder what these wise men thought. Surely, they knew that Herod wasn’t going to worship this new-born king. After all, they weren’t called wise men for nothing, either. But, there could be no doubt about what they should do when God gave them the dream not to return to Jerusalem but to take another road home.

The one thing that we must understand is that after we meet Jesus, the road we take is not going to be the road we had planned on taking. Consider what happened to Paul. When he left Jerusalem for Damascus as Saul, he was intent on hunting down all the Christians, for he believed that what they were doing, what they were about was against Jewish law. But on that road to Damascus, Saul met Jesus and the road he took was not the road that he had planned on taking and he became Paul. – Acts 9: 1 – 10.

So too will it be for us. When we meet Jesus, whatever plans we had, whatever road we were taking, that all changes. I have spoken many times of the moment when John Wesley came to understand, came to truly know Christ as his savior. For up to that moment, John Wesley’s attempts to be a better Christian had not worked. But the moment he accepted Christ into his heart, then the path that he took was a different one and one that meant the foundation of the United Methodist Church.

It is interesting to note that we know nothing about the wise men after they left but I cannot help but think that their lives were changed because they had seen Jesus. They took a different path home because they meet Jesus and I am sure that they told all their friends about this experience. Saul changed from the prosecutor of Christians to the Paul, the apostle, because he meet Christ on the road. The road he took was a different path as well.

Our own journeys in life always come to a point where we must make a decision as to the path, the road that we will take. This time of year, when we celebrate the birth of Christ, is such a moment. What road will we follow?

Cast Aside the Old

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Here are my thoughts for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, 13 December 2009. The scriptures for this Sunday are Zephaniah 3: 14 – 20, Philippians 4: 4 – 7, and Luke 3: 7 – 18.

I was delayed in getting them posted this week.

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And John the Baptizer called those who had come to watch the baptisms that he was performing a “brood of vipers.” He asked them who had warned them to flee the coming wrath. There haven’t been too many days when I did not feel the same about many of today’s sectarian leaders, those who proclaim themselves to be bearers of God’s truth but whose only interest is in the preservation of their own comfort and power.

And while I may not have thought so in the past, I have come to look at many in the secular world with the same contempt that the Baptizer had held for the religious leaders of his day.

Among the various sites that I follow is a decidedly liberal web site. And how it treats the idea of religion is very interesting. For whatever reason, it treats religion with a certain degree of contempt and ridicule, just as a similar conservative web site would probably treat atheism. And quite frankly, many of my comments on the liberal web site are not well received because I make it quite clear that I am a Christian. And, while I have not posted much to conservative sites, many conservatives have posted their comments on my blog which bring the same degree of ridicule to my statement about being a chemist. It is as if in today’s society that you can be a Christian but you cannot be a scientist or you can be a scientist but not a Christian.

But those who make either of those claims have what I call an appalling lack of knowledge about the other side. And as long as your view is limited, it will be very difficult for progress to be made. Progress can be very limited if one is not open to other ideas or one remains closed to the possibility of new ideas.

I listened to a conversation this past week on National Public Radio that, while centering on Islam, had implications for all religion. One caller to the show identified themselves as a Mormon and commented on the fact that people see Mormonism in light of polygamy, especially the version espoused by the more fundamentalist believers. This person said that the public’s view of religion was based on the extreme edges of the religion.

During the discussion that followed, one of the individuals on the show spoke of a noted Islamic theologian who said that an interpretation of the Qur’an tells you more about the person giving the interpretation than it does about the verse being interpreted.

I am not arguing for a middle of the road approach, for I believe as Jim Hightower has said, the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos. We cannot say the world is full of evil and then turn around and fight it with evil.

When there are people who are hungry, when there are people who are sick, when there are people who are naked or without housing, you do not shut the door on them because of their race, their culture, their belief, or their lifestyle. Yet that is what we are doing today. When you tell people that belief in God is hopeless or futile but you give them nothing to believe in, they will turn away.

The words Paul to the Philippians are very difficult to hear when it seems that those that have will keep what they have and take more from those who have nothing; it is very difficult to hear words of optimism when greed is valued more than thrift.

The words of Zephaniah echo loud and strong today. He spoke of a new age, of a time when the lame and the outcast will be saved and the shame that they felt in a society that ignored them would be turned into praise. Israel at that time was faced with an uncertain future, a future that the people have brought upon themselves by their indifference and self-centeredness. Zephaniah announces that they must change their ways or the uncertainty of the future becomes assured doom.

