The Prodigal Father - Luke 15:11-32

The Prodigal Father
Luke 15:11-32
June 17, 2012
Rev. William J. Kemp

I can't remember if it was in college or seminary, but one of the first things I learned about the Bible is that, contrary to common understanding, it is not a story about humanity searching for God.  Rather, it is a story about God searching for us. 

Yes there are many calls in the Bible for us to seek out God: 

"Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near."[i] 

"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you."[ii]

The fact remains, however, if all the seeking were left up to us, we and our Creator God would pass each other like the proverbial two ships in the night.   When reading the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, there are times when you can feel God's frustration with us. 

"I've made myself available to those who haven't bothered to ask.  I'm here, ready to be found by those who haven't bothered to look.  I kept saying 'I'm here, I'm right here' to a nation that ignored me.  I reached out day after day to a people who turned their backs on me, people who make wrong turns, who insist on doing things their own way.  They get on my nerves, are rude to my face day after day, make up their own kitchen religion, a potluck religious stew."[iii] 

Totally exasperated by Israel's shepherd-leaders because taking care of themselves was a higher priority than taking care of God's people, the Lord speaks through Ezekiel, "From now on, I myself am the shepherd.  I'm going looking for them ... I'll go after the lost, I'll collect the strays, I'll doctor the injured, I'll build up the weak ones and oversee the strong ones so they're not exploited."[iv] 

The parable which is traditionally called The Parable of the Prodigal Son is preceded by two shorter parables, one about a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep and searches for one lost sheep, until he finds it; and the other about a woman who turns her house upside down looking for a lost coin, until she finds it!   And when the lost sheep and coin are found, there is unbelievable joy in heaven.  God is like that.  

That God should seek us is a major theme of the Bible.  It is made clear almost on the first page.   We hear the Lord pass in the rustling grass,[v] calling out to each one of us, wherever we are:  "Adam!  Adam!  Adam, where are you?"  We reply:  "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked.  And I hid."[vi]   That's so like us, hiding from God, yea, running away from God.

Once I grasped this as a major theme of the Bible, a hymn I remember from growing up in the church suddenly made sense: 

I sought the Lord and afterward I knew

He moved my soul to seek him seeking me

It was not I that found O Savior true,

No, I was found of Thee.[vii]

It's not a very catchy tune.   Even though the tune is called Peace, which should endear it to this congregation, it doesn't compare to the all-time favorite:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found,

was blind but now I see.[viii]

Note the passive voice!  The point is that God initiates our relationship. “This is love:  it is not that we loved God but that [God] loved us..."[ix] It’s not that we find, but that we have been found.  "Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee," claimed St. Augustine.  I also believe there is an even greater truth when you invert that quote:  "God's heart is restless till we find our rest, our home, in God."

Love caused Your incarnation,

Love brought You down to me;

Your thirst for my salvation

Procured my liberty.[x]

That's how one of our Advent hymns puts it.   Not only do our souls thirst for God,[xi] God thirsts for us!   How can we miss?

Which brings us to The Prodigal Father.   I like identifying the parable that way because Jesus introduces it by saying, "There was a man who had two sons."  The Father clearly has the lead role in this story.  Also, not only is the younger son a prodigal (wasteful, extravagant), so is the elder son and so is the Father a prodigal (generous to a fault, extravagant, spendthrift). 

Sometimes when burdened by life's persistent questions, people will say, "When I get to heaven, I have a lot of questions for God..."   When I get to heaven I'm going to ask, "When you consider the human race and how we have thumbed our noses in your face and how we have defaced this beautiful world you gave us to care for, why have you wasted your time and your very self on us?  Why didn't you just wash your hands of us, as Pilate did of Jesus?  I suspect God's answer might be heard in the words of Hosea:  "How can I give you up ... My heart winces within me; my compassion grows warm and tender ... I won't act on the heat of my anger ... for I am God and not a human being, the holy one in your midst..."[xii]

So the Father in the parable does not greet the younger son who wasted his inheritance on wild living with these words:  "You good for nothing blankety blank.  How dare you spend your money like you did.  How dare you ask for your inheritance, which really means you wished I were dead!  Don't come around here looking for forgiveness."  Instead, the Father leaves the house and runs down the path, makes a fool of himself in view of the neighbors, embraces his son and orders his staff to prepare for a welcome home party that makes Nik Wallenda's celebration pale in comparison.

Nor does the Father turn to his elder son and say:  "You self-righteous prig!  All this time I thought you served me out of love, but it was only out of a sense of duty.  You look down your nose at everyone who doesn't see things as you do.  You have no sense of joy.  And why don't you?!  The farm has been deeded over to you.  I can't give you anything more me than I already have."  Instead, the Father leaves the party to seek out the elder son, who was just as much a lost soul as his brother, and begged him to swallow his pride and to come inside, to join the party and discover how life was meant to be.

