Monthly Archives: April 2007

John 13:31-35

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My paraphrase of John 13:31-35 for Easter 5C follows.

 

As soon as [Judas] had left, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him. And if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.”

“Little children, I am with for but a little while longer. You will seek for me, but, as I said to the Jews, so I say to you now, ‘Where I go, you cannot come.’”

“A new commandment I give to you: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you should also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love toward one another.”

 

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Conversion – A Sermon for Easter 3C based on Acts 9

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This was my message for today (April 29, 2007).  It is based on the story of Saul’s conversion.  You can the read the scripture text from Acts 9 here.

I remember now the time, I can show you the place.
Where the Lord saved me by his wonderful grace.
But I do not know the how, and cannot tell you why.
But he’ll tell me all about it . . . in the by and by.

This was the chorus of a song I remember singing in the church I attended as a child and youth.
Members of the Bloomfield Church of God were big on remembering the place, day and even time when they committed their lives to Jesus.
Church services would often include testimony times, during which members would stand up and say something along the lines of:
I just want to thank God that I have been saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost.
I remember when I gave my heart to Jesus,
and ever since that day my life has never been the same.
Thank God, I’ve been borned again.

You see, we were big believers in being born again.
And this was way before the idea became a part of popular culture.
In 1976, former Watergate conspirator and convicted felon Charles Colson wrote a book using as its title the phrase “Born Again,”
In it he described how he came to Jesus while serving time in prison for his crimes.
Later in that same year you may remember that Jimmy Carter described himself as born again, the first time for any future US president,
in of all things the first Playboy magazine interview of a U.S. Presidential candidate.

Being “born again” became a popular thing to be.
In the mid-seventies about one-third of US citizens claimed this description for themselves,
but by the year 2000, this had risen to more than 45% of Americans.
Even Ronald Reagan called himself a “born-again Christian.”
This from a man who never attended church while President,
and who was a lifetime Presbyterian,
and who here has ever met a born-again Presbyterian?
But the people in my little hometown church knew all about being born again.
I remember the night my dad and I attended a church service there for the first time.
It was during a revival,
and at the end of the service some of the brothers and sisters in the faith gathered around my dad to pray him through to salvation and victory.
Five or six or more people surrounded him and began praying out loud that he would turn his life over to God.
I saw tears running down my dad’s face,
and I began to cry too until one of the women of the church came and took me to the church kitchen and gave me some milk and cookies.
And though I can’t really tell you what happened after I left,
I do know that after that night my dad was a changed man.
He stopped drinking and smoking and cussing.
He started attending church every time the doors were open,
four or five times a week,
and a few years later he started preaching himself.
Something happened to my dad that night,
he was “born again,”
and given a new lease on life . . .
transformed from the old Jimmy Humes into someone new and different.

One word for such a change is “conversion,”
and our reading this morning from Acts records one of the greatest conversion stories ever told.
It is, of course, the story of Saul’s conversion.
Saul of Tarsus, who in time would become the apostle Paul,
the author of almost half of the books in the New Testament,
and the single most influential person in determining Christian theology and doctrine,
did not begin his life as a follower of Jesus.

If you remember, we first met Saul back in Acts, chapter 7.
Here we find the story of the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen.
Near the close of the story are the words,
” … And they cast him [Stephen] out of the city, and stoned him:
and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.” (Acts 7:58).
A short time later, however, Saul becomes more than a bystander.
In Acts 8 we read:
But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house,
he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
And by the time we get to today’s reading,
we find that Saul has a heart filled with hatred and murder.
He also has a pocket full of letters from the religious authorities in Jerusalem to the synagogues in Damascus .
Those letters gave Saul the authority to do what wanted to do most of all -
to search out and round up any believers in Jesus living in Damascus.
Those letters gave Saul the authority to put any Christians he found in chains and haul them back to Jerusalem to face trial there.
Those letters gave Saul a free pass to persecute and destroy the new and growing Church.

Looking back on this time in his life,
Paul would later described his feelings,
“I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
And I did so in Jerusalem.
I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them.
And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme,
and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. “
For this reason I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the religious leaders. (Acts 26:9-12)

But as another has said,
Saul, the despiser of Jesus,
Saul, the persecutor of the Church, never made it to Damascus .
Instead, Saul, for all intents and purposes, died on the road to Damascus,
struck down by the blinding revelation that this Jesus whom he persecuted was in very fact the One Christians said He was:
That Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God,
the Lord of all and the Savior of humankind.

Will Willimon has said that many
“Christian preachers have imagined Saul’s possible inner turmoil,
his possible doubts about his mission.
They have had him searching for something more fulfilling in his life,
something which might better explain how this story ends,
Forget it.
There is none of that in the story.
Saul isn’t searching for anything except these Christians.
He isn’t filled with inner doubts and uncertainty.
He has no doubts at all about the will of God and what he ought to be doing with his life.
He is a full-time theological authority,
conducting investigations, holding court,
and helping to make Israel safe again for God.”

But then he hears the voice of Jesus call his name,
and his routine, his life, his self-confidence is shattered.
His whole world view has been turned upside down.
And in a mere moment of time,
this powerful and intelligent and resourceful man is made totally helpless.
He opens his eyes only to find that he is physically blind,
and he has to rely on his friends to take him by the hand and lead him to Damascus.
Once there he can’t eat or feed himself either,
and he has to rely on the kindness and help of strangers.
It is like he has been born again.
Saul, the chief persecutor of the church has died,
and in his place we will soon see Paul,
the greatest apostle the church has ever known.
To paraphrase Paul’s own words in Colossians,
“For Paul has died, and his life is now hidden in Christ’s life.”
In other words, Saul is no longer his own,
He belongs to Jesus.
He has undergone a radical conversion,
a dramatic transformation,
and he will never again be the same.This reminds me of a story I read earlier this week during my sermon preparation time.
A pastor told of how a life-long friend of his hit bottom,
spun out of control,
and found himself headed the wrong way down the Interstate at 100 miles an hour.
In other words he fell from his prestigious position as an up and coming lawyer into the depths of alcoholism.

The pastor stated that the good news was that the man was now on the road to recovery, thanks in large part to a loving wife and children,
as well as the good work of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But on his way back to life, the man said that among the many things that surprised hi along the way,
perhaps the most surprising stuff of all had to do with the church.
You see, he had always been a church-goer of sorts,
but like many “smart” people,
he had always thought of himself as being above it all.
Church was for losers, for intellectual wimps.

One day while taking to his pastor, the man said,
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve learned about God lately.”
“Like what?” replied his pastor.

“So many things,” he said, “I had heard all my life in church have suddenly,
like a flash of blinding light,
become real to me.
Words, little Christian slogans,
that I’ve heard all my life,
are suddenly, amazingly real, deep, true.”
“Like what”

“Like being born again.
Or like ‘you can only find your life by losing it.”
Or say like, ‘take up your cross daily and follow me.’
Through my pain,
by hitting bottom I’ve met God,” he said.
“And who is the God you have met?” the pastor asked.

“God is,” he said, “a mean, relentless, devastating friend,
who won’t have us until we are down on our knees,
whimpering like a baby, so weak, stupid and helpless.
I don’t know whether I’ve been born again or [whether] I’ve died.”
(Pulpit Resource, Vol 23, No. 2, pp. 20-21)

In my opinion, this man did both.
He died to himself so that he might be born again to new life.
But just in case you may be tempted to think that such submission to the divine would signal the end of struggles,
guess what . . . it doesn’t get any easier when you finally give yourself over to God’s relentless pursuit.

Acts 9 illustrates this as well in the person of Ananias.
Can you imagine how Ananias must have felt when God called him to go and help the terrorist Saul of Tarsus regain his sight –
and there is no other word for Saul at this point in the story.
He was a terrorist,
the New Testament equivalent of Osama Ben Laden,
murdering the believers as quickly as he could lay his hands on them,
and so it is nor surprise that Ananias is more than a bit incredulous that God would ask him to go and help the one who had been persecuting the small group of believers and putting them to death in the first place.
This single, solitary man, this ordinary man,
this man of little importance says, in effect,
“Excuse me, Lord, you want me to what?”
Can you imagine what was going through his head as Ananias made his way down Straight street to the house where his perceived enemy lived?
How could he believe that he wasn’t going to die?