I cannot help but think that so many of those who proclaim themselves to be the representatives of God on hear, be they Christian, Jew, or Muslim, are similar in nature to those whom John the Baptizer criticized two thousand years ago. And to some extent, the secular authorities of today are no different from the Roman authorities of that time either. Both power groups were only interested in preserving and expanding their power; they worked with each other for mutual growth. But such growth could only come at the expense of the people.

Are we not in the same situation today? Are we not a society so self-centered that we are unable to see the other view; to think beyond and outside the box in which we live? The religious authorities of John the Baptizer’s day are accused by John of being vipers because of how they have treated the people.

I will not let the people off by blaming secular and sectarian authorities. They hold the positions that they hold because the people have let them. We have failed to be the people we should be. Each of the prophets of the Old Testament did not lay the blame at the feet of the authorities but at the feet of the people. And that is so very true today.

The people would rather spend their time listening to reports of the failing of sport super stars or budding Hollywood starlets then spend time thinking about what it will take to save this planet from its destruction by the inhabitants. I heard an interesting little tidbit of information last week; Seattle, WA, is a leading center for recycling. As such, you would think it has a very “green” attitude. And perhaps it does. But at the same time that the people of Seattle are recycling their newsprint, glass, and aluminum, the level of auto emissions has risen. You cannot expect to save the planet by recycling aluminum while having your SUV sitting in the driveway idling for ten minutes. (But don’t stop recycling; just cut down the idling).

John the Baptizer was very clear about the changes that were to come to Israel two thousand years ago. He called for those who came to be baptized to repent of their past and begin a new life. He called for the tax collectors to collect only what was required; he called up other soldiers to treat the citizens fairly. He chastised those whose words were opposite their actions. He spoke of the coming of Christ, clearing away the trash and garbage that was cluttering up and destroying society.

But change can be a fearful thing and those who hold on to power use fear as their primary means of keeping that power. Fear echoes throughout our religious and scientific discussion. A religious fundamentalist will not allow you to question their beliefs because they are afraid of the consequences. A sectarian fundamentalist may be willing to let you question their beliefs but that is because they do not have any beliefs; on the other hand, they have no vision for tomorrow because their vision is totally locked up in the present. It is their own insecurity that prevents them from seeing the hope that is now and has been offered throughout the ages by God.

I also discovered that others hold the idea that I have stated before, that those who are insecure in their own beliefs fight strongest to prevent a questioning of their belief. Dan Dick wrote the following in one of his posts,

The weaker the faith, the stronger the negative passion.  People who feel assurance in their beliefs are rarely threatened by someone who disagrees with them.  I find this to be especially true about ecumenical and interfaith engagement.  When Christians are strong and secure in their beliefs, they joyfully and gladly engage with people of other beliefs and faiths.  The weaker the personal conviction, the more hostility, distrust, disrespect, fear, and judgement define the relationship.  Same goes with secular phenomena as well.  Evangelicals got all up in arms about Harry Potter swaying the weak and spiritually immature.  However, it seems that this was little more than projection — raising the alarm from their own weak faith.  Those who were strong in their faith and intellectually rigorous saw the stories for what they are — stories.  Only those who believe that the devil is as strong as, or stronger than, God had anything to fear.  Doubt is not the antithesis of faith; fear is.  Where people scream loudest against opponents, it is fear that motivates them, not faith. (From “Pushing Buttons”)

I would add to those comments that it is not just faith, but faith and reason that will stand up to fear. It is the confidence that Paul writes of his letter to the Philippians for today; it is the confidence that comes from the Peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding.

Jesus never said that following Him would be easier; in fact, He said it would be difficult. And perhaps the most difficult thing is that each individual must change. The call from John the Baptizer echoes throughout the ages, to repent and begin anew, to wash away the present and prepare for a new life. It is a new life that begins when you cast aside the ways of the past, secular and sectarian, and begin anew in Christ.

“What Did You Learn in Kindergarten?”

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Here are the thoughts that I presented at Tompkins Corners UMC on the 3rd Sunday of Advent, 14 December 2003. The scriptures for this Sunday are Zephaniah 3: 14 – 20, Philippians 4: 4 – 7, and Luke 3: 7 – 18.