That's just how thirsty God is for us and how persistent is God's pursuit of us.   David Goldman's herculean effort to be reunited with his son, Sean, reflects such thirst and persistence.  The story unfolded nationally about two years ago.

At the age of 4 Sean was abducted by his mother and taken to her native Brazil where she remarried and tried to erase the Goldman lineage from her son.  Thinking that his wife and son were on a short visit to be with her family, David received a phone call to say that they arrived safely and everything was fine.   Then David received a second phone call, on Father’s Day no less, saying that their life together was over.  Even though she admitted that David was a great father for Sean, she said she met someone else and was going to begin a new life in Brazil and would keep Sean with her.

Time does not allow more details, but if you are interested, you can Google the story.  When Bruna died while giving birth to another child, her family still laid claim to Sean and tried all sorts of legal shenanigans to keep him there.  As you might expect, the whole experience left David Goldman emotionally and financially drained.  But David never gave up and he succeeded in bringing Sean back home to New Jersey just in time for Christmas 2009.

A few weeks ago, a month before Sean's 12th birthday, Meredith Viera interviewed him on Dateline.[xiii]  During the five years he lived in Brazil, Sean said he was confused.  "Where's my dad?" he wondered, often to himself, lest he make his Brazilian family angry at him.   Yet he never forgot his dad.  Meredith talked to him about the nice life he had in Brazil (the family was quite wealthy) but Sean replied, "but I didn't have my Dad."   When he and his father finally were allowed to meet, he admitted wondering where his Dad had been for four years.  He never knew his dad was looking for him.    "How did you feel when you saw your Dad?" Meredith asked.  "Just joy and happiness."  If only he knew that his dad was looking for him, perhaps he would have been less anxious during those five years he had to wait.

I deliver Meals on Wheels once a week.  One of my clients has had a particularly hard life.  She's quite infirm and gets out of her chair only with great difficulty.  She is divorced and finances are always an issue.   She has two daughters.  One lives in the area but they often don't get along.  The other lives up north.   She also lost a 3-month-old and a 10-year-old at some earlier time in her life. 

A couple of weeks ago she told me that her daughter in the north was diagnosed with breast cancer.   That was not good news, but cancer is not necessarily the death sentence that it once was.  Last week, however, she told me that the bad got worse and the prognosis for her daughter was about a year and a half at best.  Life sure has dumped on this woman. 

I was caught off-guard, however, by what she expressed as her major concern.  "I don't think my daughter has found the Lord," she said.  "I know where my younger children are because they died before the age of responsibility, but I'm not so sure about my daughter."

Why, I thought to myself, of all the burdens she had to carry, why did religion have to be one of them?   She needed a word from Jesus:  "Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest."[xiv]   If only she could know that God was on the lookout for her daughter.  Since there were 17 hot meals in the trunk waiting to be delivered, I only had time to say, "I believe God will never stop looking for your daughter until he finds her, if not in this life, then surely in the next."

One of the most insightful meditations on any passage of scripture is Henri Nouwen's, Return of the Prodigal Son:  A Story of Homecoming.   His reflections were motivated by his study of Rembrandt's painting of the same name at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.  The book was published twenty years ago and tells a most poignant spiritual journey.   “Here is the God I want to believe in,” says Nouwen,

a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms droop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless.[xv]

Nouwen emphasizes that this is no story of cheap grace or easy forgiveness. 

What I am called to make true is that whether I am the younger or the elder son, I am the child of my compassionate Father.  I am an heir ... Indeed, as child and heir I am to become successor.  I am destined to step into my Father's place and offer to others the same compassion that he has offered me.  The return to the Father is ultimately the challenge to become the Father.[xvi]

We are called "to be merciful, just as our Father is merciful."[xvii]  That's no call for cheap grace and easy forgiveness, but neither is it a turn to burdensome religion with all its infinite rules and regulations, doctrines and dogmas.  It is clearly a call to life, "a more and better life than [we] ever dreamed of." [xviii]

---

[i]           Isaiah 55:6

[ii]           Matthew 7:7

[iii]          Isaiah 65:1-3, The Message

[iv]          Portions of Ezekiel 34:11-16, The Message

[v]           See the hymn, This Is My Father's World

[vi]          Genesis 3:10, The Message

[vii]         Author unknown; Tune:  Peace

[viii]         Hymn #280, The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990

[ix]          1 John 4:10

[x]           Paul Gerhardt, 1653; Hymn #11, The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990

[xi]          See Psalm 42

[xii]         See Hosea 11, Common English Bible

[xiii]         April 27, 2012

[xiv]         Matthew 11:28

[xv]          Henry J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, (Doubleday,  1992), p. 95-96.