Like many of us it probably didn’t occur to Ananias to initially think that God would ask him to do something dangerous.
Ananias wasn’t prepared for that.
Neither are we.
But nevertheless, Ananias was called to trust God on this one and did not refuse to do the one thing he could do – pray and lay hands on Saul.
Ananias risked his own life.
He stuck his neck out,
and you could argue that Ananias was the lynch pin upon which the whole history of the early Christian church turned.

And if Ananias isn’t example enough,
we can turn back to Saul/Paul’s life once again.
In time Paul will go on to become a missionary to the entire known world of his day,
helping to establish and build up countless churches all over Asia Minor.
And as I said before,
over half of our New Testament is composed of his letters to various churches.
And Paul’s understanding of who Jesus was and is became the very foundation of Christian theology and doctrine.
And it is all because he has been blinded by the light of God,
answered the call of Christ to begin a new life, with a new purpose.

But all this came with a very high price tag.
Later on Paul would recount in his own words what he endured and suffered:
Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods.
Once I received a stoning.
Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea;
on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits,
danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city,
danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters;
in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty,
often without food, cold and naked.
And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.

And yet Paul endures.
Even more, he thrives.
Late in his life, Paul finds himself under house arrest for the umpteenth time.
He is on his way to Rome to appeal his conviction to Caesar himself,
an appeal that will fail and which will lead to his own execution.
And yet somehow during all this,
Paul would find the sheer audacity to write:
I have learned to be content with whatever I have.
I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.
In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

And just what was the basis for this strength?
What gave him the courage, the fortitude, and the wherewithal to endure and even to prosper under circumstances that many, if not all of us,
would be crushed under?

His foundation was a simple promise made to another on his behalf:
As God said to Ananais in today’s reading:
This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.
And I will show him how much he will suffer for my name.
But further, Paul knew he had been chosen and called by God,
and he knew that though those chosen will suffer,
nothing could ever separate them from the one who had chosen them in the first place.

Paul said it best himself:
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That my friends is the true meaning of being born again.
That is what conversion is all about.
Coming face to face with the almighty and never ending love of God in Christ Jesus and saying yes to it –
yes to that love and its power to transform our lives,
yes to that love and its ability to shape us and empower us for service,
regardless of the obstacles we face in life,
and yes to a love that will not let us go, ever.
Do we dare say “yes” to this relentless, pursuing love?
And maybe even more to the point,
are we ever really able to say “no?”

 

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Isaiah 6:1-12

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In the year King Uzziah died, I had a vision of the Lord sitting on a throne, exalted and high; the hem of his garment filled the temple.

Above all this the Seraphs were in attendance: each one had six wings: with two they covered their faces, with two they covered their bodies, and with two they flew. And they called out to one another, saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; all of the earth is filled with his glory.”

The door posts shook at voices of those who called, and the temple filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!

Then one of the Seraphs flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched it against my mouth and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity has been removed and your sin forgiven.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord say, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “ I am here, send me.”

And the Lord declared, “Go and tell this people: ‘Listen diligently, but do not understand; look and see, but do not perceive.’ Dull the hearts and minds of this people, stop up their ears, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and discern with their hearts, and return and be made whole.”

Then I asked, “How long, O Lord?” And he replied, “Until the cities are desolate and without inhabitants, and the houses are empty of people, and the earth lays in utter waste. Until the Lord has driven every person away, and the land itself lies forsaken.

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Peter, Community, Forgiveness and Mission

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This is an older sermon of mine that focuses primarily in John 21, though it does have a brief reference to Acts 9 and its story of Saul’s conversion.

 

Both of today’s readings mention one of the apostles by name.
Acts focuses primarily upon Paul and the powerful story of his conversion,
which readily illustrates the power of God to change peoples’ lives,
to turn people around and give them a new sense of being.
And in a way, the passage from John does the same thing,
albeit in a quieter and more reflective manner.
John focuses primarily upon Peter,
especially Peter’s conversation with the resurrected Jesus.

Perhaps some background is needed to understand the significance of this brief conversation.
You remember that Jesus told his disciples on the night he was betrayed that he would be raised from death,
and that he would go before them to Galilee.
Now at the time the disciples were in no way ready to comprehend what Jesus was saying to them.
They were, you might say, in a complete state of denial.
not able to face the fact that their friend, companion and teacher would within hours be dead and buried.
And as if this were not enough to deal with,
Jesus went on to say that all of them would desert him before the night was over.
Well this was too much for the disciples,
and as for Peter,
he boldly told Jesus that he would follow him anywhere,
and that even death would not stand in his way.

Now of course, we know what happened over the next two days.
Jesus was right.
All of the disciples did desert him,
and Peter did not live up to his brash and bold words.
And I can just imagine how Peter must have felt.
The burden of guilt must have weighed so heavily that it threatened to crush him.
All had deserted, yes,
but Peter had gone even further.
Peter had denied even knowing Jesus,
and in a sense, Peter was right.
He really didn’t know Jesus at all.
But then again, who among us really knows Jesus,
and who among us can point the accusing finger at Peter.

The other disciples couldn’t, that’s for sure,
and perhaps they tried to reassure Peter, to comfort him.
No doubt they reminded him of their desertions.
Maybe they tried the patented “we’re all in this together” routine.
We all failed, Peter.
You’re no different from us.

And in the end maybe that is what kept Peter alive.
Peter stayed within the fellowship,
whereas Judas had separated himself,
denied himself the company of his friends,
and in so doing he had allowed his shame and grief to overcome him and he took his own life.
Peter might have done the same,
were it not for the support of the others.

And there is a word here for us today.
It is within the fellowship of other believers that we can find comfort and support.
In times of sorrow and grief,
at those times when we have failed,
even, or especially, when we have reached the end of our ropes.
It is to the community of faith,
it is to the church and fellow Christians that we turn to for help.
None of us can make it alone in this world.
There has never been an “independent” or solitary Christian.
We need each other,
and we need to be able to look to each other for help.

This means two things.
First, we must make the effort to be a part of the community.
We must reach out and ask for help when it is necessary.
Christians, though they be close to God, are not mind readers.
They need to know where the needs are before they can meet them,
and so it is the individual’s responsibility to seek, to knock, or to ask.
If the knock never comes,
no one is going to open the door.

Second, the church must be the kind of community where people feel they can ask for help.
The church must be supportive and accepting.
It must be tolerant and non-judgmental.
It must be the kind of place where people feel they can share their sorrows and griefs, their wrongdoing and pain,
without expecting that what they share will become the latest gossip among fellow believers.

The church, if it is to be the church,
must open it’s arms of fellowship to all who would enter it’s doors.
It must be safe haven,
a place of trust and open communication,
and it cannot allow its ministry of reconciliation and peace to fall victim to a few people more interested in their own agendas and their own thrills than they are in being authentic disciples of Jesus Christ.

And if it sounds as though I am being harsh,
please rest assured that I intend to be.

If our church cannot be the kind of place where people seeking God feel loved and accepted,
no matter who they are,
no matter what they have done,
regardless of their age, their social status,
or their beauty in the eyes of the world.
If our church cannot be the kind of place where people feel that they are children of God,
and that Jesus Christ himself is present,
welcoming them and bidding them to join the fellowship.
If our church does not have a climate of trust,
where people feel they can share with one another their concerns as well as their joys,
then we had better make the changes necessary for us to be more like Christ and less like the world,
and if that is too much to ask,
then it would be better for us to close and lock these doors than to be the kind of church that is more a blot upon Jesus and his name than it is a light set upon a hill.

I do not want to pastor a church that cannot be the church,
the body of Christ for the world, for this community,
or for those of us gathered here.
And neither should you want to be a member of an institution if it does not exhibit the love and forgiveness of God in Christ.

And that brings me back to the gospel and to Peter.
You see, I have no doubt, that though the other disciples might have tried to console him,
Peter was pretty much inconsolable.
His guilt ate at him like a cancer, and by Easter morning,
he had reached the height, or the depth, of his depression.
And it was then,
when Peter, and the other disciples, had reached the bottom,
that the women came running back from the tomb with the news and the message.

The news, of course, that Jesus was no longer dead,
that he was risen and alive.
The message that Jesus would meet them all again in Galilee.
The message that called Peter by name,
that made a special point of mentioning this denying disciple.
“Go tell the disciples and Peter,”
was how the angel had phrased it,
and perhaps we can just begin to imagine how Peter must have felt when he heard his own named spoken.