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Over the course of our journey there are some things that we just naturally learn. For example, we know

Tribbles hate Klingons and Klingons hate tribbles;

When going out into the Universe, remember to boldly go where no man has gone before;

There is no such thing as a Vulcan Death Grip;

Enemies may be invisible, like Romulans they can be cloaked; and,

Always have your phaser set on stun. (Provided in an e-mail by Keith Shikowitz – Lt. (j.g.), USS Relentless – 9 December 2003)

These sayings come from a poster entitled "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Star Trek." This came out shortly after a book by Robert Fulghum entitled "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Reverend Fulghum is a Episcopal priest out in Seattle, Washington, and he put together in this little book a collection of writings about life and living. It became a national best seller and he has gone on to write a number of other books about many things. In this premier book he wrote,

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.

And remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Reverend Fulghum went on to see how the behavior of everyone in the world and all the basic tenets of life could be seen through those brief statements. ("All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten", Robert Fulghum, Villard Books, 1989)

I have two reasons for bringing up the "rules of life." First, there were a number of articles that I read this past week that pointed out that what we do and how we do things. Second, the people responded to John’s call for repentance with the question, "What should we do?"

Thomas Walters, a Catholic religious educator, reported that a Catholic child spends about 390 hours in parish religious education, from kindergarten through grade 12. Not a bad amount of time perhaps but barely significant when compared with the 11,000 hours the same student will spend in public school education or the estimated 15,000 hours the child will spend watching television. It is not the classroom where a student’s faith will be taught but elsewhere in the student’s life.

As to underscore that very point, Jerome Berryman tells the story about a time when he was a theologian in residence at a Quaker church in Portland, Oregon, when a university student came into the service one Sunday. The student, with the long hair and tattered paints of that time, could not find a place to sit in the sanctuary so he sat down in the aisle. A Quaker with white hair and wearing a three-piece suit then came and sat down beside the young student. Berryman reported that this single episode was so impressive that it changed the student’s life. (From Christian Century, December 13, 2003)

"And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?" (Luke 3: 10) The people heard John’s call for repentance and wondered what they should do, not so much perhaps to prepare for the coming of the Messiah that John was prophesying but to save their own souls.

John’s response to the people was straightforward, "Give to the poor; clothe the naked; take no more than you are owed." In other words, one should treat people fairly. We can see from the reading of today’s Gospel that there was a substantial change in the attitudes of the people who came that day to hear John preach.

At the beginning of the passage, the people were merely going through the motions and their actions did not truly represent their inward attitude. John’s response to them was to call them vipers and to point out that simply by having connections through birth to Abraham and Moses was no guarantee of salvation. The only true salvation involved repentance and a change of heart.

The same is said about the Old Testament reading for today. It is hard to see how a prophecy of doom can be the foretelling of good tidings but that is what Zephaniah is. The opening passages of this little known book of the Bible tell of the impending doom of the Israelite nation, a doom caused by the people’s own actions. They had scorned God’s laws, they worshipped false gods and sinned without remorse. Zephaniah is bringing to them the announcement that they must change their ways or else.

But the words that we heard today are words of hope, promises of protection and promises for the future of those who know God truly. We read that God was going to make all things right; that their enemies would be removed and all those disenfranchised would be restored. And these promises are not made to the nation but to each individual.

I do not necessarily hold to the view of some more fundamental preachers that these are the days preceding the Second Coming of Christ. I do not believe that we can say when that will be since Christ Himself did not know that time or place. I also do not think that there will be any more prophets.

There were prophets in the Old Testament and they were needed in order to announce the coming of Christ. John the Baptizer would also be considered a prophet because he stood there in the wilderness outside Jerusalem calling for all to repent and be saved. He knew that there was one yet to come and that the time of that coming was near.

But there are no more prophets; there is, in my view, no one that can say that the Second Coming of the Lord is near. But that is not to say that we should not be doing things. The people who heard John’s words and believed that he spoke the truth asked what it was they should do.

Jesus told those who saw Him following His resurrection that the signs of His presence were all around them. And when asked, Jesus pointed out the sick, the needy, the hungry, the naked, the oppressed, the lonely and all those society would rather forget. Our preparation for Christ’s coming, be it His birth or His Second Coming, is found in how we treat other people.

In writing to the people of Philippi, Paul challenges them to not worry but rather to pray to God in thanks. He is doing so because they have been spending their time fighting amongst themselves over matters that we do not know about. IN the verses that preceded the ones we read today we read,

I implore Euodia and I implore Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. And I urge you also, true companion, help these women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement, also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life. (Philippians 4: 1)

Euodia and Syntyche were women of the Philippian community who had fallen into some disagreement that was affecting the whole church. Nothing other than what is written by Paul is known about the two women or their disagreement. Paul does not take sides in the issue but rather implores the two to seek reconciliation. For otherwise, the church would be torn apart.