[xvi]         Ibid. p. 123

[xvii]        Luke 6:36

[xviii]       John 10:10, see The Message

Beyond Our Brokenness

June 10, 2012

2 Corinthians 4:5-12; 16-5:1
2^nd Sunday after Pentecost

Elizabeth M. Deibert

Sometimes we forget what the Apostle Paul put himself through to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which had so transformed his life.   He spent 20 years traveling thousands of miles by land and by sea to start churches in cities all over the northern lands of the Mediterranean Sea.  Grant and Gail can tell you that is a large area as they recently traveled there.   Paul’s cruise ship did not have all the amenities and comforts of a modern one, nor did he really know the places where he was going.   He started churches and wrote follow-up letters of encouragement and thanks to those letters and the work of the Holy Spirit, we are still being encouraged to this day by the one who could not stop proclaiming the Gospel, even when it landed him in prison several times.   Hard as Paul worked on this mission, courageous as he was, there were still some low moments.   We read a several weeks ago the opening of 2 Corinthians, a scripture which alludes to Paul’s despair over life when Paul reminds himself and the Corinthians that the hard times help us to be comforters of others when they go through difficult days.   This passage is similar in that Paul is speaking of trials and talking himself and the Corinthians into trusting that our weakness, our suffering, our dying is purposeful, because through it, the light of Christ and the eternal hope of our resurrection with Christ can shine more brightly through the cracks in these our fragile earthen vessels.

Listen for the Holy Spirit speaking to her church through these words from 2 Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 4:5-12; 16-5:1

For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. 6 For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11 For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.

16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18 because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.   5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (NRSV)

Old clay jars were often used to store valuables in Paul’s day.   The jars were dispensable.   The valuables were not.   We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.    These bodies of ours are like clay.   We can sculpt them.   We have influence over what goes in them and how strong they are, but ultimately, they will wear down.  They will get dropped and broken in the hardships of life.   Over time entropy has its way and we fall apart.    The Corinthians thought that was bad.   They did not approve of weakness at all.  In fact, they thought the Apostles’ weakness was a sign that God was not with him.  

Now, the average life span was about half what it is today.   People in the 1st Century knew few people who lived long enough for their bodies to slowly fall apart.   Many did not survive childhood, and to live beyond 50 was rare.   Paul was one of those.   Anyone who is close to or beyond 50 can tell you that the body at 50+ even more so at 75+ is not like the body at 25.   This will be evident when seminary intern Marilyn and I arrive in Montreat on Thursday evening to join the youth.    All the teens will be still going strong.   Jenny may still look good, but Chip Schaaff, I predict will be a little haggard by sleep deprivation.

These bodies of ours are falling apart.   Some people prop them up with plastic surgery, but the fact remains, we are aging.   And Paul says, this is good.   It’s not the jar that really matters.   It’s what is in the jar.   In the book Peoplemaking by Virginia Satir, she uses the term low pot to refer to the feeling of emptiness.    We say our glass is half-empty or half-full to tell people whether we have a pessimistic or optimistic view of life.  

Paul uses this metaphor of the earthen vessel, the clay jar, a useful but expendable item, to point to the greater value of Christ’s living in us.   It is not the outward appearance of things, but what’s inside.   He says that our apparent weakness is an opportunity for God’s strength to shine through.   In fact, you have to wonder if a shiny beautifully glazed, fully adorned and perfected exterior is problematic for an effective witness to God’s goodness and power.  

Some of you may remember that this text is one of the ones we read at Gretchen Frueh’s memorial service.   Not only did Gretchen value this scripture, she helped us as she was dying to see how God renews the inner nature while the outer nature wastes away.    There were very hard days for Gretchen as there are for anyone who has a terminal diagnosis.   It did not seem a slight momentary affliction.   In fact slight momentary afflictions are kind of like minor surgeries.    You know the truth about minor surgeries, don’t you?    Minor surgeries are surgeries happening to someone else.   If it is happening to you or someone you really love, minor is not the adjective of choice and momentary is not the length of time.

Paul says, “While we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake.”   Is that how you think of your life?   You are always being given up to death and it is for Jesus sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in you.   Richard studied this passage in depth while working on his PhD.   He tells me that the Greek word for death here in verse 10 is a rarely used one.   It is the root from which we get our word nekrosis, corpse.   It is a graphic word there in verse 10 as in rotting flesh, gangrene.   We are always carrying in our bodies, the dying flesh of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be seen.

This reminds me of a story Sherry Robinson told me about a conversation she had with one of our younger Peace participants, not quite school-aged, but very bright.   Sherry was putting the plants outside after worship, working hard as the members of the Property work crew do each Sunday while some of us are enjoying fellowship time, and this little one approached her and asked why.   And she said that the plants needed God’s sunshine so they can grow, just like little boys need to play outside she said, so they can grow.   To which he replied, you’ve already grown a lot and she said, “Yeah, do you think I’m old?” And he said, “Yeah, because look, my skin is nice and smooth, and your skin is wrinkly.”   She said “Yes, and what does wrinkly skin mean?  He said, “That means you’re old.”   Sherry told that story at the last Ministry Team Leaders meeting and all of us were laughing so hard we almost cried.

