When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

5Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

14But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’


John 20:19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Today represents a huge clash in our secular life versus our church life. I'm talking Bible versus Hallmark, liturgy versus culture, Peter versus Mom, new wine versus apple pie.

On May 11, in the year of our LORD 2008, today, the church will celebrate Pentecost Sunday. And it will also be Mothers' Day.

Yikes.

Because of the early Easter that we celebrated, Pentecost, 50 days after Easter is also much earlier than normal. This double booking will not happen again for a very long time.

From the preacher’s perspective these two events don’t seem to line up at first glance. The church is resistant to celebrate secular holidays and yet, quite often, people of the church want to know that God’s blessing is upon them in the holy days as well as the ordinary ones. One pastor held a contest to see who could find the best sermon title for the Pentecost/Mother’s Day combo:

Some of the responses:

"Your Mama's On Fire"
"The Holy Spirit Ain't Your Mama"
"Hot Mamas"
"Push! Push!"
Don't Come Running To Me When You're Set On Fire.
I told you so!
Or, as the famous Dusty Springfield Lyrics tell us:
Mama Said there’d be days like this….

Recently I heard a radio interview about Motherhood. I was actually on my way to see one of my numerous friends who has had a baby in the last month. The show was about a book entitled “the second nine months” by Vicki Glembocki. She details the initiation process of being a new mother – the life changes you experience that you can’t know about until you go through it.

A review says that Vicki breaks the New Mother Code of Silence. She lays out the truth about those first months with baby: the realization that having a baby is so much harder than anyone told you it would be; the certainty that you're doing everything wrong; the desire to kill your husband, your mother, your dog; the struggle to balance who you were with whom you've become—a mother. She says: Take heart, new moms—you are not alone!

As I listened to the show, the host encouraged women who wanted to phone in to do so immediately because as he predicted, the phone lines were completely full within seconds. Mother after mother called in and shared their story about the transition from pregnancy to motherhood and how it was more life changing that they had ever expected.

Shortly thereafter I arrived at my friend’s house, obviously not willing to tell her about the show I had just heard. She was already full of emotion and she held back tears about the feeding issues she was having, but at one point she looked and me and said, “How will I know what to do?”

We’ve all had those same feelings at some point in our lives.. Perhaps in a new job, perhaps with an aging parent, perhaps with a child with special needs, perhaps on a first date -- unsure of the rules for the path ahead, we stand and ask – How will I know what to do?

2 weeks after I started seminary the tragic event of 9/11 rocked our nation. The church I was serving decided to have a noon-time worship service on the Tuesday following the crash. I wanted to attend to learn about how to help a church in the midst of a national crisis, as I sat down in the pew, the secretary pulled me aside to tell me that the pastor had become ill and would not be attending. I would have to improvise. Scared to death, I asked her the same question. How will I know what to do?

Baptism by fire is the phrase we commonly use to describe these moments. When you’re just thrown in without the manual, praying that you make the right decision. The phrase was first used in france in 1822 to describe an inexperienced soldier’s first moments on the battlefield, but the language is taken directly from our beloved verse John 3:16 – one is coming who will baptize you with fire.

There is no way those disciples could have known the rules that day. It was impossible to know what to do next. As they sat there eating and chatting, still probably wondering when Jesus was going to come back and lead them on the next miracle walk, the holy spirit comes to them in fierce flames and in violent wind, leaving each disciple with the question “How will I know what to do next?”

Though we know Pentecost as the day when the holy spirit descends upon the disciples, Paul and the jews of the day knew Pentecost as the festival of the harvest. In Hebrew it was called Shavuout and it was celebrated 50 days after the Passover feast to offer the first of the harvest to God and to honor the receiving of the tablets by Moses on Mt. Sinai 50 days after being released from Egypt. In all observances Pentecost is the festival day that celebrates the gathering of the gifts of God.

Acts 2.1-21 tells us it is on this festival day that the followers of Jesus are “all together in one place” when the Spirit appears. It arrives as a rushing wind, filling them, in-spiring them, causing them to draw breath and speak in a way they have never known before, in a way that will change their lives forever.

As I think about my own expectations for life –- my plan and my vision and my hopes and dreams – Pentecost reminds me that at any moment God can and will dramatically enter in and flip my world upside down and that no earthly preparation – no bank account, no security system, no birth plan will insure that I will know what will happen next.

To me, to not know if I will always have a house or a job or to not know whether my friends will be my friends or to not knowing the number of years I will have to celebrate with my mother or not knowing if my children will feel that I have been the best mother I could be…

This is terrifying stuff.

And this is Pentecost.

God comes to us in amazing ways – but in terrifying ways as well. The spirit fire that descends down on the disciples is not a soft candle lit fire or a fireside chat, but it is raging and overwhelming, it is the burning bush, and the pillar that leads the way to an unrecognizable place that we have never been before.
If we believe. If we really believe, that no matter what God puts in front of us… if we believe that if the one thing that is beyond our imagination could happen right now and God will make it okay Then we are ready for Pentecost.

Because the “how will I know what to do next” that is said it fear and trepidation will be transformed into “Lord, show me what to do next, for I know that you will lead the way… always.”

For the followers of Jesus, the day of Pentecost becomes an occasion of profound initiation. With the gift of spirit and flame, the community that Jesus had formed is now fired, prepared, propelled into a new stage of its journey. Like a piece of clay that was soft and able to be destroyed God seals the new vessel in the kiln of his Spirit. As the disciples realized that it was never going back to the way it used to be, they had the choice to live into the fear – to blame one another and yell at one another to find out how was responsible for this linguistic and fiery mess. And they had the choice to embrace the terribly awesome work of God and live the life that Christ had already shown them. It was simply their time to own what they knew was possible all along.

As they asked their own question --- how will I know what to do next. They were greeted with God’s answer – the spirit gave them the ability.

As those followers knew, we can’t always plan our moments of initiation. If we cannot control God, it follows that we cannot control the ways that God beckons or, sometimes, seemingly flings us across a new threshold. We can work through prayer and openness to make ourselves available when it happens, but we don’t always get to choose our initiations

At Pentecost, initiation occurred not only at the individual level (”and a tongue rested on each of them”) but also at the corporate level. The outpouring of the Spirit upon the whole community reminds us that we are not on an individual journey but a shared one. We are called to be the church – together – to discern as a holy people what god wants next for us as christens and as church – even if that plan doesn’t resemble what we always thought it would. The best part of this is that we have one another to do this with. On Pentecost we are reminded not only that God gives us the holy spirit, but that God calls us, compels us, to attend to the Spirit in one another.

As we live out the days our mamas warned us about, we are challenged to think of those in our families who seem to have broken the pact. Who seem to have forgotten that the spirit of god rests on each of us. Those by whom we feel judged and those we judge. They are mothers for sure, but they are also children and spouses and sisters and brothers and friends. But the most challenging initiation of Pentecost is not being welcomed into the gentle church pew and the sweet hymn. It is accepting the love of Christ and living the life of radical forgiveness.

God is searching right now for the moment of our lives that he can breathe through us. So that we can be the radical church that exists for love. God is challenging us to remember those moments of initiation in our lives and how God brought us through them to stand here this day and hear the words of the spirit. So that right now we can say to our God – I accept what you are doing in me. You have already brought me through the fire – through the second nine months, through the first day on the new job, through the divorce, through the loss of my mother – and now I can allow God to breathe through me so that just one more person can feel the rush of the Pentecost wind, can be washed in the flow of the baptismal water, can be made alive by the fire of Pentecost.

Mama said there’d be days like this.