It would be hard to imagine what the actual disagreement was about. But whatever the disagreement was, it was enough to threaten the church and Paul is doing his best to get the parties involved to resolve this conflict. It must have been sufficient to cause grief not just for the two individuals but for the whole church as well, because that is why Paul speaks of rejoicing.

It is not to cover up the disagreement but to reinforce the notion that the church’s existence is so that each member can renew his or her relationship with God. Paul is pointing out that in times of strife and stress, it is most important that we focus on that relationship. It is part of the doom that Zephaniah spoke of because the people had forgotten their relationship with God.

John too is speaking of the relationship the people have with God and the need to renew that relationship. As we prepare for the coming of Christ through his birth, we are reminded of the relationship that was established that last night in Jerusalem.

When he gathered with the disciples in the Upper Room that night before He was crucified, Jesus reestablished the relationship of each person with God. Our partaking of communion today does the same. In this season of Advent, you will be called to do many things, some you may not want to do and some perhaps with persons whom you would rather not be with. It is in those times and those situations that you need to remember what you have been taught, as the disciples were, by the example of Jesus.

It isn’t what you learned in kindergarten that counts the most. It is what Christ has taught you and how well you live those lessons that will determine the preparation for this season of Advent.

“What Do We Do?”

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Here are the thoughts that I presented at Walker Valley UMC on the 3rd Sunday of Advent, 17 December 2000. The scriptures for this Sunday are Zephaniah 3: 14 – 20, Philippians 4: 4 – 7, and Luke 3: 7 – 18.

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It has been interesting watching the rising and falling of the dot.com stocks these past few months. As the year began, there seemed to be a feeling that the future of the stock market was in companies based on technology and their use of the Internet. If the company named had ".com" at its end, it was almost certain that the price of its stock would rise at astronomical rates.

But as investors put millions of dollars of their own money into these companies, so too did they express the desire to see where there money was going. What were they going to get for their investment? So, as the year ended and the majority of these companies could not produce results consistent with identified goals, the price of the stock has begun to fall at the same rate as it rose. As a result, these companies end the year by laying off people and shutting down the shop. As we begin the new year, investors in these technology-oriented companies want to see results for all the words that the companies say.

I think that is why the crowds came to hear John the Baptist. His talk of repentance and salvation were more than just words; they were a call to action. Many came to be baptized but their actions afterwards repudiated what they had done by the banks of the river Jordan.

Jewish society at that time was primarily a world of words, words in the form of laws. Who you were in society was determined by the laws of the time; what you hoped to become were dictated by how well you followed the laws. Through the observance of the laws, the world of Jesus’ time was one with sharp social boundaries; boundaries between the rich and the poor, the Jew and the Gentile, men and women, righteous and sinner.

Laws are necessary in an orderly society but laws should never be the determining factor in setting the goals for one’s life. Salvation can never be determined by how well you followed the laws of society or the church.

The problem was that the laws of that time, while based on the Ten Commandments had become so complex that it was possible to follow one law while breaking another one. And upholding the law, such as not working on the Sabbath, would come into conflict with the needs of the spirit, such as Jesus healing on the Sabbath. The conflicts between Jesus and his disciples and the scribes and Pharisees were many times over this conflict between the law and the spirit.

John’s call in the wilderness was a challenge to the notion that salvation could be obtained through following the law, if you will, religiously. John called upon the people to repent of their sins, to renounce their past behavior, and to begin anew. This challenge required that the people take action.

First, people were asked to repent of their sins and to begin life anew with baptism. Second, the people were asked to take actions to show that their life was new and fresh. It should be important to note that John’s instructions on what to do came after the baptism, as a sign of their baptism, not before as a requirement for baptism and repentance. This also echoes the nature of the Methodist church in calling for action after salvation.

Laws are nice; they give us a structure upon which society can operate. And we like to have a structure in our lives, for it gives us a sense of security. That is why many people take comfort in the law; it gives some security and outlines what they must do and how they must live. But salvation is not and never has been dependent on the law; salvation comes by the grace of God, not by how we live our lives. And if we hope that by faithfully following a set of laws set down by man we can achieve salvation, then we will quickly find that the security the law provides quickly becomes a prison in which we are trapped.

For some it is not possible to leave the safety and security of the laws. But both Paul in his letter to the Philippians and the prophet Zephaniah spoke about what happens when you trust in the Lord. When what we do is right, when it is the Holy Spirit that guides us, we have nothing to fear. With the Lord, there is nothing to fear and we need not worry about those who would not follow God’s laws.