It’s not the temporary tent of our earthly bodies, but the permanent home we have with God.   I must say that as I watch my mother age, I am so amazed at how little she complains.   Her arthritic knees lock when she stands for a little while, and I see her grimacing as she tries to get them unfrozen to move again.   Her feet and toenails require the untrained but careful attention care of my hands every time we are together.   Her neck locks as badly as the knees, and she is three inches shorter than she used to be.   But all of these weaknesses are opportunities for the light of Christ to shine through her weakness, her increasingly fragile body.   She spoke to me this visit of the grace required in letting other help her when she is unsteady on her feet.   She says, “You know you are old and frail-looking, when everyone in the airport offers to get you a wheelchair.”

Henry Nouwen, author of the Wounded Healer, says in his book The Inner Voice of Love that we must learn to acknowledge our own powerlessness in order to fully receive the power of God.   The more we focus on divine power, the freer we become in accepting our own weakness, which ultimately makes us stronger, calmer, healthier people.

The lyrical phrases “afflicted . . .but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” remind us of the reality of suffering but tell us that suffering never gets the last word.    In moments of deep pain, there is always hope.   Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, says Paul in Romans 5.   Only one who has suffered and maintained hope can make such claims with integrity.  

In our short life as a new church, we have experienced the strength that comes in weakness.   The strength of relationships less than a decade old, formed in a church that wasn’t always sure it would survive.   The strength that comes from trusting God’s ability to provide when we are not sure how we will build a church home with the resources we have available.   The strength that comes from a spirit of gratitude and generosity, such that all of us feel compelled to do our part in giving and serving, instead of being pew-sitters, consumers of religious services.

Beyond brokenness is the capacity to not only be a greater comfort to others who suffer, but to shine the life-giving power of Jesus Christ.    Paul goes on in chapter 12 of 2 Corinthians to refer to his “thorn in the flesh” which he describes as some physical infirmity given to make him more humble, to keep him from being too elated.   He prays for the removal of this problem, but God says to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”   And Paul then says he is content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ, because when he is weak, then he is strong.

Why do we try to cover all the cracks in our clay jars?   Why do we try so hard to dress up our clay jars, so no one can see the holes?   Why do we waste so much energy working to hide our brokenness?   Brokenness is a reality for all of us who are honest with ourselves.   And beyond brokenness is the power of God to live and shine more brightly because of the gaps in our lives, where there is no room for pride.    When all opportunity for pride and boasting is removed from us, then the real life of Christ in us is made visible.

Psalm 23

June 3, 2012

Psalm 23
Tricia Dillon Thomas

To view this sermon click here.

Comforted by the Spirit of Truth

 May 27, 2012

John 14:15-19; 14:25-27; 15:26-27; 16:12-13Pentecost Sunday

Elizabeth M. Deibert

God of power, may the boldness of your Spirit transform us, may the gentleness of your Spirit lead us, may the gifts of your Spirit be our goal and our strength, now and always. Amen.

Now the most commonly read text on Pentecost by those of us who celebrate the day is likely the narrative of the day from Acts 2, the story I told the children, a story of wind and fire and tongues.   This year, I thought we would take the verses from Jesus’ farewell discourse in John which refer to the Comforter, the Advocate, the Spirit, the Paraclete.   Those who were here last week may recall that we read from the opening 2 Corinthians, a passage about paraklesis, about receiving comfort from God and sharing it with others.   In some ways, this text explains how we are empowered to share comfort, peace, love, truth with others, through the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in us.  

Last year I missed Pentecost at Peace, as I was at a Credo Conference in upstate New York.   Pentecost is one of my favorite days in the church, because I’m a fan of the Spirit.   I love the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry.   I appreciate the sovereign protection of God, but I feel closest to the Holy Spirit.   I feel nudges from the Spirit, little reminders throughout the day.  Do you ever get those nudges from the Holy Spirit that you should call someone or do you suddenly remember something that you almost forgot or do you get that push from the Spirit to apologize, to admit you were wrong, to be quiet before you say something you will regret.   I experience the Spirit helping me write sermons.   If you don’t know it already, it is a miracle that I stand here in front of you most weeks.   It is a true sign of the power of the Spirit that I have something to proclaim each week.   At least three or four times each week, I talk to the Spirit about my need for inspiration.   The word, inspire has its roots in the Latin word for “breathe into”   I am totally dependent on spiritual CPR every week.  I can still sing, as we did last week, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” but in some ways, the mysterious Holy Spirit is my best friend. 

 As a woman I feel like the Spirit is where my gender connects best with the Godhead.   The Spirit is thought by many to be the feminine aspect of God’s personality.  The Old Testament Hebrew word for Spirit is “ruah” a feminine noun.  The New Testament Greek word for Spirit is “pneuma” a neuter noun.  The word for truth, as in Spirit of truth, used three times in our text, is a feminine noun.  So while we know God is beyond gender identifications and we would never want to anthropomorphize God by turning God into the image of us, instead of the other way around, I find it very helpful to think of the Spirit as feminine.   It provides some balance to the Trinity.  So when we read our text, you will note that I am shifting to feminine pronouns.   I do not do this lightly or without the support of diverse scholars – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox -- who believe that this is justified.  