Each week when Noah and I head to the grocery store, he sits happily in the cart just waiting for people to pass by us. He gets very excited and smiles at the strangers and then waves and says “Hi.” About 30% of the time people come over to the cart and talk to him or at least say hi back with a smile. But about 70% of the time he is ignored. Some people find it odd that someone is talking to them. Some people pretend they don’t hear him or assume he isn’t talking to them. Most people are so consumed with picking out the perfect salad dressing that they don’t even notice the world around them. Noah is learning how to communicate with people in his community and at the same time is learning that in public places it might not be appropriate to say hello.

It saddens me greatly when he is met with a poor response. I want him to believe that people are full of goodness and that there is hope for us to at least be polite and cheerful with one another. But, I know for sure that it has become taboo, perhaps even dangerous to speak with someone we do not know. I used to require teenagers on retreats to say hello to everyone they passed by. They were always amazed at how many people they didn’t notice in a days time and equally as surprised at how many people looked shocked by a simple hello.

It seems to me that in this day and age we are virtually anonymous. We might go through an entire day in the public square and never have a meaningful encounter with another person who is not from our immediate circle of friends and family. We might go weeks or months without meeting a new person. Even family systems have changed dramatically. I grew up with most of my relatives living within 10 miles of my home and slowly over the years we have begun to move farther and farther away from our place of birth so that grandparents and aunts and uncles do not often cross our paths during our daily life. And we become more and more anonymous, unknown.

But, somehow, I don’t think we are happy in this state. Somehow I don’t think the increasing technology that allows us to talk to people across the planet quickly and easily replaces the emptiness of an unmet supermarket hello. But the grasping, the groping for God, as it is put in today’s lesson from Acts is still so present.

The scripture reading today for some reason caused me to immediately think of the new book that Oprah is promoting: A new earth. I’ve been approached by several people lately asking me if I have read the book and encouraging me to do so. The book espouses that if you read it you will find the secret to becoming awakened. That in the pages there are concepts and ideas that if your soul is ready will immediately transport you into a place where you will receive new vision about yourself, your surroundings, and all of creation. That we as individuals carry the power to change absolutely everything about the world, according to how good we feel about ourselves and others. The book goes on to cover areas about how to manage pain and relationships.

Now, no matter how I feel about this type of literature. No matter how I feel about the power of positive thinking, the piece that is stunning to me is that Oprah decided to hold a weekly online lecture from the author of the book on how to achieve awakening. For the first session the website crashed because more than 2 million people tried to gain access to what the man had to say.

Alone in their homes, in front of their computers, isolated and anonymous people are seeking to somehow find a connection to the divine.

And as it was, so many years ago in the book of Acts, we find a place called Aeropagus. A rocky hillside in Greece where a council of elders by the same name used to meet. They would make important decisions about the culture and the government of the day and eventually changed the face of Greece. By the time Paul was standing on this site, the Aeriopagus was a place where politics and philosophy were debated and discussed. Where the cultural trends were taking shape. Perhaps the place where the next hot new book to shape the nation would be chosen.

And when Paul comes to this place he says to those who are in the middle of the cultural hub of the time… I have been looking through your things and I found an altar. It is inscribed “to an unknown God.”

But Paul argues that this God that we proclaim is not unknown. He says:

24-29"The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn't live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn't take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don't make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. He's not remote; he's near. We live and move in him, can't get away from him! One of your poets said it well: 'We're the God-created.' Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn't make a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone for us, does it?

30-31 The unknown is now known, and he's calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead."

The unknown is known in Christ.

In Paul’s day it was the aeropagus, in the 50’s it was L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, in the late 80’s it was the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and for the last 20 years, Oprah’s voice has influenced the direction that people take in their lives.

The Athenians, whose altar is dedicated "to an unknown god," are trying to cover all the bases. If the gods of their other altars or shrines fail them, perhaps an "as-yet-unnamed" deity will look favorably upon them. Though this sounds like an ancient problem, I’ve seen a similar sight in southern California. There you can get into a car that has a rabbit’s foot sitting in the cup holder, a sacred heart air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, a bobblehead Buddha sitting on the dashboard and a Darwin "fish with feet" emblem on the trunk.

People are reaching for an experience of the divine. Some express their search in their automobile shrines, while others kneel at the altar of Superlative Experience: they’re seeking the highest high, the biggest vehicle, the most extreme sport, the most sordid confession on a reality show. Many in our culture are indulging in this cult of experience, which is actually a misguided groping for God.

But with each trend comes a quick and passing sense of awareness and fulfillment, only to leave more unanswered questions as time goes on. We will never be known in any of these movements. The altar of whatever works for today is not the path that will connect us to our God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Because it is in God that we live and move and have our being. And the farther we stray from that vital truth the farther we slip into the world where we do not recognize Christ in our cultural centers.

St. Augustine says in a fervent prayer: "O God, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you,"

Perhaps it just seems like common sense to all of you, after all you are sitting here in church today. But what I see in the world is a whole lot of people who aren’t quite sure about faith and about God and about Jesus. And yet they have a desire to figure out something. 2 million people share the same desire to be awakened. That means that at least 2 million people feel like they aren’t in touch with God. The restlessness, the groping as the text says, for God is so real and so evident, and no matter how many 12 step paths to fulfillment we embark on, on those journeys, I promise you, we will not find the answers.

And that is the best news you can hear this day. Let me tell you why.

Because when we are not 100% in control of everything that happens, that means that we are not alone. When we are not the ones who know what heaven looks like and what waits in eternity, that means that we don’t have to prepare that banquet and we don’t have to worry about those invites. When someone we love dearly passes away or when the first cries of a child are heard, we can take comfort that we are not unknown and God is not unknown. Thank God that Oprah and L. Ron Hubbard do not determine our destiny. Because this journey with the God who knows every hair on our head is not one sided – the bible is not placed in front of us as a cultural book for our era, instead it is the guidebook for every time and every place and thank god it isn’t left up to humans.

When Paul shared the gospel message in the cultural center of the aeropagus, he was met with a mixed response. Some believed what he had to say, but many did not. He could not know how they would respond.And so in our communities, in our own Aeorpagus,

A Nazi propaganda poster shows a disabled man sitting on a chair with a policeman standing behind him. The quote beneath the figure says: This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too."

It was one of many posters that were used during the Nazi regime to psychologically convince Germans that the Nazi plan would benefit them. That only certain types of people were desirable. It is most commonly thought that the reign of Hitler was only to expel Jews from the earth, of which he did slaughter 6 million. But Hitler had a more complex idea of what the world should look like that went far beyond his hatred for Jewish people.

He believed that a certain set of characteristics were desirable. Blond hair, blue eyes, a certain height and intelligence. Only those speaking Slavic and Germanic languages were a part of this race. He even went as far as to place some children that he thought were close to perfect in special homes so that they would breed only with one another when they grew up. This is how he was planning on creating the Master Race that would, in essence, weed out all of those people who were undesirable.

He had a large list of folks labeled “life unworthy of life” including but not limited to the: criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, religious and weak humans who were all, in his mind, a hindrance for the rest of the world and were set up for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 persons were sterilized against their will, while 70,000 were killed. Hitler’s total slaughterhouse count was 11 million people.

The Nazis Master Plan seems incomprehensible to us. To see so much hate and anger in one person. To even try to understand what Adolf Hitler’s brain must have been like is a psychiatrist’s fantasy.

But most of all what stands out to me is the rejection. The intentional and hateful rejection of people. Because of their religion or race or identity.