The risen Lord sent a message to Peter,
to the one who had boasted “I am ready to die with you,”
and then had denied Jesus three times.
Jesus is risen even for Peter.

The one who talked about forgiving seven times seventy,
meant what he said,
and he forgives . . . Peter.
This is not some general “you are forgiven.”
This is specific. This is personal.
Peter had heard that God forgives everybody,
but this was his failure, this was his shame, his despair.
And still the word of forgiveness came to him,
and it came to him by name, “Go tell Peter.”

There is a word for us here as well.
God in Christ calls us all by our own names,
and he does so to let us know that the very worst in us is forgiven.
He speaks my name, and he speaks your name as well.
Will, come on home, all is forgiven.
And if you listen, you will hear your own name spoken.
Can’t you hear it.
Come home, all is forgiven.
I am alive and I am with you wherever you go,
and nothing that has or will ever happen to you,
nothing that you have done,
and nothing that you could ever do,
will keep my love and my forg

iveness from you,
if only you will hear my voice, answer my call, and come to me.

And this brings me to say that forgiveness,
if it is for any of us, must be for all of us.
The fact is simply this:
All of us are sinners,
and all of us have been forgiven,
and forgiven time and again.
Since this is an indisputable fact,
can we presume to keep God’s forgiveness and love from anyone else?
We dare not try to play God.
This is not part of the Church’s job description.
It is the Church’s task to offer God’s love and forgiveness to all takers for as long as is humanly,
or should I say divinely, possible.

And so you see, I hope, how this fits in with my first point concerning the nature and mission of the Church.
As Christ’s body on earth, and specifically here in Pottstown,
we are to be God’s own agents of reconciliation,
of forgiveness and of peace.
If we do anything less then this,
then we have failed in our essential task,
and we have disgraced the very name of the one we claim to follow.

And this, my friends, brings me to my final point.
Peter and the other disciples return to Galilee as they had been instructed.
They went back to their old homeplace.
Back to the place where they first met Jesus -
to the old familiar places where Jesus had talked to them about God,
and God’s desires for the world.
Back to the place where Jesus had first nurtured them,
told them parables about God’s kingdom,
and first spoke about the cross.

The disciples had not wanted to hear about the cross back then.
They wanted glory – Jesus spoke of service.
They wanted power – Jesus spoke of humility.
They loved the crowds and the attention – Jesus loved the people.
They hadn’t understood a word back then,
but now it was all becoming a just a little bit clearer.

And it might not be too far off the mark to imagine the disciples went fishing one night hoping that the night air,
the breeze over the lake,
and the physical labor itself
might help them sort things out even more.

But the night proved to be frustrating.
They didn’t caught a fish, not even a minnow.
And as dawn broke in the east,
I am sure that the last thing the fishermen wanted was advice from someone standing on the shore.
But a man did speak.
He told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat.
They were a good distance from the shore,
but they might have realized right then who it was that was speaking,
but they didn’t.

Instead they threw out their nets,
probably just to show the guy he didn’t know what he was talking about.
But of course, he did,
and what a catch it was – over 150 fish.
It was then that John knew who it was standing on the shore.
And it was then that Peter, good old brash Peter,
jumped out of the boat and ran to greet his friend and savior.

Jesus had a fire burning,
and so they cooked some of the fish,
and then Jesus served them.
No doubt reminding them again of the night he was with them before his arrest,
when he had taken bread and wine in his hands.

After breakfast Jesus took Peter aside.
I can imagine him looking at Peter and saying,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
And I can just imagine Peter’s response.
I am sure the question bothered him a great deal.
For one thing the name Jesus had given him was Peter.
You remember the time.
It was when Jesus had asked them who people said he was,
and then, true to form once again,
Peter had spoken out and said,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
And Jesus had said, “From now on you will be called Peter.”
A name which means “the rock.”

And now here is Jesus saying in effect,
“Simon, son of John,
you who have proved not to be a rock,
but a handful of sand,
do you love me?”

It must have been tough for Peter to take.
And he asked it not once or twice but three times.
Three times he asked it,
and then, no doubt, Peter finally began to understand that three denials need three questions and three answers.
Yes, Jesus has forgiven him,
but now he wants to know what Peter is going to do about it.
And so three times Peter gave Jesus the only answer his heart could ever give,
“Yes, Lord, You know that I love you.”

And three time Jesus told Peter what he wanted him to do about God’s infinitely forgiving love for the world.
“Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”
And do you know what?
That is exactly what Peter did for the rest of his days.

My final point brings us back again to our mission as a church and as disciples of Christ.
We have been forgiven, there is no doubt about this.
The question is: “Now what are we going to do about it?”
What will our response to God’s love and forgiveness be?

You are here, at least in part, because God has called you here.
God has spoken your name,
and to one degree or another you have answered the call.
You know that forgiveness and healing and mercy and love can be found here in this place,
and many of you have no doubt experienced these things time and again.

Today, Jesus looks at each of us,
and he asks of us the same question he asked Peter.

Do you love me?
Do you really love me?

If you do, then hear Jesus reply for your life:
Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.

In other words,
get busy doing the ministry of the church.
Get busy being my body to this world.
Make your eyes my eyes.
your ears my ears,
your hands my hands,
your feet my feet,
your mouth my mouth.
If you love me,
then follow my example of loving and humble service.
For God’s sake, for my sake,
please be the church you can and should and must be.

 

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How Much Do You Love Jesus? Show Him

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A sermon based on John 21:1-19
by Will Humes

John, chapter twenty, which is right before our reading this morning, ends with verses 30 and 31,
which read:
“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples,
which are not written in this book;
but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that believing you may have life in his name.”

These verses provide a logical conclusion to John’s gospel.
Nothing more remains to be said, it would seem.
But then we have a whole other chapter tacked on after this.
Those who study the scripture tell us that chapter 21 is an addition to the gospel – an epilogue.
Now an epilogue is something added to the conclusion of a story,
the purpose of which is to complete some lines of thought or ideas or a narrative strand left unfinished.

And this got to to wondering what would have caused John to take up his pen and write another chapter to his book,
after he thought he had finished it.
What else needed to be said?
What story had he left out?
And the answer to that question for me has to do with Jesus and Peter and their conversation about love.

Of course, compared to the other gospel writers,
John has already written about love more than the rest combined.
His gospel is full of passages about love.
John 3:16 tells us about God’s love:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John 5:20 tells us that God the Father loves his son, Jesus Christ.
John 11 tells us about Jesus great love for his friend Lazarus.
Upon seeing Jesus weep,
some of those gathered said to each other:
“See how much he loved Lazarus!”
And John 13: 34-35 recounts Jesus’ love for us, and his commandment to us, as his followers, to love one another:
“A new commandment I give to you,
that you love one another; even as I have loved you.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples,
if you love one another.”

And, of course, Jesus death on the cross,
readily shows his great love for the world,
and not just for his followers and friends then,
but for all people of all times and places.
So, having told us already that God loves us, Jesus loves us, and that we should love one another.
We might be wondering by now what more John can possibly say about love.
What else is there for him to add?

The what else is this:
What about our love for God?
What about our love for the one sent by God, Jesus the Christ?
No gospel is complete,
no story is finished,
no talk about love can be concluded,
without speaking about our love for Christ, our love for God.
This is the unfinished part,
and this is what prompts John to take pen in hand and write his epilogue.
John remembered a conversation Jesus once had with Peter,
and he especially remembered the question Jesus asked;
the question – “Do you love me?”

Do you love me?
What a powerful question.
It’s a question that’s been the source of a multitude of stories,
books, plays and poems.
Thousands, perhaps millions of songs have been written and sung about this question and the answers it engenders.
Hearts have soared to new heights,
life has taken on new meaning,
and hope has blossomed and flourished when the answer to this question is yes, I love you.
Hearts have been broken, crushed,
lives have virtually ended,
and hopes have been shattered when the answer is no.

It is said that young Mozart was driven to ask everyone the same question of everyone he met.
The question: “Do you love me?”
And it is this question that Jesus asked Peter,
and it is asked of every person who claims to follow in Peter footsteps and be a disciple of Christ.