So what should we do? The season of Advent is a time of preparation. John came out of the wilderness preparing the way for Jesus. As we prepare for Christ’s birth next week, so to should we be preparing the way so that others can come to know Him as well.

For some I hope this is a call to serve this church in some capacity, to utilize your talents in ways that will enable this church to grow and prosper in the coming years. As we prepare for Charge Conference, there are still a number of positions that must be filled. Think and pray about how you might be able to fill one of those positions. Take heart in the words of Paul that with God and Christ, the task is not too big and that you will be given the guidance that it is needed so that you can help the church.

Perhaps your service will be as a reader, a greeter, an usher, or a Sunday school teacher. In doing this little task, you allow someone else to take on a bigger task.

And for all the members of the church, there is the task of reaching out to those members of this church who are not here and inviting them back. Never worry about what you have to say or should say; with Christ in your heart, the words will come.

So we prepare for the coming of the Lord. The voice is crying in the wilderness to make the way straight and the path clear. It may be that the call is for you to find the Lord in your life; but it may also be asking that you do things which enable others to hear that call as well.

Is It Even Possible?

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Here are my thoughts for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, 6 December 2009. The scriptures for this Sunday are Malachi 3: 1 – 4, Philippians 1: 3 – 11, and Luke 3: 1 – 6.

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For whatever reason, the thoughts that I had about this piece never quite came together like I thought they would. But the words of John the Baptizer, written in Luke, still echo in my mind and I wonder if it is even possible to fill all the valleys and make the crooked roads straight.

Of course, if you have read my previous pieces, “Pound Gap, VA” and “Who Is the Messenger?”, then you know that I have seen the valley filled and roads made straight. The pictures of the Pine Mountain after it was cut are posted at http://strata.geol.sc.edu/Appalachian/PoundGap/Appalachian_galleryPoundGap1.html.

The things that I have come to understand with my encounter with this construction are that 1) it took a lot of work to fill the valleys and straighten the road and 2) things changed because it was done. The landscape of that area of Letcher County, Kentucky, is not the same as it was (and that may have been why it took so long for me to realize that I had been there once before).

The changes in the roads did make it easier for those passing through to get through the area. I cannot speak to the changes in the ecology of the area or if it did make driving for the area residents any easier. It made it perhaps a little easier for those who drive through the area to ignore the small towns and hollows where the people lived.

But when John the Baptizer was wandering the hills and valleys of the Galilee, he was making it easier for the people to know that the Messiah was coming. He was making it easier for everyone to see the Salvation of God. In a day and age when so many people were forgotten by society, the Baptizer’s voice told them there was a way.

But in today’s society, it seems that we have regressed to the time before the Baptizer’s call. It seems as if we think that one human life has no meaning. We are faced with war and we answer with more war. We are faced with a crisis in healthcare and we answer with politics and platitudes. The number of hungry families, not individuals but families, increases almost everyday, our food banks are stressed, the number of people without jobs is almost at an all-time high and all we have done over the past twenty years is give money to those who have money and hope that they will share it with others. We are not interested in making the rough way smooth, we are not interested in getting the people trapped in the valleys out nor are we interested in the hearing the voice which cries out in the wilderness.

We are a society in which the only individual we will show any interest in is one who is rich and famous and who has committed a grievous error of judgment. We are fighting a war in Afghanistan and we are apparently committed to sending more troops there. But we care very little that we do not have the manpower for this operation and that we are sending troops back for their 3rd or 4th deployment; we care little about the rising number of suicides among our troops because of the stress of these continued deployments and redeployments; we care very little for the effect that this has had on the families of the troops. And the evidence is there that we don’t care about the troops when they come home. The number of homeless veterans is on the rise. Our troops have become a throw-away commodity in a throw-away society. We use them until they are no longer useful and then we thrown them away in hopes of finding new replacements.

The answer to the problem is not the draft or invoking the call for national service. We tried both and both have failed (of course, calling for the people to go out and shop in the name of national security seemed a little ludicrous at the time as did giving them $250 to spend when the $2000 mortgage was due).

How can we say that sending more troops is the answer when it didn’t work in Viet Nam and we know what has happened to foreign armies fighting in Afghanistan in the past? How can fighting more war help those who are oppressed by corrupt governments and war lords? And why, why does this country insist on propping up those corrupt and oppressive governments? Why do we train their troops when they will use the training against the people in their country who oppose the government, not the terrorists who fight us?