Rejection is not a foreign concept to us. It starts very early on in our lives when some children don’t want to play with us. One mother in my Mom’s group recently stated that her 6 month old simply did not like another little girl and she refused to let her child play with the other one – at 6 months of age.

Our YMCA has a series of posters in the hallways portraying average children in our community. The posters are split in half, one side with a small child sitting in sadness and alone – Yesterday Samantha sat alone at home. Today her lonliness is met with friendship.

The Y is not marketing to ignorant ears. We are quick to blame video games and television for our children’s lack of outdoor play and neighborhood play. We are quick to talk about the old days when we knew everyone on the block and everyone’s door was open all the time.

But it seems to me that this rejection that we see acknowledged in our community gathering places, on our streets, in our schools, and throughout our history is vividly evident in the biblical story.

1 Peter tells us that Jesus himself was rejected by mortals and yet a chosen and precious in god’s sight. Rejected by mortals and chosen by God. To many people who were full of fear and doubt in biblical days, Jesus did not fit into their ideal of what a messiah should look like. His appearance wasn’t stately, he didn’t wear the right kingly clothing, and he wasn’t a warrior. In all of the categories that we use to rate individuals – whether to accept or reject – jesus most likely would have failed our standards. And yet, he was the chosen one, the precious one on whom our lives are built.

Looks aren’t always as they seem.

In 1957, some Buddhist monks in Thailand had to relocate a large clay statue of Buddha. A highway was about to be built straight through the center of their temple. However, when a crane began to lift the huge statue, a loud crack was heard. At the same time it began to rain. The head monk, afraid that the Buddha would be permanently damaged, decided to lower the statue to the ground and cover it with a huge tarp. Later that evening, the monk went to check to see if the Buddha was still dry. When he lifted the flap and directed his flashlight toward the idol, his eye caught a slight gleam. Curious, the monk fetched a chisel and hammer and began to tap away at the clay. What he discovered after hours of delicate work was amazing–a solid gold Buddha–ten and a half feet tall, weighing two-and-a-half tons! After some research, the monk discovered that centuries before–when an enemy army was about to attack the country, the ancient monks had coated the golden Buddha with clay, so that it would not be destroyed or plundered. Because all of the ancient monks had been murdered by the enemy army, nobody had discovered their secret until 1957. (Chicken Soup for the Soul, p, 69-71)

The Good News of the gospel proclaims with delight and certainty that each one of us is like that golden Buddha statue. There is within us a gleaming image of God, an essence that is eternal and indestructible–a beauty and value inestimable in its worth. Our problem is that over the years, the clay and dust and muck of life has layered us with disguises–hiding our light and tarnishing our beauty from ourselves and from others. For some of us, the clay which is hiding our gold, consists of childhood messages of judgment or shame or inadequacy. For others, it is the stress of the work world that has tarnished the sheen of our own self worth. And for yet others it has been failed relationships or broken trust, shattered dreams or physical pain that has buried the spark of God within us. We have come to reject because we have been rejected.

Yet, it is to these people–with little affirmation from the world around them–that the ultimate affirmation of God is given:

You are holy, you are precious,
you are chosen, you are called,
you are, in the eyes of God, important
significant, and necessary people.
And it through the Christ in you that
you have become the building blocks
of the new creation.

And though we do not wear SS bands of Nazi status and power and we are even disgusted by the rejection we see of precious humans in our every day lives, the layers of grime that we live with cloud our vision so much so that we too become agents of rejection, quickly sorting through those we personally deem worthy, assigning a rank or status in our own life and often leaving those who we do not deem good enough by the wayside. And though God looks at each one of us and claims us as chosen and precious, god does not stop there.

In John today, Jesus tells us that God the father lives in him and therefore he lives in us. And that the one who believes in him will do what he does. That Jesus was a living stone thrown out as not worthy to be used by the world and so too we – though often rejected by the world -- are to use that Christ, that living stone, in each of us to be built up into a spiritual house.

But the house that I see is a house full of holes. Imagine if this church building had some huge gaps where some of the very stones of our structure were missing.

Somehow, somewhere, we have decided that this living stone, this Christ presence does not reside in certain people. We have made the judgment call that a certain group – whether it is the homeless, or those on welfare, or even those who are wealthy.. we have made the call that they can’t have Christ living within them. We have made the judgment call that the living stone is not present in certain races or certain communities. We have made the judgment call that some of our family members or people in our church community do not have the living stone of Jesus Christ within them.

But today, I challenge you to name those you reject and imagine them as the missing pieces to the house that has gaps. Take time this week to talk to them, reach out to them, or at the very least pray for them… because there might just come a day when that one missing stone could cause the house to crumble. Christ tells us in John – If you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.

We can look back through biblical history, through world history, through our family trees and see the ways in which we have rejected one another and for so many of these things beyond our control and even our lifetimes we cannot do anything. But for the stones that still live, for the Christ that is still present we can build and grow and overcome and love. For once we, ourselves, were not a people and now we are God’s people.

Thanks be to God for all the precious people sitting in this sanctuary–and for all the precious people out there that God is calling us to serve.









We recently received a new book of Peanuts cartoons. There was a great one I saw of Linus talking to Lucy with joy spread across his face. The caption read: "This morning in Sunday School we were singing "Jesus Loves Me" when all of sudden it hit me...Jesus loves me...ME...completely worthless ol’ me!"

Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward...I mean, where are we going? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking:...so, that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer.. I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship; maybe he has sensed-even before I sensed it- that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those guys say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Elaine is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty...

And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and tell them where to put it.

"Roger," Elaine says aloud.

"What?" says Roger, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have... Oh God, I feel so... (She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Roger.

"I'm such a fool," Elaine sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse???" says Roger.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Elaine says.

"NO!" says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.



(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"I’ve really enjoyed this, but I need some time. Thank you, Roger," she says.

"Thank you," says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a tennis match.

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?"

And that's the difference between men and women. (http://wilk4.com/humor/humorm84.htm)

Let us Pray.










The difference in gender has long been debated and discussed, even back from the beginning of time. The bible tells us that God created them, male and female, in his image. We tell hosts of jokes about adam and eve and the apple that play upon our own gender stereo-types. Even in the midst of our presidential primaries, the issue of gender is a relevant point of discussion.

A 1992 bestseller Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus highlights this very issue – that men and women speak different languages and somehow need to learn to communicate with one another in order to survive together in relationships. By virtue of its name, the book implies that men and women are so different that they act as though they stem from different planets. The book claims that woman complain because they want their problems to be acknowledged and men complain because they want their problems to be solved. The author claims that when men are stressed they retreat into some sort of “cave” and need a time out to completely forget about the issue for a while, while women like to talk through their problems for long periods of time in hopes of finding resolutions in dialogue. The relationship between men and women is defined by a point system where good deeds are rewarded, but in very different ways. For instance if a woman makes the man’s favorite meal, she is quickly awarded twenty points, but if the man buys a nice present for her birthday, for which he is easily expecting 100 points, but forgets a card, he might receive a point or two for effort.

Beyond gender relationships remains the statistical gender divide. In comparative studies men seem to be able to take risks more frequently than women. Women tend to be more agreeable and compassionate than men but also more neurotic and worrisome.
Even in the midst of a single conversation, women tend to make small gestures to show they are listening, sharing an mm-hmm.. I see, while men are more likely to be silent.

The popular book spawned 12 more books from the same author that seem to point out some obvious differences in our natures: Venus and Mars: Why men and women need different diets
Planets in the workspace: why men and women react differently in their careers.
And of course, there is my favorite book title from a different author offering a complete disagreement to the whole logic: Rebuttal from Uranus.