And I am sure that almost everyone here would answer this question in the affirmative.
Just as Peter did.
Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
But then there is a follow-up to our answer,
If you love me, Jesus says, then show me.
And that, my friends, is the tricky part.
It is easy to profess our love,
It is far more difficult to live out of love.

I remember a discussion in a class at Seminary once.
The professor was asking the class how you knew if another person loved you.
“How do you know that he or she loves you?” he asked.
They may say they love you,
they may shout it from the rooftop,
they may take an ad out in the paper,
but how can you really know?”

Getting no answers from this supposedly bright class,
the professor answered the question himself,
“You know that someone loves you, he said, “by what they do.”
And in the case of love,
actions really do speak louder than words.

This reminds me of the Broadway musical and later Hollywood film called My Fair Lady.
As the scenes unfold Eliza becomes more and more frustrated about a paramour, who though he speaks of love,
is reticent to show his affection.
The music wells up in the background,
and we know a song is on the way.
Eliza then exclaims:
Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?
Don’t talk of stars burning above;
If you’re in love, Show me!
Tell me no dreams filled with desire.
If you’re on fire, Show me!
Here we are together in the middle of the night!
Don’t talk of spring! Just hold me tight!
Anyone who’s ever been in love’ll tell you that
This is no time for a chat!

Haven’t your lips longed for my touch?
Don’t say how much, Show me! Show me!
Don’t talk of love lasting through time.
Make me no undying vow. Show me now!
Sing me no song! Read me no rhyme!
Don’t waste my time, Show me!
Don’t talk of June, Don’t talk of fall!
Don’t talk at all! Show me!

Never do I ever want to hear another word.
There isn’t one I haven’t heard.
Here we are together in what ought to be a dream;
Say one more word and I’ll scream!
Haven’t your arms hungered for mine?
Please don’t “expl’ine,” Show me! Show me!
Don’t wait until wrinkles and lines
Pop out all over my brow,
Show me now!

We only know that love is true and real if the one who claims to loves us, shows us his or her by what he or she does.

And that brings us back to Peter and Jesus.
Just imagine them there on the shore of Lake Galilee.
The disciples have finished eating the breakfast Jesus had fixed for them.
and Jesus and Peter decide to take a stroll by the lake.
As they are walking Jesus stops and turns to Peter and asks him,
using Peter’s real name:
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

Imagine what might thoughts might have went through Peter’s mind.
“Do I love you more than these?
What does he mean?
Is he asking me if I am prepared to give up my livelihood as a fisherman?
Is he asking me if I love him more than my friends love him?
Or is he asking if I love him more than I love my friends?
Why in God’s name is Jesus asking me this?
And why is he calling me Simon?
After all, he gave me the name Peter, the rock.
He called me the rock.
Now I know I was anything but a rock during his trial and crucifixion – so maybe he is chiding me for my failures.
I don’t know.
I just don’t know.
But I do know that I love him,
and in spite of all evidence to the contrary,
I love him more than anything or anyone else.”
And so Peter gave a simple answer,
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

And Jesus replied, “Feed my lambs.”

And then Jesus asked Peter again,
“Simon, son of John, Do you love me?”
And again

Peter replied,
perhaps with growing concern,
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
And again Jesus replied,
“Tend my sheep.”

And then for a third time, Jesus asked,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter, by now distressed that Jesus had asked not once or twice, but three times, answered,
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
And again Jesus replied,
“Feed my sheep.”

Of course, we all know that it was three times Peter had denied knowing Jesus on that cold, dark night of betrayal a few weeks before..
And now three times Jesus has asked his question about love,
and in reply to Peter’s answer,
Jesus has also told him three times to take care of his sheep,
his lambs, his followers.

In other words, Jesus is telling Peter that if Peter really loves him, then he will show his love by what he does.
Peter will show his love by giving his life to tending the lambs and sheep of Jesus’ flock.
As William Barclay points out in his commentary on this passage:
“We can only prove that we love Jesus by loving others.”

And, of course, this is what Peter did with the rest of his life.
From that moment on the beach to his death,
Peter showed his love by doing all that Jesus had asked him.
And when he came to the end,
Peter, like Jesus whom he loved so much,
was able to give even his life as a sacrifice of his love.
Peter, through his life, showed to Jesus and to the world the truth behind his claim to love Jesus.
In fact, I would say that in his life,
Peter actually showed Jesus himself to those around him,

The truth behind what I am saying is simply this:
We become what we love.
If we look lovingly at anything for long enough,
we take on its characteristics.
It is said that our faces are maps of our living and loving.
And I think there is something in this.

It is often said, for instance,
that people seem to resemble their pets.
And, on a more serious note, a husband and wife who have loved each other for a long time begin to look like each other.
That’s why we must be careful who or what we love,
for we take on it’s appearance.

And so I ask you,
“Who or what do people see when they look at you?”
Do they see Jesus, or do they see someone else?
Do they see Christ’s love, or do they see something else?

And we have to be careful who or what we love,
because our loving determines our living.
And to truly love,
to love as Jesus loved,
to love as Jesus would have us love,
means to give one’s self away.
To give without counting the cost,
as God has given to us.
It is easy to sing the words, “Oh how I love Jesus.”
It is much, much harder to live out your love.

But that is where the power of the resurrection comes in.
Olive Burns, in her novel Cold Sassy Tree has one of the characters in her book ask his grandfather about Jesus rising from the dead.

“Gosh Grandpa, You mean you don’t Jesus rose from the dead?”

“I’m a sayin thet did he or didn’t he ain’t important son.
What’s important is thet when the spirit-a Jesus Christ come down on them disciples later,
they quit settin round a-moanin and a-tremblin,
and got to work,
They wairn’t scairt no more,
and the words they said and the things they did had fire in’m.
Compared to a miracle like thet,
Jesus rollin’ back a dang rock and flyin off to heaven ain’t nothin.

and thet same miracle is still a happenin right here in Cold Sassy, in July of nineteen aught-six.
A crippled person or a invalid, or the meanest thief of most despairin misfit,
why, if can ketch aholt of the spirit of Jesus Christ,
he can quit bein scairt and be like risin from the dead.
Once his soul gits cured,
no matter what his body’s like,
why he can start a new life.

Through Jesus Christ we already have new life,
and because of this when he asks us,
“Do you love me?”
We can answer,
“Yes, Lord, you know we love you.
You have given us all that have and made us who we are.
Our lives are yours. Of course we love you.”
And we can truthfully say this because we know that through Jesus Christ and his continuing presence with us,
we have the strength to live out our love,
no matter what it entails.

This morning, Jesus asks all of us a question,
a simple question: Do you love me?
If our answer is yes,
yes, Lord, we love you,
then we have no choice but to show him,
to show him our love through our words, yes,
but even more importantly, by what we do.

 

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A Quote from the Movie Ararat

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Atom Egoyan’s movie Ararat tells the story of a young man whose life is changed while making a film about the Armenian genocide that took place in Turkey during 1915. This week many people are observing the Mec Ejer’n, during which this holocaust is commemorated (see my last post for more one this).  As many as 1.5 million Armenians were brutally slaughtered by the Turks on the pretense that they were a threat to national security.   While the film has its flaws (see my review here), there is one scene in the film that has stayed with me.  In it the young filmmaker Raffi confronts Ali, a half-Turkish actor who has just completed playing his role as Jevdet Bey, a rather heinous character in the Turkish army (the following quote is courtesy of the Internet Movie Database:

Raffi: Were you serious about what you told him?
Ali: What?

Raffi: That you don’t think it happened?
Ali: What, the genocide?

Raffi: Yeah.
Ali: Are you gonna shoot me or something? Look, I never heard about any of this stuff when I was growing up. You know? I did some research for the part. From what I read there were deportations and lots of people died. Armenians and Turks. It was World War 1.

Raffi: But Turkey wasn’t at war with the Armenians. I mean, just like Germany wasn’t at war with the Jews. They were citizens. They were expecting to be protected. That scene you just shot was based on an eyewitness account. Your character Jevdet Bey, the only reason they put him in Van was to carry out the complete extermination of the Armenian population in Van. There were telegrams, there were communicators…
Ali: Look I’m not saying that something didn’t happen.

Raffi: Something…
Ali: Look, I was born here. So were you right?

Raffi: Yeah.
Ali: This is a new country. So let’s just drop the history and get on with it. No one’s gonna wreck your home. No one’s gonna destroy you family. Hmm? So let’s go inside and uncork this thing and celebrate. Hmm?