More troops, more money spent on armaments, more time spent supporting corrupt and oppressive regimes will only lead this country deep into the valleys where it is impossible to escape. And while we are spending more money and time trying to find our way out of that morass, more and more innocent people are lost.

And it isn’t just the civilian population of Afghanistan that suffer. There are 38 conflicts presently in process around the globe.

The United Nations defines “major wars” as military conflicts inflicting 1,000 battlefield deaths per year. In 1965, there were 10 major wars under way. The new millennium began with much of the world consumed in armed conflict or cultivating an uncertain peace. As of mid-2005, there were eight Major Wars under way [down from 15 at the end of 2003], with as many as two dozen “lesser” conflicts ongoing with varying degrees of intensity.

Most of these are civil or “intrastate” wars, fueled as much by racial, ethnic, or religious animosities as by ideological fervor. Most victims are civilians, a feature that distinguishes modern conflicts. During World War I, civilians made up fewer than 5 percent of all casualties. Today, 75 percent or more of those killed or wounded in wars are non-combatants.

Africa, to a greater extent than any other continent, is afflicted by war. Africa has been marred by more than 20 major civil wars since 1960. Rwanda, Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Liberia, and Burundi are among those countries that have recently suffered serious armed conflict.

War has caused untold economic and social damage to the countries of Africa. Food production is impossible in conflict areas, and famine often results. Widespread conflict has condemned many of Africa’s children to lives of misery and, in certain cases, has threatened the existence of traditional African cultures.

Conflict prevention, mediation, humanitarian intervention and demobilization are among the tools needed to underwrite the success of development assistance programs. Nutrition and education programs, for example, cannot succeed in a nation at war. Billions of dollars of development assistance have been virtually wasted in war-ravaged countries such as Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan.

From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html

Of course, I will disagree with that last statement if only because the monies that are wasted are lost in the bureaucracy of the government and have little impact on the people that it was intended to reach. And that is the point; it has to be the people who get the aid, not the government.

There was a thought back in the 1960s that the single most powerful foreign aid program this country had ever developed was the Peace Corps. It was a program that sent volunteers into the countryside of the various countries and it had an impact on the countries, not to mention the people. It has been said that many countries, while spouting an anti-American line in public, were privately asking for the Peace Corps volunteers. But because it didn’t fit the mold, it didn’t have the glory that other programs might have had so we don’t hear much about it these days.

If we were to spend as much on people, both here and abroad, as we do on weapons systems and military-oriented bureaucracies, perhaps we could make a difference in this world. But we don’t care for the people, either here or abroad.

We argue for healthcare reform but we focus on the cost instead of the people. And I fear that the result of the political theater that Congress has become will result in the rich having coverage, the middle class getting it but at a cost beyond their means and the poor having little or none. Yes, healthcare reform today will cost a lot of money but that is because we have neglected and fought against the reform for so many years. And if we are going to argue for savings, how much do we save if we make sure that all who get sick get the care that they need?

It should be clear that the old ways don’t work. And just like the project to straighten out the road that passes through the Pound Gap took a lot of time and a lot of money, so will any project that focuses on the people and not the system. And, yes, there are going to be those in power, both left and right, who are going to fight against the change. They know of what the prophet Malachi speaks in today’s reading from the Old Testament. They know that the change that is coming will destroy them; that they will be lost in the fire that purifies the gold.

When Malachi made his call, the people were indifferent and apathetic. When Malachi challenged them, they responded with the type of Christianity that we see today. It is the response that we are a Christian nation because we go to church and it doesn’t matter that we don’t heed Christ’s words to feed the hungry and we ignore the oppressed and we don’t care if the sick get health care. When confronted with their own sins and greed, the people denied them.

My Advent reading for today (I am writing this on Saturday, the 5th) comes from the booklet “Love Finds a Voice in Bethlehem” (by Peter Mead and based on the writings of Roger R. Sonnenberg).

From the fruit of the mouth one’s stomach is satisfied; the yield of the lips brings satisfaction. Death and life are the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18: 20 – 21

Words have power, Lord, MY words. The things I say matter — to you and to those around me. They mean something. The writer of Proverbs, the gatherer of wisdom, knew their power — the awful, awesome power of death and life. The things I say can kill an idea . . . can kill a relationship . . . can kill the spirit of those toward whom I recklessly shoot off my mouth. The things I say can encourage creativity . . . can enliven a friendship . . . can affirm life and light and love in those toward whom I offer a tender word. Send your Christmas angels to guard my rebel tongue. Then I will shout loud “glory” to you, and “peace” to those around me. Teach me the love language of AFFIRMATION.