John 14:15-19; 14:25-27; 15:26-27; 16:12-13  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees her nor knows her.   You know her, because she abides withyou, and she will be in you. 18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 

25 "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, she will testify on my behalf. 27 You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

  "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth; for she will not speak on her own, but will speak whatever she hears, and she will declare to you the things that are to come.   (New Revised Standard Version -- adapted)

A 14th Century fresco in a small Catholic Church southeast of Munich, Germany depicts a female Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity.   (image on screen) The three are con-joined at the bottom and are in a single robe.   The Spirit is flanked by Father and Son.    There’s an ancient debate between east and west, a conflict about the language of the Nicene Creed between the Orthodox and Catholic (long before the Protestant Reformation) about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son.    These verses seem to support that Eastern view of the Spirit coming from Father, yet it is Jesus who promises it.   I am grateful for Biblical and theological and church historians, who work on these matters.   I am equally grateful that it is not my job to do that.   I am content to receive the ancient and modern creeds as the communal and generational wisdom to guide my faith as I serve in leadership of Peace Church.   I tend to agree with St. Augustine who said, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity (LOVE).”   I also find creative writing like that of The Shack, by William P. Young, to be helpful in stirring my imaginations about the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promises the disciples that the Spirit will come, will remain with us and even in us forever, and will teach us what we need to know, will remind us of all Christ has done.   He says that the Spirit will be dependable and full of truth.   You see, that Greek word for truth also has the connotation of uprightness and trustworthiness.     

The Spirit is your advocate, your counselor.   The Spirit especially advocates for the weak and the powerless.   Jesus said at the beginning of his ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to the captives/the oppressed.”   The Spirit fills you so you can be fruitful in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.     The Spirit will nudge you when you are getting away from those, and you can by grow in them by listening carefully to the Spirit.

By the Spirit God created the earth.  By the Spirit God raised up leaders and prophets in Israel.   By the Spirit Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb.   By the descending dove of the Spirit Jesus was baptized and empowered.   By the Spirit the risen Christ is present with the church.  

The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life, the Renewer of Life, and the One who transforms us into disciples of Christ.    On Pentecost, the Spirit overwhelmed the people.   I’m not sure it sounds comforting to have tongues of fire on your head and a strong wind blowing inside the room.   But for the early Christians, this was a transformative moment, one that clearly demonstrated that what Jesus had promised (the coming of the Spirit) was now true.   Christ was ascended, but they were no longer alone and no longer afraid.   They began to experience in their fellowship a new quality of life.   The Spirit can move us to respond in faith to the Gospel.   Some of you are probably experiencing a nudge from the Spirit to do something faithful today.   Don’t ignore that nudge.   Learn to pay attention to those nudges, those gentle suggestions from the Holy Spirit.   

In the small chapel at Aldersgate in London, there is a plaque on the wall that reads: "On this spot on May 24, 1738, John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed."
One day Leslie Weatherhead a well-known London preacher went there and while he was reflecting on Wesley's "warmed heart" and praying in one of back pews suddenly the chapel door opened and an old man with a cane proceeded to walk down the aisle. When this man came to the plaque, not seeing the young preacher in the back pew, he read out loud the words: "On this spot on May 24, 1738, John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed." The old man dropped to his knees and exclaimed, "Do it again, Lord! Do it again for me!"

Time and time again the followers of Jesus have testified to a similar experience and such transformations began on that Day of Pentecost following Jesus' resurrection when his first disciples were moved by the Holy Spirit's flame.   The Holy Spirit is dependable and worthy of your trust.   So rely on the Spirit to assist you in times of temptation and weakness and fear and confusion.    Practice listening for messages from the Holy Spirit.

Anne Lamott in her best-selling book, Traveling Mercies tells of her fear at the appearance of the slightest mole on her body.  This was because her father had died of a malignant melanoma.  Lamott did not grow up Christian but she started attending, almost by accident (by Holy Spirit) a lively little Presbyterian Church with a small African-American congregation and first began to feel the love of God there.   With funny wit, Lamott confesses that she finally came to her senses about this uncontrollable fear about melanoma and about life in general.   She said to herself one day, “Yes, I do believe in God.”   And she wrote on a scrap of paper these words: "Hey God, I am a little anxious. Help me remember that you are with me. I am going to take my sticky fingers off the control panel until I hear from you." Then she put the note in a drawer of the table next to her bed and surrendered her future to God no matter what.   Jesus sought to assure his disciples that they did not have to have their "sticky fingers" on the control panel of their lives.    Peace I leave with you.   My peace I give to you.   I am sending another to be your Advocate, your Counselor, your Comforter.   This One is always offering peace.  Think of this Spirit wrapping you up securely, tucking you in bed, that kind of comforter.   Think of the Spirit eating dinner with you when you feel alone.  Think of this Spirit filling you with the truth, power, and goodness of Christ so you can be a comforter and truth-bearer for others, an Advocate of the powerless, a counselor to those who need a friend. 