Raffi: Do you know what Adolf Hitler told his military commanders to convince them that his plan would work? “Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?”
Ali: And nobody did. Nobody does.

Well today I remember, and if you have read this, so do you.  May we never forget.

 

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This Week’s Links – Armenia, Vonnegut, Guns, etc. . .

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Never Again, Again  (from Even the Devils Believe)

Today [April 24th] the beginning of the Mec Ejer’n, the Armenian Holocaust, is commemorated. A number of people around the blogosphere have posted about it, including Serge (John) and Kyle.

Armenia is very close to my heart. My host family in Russia is Armenian, long-time residents of the RSFSR/Russian Federation, but loyal to Hayastan nonetheless. The memory of the genocide looms large in the Armenian consciousness, in large part because it has gone unacknowledged by many in the world (including the United States, with the Republican Party and many others opposing official recognition of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands Armenians by Turks). Turkey continues to deny the genocide and routinely jails writers and other dissidents for agitating for recognition.

Please keep the people of Armenia, the oldest Christian nation on the planet, in your prayers today. Try to learn a little about the genocide, and if you feel so moved, write your representatives to ask that they further the cause of recognition. We say “never again” often, but too frequently we ignore the truth about these tragic events of the 20th century.

Vonnegut and the Century (from Theolog)

In this week’s Newsweek, David Gates honors Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical fiction and his “appropriate” response to an era that included WW II, the Dresden firebombing, and other 20th-century horrors. Gates mentions a Century interview from 1976: the complete interview is posted here.

God Doesn’t Forgive (from Threads from Henry’s Web)

OK, this is shocking.

Peter Kirk reports that:

I interrupt my normal programme to bring you this shocking quote. Yes, the news is going round that Richard Cunningham, director of UCCF, said

God never forgives – he punishes.

Apparently he said this during a talk at the recent Word Alive conference, the same one which is separating from Spring Harvest.

Go to Peter’s blog and read his discussion on this.

Two Theologians and a Gun (from Waving or Drowning)

In the aftermath of Virginia Tech it’s natural that the gun control conversation should come to the fore once again. Tonight two of my regular theological reads are addressing the subject, albeit from two different perspectives.

First, there’s John Stackhouse, in response to the question, “How could this happen?”

So here’s one simple answer: guns.
No, I’m not about to sound off about gun control. And no, I’m not saying that the individual wasn’t to blame, or that his parents aren’t to blame, or that society isn’t to blame, or that God isn’t to blame. All of those are valid sites for analysis and reflection.

Here I want to say something a little different, at least for a theologian, and I need to say so in two parts.

You can read on here.

Then Ben Witherington makes another keen observation:

It is interesting to me that even most American Christians, when they discuss these things, discuss them in terms of their Constitutional rights to bear firearms. They don’t ask whether the New Testament might have anything to say about Christian conduct in this regard.

Read Ben’s essay here. Food for thought.

Reflections on The Red Wheel Barrow

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The Red Wheel Barrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

A few weeks ago, the inestimable Julie of Lone Prairie Blog posted this poem in one of her “Google Gadgets.”  I commented that I loved the poem, and I believe Julie said that it was the word “glazed” that got to her every time she read the poem.  To me this is one of a few quintessential poems.  While some poems use ornate and beautiful language, and while some can go one for pages in their descriptions and thoughts, The Red Wheelbarrow is what I would call a picture poem.  It gives us a simple image in three layers – a barrow, water, and chickens.  In my mind I can see each part of this picture as Williams introduces it.  Of course, he comes to each part of the picture by first using language that will modify the items that follow, which helps build up some linguistic tension in this short work.  It is only after you see the whole picture in your mind that you are taken back to the beginning of the poem and its curious introduction:  “so much depends upon.”  This short phrase is what makes this poem a classic in the English language as far as I am concerned, for we are left to ponder what it is that Williams means by introducing the poem in this way.

Explanations

While researching the poem on the internet, I ran across this Website, which had this quote from the book Understanding Poetry:

“Reading this poem is like peering at an ordinary object through a pin prick in a piece of cardboard. The fact that the tiny hole arbitrarily frames the object endows it with an exciting freshness that seems to hover on the verge of revelation.”

On another website, we find an “explanation” for the poem. And if it is possible for anyone to ever really explain a poem, then this explanation is as good as any that might be proffered:

The opening lines set the tone for the rest of the poem. Since the poem is composed of one sentence broken up at various intervals, it is truthful to say that “so much depends upon” each line of the poem. This is so because the form of the poem is also its meaning. This may seem confusing, but by the end of the poem the image of the wheelbarrow is seen as the actual poem, as in a painting when one sees an image of an apple, the apple represents an actual object in reality, but since it is part of a painting the apple also becomes the actual piece of art. . . .

. . . Notice how the monosyllabic words in line 3 elongate the line, putting an unusual pause between the word “wheel” and “barrow.” This has the effect of breaking the image down to its most basic parts. The reader feels as though he or she were scrutinizing each part of the scene. Using the sentence as a painter uses line and color, Williams breaks up the words in order to see the object more closely.

. . . The word “glazed” evokes another painterly image. Just as the reader is beginning to notice the wheelbarrow through a closer perspective, the rain transforms it as well, giving it a newer, fresher look. This new vision of the image is what Williams is aiming for.

The last lines offer up the final brushstroke to this “still life” poem. Another color, “white” is used to contrast the earlier “red,” and the unusual view of the ordinary wheelbarrow is complete. Williams, in dissecting the image of the wheelbarrow, has also transformed the common definition of a poem. With careful word choice, attention to language, and unusual stanza breaks Williams has turned an ordinary sentence into poetry.

Reactions

Reactions to The Red Wheel Barrow are among the most varied I have ever seen towards a poem.  The comments at the website (in paragraph two) from Rice University readily illustrate the range of responses.  Some of my favorites include:

Ken Stephens:  It’s stupid. Nothing only depends on a wet, red wheel barrow sitting beside white chickens.

Olivia Williams:  I read your review on that poem “The red Wheelbarrow.” i thought i would ask you why you liked it. Personally, i didn’t like it at all. I thought it was strangely…stupid. My six year old sister could write the same thing. Thanks for your time.

Templin2005:  Reading the Red Wheelbarrow is about as life changing as watching grass grow. It would be better for you to smack yourself with a brick and run into oncoming traffic than to waste your time reading this meaningless and pointless poem about wheelbarrows and chickens.

Happyg270:  I honestly think this poem makes sense, it makes people think outside the box. I also think that poetry makes people use their imagination.  I believe that for some people to make sense of poems they need to have an imagination

Robert Gambrel:  I think that the wheelbarrow should be yellow.

Justin Carey:  I think that is a very goo[d] poem because it is short.

cccustard:  This works for me on two levels.  First there is the red wheelbarrow, and then there are the white chickens. And holding the two together is the glassy rain.   I like to think of the wheelbarrow as say the fourth or fifth floor, and the chicken as the ninth floor, and the rain as the emergency fire stairs.  They are all dependant upon each other and yet upon nothing.  It wouldn’t be the same if it was sleet or even a heavy mist. No way.

Other Thoughts and Insights

In combing the web, I also found the following:

One blogger has this to say:  William Carlos Williams once wrote that “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens.” And he was an idiot.

A wheelbarrow is usually kep in the barn or shed, especially if it is going to rain rain, since it will rust. Therefore, it could be said that the whte chickens symbolize a utopian society, where everyone is innocent and clean, where as the red wheelbarrow symbolizes the contrast between beauty and violence; red representing blood and war. Put all this together and you could say the poem is stating that war plays a major part in creating a perfect life. In other words, you can’t have beauty and perfection without sacrifices; which is why so much of our world depends on a red wheelbarrow.  – Daniel from United States  (All I can say to that is “Wow!”)