Words do matter. It is time to speak up, to say we cannot forget the people. It is a cry that John Wesley spoke some two hundred years ago when the church and society cast aside and forgot the many in favor of the few. It is a cry that should be heard in this country and around the world today.

We read the words of Paul who saw the impossible take place in Philippi. Philippi was a culturally diverse city, yet the people came together in the name of Christ and worked in the name of Christ. Paul’s words today are a shout of acclamation that the work of Christ was continued, not just on Sunday but on every day of the week.

There are those who scoff at the idea that the valleys can be filled, the road made straight. This is the way that things are and that is what we have to do. But how long can we support, let alone fight a war? Sooner or later we will have no youth to send off to battle. Who will send then; the old? Must we lose a generation before we find peace?

How long can we let the sick get sicker and those who can work go without work? Shall the profits for the few mean more than the riches of the many?

The work is before us. The work can be done; it is possible. It begins when each individual hears the cry of the Baptizer to change their ways, to repent and begin anew, to cast aside their past and be cleansed by the Holy Fire. It will take work because we are so accustomed to our previous ways. But it is possible and it must be done, for if we don’t it will be each one of us who becomes the lost and forgotten.

“Pound Gap, VA”

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Here are the thoughts that I presented at Tompkins Corners UMC on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 7 December 2003. The scriptures for this Sunday are Malachi 3: 1 – 4, Philippians 1: 3 – 11, and Luke 3: 1 – 6.

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The Appalachian Mountains are both a thing of beauty and a barrier to advancement. Stretching from northern Georgia into Maine, the mountains blocked easy passage from the thirteen colonies into the undiscovered heartland of this newly discovered continent.

This is not to say that there weren’t ways to get around or through the mountains. On the boundary between Virginia and Kentucky is a ten-mile wide gap in the mountains best known as the Cumberland Gap. This natural opening in the mountains was known to the Indians of the area and then used by Daniel Boone as he moved into Kentucky, developing the Wilderness Road from the gap to Boonesboro, KY.

The next such gap in the hills is about 100 miles north of the Cumberland Gap and is known by the town that it is close by. This is Pound Gap and marks an easier passage through the Appalachian Mountains from Virginia into Kentucky. I first became aware of Pound Gap when I moved into the area to teach chemistry at the local community college in that part of Kentucky. At that time, in 1998, the Kentucky and Virginia Departments of Transportation was in the process of rebuilding the roads coming down from the northeastern corner of Kentucky and splitting into highways going into Virginia and Kentucky.

If you happen to visit Pound Gap, and it is a place that I recommend, you will be impressed by the wonderful beauty of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and eastern Virginia. It is even possible on a clear day, to see the presence of New York on the far northeastern horizon. And on the northern edge of Pine Mountain, you will see where the covering has been stripped from the granite underpinning, showing the natural history and numerous rock layers that have shaped this part of the country.

It did not occur to me until one day as I was coming down from a meeting north of Whitesburg that I realized that my first visit was not in 1998 but rather back in 1987 when I drove from central Ohio down to Jacksonville, Florida. As I compared the road that I was driving back then to the one I drove almost weekly during 1998, I received a very clear impression of what it meant in the scripture for the valleys to be filled, the mountains and hills made low, and the roads to be straightened. As noted in some of the publicity about the project, this was one of the most massive earth removal projects in the history of road construction.

In 1987, as I was driving up the side of Pine Mountains, the road was a series of switchbacks and since it was after dark, I could see the front lights of the cars in front of me above me. Yes, above me! But, in 1998, all of those curves and rises in the highway had been stripped away and the valleys filled to bring a more gradual straight drive up to the split in the roads, which then went down the respective sides of the mountain.

It has often been noted that straightening roads or filling valleys requires a great deal of effort. And that was certainly the case for the redesigning of Highway 19 through Pound Gap.

It was also the case for John the Baptizer and Malachi. As those charged with the task of preparing people for the coming days, their tasks were not easy. Especially in this day and age, and no doubt in Jesus’ time, we turn a tin ear to those who proclaim themselves as messengers from God. When we do listen, what we hear wears out very quickly. We do not listen because their call focuses more on them than it does their message or mission.