The Spirit is a strangely peaceable powerful presence.   Think of the soothing nature of watching a candle or campfire burn.   Think of the power of the wind to effect change, to move things that are usually stationary.   Trust in the Spirit to breathe life into all the withering, dry places of your life.   Finally, live by the Spirit – boldly free to be a disciple of Christ, not counting the cost.   Make this day a day of new commitment to be spirit-ual, spirit-filled.  Cultivate your ability to listen for the Spirit in nature, in scripture, in prayer, and in those spiritual nudges which are constant.   Even now the Spirit is blowing away all your doubt and fear.   The Spirit is burning away all your complacency, leaving your heart warm and clean.  The ultimate Truth of Life, this trustworthy Spirit of God, is your Comforter, filling you with love and with power and with the grace to live as Christ’s follower.

Let us pray:  Praise and glory to you, creator Spirit of God;

You are truth.   You come like the wind of heaven, unseen, unbidden.

Like the dawn you illumine the world around us;

you grant us a new beginning every day.

You warm and comfort us.

You give us courage and fire and strength beyond our everyday resources.

Be with us, Holy Spirit, in all we say or think,

in all we do, this and every day. Amen.

Called to Caregiving

2 Corinthians 1:3-11
7th Sunday of Easter
Stephen Minsters' CommissioningElizabeth M. Deibert
20 May 2012

Can you remember the first time you scraped your knee?    Did someone provide comfort?   If you had never scraped your knee ever, would grimace when you see a kid (or worse, an adult) trip and skin their knee.   The sight of it triggers your memory of the feeling, and the memory of the feeling makes you empathetic, especially if you yourself were comforted when it happened to you.

Can you remember a time when you were not chosen, left out, excluded.   I was the youngest in my family and remembering feeling left out from all the exciting things that I imagined happened in the house, after I had to go to bed.   Maybe you were the last one picked when teams were chosen.  Maybe you were the kid who didn’t get the invitation to the party everyone was talking about.   If you were left to tough it out on these difficult occasions, then you might have missed the opportunity to develop empathy for others.   Most parents these days want to protect their children from negative experiences, but you see, it is not the negative experience itself that is so bad, but the experience without any comfort.

I can recall the very place on the front steps where I was standing at age ten when my mother told me that a little three year old girl, a friend of our family, was killed in a car accident.   A sleepy driver crossed over into the lane where her father was driving and in the days before car seats for toddlers, this life was finished for cute little Carmen.   I had no idea at age ten what it was like to be the parent of a child who died in a car crash, nor to be the driver of the car that veered into the other lane, causing the death of a little girl.   But I remember hearing my mom reflect on that death from two perspectives.   She had lost her father in a car accident when she was 15.

Empathy is a natural response of our human race because we are created in the image of God, who empathized with us to the ultimate degree by being one of us.    

In the opening of his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul is defending his apostolic authority by speaking about the value of suffering, as it allows us to be comforted by God and then to be comforters of others who suffer.   Paul uses the Greek word parakaleio in its noun and verb forms ten times in this passage we are about to read.   The New Revised Standard Version translates the words as console and consolation, and but I don’t think that is a very effective translation of a word that means to comfort, encourage, strengthen, so you will see that I have changed the word in our reading from the screen.   Another word I changed is the word, “afflicted”  It means squeezed or put in a narrow place.   So I’m using the contemporary word, “stress”  because I never hear anyone talk of being afflicted, but everybody these days is stressed to the max or so it seems.

2 Corinthians 1:3-11

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our stress, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any stress with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. 6 If we are being afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are being comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 8 We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, 11 as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.  (NRSV)

And you’ll see here that someone translated afflicted/stress as trouble.   And mercy is changed to compassion here.  

Many people want to approach suffering with the question “why?”   One answer to that question is that we suffer so we know how to comfort others.   It builds empathy.   That is, when our suffering is coupled with the comforting presence of God and others.   Paul gives another reason for suffering.   He says he was utterly, unbearably crushed, despairing of life, thinking that he would die – so that he would rely not on himself but on God who raises the dead.  He says, if I am being troubled/stressed, it is for your comfort and salvation/healing/wholeness.   If I am being comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience WHEN you patiently endure – suffering like others do.

An infant needs to learn that suffering/crying leads to being comforted.  Likewise, in the church, Christians need to learn that when we are in trouble, people will be there for us.   Richard and I experienced this kind of support this week when we were under the strain of thinking that our daughter Emily in Korea had meningitis.   But in our anxiety while waiting to hear from tests, we received the comfort of many who suffered with us, who reached out in compassionate care-giving.  People who were able to translate their experience of worry over a sick loved one to our situation.   