To me, this poem is simply about the unexpected beauty that can sometimes be found in the simplest and most inconsequential things. Sometimes something that is absolutely ordinary can be stunningly beautiful. If you’re lucky, you stumble on something like that once in a while and hopefully have the presence of mind to savor the experience, if only for a fleeting moment. To me, this poem is about such a moment. The imagery is very simple and understated, but, at the same time, extremely vivid. When I read this poem, I can see that rainwashed wheelbarrow as clearly as if it was sitting in front of me, and I can hear the chickens clucking as they mill about pecking at the soil in search of bugs and worms. I am there, savoring that moment along with Williams, and I am grateful that he preserved it for us with these sixteen powerful words.  – Shazzie from United States

Our friends at Wikipedia write:

William Carlos Williams‘ 1923 poem The Red Wheelbarrow exemplifies the Imagist-influenced philosophy of “no ideas but in things”. The poem, written in two minutes or so, portrays the scene outside the window of one of Dr. Williams’ patients, a very sick child he was attending. This provides another layer of meaning beneath the surface reading. The poem is intentionally plain and lucid. Williams was trying to veer away from what he saw as the “European” verbosity of his peers (T. S. Eliot, for example), to create a typical “American” image with his poem.

The subject matter of The Red Wheelbarrow is what makes it most unique and important. He lifts an ordinary scene to an artistic level, exemplifying the importance of the ordinary; as he says, a poem “must be real, not ‘realism‘, but reality itself.” In this way, it holds more in common with the haiku of Bashō than with the verse of T. S. Eliot. Bashō, a master of Japanese haiku, wrote poems that are somewhat similar to The Red Wheelbarrow (e.g., “Moonlight slants through/The vast bamboo grove:/A cuckoo cries”).

Loren Webster in the blog In a Dark Time . . . The Eye Begins to See writes:

In discussing his poetry Willliams said, “Emotion clusters about common things, the pathetic often stimulates the imagination to new patterns—but the job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language to him which is authentic. In my own work it has always sufficed that the object of my attention be presented without further comment.” Later, he stated, “No ideas but in things.”

The blog po-i-tre has this interesting and insightful entry:

“This stark, elegant piece always reminds me of the versatility of poetry and the agility of precision-crafted writing.

The poem’s opening couplet (“so much depends upon”) starts the reader on a traditional poetic journey into desires or physical imperatives which must be satisfied. This is what poetry is good at: finding emotional fault lines, tracing needs and wants, describing action or setting in a way intended to convey something conceptually more complex – more meaningful. Or I should say, this is what we do easily with poetry.

But somewhere between the second and third couplets, the poem makes a shift. (Actually, this is when the reader makes the shift. The poem itself transforms with the phrase a wheelbarrow, rather than calling out the wheelbarrow.) The language is not a high-flying metaphor or parable for anything. It does not teach, complain, exalt, condemn – or do any of those other didactic things poems usually do. Instead, the poem settles in to an intensely visual sensibility; and though the descriptive elements are really quite scant – a red wheelbarrow, wetness, white chickens – the resulting still-life has a rich, painterly quality. Williams does not so much describe an image as create one.

Still, the powerful opening couplet refuses to let the reader simply take in the scene, as if it were depicted on a canvass. There is a temporal, narrative element – and an urgency – quite apart from the visual snapshot. The mundane object and unremarkable birds are presented without the hint of action or any trace of expressive quality; and yet, we ache to know: who or what depends on a wheelbarrow, and why?

The beauty of this tension, and of the interplay of discursive strategies within the fourteen spare words of the poem, has kept me returning to this poem for years.

My deepest thanks to my lifelong friend Eric Zakim for introducing me to this poem.”

Nicco Davidson, the writer of the blog As If It Matters relates the following story:

Late in his life, William Carlos Williams had become a well-known poet and he received an enormous amount of mail. One day, his mailman slipped this note to him while delivering the mail:

So much depends too Upon the cold mail handler Crazed with Frost blister Dumping out the Drab mail sack.

William Carlos Williams told his wife that it was the greatest moment of his career, the single greatest compliment that he could have received.

I wish I could remember the exact language in the Doubletake description of the event the above poetry text I found online in an interesting essay on rural mail handlers.

And finally, Camille Paglia, in an essay entitled Why Poetry Still Matters, briefly discusses Williams poem:

Simplicity is the hallmark of William Carlos Williams’s most original work, which never loses its mysterious freshness. Like Wordsworth, Williams sought a common language to close the gap between poetry and everyday experience. “The Red Wheel Barrow” invites us to cast off habit and look at life again with childlike wonder. The poem is an example of Imagism, a modernist Anglo-American movement influenced by unrhymed Asian poetry (such as haiku and tanka) that strictly limits the number of lines and syllables. In Imagist poetry, sharp physical details are presented but not explained: the images must speak for themselves.

My Closing Thoughts and a Video

msoctaviusWhen I read The Red Wheel Barrow, two movies come to my mind.  Both of them have to do with recognizing beauty in the world around us and taking the time necessary for it to become evident to us.   The first is, of all movies, Star Trek: Insurrection (I am a trekkie myself, so this comes as no surprise to me, though it may to you).  In the film Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) develops a love interest in Anij (played by the beautiful Donna Murphy, I might add).  Early on, Anij appears to be able to make time slow down and even stop through the power of contemplation.  In a conversation that either precedes or follows this (I can’t remember which), the following is said:

Anij: Have you ever experienced, a perfect moment in time?
Captain Picard: A perfect moment?
Anij: When time seemed to stop, and you could almost live, in that moment.
Captain Picard: Seeing my home planet from space, for the first time. (from IMDB)

[SPOILER ALERT] Later in the film, Anij is in danger of dying, and Picard must try to save her carrying out a similar feat all on his own, since she doesn’t have the strength to do this herself or even aid him in the attempt.  As time slows down to almost a stand still, we see the beauty of the moment in Picard’s and Anij’s faces and even in the elements we see in the cave in which they find themselves.  For me, this scene is one of the greatest pieces of film-making in the entire Star Trek franchise.

In another movie, the theme of recognizing beauty is also prevalent.  American Beauty features the acting talents of both Kevin Spacey (Lester Burnham)  and Wes Bentley (Ricky Fitts).  Ricky, a misfit and outsider of a young man, has a conversation with Angela Hayes (played by Meni Suvari) about why he films sometimes weird and strange things (at least as far as many are concerned):

Ricky Fitts: I was filming this dead bird.
Angela Hayes: Why?
Ricky Fitts: Because it’s beautiful.

[SPOILER ALERT]  At the end of the film, after Spacey’s character has been murdered, we have Lester giving us these lines of closing narration:

I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time… For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars… And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street… Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper… And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand new Firebird… And Janie… And Janie… And… Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty [angry] about what happened to me… but it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst… And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life… You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry… you will someday. (Quotes from IMDB)

What do these films and quotes have to do with The Red Wheel Barrow?  For me they and the poem are all about being awake and aware of where and when we are.  It is about being in the moment and trying to live there as well.  Many of us often try to either live in past or in future.  Sometimes we retreat into the nostalgia of our rose-colored memories when the present becomes too difficult to accept.  And at other times, when we are going through what seems to be hell itself, we hope for the future to come and save us from our current problems.  But when we engage in either practice, we fail to live as fully as we might in the present time.

One of my stock answers when people ask me how I am is, “I’m awake.”  I say this for at least two reasons.  One, I am joking about the fact that I often get too little sleep, and therefore I am lucky that my eyes are open and I am not openly snoring in their presence.  Two, I use to term in the Buddhist sense:  I am aware (or at least I am trying to be aware) of what is happening right now.  Part of this is simple wishful thinking, of course.  I want to live in the present.  I want to recognize what is happening around me.  I want to see the beauty of this world and my life, even if it is at times a “terrible beauty.”  If it is true that Williams wrote this poem after the death of a young child in his care, and after he had looked up to see the image he describes in his poem outside a window in the child’s home, then this indicates to me that perhaps he was thinking along the same lines.  And even if this story is not true in a literal or historical sense, it seems to me that it is still truth in a metaphorical sense.

Below you will find a video from YouTube that is also a metaphorical interpretation of Williams poem.

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Virginia Tech Killings: Once Again, Death and Sorrow

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“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.”  (Matthew 11:12)

And if this is true for the kingdom of heaven, how much more is it true for our earthly kingdoms?

Words fail us in times of overwhelming grief. I have been unable to voice my feelings over yesterday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech.   Instead, I have found myself weeping over the past 24 hours at the strangest times and places.  A word, a thought, a song, even a stupid, sentimental commercial on TV; these have all caused tears to fall unbidden from my eyes.