It is interesting reading Malachi in light of his call for preparedness and the attention that the community to which he gave the message listened. When he began preaching to the people of Israel, he found that they had cold hearts. They were indifferent and apathetic. And when he confronted them with their sins, they asked a series of questions that tell us much about their spiritual condition.

At the very beginning of his ministry, the people of Israel ask God, "In what way have you loved us?" (Malachi 1:2) The people do not trust God and implied that God had not been faithful to them and to his Covenant with them. They were in effect saying, "If you really love us, whey are we still under foreign oppressors, waiting for the promised Kingdom?" How many times in our own days do we hear people questioning God and asking where is He? How many times do we demand that God prove His love for us when we should be showing our love for Him?

The people then asked, "In what way have we despised Your name; in what way have we defiled You? (Malachi 1: 6 – 7) Here the people are showing the half-heartedness and rationalization that allowed to give less then their all. Malachi pointed out in verses 8 – 10 of this same chapter that their sacrifices were unfit and not prepared according to the law. As we prepare for Christ’s birth we have to ask ourselves if we too give our best or do we just go through the motions?

Later, in chapter 3, the people ask, "In what way shall we return?" (Malachi 3: 7) Here the people show an apparent blindness to sin and an arrogant attempt to gloss over their wrongdoing. "We don’t know what You want us to do because we haven’t done anything wrong." When we are faced with our sins, what are our excuses?

The greed of the people was clearly evident. In response to Malachi’s charges of greed, they replied, "In what way have we robbed You?" (Malachi 3: 8) They did not view their possessions as God’s possessions and to be used for his glory, not their own. In light of the trial of the Tyco CEO going on right now, that is an interesting call. In our own way, do we gladly give to God? How will you respond to the call to give so that this church may do its work?

It is our actions that tell people what we think. Paul writes to the Philippians to tell them how happy he is that they have accepted the Gospel. And, more importantly, how they are showing the acceptance of the Gospel in their own daily lives. Philippi was a culturally diverse Roman city on the main highway from the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire to Rome. In his writing, Paul specifically refers to three people; one Asian, one Greek and one Roman. On the surface, they had little in common; one was a businessman, one was a slave girl and the third was a jailer. Yet, though they were three races and three social ranks they were all equal in the body of Christ. They humbled themselves as Jesus had done and were unified in the love of Christ.

There are those who preach the word of God as John did, calling for repentance in preparation of the Second Coming of Christ. By now you know that I am not one of them. I accept that idea that there will be no more prophets or messengers from God telling us to prepare. Christ has come and no more prophets are needed. But that is not to say that there are not signs or indications that we should prepare. All we have to do is look around us.

Jesus reminded us that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, care for the needy we are seeing Him. Our own actions tell others of our preparation. I know very little about the writer Anne Lamott but a recent article suggests that perhaps I should. She said,

I do not have a deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God. I try to share my own resurrection story with people in hopes that some of them who have left churches or been kicked out because of their beliefs or sexual orientation will find something in my words and humor that makes church safe for them again. That gives them the Holy Spirit nudge to try and find a spiritual community where they will be freely given what I have been so freely given. I have never said that I am a good Christian. I just know that Jesus adores me and is only as far away as his name. (from Context, December 2003, Part A, page 6)

It is how we meet others that we say more about who we are than any other action. The last questions that the Israelites put before Malachi showed their own callousness. "What have we spoken against you?" (Malachi 3: 17) they asked. They had said that it was "useless to serve God" (Malachi 3: 14) and they continued to think that their external observance of religious ceremonies would satisfy God’s demands on their lives. Do we wholeheartedly serve God? Or do we go through the motions hoping that our external actions will cover up our insides?

We hope that our lives will allow us to find the Cumberland Gaps in our journey; those broad gaps in life’s difficulties that allow us to get by. But more often than not, there are none. More often than not, the gaps that make life easier are at just out of our reach and take an effort to reach. That is why Pound Gap is not the historical landmark that the Cumberland Gap is. It was easier to go through the Cumberland than climb the mountainside and go over the mountain at Pound.

But the roads have been straightened, the valleys filled, and the mountaintops laid low and it is easy for the folks of Letcher County, Kentucky, to again visit the people of Wise County, Virginia. But in doing so, the covering of the mountainside has been laid bare showing the foundation of the mountain.

John called for repentance for one’s sins in preparation of the coming of Christ. That is still true today. We are reminded that Advent is the opportunity to again straighten the paths of our lives so they easily lead to God. We may not visit eastern Kentucky or western Virginia but we can see the gaps in our lives and see if they are enough for us to see God in his glory and birth.