Thank you for suffering with us and rejoicing with us in the news that Emily is okay, despite having had a sudden seizure in the night.  Thank God for sister Catherine being there with her to help her.   Never have I been more grateful for Facebook because thru it we were able to communicate with Catherine in the hospital with Emily and through it, we were able to receive countless consolations and promises of prayer, from England, from Switzerland, from multiple states in the USA, and a phone call from Rob Tuite, who has had his share of suffering in the last year and because of it has a deeper inclination to comfort others.   So like Paul, we can “give thanks …for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”

Today we commission our first class of Stephen Ministers at Peace.   Stephen Ministry was developed by a Lutheran pastor in the 1970’s because he knew he did not have enough time to provide the kind of care he knew suffering people needed.    Pastors are there in the moment of crisis, but often the suffering lingers while the pastor has moved to the next crisis in the congregation.   Those who grieve often don’t hit the bottom until months after a death.   Those who experience an unwelcomed divorce know that it can take months or years to heal, to adjust.   Those who lose a job or a home or move away from close friends or become empty-nesters can undergo a season of depression.   Stephen Ministers are the “after people.”  They are the professional comforters.   In Biblical times there were professional mourners who would come to weep with you at the time of a death.   Stephen Ministers are skilled, caring listeners who come to help you sort through trouble.  Stephen Ministers can help you to experience the comfort of Christ by being with you in your difficult days.   Men are assigned to men and women to women, always confidentially and only when you agree that having a Stephen Minister would be helpful. 

All of us are called to the ministry of caregiving, but the people who will be commissioned today have spent many hours in training, and have committed to serve in an intentional process of Christian caregiving for the Peace congregation & Friends of Peace.   This means they will participate in supervision and training twice/month and will be prepared to meet with a care receiver on a weekly basis.   Three of our ordained Presbyterian ministers with years of pastoral experience will be working with the Stephen Ministers and me.   We encourage you to seek out Stephen Ministry when you are going through any kind of trouble.  Just tell me or one of the Stephen MInisters that you’d like to consider this kind of support.

Two weeks ago, we read from John 15 that we should abide in the vine and love one another, that our joy may be complete.   Last week we read from the 1 Letter of John, chapter 4, that since God loves us so much, we should love one another and if we do, God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us.   Now we are hearing that love involves suffering.   Because we cannot comfort people if we have not suffered and experienced the comfort that has its origin in God’s love.  

Our ability to empathize is cultivated by our experience of being comforted when we have suffered.   Remember how it feels to scrape your knee?  Remember how it feels to be excluded?   Remember how it feels to lose someone you love?   Assuming you got the comfort you needed to heal, you will have the resources to be a comforter of others.   This is a huge part of what it means to be human – to be like Christ who suffered with us, for us, in order to be a comfort to us.   And he promised us the Spirit, the paraklete, who is the great Comforter, who groans with us with sighs too deep for words.

We simply cannot learn Christian compassion without pain.   No, we are troubled, stressed for the comfort and salvation of others.   And we are comforted to be a comfort to those who endure suffering with patience.   It is the grandest circle of life, drawing us closer to death, so that we rely completely on the one who rescues us from death.   In God we hope and to God we give thanks in all circumstances.   No one understands this better than this guy, Nick, born with no arms and legs.   (View 4 minute video by Nick, a man of great faith)

(Note:  Go to www.youtube.com and search for Nick Vujicic or copy this link into your browser   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5mbldTkruM

Secured in Love

1 John 4:7-21

6^th Sunday of Easter
Mother's Day

Elizabeth M. Deibert
13 May 2012

Last week we the branches, were challenged to be fruitful, by abiding in the vine, Christ.   What does being fruitful look like?   Loving as Christ loves.   Today’s lessonfrom the 1^st Letter from the Johannine community continues this theme of Christ’s love.   Written about a decade after the Gospel of John, probably around the year 100, it calls us to demonstrate authentic faithfulness to Christ through love.  God is defined as love, and that the two cannot be separated.   You cannot have God without love, or love without God.   Jesus Christ shows us what it means to be completely secured in love.  By His Spirit living in us, we too are secured by love and empowered to love.

Some preachers today will focus on the sacrificial love of mothers and how grateful we should be to them and inspired by them to love one another.  In those sermons, motherhood will be placed on a pedestal to admire.  And indeed many mothers, including mine, deserve great praise.  Equally many mothers who did their best under difficult circumstances, failed their children miserably in some big moments because they did not have the emotional, mental, or spiritual resources they needed to do the job.   This text reminds us that it is God’s love which inspires us to nurture one another in love.

Prayer

1 John 4:7-21

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

 ¹³ By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. ¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷ Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.  (NRSV)

You are here today because somebody loved you and that love inspired you to draw near to the One who loves you best and to worship.   Some of you have had radical, transformative encounters with the living Christ, like the Apostle Paul, but others have come to understand God is love through people who were good expressions of God's love.  Verse 12 says,  12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.  By perfected, we don't mean flawless, but completed, reaching its full purpose and goal .