As a pastor, I have already seen and experienced far too much of death’s power.  I have seen too many families and friends mourn the loss of their loved ones.  And I have seen too many men and women and children try to pick up the pieces of their lives after they have said goodbye to their friend, their mom, dad, brother, sister or child.

The latest assault on life was at Virginia Tech, and I mourn the loss of every life, including the life of the killer.  But ours is such a violent world, and it is incredibly sad and depressing to think that yesterday’s killings are but a small footnote in the history of this world’s violence. From Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, to Jephthah’s slaying of his own daughter, and to Jesus’ execution on the cross; the Bible does not hide from us the great evil we can do to each other.

And though Jesus came as the Prince of Peace, the peaceable kingdom has not yet arrived.  Massacres and holocausts are commonplace, with so many occurring in just the last 100 years:  the genocides in Armenia and the Sudan, the Holocaust, the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, to name just a few).  And then there are the millions of senseless murders, of which the killings at Virginia Tech are just the latest, which wrench minds and hearts from our everyday activities to consider once again our mortality and the inhumanity that we are so capable of visiting upon one another.

In the face of such things, I can only offer my sorrow for the victims, my empathy for their friends and families, and my prayers for all of us and this mad world on which we live.  God have mercy.  Please, God, have mercy.

———

God of all mercies and of all consolation,
you pursue us with untiring love
and dispel the shadow of death
with the bright dawn of life.
Give courage to all in their loss and sorrow.
Be their refuge and strength, O Lord,
reassure them of your continuing love
and lift them from the depths of grief
into the peace and light of your presence.
Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
by dying has destroyed our death,
and by rising, restored our life.
Your Holy Spirit, our comforter,
speaks for us in groans too deep for words.
Come alongside your people,
remind them of your eternal presence
and give them your comfort and strength.
All Amen.

———

Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

———-

Dirge Without Music
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

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The Sermon I Did Preach: Walking the Road of Disappointment

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Far_Green_Country_by_goteki-black borders

Below is the sermon I actually did preach at two of our three worship services this morning.  It too is based on the Emmaus Road story in Luke.  Of course, since what I actually said at the time was pretty much ad-libbed, what follows is a fleshed-out version of the message.  I hope it is of help to others who have or are facing disappointment and disillusionment in their lives.  

———–

The date was March 28, 1992,
and I was in Philadelphia on a traditional dinner and a movie date.
We were eating dinner at one of those restaurants that has TV screens scattered all over the place.
Most times I hate this, but on that day it was okay.
In fact, it was better than okay because the University of Kentucky was playing a game in the NCAA basketball tournament,
and in case you don’t know this yet, I am a Kentucky Wildcats’ fan.
If you cut me, I bleed blue, Wildcat blue.

Now this was an important game for every Wildcat fan,
because it marked the return to national prominence for our beloved basketball program.
In the 1988-89 school year, Kentucky had suffered through it’s only losing season ever with a 13-19 record.
Even worse, the head coach had been fired and the NCAA had penalized the program because of rules violations.
UK basketball was at an all time low.

But then, Rick Pitino had been hired as head coach,
and after a 14-14 record his first year, and a 22-6 record the following year,
we were now 27-6 and playing in the East Regional Final for a place in the NCAA Final Four.
Only one team stood in our way – The Duke Blue Devils.
At halftime, the score was Duke 50, Kentucky 45,
But by the end of the game, the score was tied at 93 all.
And so the game went into overtime.
With Duke leading 102-101,
Sean Woods, a Kentucky player, connected with the basket.
UK was now ahead 103-102 and there was only 2.1 seconds left in the game.
Kentucky fans the world over were already celebrating.
We were finally going back to the Final Four.
But then, after a timeout, Duke’s Grant Hill inbounded the ball with a 75 foot pass to Christian Laettner,
who put down a quick dribble, turned, and then launched a 17-foot jump shot that swooshed through the basket.
With no time left, the score was 104-103, and Duke had won the game.

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To say that I was disappointed with this outcome is a major understatement.
It was like someone had sucker-punched me.
I couldn’t breath, and I couldn’t believe that this had actually happened.
You see, I had hoped that this would be the team that would bring Kentucky it’s sixth national championship.
But now, that dream was gone.
I had thought that this would be the team.
But I was wrong.

In the spring of 1989, I was finishing my final year in Seminary.
I was also in my first year as a pastor serving a small rural church in southern Lancaster county.
The Admission’s director at Drew told me about a job opening he had heard about at Union College in Kentucky.
Union was looking for a college chaplain who would also be able to teach a few courses at the school.
It was the perfect job for me.
I could move back home to Kentucky,
I could preach and pastor without being tied to a local church (something I really didn’t want to do),
and I could teach one or two college courses a semester.
It was the ideal situation.

I flew down to Cincinnati, rented a car, and drove into the mountains of Kentucky where Union College is located.
I met the College President,
interviewed with various committees,
took an extensive tour of the campus,
and at the end of the day felt that I had made a very good impression.
Once home, I anxiously waited for some news.
It came in the form of a letter from the College President.
In it he told me that of all the candidate interviewed,
two of us stood out: a young woman from Vanderbilt and Me.

He praised us both and said that as far as he was concerned we were equally qualified for the position,
which, however, they were offering to the young woman, since in his words, “We’ve never had a woman chaplain before and want to try something new.”
And even though I am a died-in-the-wool liberal when it comes to equal opportunities for all, this was devastating news.
You see, I had already been formulating my moving plans,
and now, I was being told that I would be staying right where I was.
It took me a while to get over this loss, because, you see,
I had thought that this job was the one for me.
I had hoped that this was what God wanted (at least it was what I wanted),
I had thought this was it, but it wasn’t.

One more scene for you:
I am a sophomore in high school,
and my dad has been the pastor of a little store front church for 3 years.
Growth has been slow, but things are beginning to look up.
The pews are beginning to get a little crowded – all ten of them,
and there was talk of buying some land and building a new church.
Along the way, however, something has gone wrong in the relationship between my dad and mom.
Their life has never been easy,
but the pressures have been mounting for some time.
Every day they got up at 5 am to drive almost two hours to their jobs in an appliance factory.
Eight back-breaking and monotonous hours later,
it was two more hours back home.
After supper, my dad would go out for several more hours of church work.

I guess it all became too much,
and somewhere, somehow, along the way,
my dad lost his bearings.
He began an affair with a church member.
The night I realized this, my mom was in the hospital.
She was suffering from what the doctors called “nervous exhaustion.”
It was late, after eleven, and I am sure my dad thought my brother and I were asleep – but I wasn’t.

Our bedrooms were separated by the thinnest of walls,
and in the quiet I heard my dad talking on the phone in hushed whispers.
He was telling someone that he loved her,
that he wanted to be with her and not my mom.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but there it was,
and a few short weeks later my family life had been shattered.
It was bad enough that my Mother, brother and I were now on our own.
Money, which had always been tight, would be even tighter.
Our lifestyle, already bordering on working-class poor would plunge further down the socio-economic scale.
But the sense of betrayal and loss was palpable,
and there was also a profound disappointment with my dad.
You see, I had thought of him, as not only my dad, but also as my role model in the faith.
I had wanted to be like him and had hoped to follow in his footsteps,
and now he had throw his life and us away.
I had thought that if anyone could be a Christian,
if anyone could be faithful to their calling,
then that person was my Dad.
I had thought this, but I was wrong.

Have you ever been deeply disappointed?
Have you ever experienced a major loss or betrayal.
Have you ever had your expectations and dreams crushed and destroyed?
If so, and I can’t believe that there is a person out there, who hasn’t experienced these things,
then you know how the two followers of Jesus must have felt as they traveled down the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way:
“The Road to Emmaus is the road of deep disappointment,
and walking it is the living definition of sad.
It is the road you walk when you lose a big game,
or your candidate for office loses, or you lose your job,
or you lose your loved one to death.
It is the long road of loss.
It is the long road back to an empty house,
an empty seat at the table,
an empty place in bed next to you,
piles of unopened mail,
calls on your answering machine from creditors demanding you call them back instead of friends or family offering you a cup of water in your misery.
The Road to Emmaus is real.
(Drawn from Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, Cowley Publications, Boston, Mass, p. 20).