But the communication gap doesn’t stop between men and women. There is hardly a teenager or college student around that doesn’t have headphones in at all times and parents shake their heads in wonder at the completely new language that has been invented by text messaging… as if communicating with a teenager isn’t hard enough in English.

And even in the midst of all of the divides and all of the differences that may be innate between genders or developmentally appropriate between generations, somehow the bible tells us that there is a way for us to share a common language.

We hear a miraculous and seemingly incomprehensible text today in Acts: 44All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

All who believed were together and had all things in common. In this text, there was no divide in communication because they were all on the same page.

Wow. I can’t imagine how awesome this moment in time must have been. Where everyone was on the same page and headed in the same direction and they had glad and generous hearts. It even sounds better than the family dinner table of the 1950’s.

What happened to create the need for books about our planetary heritage? What great earthquake has shaken our world so harshly that the divide between us seems insurmountable as we trudge through another day sighing “I just don’t’ understand my husband.” I just don’t understand my kids. I just don’t understand the world.

I invite you to close your eyes and listen. Because today I am going to read for you perhaps the most famous bible passage of all time, the 23rd Psalm. And I don’t want you to say it with me, I want you to listen. To hear and be present in God’s answers for our community today:

Psalm 23

1The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;

3he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.

5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.


I am full of desire and want. I want to know how things will end up for my friends and family. I want to make everything right. I want to change the world. I want a new knife set for the kitchen and our house to be finished. I want to have money for Noah to go to college. I want to have twelve hands and 30 hours a day to serve you, to be a good mother, to be a good wife, and to spend time with God.

But, because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

I wander through many days creating endless lists of things that need to be done. Items that need to be gathered and purchased. I spend more time organizing my tasks than doing them. I get lost in the details to the point of exhaustion. I worry enough for all of you. And in the midst of all of that, my soul is weary.

But, because the Lord is my shepherd, my soul is restored.

I certainly have more than my share. I have been blessed with a beautiful and loving family. I never go a day without food or water. Even though gas prices are high and a recession looms and the news tells us we ought to be building bunkers for our cash and storing our retirement funds under our mattresses because of what might happen.

Even now, because the Lord is my shepherd, I know that my cup overflows.

All our anxiety about how things will be. All of our fears about whether we are doing enough or doing it correctly. All of our sense of wandering aimlessly through life. All of our concern about money and security.

It all stems from our desire to be the shepherd of our own lives. We have come to a point in our world and in our lives where we are convinced that the only way things are going to get done is if we do them.

We have successfully ceased all form of communication with our shepherd. We have pushed the one who knows where we are headed and how we are going to get there so far out of our realm of communication that we feel no choice but to take over ourselves. The line of dialogue and relationship and openness and trust between each one of us and the one Shepherd that we know we ought to follow is the most important tin can phone call we can ever make. Whether we nod politely as we listen, whether we listen silently or whether we shout AMEN as god reminds us that we don’t have to figure it all out, that we don’t have to be in control, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Acts community of love and joy and sharing and peace and fellowship is possible and within reach when we live out the words that God gives us today.

By trusting that the Lord is our shepherd and is leading us even as we sit here this morning, we can remove from ourselves “the want” of how we would like to change the way our daily dialogue plays out and ask God to guide us out of the I want and into the my cup overflows.

This trust, like the ways of a sheep with its shepherd, is a radical trust that empowers us to believe that life in Christ has meaning, even though our immediate experience may be telling us otherwise.

Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest and religious teacher, observed that many people, live as if we've forgotten our address and are living at the wrong place-living in the house of fear instead of the house of the Lord.

God's alternative to this house of fear is the house of love, in Nouwen's words, "the place where we can think, speak, and act in the ways of God, not in the ways of the fear-filled world." Jesus, our Good Shepherd, offers us this house even now, in the midst of our anxious fear. In John 15:4, he says to us: "Make your home in me, as I make my home in you."

In 2003 the whole of Eastern Canada and the United States was plunged into darkness during a massive power outage. Cell phones were jammed, highways were paralyzed, the whole island of manhattan was left wondering if something tragic had gone wrong. Jay Reynolds, the Director of the Walter R. Sheely Planetarium outside Cleveland, Ohio saw an opportunity.

Before sunset, so that all of his neighbors could see what he was doing, Dr. Reynolds set up his telescope in his front yard, inviting everyone to come over and see the marvels of the sky. The deep, deep black of the sky free of artificial light revealed the galaxies in plain view. The whole sky was live. The planet Mars was brilliant and the Perseid meteor shower as well. Jay Reynolds said: "It was a great night to see the stars the way they were meant to be seen."

What is there about us always is the House of the Lord: the heavens above, the earth below, and neighbors all around. The place where we experience the unearned, unmerited, unwarranted super-abundance of God's love, the amazing grace for which our hearts' prayer is simply, "Thank you."

That’s what brings us here week by week—to listen for a voice from beyond us—a voice from the heart of the universe calling, encouraging, challenging, guiding. To once again open up a dialogue that is never too far broken to be restored. A place where together we can get a glimpse of how God wants our lives to be. To be a part of the great relationship of creator and creation. To allow our lives to once again be set on the path where despite our gender or our tendency or our age or our career or anything else that might divide us we are given a moment to be known and loved and each time we stand at a question – where am I going, what am I doing – to know that God is leading us..The lines of communication are as open as we want them to be. The Lord is indeed our shepherd.

I leave you with another version of the psalm of our hearts:

God, my shepherd,
I don't need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows.
You find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word
You let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through Death Valley
I'm not afraid when you walk by my side.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.
I'm back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.

Amen.














"If sometimes you have trouble hearing the voice of your shepherd, be patient with yourself - because some days it sounds like a whistle and some days like a cluck; some days it sounds like a love song and some days like a [command]. It is not a voice that always speaks in words, much less complete sentences, but it can usually be heard sometime between your getting up and your lying down each day, leading you beside the still waters, restoring your soul" (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life , pg. 145.)

A scene in one of Lewis Carroll’s lesser known works presents us not with Alice and Wonderland, but with a tortoise and Achilles, one of the greek gods known for speed. The tale has a similar feel to the fable of the tortoise and the hare. In Carroll’s version, the tortoise challenges Achilles to a race saying: solvitur ambulando, “it will be solved in the walking.”

Walking was the key to the activity we used to use to encourage teenagers to find Christ while moving. The activity was known as an Emmaus walk. When young people would arrive at an event they would be assigned an Emmaus partner. Someone they had never known before. At various designated points throughout a weekend the pair would have to go on walks. We watched each and every event as two strangers journeyed together ending their path as friends, moving from fearful, perhaps even judgmental of one another to embracing and caring for someone they just met. “It will be solved in the walking”

The Gospel today also proclaims that we will be transformed by movement – that we find the Risen Christ in moments of spiritual movement and growth, in walking. We are transformed by our moving. God’s Easter Spirit is found today most significantly in the process, rather than stability. To experience God’s inspiration more fully, we have to be on the move, because God is on the move!

As Mary Magdalene discovers in John’s resurrection story (John 20:1-18), God’s power is found when Mary lets go of the tomb as the place where jesus resides. She has to go back and tell what is happened, letting go of the landmark to find a new way to understand God. Resurrection transforms the known world and opens us to undreamed adventures in companionship with God. Resurrection life is filled with abundant surprise and unexpected adventure.