 John is saying: God starts it all. Being loved enables us to love not just by offering an inspiring example, but because love frees us from the things that would otherwise block us from loving, including guilt and fear. This is why, whenever the author speaks of the commandment to love one another, he nearly always brings it back to God first loving us. That love is enabling, the more we let it reach us and set us free.  (William Loader, textweek.com) 

“We never get beyond God's love for us in Christ and how that is lived out in love for one another. We are always drawn back to that central, and centering, claim. We know God's love, first and foremost, in the Son; and we know God's love because we have witnessed it in love for one another. This text may serve as a reminder that we never grow beyond our need to hear again the gospel of God's love in Christ.”   (Brian Peterson, workingpreacher.org)

Much of the anger that erupts within the church under the banner of loving God and defending God's truth often seems to grow instead from love of self and of the power that comes from winning the argument, even at the expense of the church's unity in love. The gospel of God's love for us in the Son sets us free from such loveless and fearful pursuits.  John will not allow the sacrifice of love for the sake of truth (as though they could be separated), and continually brings us back to the only place where we can learn how to love faithfully: the prior love of God for us in the sending of the Son.

“The opposite of love is not hate but fear,” William Sloane Coffin once said, as he preached on this passage.  If God is exclusively understood as the God of power, or demand, or even justice, then we approach God with fear — both in this life and in the life to come. 

But if understood first as the God of love, perfect love, then we approach God with confidence. God's love is perfect and our love is perfected because we trust in God's love. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).   (David Bartlett, workingpreacher.org) 

In every human relationship, even the most loving relationships, there is an element of fear.  We fear abandonment.  We fear rejection.  We fear possessiveness.  We fear intimacy.  We fear failure.  We fear sacrifice.  We fear being known.  Love is threatening because it requires so much of us – both the one who loves and the one who is loved.  “Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.”  (Merle Shan)

Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment.   At Faith and Film on Friday night at Peace, we viewed Kings Speech, which is the story of the transformative power of love, more than the power of speech therapy.   What the character Lionel Logue understood about stammerers which proved so helpful to King George th 6th is thta the stammering is rooted in fear more than in the mechanics of speech.  Lionel gave him the love of friendship, and through that was able to do what no expert could do: help him overcome the fear of making his voice heard.    This act of love changed the course of history, as do all acts of true love.

Theologian Paul Tillich said "The first duty of love is to listen."  To Tillich’s duty of love to listen, I would add that the flip-side of listening is asking good questions.  Keep the conversation alive by a deeper engagement of the other – not by mouthing off about yourself.   St. Augustine said, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.   To invite others to share their stories, and then to really listen with attentiveness, asking meaningful questions is an act of love.

It is no small matter that these fifteen verses have 27 references to agape, the Greek word for love.   Agape is love because of what it does, not because of how it feels.   God so “loved” (agape) that He gave His Son. It did not feel good to God to do that, but it was the loving thing to do. Christ so loved (agape) that he gave his life. A mother who loves a sick baby will stay up all night long caring for it, which is not something she wants to do, but is a true act of agape love.

  

The point is that agape love is not simply an impulse generated from feelings. Rather, agape love is an exercise of the will, a deliberate choice. This is why God can command us to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44; Exod. 23:1-5). He is not commanding us to “have a good feeling” for our enemies, but to act in a loving way toward them. Agape love is related to obedience and commitment, and not necessarily feeling and emotion. “Loving” someone is to obey God on another’s behalf, seeking his or her long-term blessing and profit.   C. S. Lewis once said, “Christian Love, either towards God or towards [humanity], is an affair of the will.

We will never understand the fullness of love unless we start with God.  And when we start with God we start with the understanding that God is love, not that God loves, but that God is love.  God loves “might stand alongside other statements, such as ‘God creates,’ ‘God rules,’ ‘God judges’; that is to say, it means that love is one of God's activities.  But to say ‘God is love’ implies that all God's activity is loving activity.  If God creates, God creates in love; if God rules, God rules in love; if god judges, God judges in love.  All that God does is the expression of God's nature, which is — to love.  The theological consequences of this principle are far-reaching.”  (CH Dodd)

Mother Teresa, who proved she really knew God by the way she loved the unlovely said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”  She said, “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”  She also said, “Love until it hurts. Real love is always painful and hurts: then it is real and pure.” Martin Luther King, Jr., who knew he could not talk about the love of God without being willing to love those who mistreated him said, “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” 

 

"Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love." According to writer Madeleine L’Engle.   Soren Kierkegaard said, “When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world - no matter how imperfect - becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.” 

 Oh, what a world we might have if fear were overtaken by love, if all who claim to love God began to prove it by their fearless love of other people.  It can begin right here, Peace.  It can begin with a commitment on our part to be fearless lovers of the all people, who are not concerned for our own well-being out of a fearful protection of self, but who trust God enough to love bravely, to really love like Jesus loved.   We cannot do it, but God can do it through us.  Because God is love, and when God lives in us, God’s love is perfected in us.   May God’s love reign in our hearts and in our lives everyday in every way as we stand and sing…