And it is on this road that we find two defeated disciples,
headed out of town toward Emmaus, toward nowhere.
These two followers of Christ are tired;
they have heavy hearts and leaden feet,
and they walk to Emmaus to forget,
to forget about Jesus and the great failure that was his life among them.
They are walking away and will try to pick up the pieces of their shattered dreams and start over.
And if we look hard enough we will see shadows of ourselves walking down the same road.

Cleopas and his companion, like many others, had trusted in Jesus.
They had put all their hopes, expectations and even their love in him.
And for awhile it had looked good.
Just a week before Jesus had been welcomed to the city as a conquering hero,
palm fronds waving and people shouting,
“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”
And they had thought,
no, they had hoped, that he, that Jesus, would be the one.
They had thought and hoped this,
but they had been wrong.
And now they were simply trying to get away from their disappointment and despair by going to Emmaus.

Suddenly, however, on this God-forsaken road a stranger appears;
he walks and talks with them,
he draws out their hopes and dreams.
He slowly allows them to voice their fears and doubts,
and finally, at their table in the evening,
their hopes and dreams were renewed when they realize that the stranger in their midst is no other than Jesus himself,
their master, their teacher, their Lord – risen from the dead.

emmaus

One writer has put it well:
Searching for resurrection signs and hope along a stone-strewn path,
amid the jumble of confusion, the rubble of lost dreams,
and the residue of Friday,
two travelers on a Sunday walk talk to a Stranger who takes time to speak,
break bread, pour wine and show his face and wounded hands, now healed.

The Sunday Stranger still walks and talks and tarries
with those who will invite him in.

The truth is that we will all travel the road to Emmaus at one time or another in our lives, and most of us will make many trips on it during our lives.
We may come to the road full of doubt and fear for many reasons-
a loved may have died leaving us questioning God.
our faith may waver in the face of overwhelming obstacles –
so many hungry, so many poor, so much hatred,
or perhaps love will seem to vanish –
a husband or wife may leave us, or a child reject us.
But regardless of the reason we come,
we walk down the road with heavy hearts and leaden feet.
But a stranger awaits us, and in the encounter with the stranger – our risen Lord – we soon know that fear and doubt cannot overcome hope,
darkness cannot overcome light,
hatred cannot win out over love,
and death can never, ever overcome life.

Now as a pastor/preacher I need to tell you that when I preach,
I preach as much to myself as I preach to you,
and so it is that I want to believe the words I say as much I want you to believe them.
I want to believe that Jesus meets us on our roads of disappointment.
I want to believe that hope overcomes fear and doubt,
and that love and life win out over hate and death.
I want to believe, but sometimes belief, sometimes faith is hard.

Let me explain by telling you one more story.
I hope you’ll indulge me.

In mid-January 2001, I received a call from our then District Superintendent telling me that “the Bishop has made an appointment.”
I was then informed that come the end of June I would be moving from my current church in Elysburg, PA to the First United Methodist Church in Pottstown.
I was ready for a move, and so I received this news with some joy.
After ten years of serving churches that had been in high conflict prior to my arrival,
I was ready for a change,
ready for a church that wasn’t fighting, wasn’t hopelessly divided, and was ready to do whatever it took to be faithful to its calling in Jesus Christ.
In addition, I had just gone through a painful separation from my wife of seven years,
and a change in scenery would also be appreciated.

So it was with high hopes that I came to Pottstown,
and for awhile everything seemed to go well, even great.
A little over a year after my arrival,
we began a time of discernment with a Vision, Mission and Action team,
which led to a report being presented to the church in the Spring of 2003.
Over a hundred people attended this meeting,
and we approved, without dissent, the implementation of its recommendations.
In turn this led to our hiring Jim Jannotti as our new full-time pastor of Community Life and Modern Worship.
Jim and his family joined us in July of that year,
leaving behind their home of ten years in Ohio.

Jim set about chairing our newly formed Ministry Planning, Implementation and Evaluation Team (Ministry PIE Team),
and they in turn led a series of Spiritual Gifts workshops and helped to put into place several new ministries in our church.

In addition, we adopted new Core Value, Mission and Vision statements.
We spent thousands of dollars on advertising,
at one point calling every household in the area to introduce our new modern worship service.
And on the day our new service began we had over 100 people in attendance at it and over 200 for services that weren’t held on Christmas Eve or Easter.
It was an amazing start.
In 2004, we saw our first significant increase in attendance in over 40 years,
going from under 120 in worship to a 137 average.
Things were beginning to turnaround.
We built a new parking lot and made other improvements in our facilities,
and between 2003 and 2005 we spent over $200,000 above our regular budget to try a make a positive difference in our church and community.
And for awhile it all seemed to work.

But then things started to fall apart.
Our attendance began to decline once again.
Our aging congregation continued to suffer from the deaths of it members – over 70 deaths since I have been here,
and the small influx of new members could not and did not keep pace.
Our giving began to decline,
even when factoring in additional monies from our capital funds campaign,
and at the beginning of 2005 we had to cut almost $20,000 from a budget we had just adopted a few months earlier.
By the beginning of 2006, we had eliminated every paid staff position except for myself and our music director.
Gone were our all of our other part-time employees – our children’s choir director, the beginner’s handbell director, our janitor, and finally our church secretary (who had been with us for over 25 years).
And while Jim continued as our modern worship leader,
he had to find
other employment in order to pay the bills.
Further, many of the programs and ministries we had either started or had continued from previous years have fallen by the wayside.
We are now basically a two day a week church – Sunday morning worship and Wednesday evening choir rehearsals.
Our attendance has declined from a high of 137 to a point where is hovers around 100,
less than it was when I arrived by almost 20% .
In addition, our financial situation continues to worsen.
Even with the additional income from our lease with The Lincoln Center bringing in almost $2,000 a month,
overall monies coming into the church are lower now than they have been in many years.
And after a one-year reprieve,
we could be facing a huge deficit by the end of this year.

All this bad news has left me feeling more than a little depressed, disillusioned and disappointed.
It probably leaves you feeling the same way.
It’s one thing to be a part of a congregation that has experienced nothing but continuous decline,
it’s another thing altogether to have experienced some hope and positive growth only to have that growth reverse itself and your hopes dashed.

You see, I had thought that this was the church –
that we could turn things around here,
and that we could be a vital and alive and thriving congregation.
Perhaps I had even thought that this was where I could put into practice all the things I had learned about church growth,
and that I could be an instrumental part of helping to renew a church that had been in decline.
And while I know that is more than a little egotistical,
I did really believe that we could do it.
I was confident of it.
And yet, by all appearances, it seems that I was wrong.
I had though, I had hoped that this church would be the one,
but so far, at least, it isn’t.

Do you know what the road to Emmaus is known as by many pastors and churches?
It is called an appointment change.
A church or pastor becomes disillusioned,
things go wrong and one or both request a change.
And they begin the walk the long, hard road to Emmaus.
But though this may be a disappointment to some,
I am not ready to start that road,
regardless of my own disappointment in the our church and in myself.
As far as I know,
I will be with you for the next year and hopefully for a long time to come.
And it is my hope that in my disappointment, in your disappointment, we just might encounter the risen Christ in our midst.
I really want to believe that,
and I will try with all my might to do so.
Will you join me?
Will you pray with me the prayer that all those with doubts and fears have prayed at one time or another:
“Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.”

When troubles come and our world begins to crumble around us,
we want to forget.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus had followed Jesus and now it was all over – it had all been for nothing – or so they thought.
But then Jesus appears,
he walks and talks with them,
he breaks bread with them,
and as he does, a breeze begins to blow across the ashes of their hopes.
And what was true for them is true for me.
And it is true for you as well.

For those of us who have experienced disappointment, brokenness and loss,
I offer to you, and to me, Jesus.
Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord,
who has come to us and shared our common lot,
who has conquered sin and death”
and who meets people on the roadway of disappointment, sadness and distress,
and who can bring us healing and wholeness and hope.
I give to you, and to me, Jesus,
who seems to prefer working with people whose hearts are broken,
whose dreams are broken,
whose lives are broken,
whose world is broken.
Jesus, who in his own brokenness,
takes bread and breaks it and gives it to us, saying,
This is my body.
Jesus, who promises to us that wherever two or more are gathered in his name,
he is there with them.
Jesus, who tells us that he will never leave us or forsake us.
Jesus, whose death and life we share in baptism,
and who calls us to share his love and grace with everyone we meet,
so that no one has to walk the road to Emmaus again,
let alone walk it alone.

christemaus