A living faith, in the spirit of theologian Whitehead, does not cling to the certainty of the “old time religion,” but “originates response” to whatever is happening in the environment. If the disciples on the Emmaus road and could only cling to the way it used to be, they would be without a risen Christ, unable to move from crucifixion to resurrection. In every situation we have experienced in the past, we have had to build a response to it and match our emotions and our actions to what was happening in our environment. In the gospel today there is no sitting still, no staying the same. It reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures – in Christ we are a new creation. A line that I often repeat to myself when I am struggling with a new thing or trying to release myself from the grip of something I know I need to let go of.

In light of the act of resurrection, what “new thing,” what new behavior is God calling us to now? How do we respond to resurrection in all its surprise in our personal and congregational lives? Living by resurrection inspires us to awaken to resurrection – what new thing will God do in our lives? How will we respond to the many changing events and circumstances in our world and in our lives? How can we find God in the movement?

Two pilgrims on the way to Emmaus find resurrection in the walking! Fatigued and depressed by the rapid-fire events of Passover Week, they are returning home for rest and regrouping. They had expected a different outcome than crucifixion. Even the rumors of Jesus’ resurrection are unsettling, far more than they can integrate into their experience at the moment. A third pilgrim joins them. Hidden from their recognition, they journey toward home with the Risen Jesus, not knowing that their own hope for resurrection is as close as the next footstep. Still, engaged in conversation, they gain a new perspective on the events of Passover Week.

On the way to Emmaus, moving with Jesus, they discover a new world of possibility. Something is drawing them forward; something is drawing them toward this new life, although they are not yet conscious of it. Along the pathway, God is constantly giving us visions and possibilities, guidance and inspiration, and occasionally we notice it. Like the well-known poem “Footprints,” divine guidance and protection often come when we are least aware of it.

Still locked in the prison-house of grief, the two men do something amazing. They reach out in hospitality, although their hearts are breaking, sprits flagging, and bodies worn. As Jesus prepares to walk on to his next destination, they invite him to supper. And then in the beauty of our sacrament -- they know him in the breaking of the bread. But, like Mary of Magdalane’s story, they also cannot hold on to the Jesus they used to know. As soon as they recognize him, he vanishes from their sight. Mystical experiences come and go. Moments of assurance are fleeting. Inspiration is transitory. Even our health is temporary. But, God is in each detail, filling it with holiness and then moving on the next and inviting us to follow.

We often find ourselves so thrilled with a certain moment, a certain point in time, that we fearfully hold on to it, ceasing to believe that there could be another time that could be better or more worthwhile. The disciples on the road were clinging to the jesus who did miracles for them, who healed them, who preached amazing news to them. In their moment of grief, they could not imagine how it could ever be better than it used to be. Surely faithfulness is in the remembering but also in movements that create new memories and new possibilities. A magnet on my refrigerator states that “faith is believing that

Although Jesus may not have given them a specific command, they immediately and excitedly return to Jerusalem. The seven miles fly by as they are propelled by the Spirit. The same seven miles the disciples slowly trudged through on the path where Jesus found them. Known in the breaking of the bread, fed by God’s Spirit, they have energy to burn and new life to share.

Though we walk on the Emmaus road each day, not sure of whether we are walking with Christ or not, the greater movement for me here is the one that is both more obvious and more elusive. That is the movement from death to life. This time, not for Christ, because he is already alive, but for the followers.

I came across a poem about the Emmaus walk that brought it all together for me. An excerpt says

We catch up to one

who has gone on ahead,

a stranger he seems

to those who are dead.

A standard jewish view of death states that it is the unmaking of the creator’s image. That death is the distortion of all things that God has made beautiful. By standing still and refusing the movement of the spirit in our lives, claiming “the bible has nothing to offer for me” I don’t have time for church, devotions, prayer, insert item here. By living god-empty lives without purpose or meaning we are un-making the creator’s image. We cease to move. We cease to grow. We cease to embrace life. We deny jesus the opportunity to be the solution for our lives.

In response to God’s unexpected resurrection and transforming grace, “what shall we do?” the Psalmist asks. That is our question, too. In response, we shall move and dance, praise and keep covenant, and do justice and share in the resurrection healing that Christ offers us.

The tortoise vs. Achilles seems a silly race to me. One that, from the tortoise’s perspective seems insurmountable. The tale was written to explain and expound upon laws of physics and calculus. But from my perspective it presents us with the options we face every day. Achilles offers us the swift and attractive speed of the world. Fast paced lives, fast cars, attractive homes and attire. The tortoise offers us the slow and steady path that does not exhaust or trick. In the fable, we know that the tortoise is the one that wins the race – that the mockery and speed of the hare is self centered and arrogant. His over confidence falsely tells him that it is okay to stop moving and check out of the race for just a little bit, missing the greatest opportunity of this life.

Choose your path, my friends. Ask God to show you the way. It will be revealed in the walking.

On November 12, 1970, the Oregon State Highway Department performed the detonation, in an attempt to remove a beached whale, discovered dead on the shore five days earlier, upwind from the coastal town of Florence. The decision was made to disintegrate the whale with explosives, with the belief that it would be broken down into small fragments that would then be picked up by gulls, crabs and other scavengers. Twenty 50 lb. cases of dynamite were placed under the 45 foot Pacific Gray whale, and a quarter mile radius was cleared of spectators for safety. The explosion, captured on film by several news teams, was more vigorous than anticipated, and many in attendance were hit by whale debris. Much of the whale carcass remained unexploded on the beach, and was buried where it laid. Nobody was injured, though everyone in attendance was coated in a " sticky film" by the ensuing cloud of rotting whale vapor. The most damage was suffered by a car parked 450 yards from the blast site. A 1970 Oldsmobile, owned by Walter Umenhofer, was struck by a large blubber fragment, which entirely flattened the roof, effectively totaling the car. The car had been purchased two days earlier from Dunham Olds in Eugene, a dealership then advertising "A Whale of a Deal".

Let us pray.

Have you ever really stopped to think about Jonah and the Whale?

It’s a Sunday School top 10 biblical story and yet, have we as adults given it enough thought to really swallow what it has to say?

I mean, God had a whale open his mouth and ingest a man. That seems fairly unnatural and perhaps impossible to me.

And why a whale?

A goldfish would have been worth more.
Whales can’t possibly be as smart as other sea creatures because they don’t live in schools.
I heard that God asked the lobster before the whale but he was too shellfish.
What do whales do all day? They seem pretty lazy to me. I suppose if they wanted to get a job they could look in the kelp-wanted ads.
Who knows. If I was a whale I would be scared to live that far down beneath the water’s surface. I would be all shaky and worried… I’d be a nervous wreck, for sure.

One little boy was sitting through his third grade science unit on marine biology and the teacher was talking about whales. The little boy pipes up and says, “I know about whales, the prophet Jonah was swallowed by one.” Well the teacher looks at the little boy and says that she doesn’t believe that for one minute. But the third grader insists that it is true; Jonah was swallowed by a whale and he lived to tell about it. His teacher says that the story about Jonah being swallowed by whale is just that, a story, and besides, you can’t prove that it happened because Jonah lived so long ago. So the little boy says, “well when I get to heaven I’m going to ask Jonah if he was swallowed by a whale myself.” And the teacher retorts, “Jimmy, what if Jonah didn’t go to heaven.” “Well,” says Jimmy, “then you can ask him.”

Research shows that sperm whales can indeed swallow human beings which is pretty amazing to me. They claim the hardest part would be to get past the teeth without being scathed.
In a newspaper report from Great Britain in the late
1800's a man named James Bartley claimed to have been
a whaleman aboard a whaleship the "Star of the East". The ship was hunting whales off of South America in 1891 when a sperm whale was spotted. Two whale boats went out to catch the whale. One boat was wrecked by the whale, one sailor drowned and one was lost and could not be found. The second boat killed the whale and towed it to the ship. The next day, when the stomach of the whale was brought up on deck and cut open, Bartley was found inside the stomach of the whale. A bit worse for wear (it was said that his hair
was gone and his face and hands were bleached "like parchment").

According to the story, Bartley eventually made a full recovery (although he retained the strange coloring of his skin) and became somewhat of a local celebrity around England. His story was printed in popular accounts and newspapers at the time, and has shown up
quite often since then as a tale of the "Modern Jonah".

To a Hebrew of the fifth century BC, the very premise of the story is absurd. Jonah is a midrashic tale – one that is used to explain or unpack God’s will. These takes usually come in the form of "imagine if." But in Jonah's case the "imagine if" is unimaginable. The story's situation is impossible for Jonah's Hebrew audience; the narrative is for the Israelite of the time an invitation to think about the unthinkable. What if God offered repentance to the worst people in the world? He wouldn't. Even if He did, they wouldn’t respond. But in Jonah they do.

It is an entire biblical book with nothing but satire, nothing but humor. And in the joke, in the unthinkable, we find joy, humility, and grace.

The opening scene sets the humorous tone. The first thing we see in Jonah is his call to be a prophet. We know that many people in the bible tried to get out of god’s call for them. Even the great Moses tried to get out of being prophet on grounds of stuttering. But when the Lord calls Jonah, he puts the pillow over his head and shooshes his father away, pretending he never heard anything.

Just about every scene in this book would bring a smile to our lips if we took the time to really imagine it.

After Jonah ignores God in the call scene, he moves on to lazily refuse God again and again. But not in a defiant “I won’t listen” sort of way. Instead, Jonah treats God as the annoying voice on his shoulder that if he just pretends he is not hearing voices will ultimately go away.

The first chapter alone sets up enough ridiculous situations for a Marx Brothers movie. God orders: "Go east," Jonah goes due west, as far as he can. God threatens Jonah with a "mighty and rough sea so bad that the ship will seem to be broken" [1:4]; Jonah, unfazed as a five-year-old, remains "fast asleep." God gets into a water fight with Jonah just so He can rescue him. And the means of that rescue? Angelic life preserver? Submarine? Trained porpoise? Nope: the distressingly uncomfortable and disgustingly smelly "belly of the fish" [1:17].

Imagine the scene after Jonah is vomited up from that belly -- reeking of whale vomit, trailing seaweed and barnacles and old fishheads, bleached of all his color by gastric juices, robe shrunk up to his knees and elbows, way bad hair day, not only disheveled but seriously disgruntled, trudging into Nineveh muttering his message of doom in a language the Ninevites can't even understand, on a mission from god to preach.

The preaching that he does is some of the sorriest preaching you can imagine. He doesn't call for repentance. He doesn't tell about God's mercy for those who have done wrong. He just tells the Ninevites that God is going to destroy them.

So what does any large city do when they are told to repent? Turn away and stand in defiance? Nope, not Ninevah. The entire city immediately repents, they deck themselves in sack cloth and ashes to prove how sorry they are and they even dress their cows and sheep in sackcloth and ashes to help them repent.

So, not only did Jonah do a rotten job of preaching, the one prediction that he as a prophet makes doesn't come true.

Then this freshly vomited upon prophet chooses not to rejoice in the success of his mission, but instead he is furious. No matter how many times he tried to thwart god’s plan, he failed. He tried to escape. He did the worst job he could. And still God used him to spare the Ninevites! So he sits down outside the city to see if God is really going to let them off the hook so easily.

So God asks Jonah a question, a real good question. "Do you have any right to be so angry?”

But Jonah isn't in the market for helpful questions. Instead he answers God with his anger. "What do you know about being God! It is just as I feared. You're too soft on the bad guys. They come and destroy us, we your chosen people! And you let them off with: "Oh I'm so sorry. We'll do better next time. If you knew anything about being God you'd be destroying them right now. How about a few plagues like you put on the Egyptians?"

But that question… the one god asks jonah. Do you have any right to be so angry?

Do we have any right to be so angry?

We see that bitterness at work in Jonah, who would rather die than live in a world where Ninevites are forgiven. Now Jonah’s bitterness and his values are almost as absurd as his journey in the belly of the great fish. And yet, in my own life, I have seen people cling to bitterness, hatred, and the wrongs of others because in their unconscious minds they know that forgiveness will only confuse the issue.

I ask you a third time, Do we have any right to be so angry?

As people who are loved and redeemed and welcome and nurtured. As people who have been given the gifts of laughter and humor and pure joy, what on earth are we doing fretting away all of our time. There are too many good jokes, too many good stories, too many good moments to share, too many things to thank and praise God for. This is resurrection time and god is laughing!

But somehow, somewhere along the line, we have been taught that God is not for enjoying and that it is all serious business with no laughter. The truth is, the humor is there but we miss it. The Bible is the last place most modern readers would find a laugh. And the main reason we fail to find humor there is that the Bible is the last place we'd look. Given how persistently humor smiles and chuckles and sometimes laughs right out loud in virtually every book of the Bible, it's remarkable how consistently we manage to overlook it. It's also unfortunate. Humor informs biblical texts. To miss the humor of the Bible is to miss not only much of its fun, but much of its meaning. There is so much talk in the bible about laughter and joy and being uplifted and resurrected – it’s good stuff and the best news is that is all for us… a free and precious gift designed for us to enjoy and love and laugh.

I read this week that laughter triggers the same part of the brain as chocolate and wine. It
activates the chemistry of the will to live and increases our capacity to fight disease. Laughing relaxes the body and reduces problems associated with high blood pressure, strokes, arthritis, and ulcers and heart disease. Historically, research has shown that distressing emotions (depression, anger, anxiety, and stress) are all related to heart disease. A study done at the University of Maryland Medical Center suggests that a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh at stressful situations helps mitigate the damaging physical effects of distressing emotions. 2

But the best part of laughter for me is that it is from God. We read about laughter in scripture because we are created in the image of God. This goodness, this joy is rooted in God’s perfect nature and if humor and laughter are an expression of good emotion, then we know that God too laughs and enjoys and wonders why we spend so much time in anger.

In his easter address, Rev. Samuel Wells, dean of Duke Chapel, preached solely on laughter – on the very essence of laughter in light of the resurrection. He says that Jesus knew the world we live in – he knew the anger and bitterness in the hearts of those who did not know god.
And what Jesus brought was a different kind of laughter. It’s an infectious laughter. A laughter of a tiny baby in a manger. A laughter of a woman finding a lost coin. A laughter of a blind man who begins to see for the first time and starts to separate the people from the trees. A laughter of Lazarus coming out of the tomb, trying to get all the death bandages off in one long peel, as if he were unraveling a tangerine. A playful laughter that doesn’t humiliate or dominate, a laughter that doesn’t deflect or deny. A laughter that’s more infectious than a disease, more irresistible than an army, more
subversive than a guerilla movement. A laughter that looks into the heart of God and smiles uncontrollably. We stand just a little over a week from the greatest catastrophe there has ever been or ever will be – the betrayal and execution of the Lord of glory – and here we are, laughing, infectiously, uncontrollably, in a way that diminishes no one, denies nothing, leaves no one out and understands all things.

Wells continues, “Imagine a very different kind of laughter. Imagine a laughter that can’t be contained, that’s so infectious and so irresistible it bursts out of the tomb and floods the whole world. It’s a laughter that shakes your whole body, that splits your aching sides, that takes the head off your grief, that makes you rock deep down inside. And it’s
not just you it’s everybody, it’s everything; the whole earth is overcome by joy, rocking and convulsing and aching with joy. The worst that humanity can do in denial and destruction has been met with irresistible laughter, not mocking, not deflecting, but laughter that creates a bigger community, tells a greater story, imagines a bigger world, laughs in tune with the laughter of God. (3)

Let me tell you, friends. This Christianity thing… it’s a whale of a deal.



2. helpguide.org
3. One Day you will laugh. Duke Chapel. Rev. Samuel Wells

“Remember the day when life increased,
explainably or outright, was haloed in poignancy,

straight life, given not attained, unlurching ecstasy,
arrest of the guards for once, and ourself released,

splendour taking detail, beyond the laughter-and-tears
as if these were gateway to it, a still or moving utterness

in and all around us?”
(“Easter 1984”)

Remember the day when life increased.

Let us pray.


I am terrified of Easter.

There. I said it. I am utterly terrified and afraid of Easter. I wrote these lines as the 15th draft of my Easter sermon. The terror was living within me and haunting me. On a morning of trumpets and lilies, beautiful dresses and freshly ironed shirts -- what is supposed to be pure joy radiating from the heart of Christians everywhere. And I’m afraid. I set aside all this extra time this week to write the best Easter sermon ever and nothing seemed funny enough or endearing enough or worthy enough to say.

For so many reasons. I wish we could be having this discussion around a table and not between the pulpit and the pews. I feel honored to have this captive moment to share with you my fear.

I am terrified of Easter because I’m afraid that today will not increase anyone’s life.
I want for each and every one of you to know the risen lord. To know amazing peace and joy and to be filled with hope. But I am afraid that Easter worship might be a checkmark on your list of events for the day. Somewhere after Easter baskets and before the ham.

Mary kneeled before the empty tomb in fear. And her fear of the unknown, not really sure what had happened or what was next, echoes into our lives.

Annie Dillard writes that Christians are simply not sensible on Easter. She yells in her writing “Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so invoke?” she asks. We stand in the face of death and claim to be conquerors.

Or, even more frightening, does no one believe a word of it? She describes the worship experience in this way: “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should latch us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”1

Bunnies and baskets we can handle. The glory of a homemade peanut butter egg – that we can stomach. There is no fear in the gluttony of one more piece of cheesecake.

But resurrection? Who wakes up on Easter morning and says – I can’t wait to get me some resurrection today?

I thought of how difficult this sermon is every year on Easter Sunday, but the more I looked into it, in the book of Acts all of the sermons are about death and resurrection – every single time. And then I realized that we have become much more comfortable with scripture and sermons about doing good things, being good people and perhaps striving to be Christ-like… but it is the resurrection that sets us apart as Christians. And my fear is that the resurrection plays little or no part in our lives.

William Sloane Coffin, one of the great protestant preachers of the last century said that “Too often Easter comes across very sentimentally like a dessert wafer– airy and sweet. But there’s nothing sentimental about Easter: Easter represents a demand as well as a promise, a demand not that we sympathize with the crucified Christ, but that we pledge our loyalty (and our lives) to the Risen One....He says “I don’t see how you can proclaim allegiance to the risen Lord and then allow life once again to lull you to sleep, to smother you in convention, to choke you with success.”

Mary kneeled before the empty tomb in fear. Not sure of what had happened or what would happen next.

I think my fear this morning comes from the refusal to give in to the idea that you are mindless and uninterested. I cannot believe that this all makes sense to all of you. Throughout the 100+ sermons I read this week I found this common theme – jesus is raised. We should be happy. Life has no more hardships. Amen.

But it doesn’t work that way. And I know that your lives are deeper and more complex than this and that your spirit longs for answers of substance. Perhaps to don the easter apparel and head to church is as easy as finding brightly colored eggs in the lawn. And perhaps it is this easy-ness that we long for in a world of difficulty. But when we proclaim that Christ is risen from the dead, that he is alive, our world should be shaken. This is big news. But somehow the resurrection day has fallen as another day on the church calendar and left us wondering. Wondering where it is that the risen Christ intersects with our daily lives. Is it at breakfast? Is in the car? And the fear enters in when I worry that you might say he doesn’t enter in at all. That the questions that you seek real answers to remain unanswered. Especially in matters of death.

Because there is most likely not a single one among us who has not kneeled before the tombstone of someone we loved dearly. I doubt that there is someone here who has not suffered a great loss and wished and prayed with all of their might that God would bring back their beloved. And when we kneel in anguish and in pain there is no resurrection. The tombstones are still intact. The grave still looms.

Each one of us carries this inner fear, this inner pessimism. Sigmund Freud calls it the “death instinct.” Common to all human beings and all animals, we have this instinct. Deep down inside is this fear that this is all there is. And so we come to the graves of life, the graves of our mothers and fathers, and grandmas and grandpas; we come to the deathbeds of life, and we finally come to our own deathbed and we quietly pray: “I want to believe, help my unbelief.”

Annie Lamott writes for all of us, “I hate it that you can’t prove the beliefs of my faith. If I were God, I’d have the answers at the end of the workbook, so you could check as you went along, to see if you’re on the right track. But noooo—Darkness is our context, Easter’s context; without it you can’t see the light. Hope is not about proving anything. It’s about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak [stuff] anyone can throw at us” 2.

Because it is love that opens the tomb. The resurrection doesn’t happen because there is a secret guard or because Jesus moved the massive stone himself. The resurrection happens because God’s love can move anything at anytime, in any place.

And so I ask you this morning to join me in fear. Fear of what it would be like if right now God put all of your insecurities on your forehead. To imagine what it would be like of God suddenly opened all of the tombs that we have securely closed within us and exposed them to the light. All of these things – our secrets, our sorrows, our past regrets, our lies, our pride, all of it is death – it drains us and keeps us closed off and alone -- and resurrection means exposing all that is death in us to God’s light and knowing that as we stand bruised and imperfect, only then will we begin to understand how beautiful fear looks when it is transformed into complete love and acceptance.

My fear is that we have become so removed from our faith and so convinced that we are in control that when we order God to change things in our life and God doesn’t immediately respond with trumpets and fanfare that our quick fix world says that a god that does not respond in 90 seconds or less is not a god worth having.

Easter life and Easter joy isn't measured by our eyes, our ears, our fingers or even by our intellect. We come closest to knowing what resurrection life is about only by truly living: in the gesture of reaching out to help those in need; in hugging someone we love dearly; in catching on to an idea we've never quite understood before; in recognizing the presence of God when we pray. These hints come to us by our senses, but the important part isn't what we sense. When I hold my husband’s hand, it's not the nerve endings in my fingers and palm that make me feel the way I do. When I give my child a big hug, it's not my arms or chest that makes my eyes water. When I pass a buck to some poor stranger on the street, it's not the feel of the paper or the sound of his voice or the way he looks or smells that teaches me about Easter living. No matter how much we try to defend our case – the world is not logical or fully explainable.

Mary kneeled at the tomb in fear. Unsure of what would happen next. I invite you this day to stand at your own tomb and ask God to open you to resurrection. To be able to get through this day and every day and say that life has increased. True life, Real life, Resurrection Life has increased.

The proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well.
And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism
of one who has never known a time when all was not well
but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory,
who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God.
In the end, his will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor.
Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives, through him, in him.
Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction
than the wildest visionary ever dared to dream.
Christ our Lord is risen.3

May your life be increased. Amen.

Frederick Buechner
The Magnificent Dead




1. Annie Dillard, ‘Expedition to the Pole’ in Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 40-41.
2. Annie Lamott Plan B Further Thoughts on Faith. P. 224

Job 9:25 I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet [e] in [f] my flesh I will see God;

27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!

Job 38:6-7

6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-

7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?


Martin Luther said:
A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human
being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of donkeys and the grunting of hogs."

I had to share that quote. Not so much for it’s scriptural insight but because I knew Bill would smile at it.

Let us pray.


The word beginning is defined as a noun -- the point or space in time in which anything begins.

Or as an adjective – just formed.

As Christians we often refer to the earliest text in our Bible as “the Beginning” which encircles all of those wonderful stories we heard as children about the formation of the waters and the skies and especially the formation of man and woman. While there isn’t a distinct reference to music at the Beginning, Martin Luther stated that music is the echo of all creation. Music is the harmony of all things and all voices working together for the good of God, before any tension was introduced.

The beginning of my friendship with Bill began on my first day in the office, three Novembers ago. He politely rang the doorbell and came in to introduce himself and I’m sure to size me up a little bit. Perhaps this day you can remember your beginning with Bill. For Bob and Jane it was before they even knew themselves, for others you may have first met his acquaintance at the University or at any number of churches that he faithfully served. For many members of our congregation and many others, Bill Emery will always hold a special place in their heart as the man who played the organ at their wedding.


The beginning: The point or space in time in which something begins. Just formed.

In the well known book of Job, the protagonist wrestles with God in such a way that continually questions the things happening in the world. Why aren’t things going as I had planned? Why aren’t my friends and family responding to the world with faithfulness that you o god have promised? Why do trials continue to come my way when I have not faltered?

After long hours of questioning God, Job receives an answer from our heavenly creator: “Where were you, Job,...when the morning stars sang together {in the beginning} and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”

“Where were you?” God asks. In some ways it is if God is sharing a piece of creation with job, saying “Let me tell you a mystery.” The mystery that God recalls for Job is none other than the mystery of the creation—of those first, pristine days when God commanded light out of the darkness, when the waters were separated by the firmaments, and the stars spun into their places.

God takes Job back to where it all began—when, in the morning of everything, the morning stars sang for joy in their creator. Why does God do that? It may seem strange to us that God should respond to Job’s problem—his boils and his grief and his losses—by talking about stars that sing!

As I studied scripture for this very important moment. For the moment that would glorify God for the gift of Bill Emery, Job’s words were so fitting.

With Conviction, in chapter 9:
Job 9:25 I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;

27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!

I can hear Bill echoing those words – I know my redeemer lives and After my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God.

But, I’m quite certain that Bill knew his redeemer in a different way than I do. I’m quite certain that there was a part of him that was in some way divinely attached to the music that has echoed from creation. You could see the delight in his eyes at a wonderful musical performance. He loved to travel and hear music of all shapes and sizes. Music gave him a means of expression, a jolt of energy, and I would go as far as to say it gave him a connection to God that for him was worth more than gold.

When God responds to Job in his stern parental way – Were you there when the stars sang at creation? I believe that somehow, by God’s design, Bill had a connection to music that was the basis and beginning for the rhythm of the rest of his life. Somehow it was evident that he felt Luther’s words that music was the harmonious echo of the beginning of creation and it was for him the momentum for much, if not all, of his life.

Beginning: The point or time in which something begins. Just forming.

Yes, indeed. Bill was there for me and with me from day one of my ministry. He and I shared our Christmases and our Easters. We shared weddings and funerals. We shared the love of the church and the respect for tradition. He believed that church ought to be a warm and intimate community where people know one another deeply and in that knowing they would come to know God. He was a faithful Christian before all things and was dutiful to his God, his family, and his friends. He served the church in every musical capacity and also as an elder. He had an amazing heart for humanity and donated to many causes generously. When we were working with the homeless communities in Maryland he told me of how his heart broke for the poor and wanted to know how he could help. He loved everyone in his life deeply and worried and prayed and hoped for all of you all the time. I felt this love personally because he adored my son and would play nursery rhymes for him on the organ when no one else was around. I had hoped that would continue for years to come.

It seemed that our ministry and our friendship was still at its beginning. Still being created. Still being formed.

That first Monday visit quickly turned into a Monday morning ritual. Each week that he was slated to play at Rock Church he would come by on Monday morning and drop off his music selections. They were carefully written and even more carefully chosen. He loved every piece of music he played as if he knew it personally, and perhaps he did.

He would hand me the paper, sit down in a chair and we would commence our dialogue on the state of the world. It usually started with discussion about family and perhaps the news. It always carried over to his analysis of Rock Church specifically. There was almost inevitably a discussion of a recent concert or show he had been to. No matter what the discussions were, there isn’t a talk I remember that didn’t mourn the loss of the traditional church. Bill Emery was full of questions about what was happening to the church – questions that are not foreign to many of us. He longed to know why people didn’t seem to love the organ as they used to. He desired wholeheartedly to give everything he had and everything he was to share the amazing gift that God had given him, but to him it seemed that as time went on, the central and paramount place of the organ and traditional worship was dislodged and Bill was trying eagerly and hopefully to recenter one of the true loves of his life in the prime space of church.

He was the Job who was sure of his Redeemer. Sure that in the beginning God had created this perfect order and sure that he was a part of God’s flock of servants. Sure that he would one day see God face to face. But, he was also the Job who continually asked God why the world was not as it ought to be. Who begged God to once again set the world in perfect order as it was in the beginning, because in the music of his soul he had a taste of that perfection.

It was no more than a month ago that I had left a book lay on the organ at our church. It was an absent minded thing to do and when Bill came to play he gently placed it next to the organ. He was always respectful and thoughtful. But the next visit to my office sparked a new conversation between us.

He said to me – I saw a book on the organ last week and I don’t know who it belonged to. I asked what book it was and he told me it was “90 minutes in heaven” by Don Piper. I shared that a member had loaned it to me to read and I put it front and center to remind me to give it back. The book is evangelical in nature, emotional, even. It tells the story of a Baptist minister who was pronounced dead after a car accident, how he traveled to heaven for 90 minutes and then recounts the journey to recovery after the accident.

He stated matter of factly that he knew all about the book and had devoured it himself. He asked if I had read the parts about the music in heaven. Indeed I had. Don Piper recalls his experience standing at the pearled gates of heaven with angels every singing in such a way that he couldn’t even focus on the song. That it was so breathtaking and awe inspiring and uplifting and amazing – beyond all music he had ever heard – that he never ever wanted it to end.

Bill was so entranced with that concept that he was lost for a moment. He relished the thought of this kind of music. And I believe that somewhere in his heart he hung on to this idea because he had already received a taste of it here on earth.

Music for Bill was God’s way of making beauty. You could see it in his eyes when he played and you could tell that God was doing great things in his heart by way of music. But this music is a model for us all... to achieve harmony with our neighbor and with our God. To never live our lives with tension that is unresolved. To continually use what God has given us to spread the Gospel to everyone that we meet.

Music was a beginning for him in his career, in his faith, in his friendships. But the book of revelation promises a new heaven and a new earth and I am convinced that the music of heaven that Bill will taste will be without the bittersweet experience of Job here on earth. There he will have no sadness for the way he wishes the world could be. There will be no testing of his faithfulness for it has already been proven. There he will have no loss because he will be with the love of his life. There he will bask in the glory of the song of the stars, the perfect echo of creation, the harmony of all of God’s beloved, reunited in perfect song.

Then, my dear friend, we will sit together at a new beginning, a new formation, and only marvel at the wonder of God, with no more longing and no more unanswered questions. Just the new creation in perfect harmony, as you have known possible all along.