“The Other Son” | Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Do you have a favorite Gospel? I do. It’s Matthew, and that tells you something important about me and the shape of my soul.  Some 40 years ago, I attended a workshop in San Antonio on Prayer and Temperament, and the leaders of that workshop told us that the Gospel to which you most naturally gravitate is an indication of how you are wired spiritually.

The Church could have just given us 1 Gospel, and there were some in the early church who tried their best to, but in the end the Church chose instead to forever anchor our faith in Christ in the complexity of four very different portraits of Him, written by four very different authors with four very different personalities, perspectives. and purposes, and we need all four of them to get the fullness of Christ.

One of the early church fathers argued that there was a kind of natural symmetry to four – there are four seasons (spring, summer fall, winter), four directions (north, south, east, west), four dimensions (length, width, height, and time), and four corners to a square. He said that four was one of the essential structures of reality, and so God gave us four Gospels. I don’t know about that. What I do know is that having four Gospels honors the complexity of who Jesus Christ is (one picture of Him alone can’t begin to plumb the depths of who He is, and what He said and did, and why He matters), and it insures that we human beings in all our diversity of personality and perception will have a way of connecting with Christ that’s compatible with who we are.

I’m a learner and a teacher, a person on the path of truth, that’s just how I’m wired. I have a faith that seeks understanding, and the Gospel of Matthew with its portrait of Jesus Christ as a teacher standing on the promises that God made to the Patriarchs and Prophets who came before Him pulls me into His presence. Some of you are people of action, doers and not just hearers of the Word, people on the path of goodness, and the Gospel of Mark with its portrait of Jesus Christ as the mighty man of God confronting and defeating anything and everything that seeks to work us woe is your Gospel. Some of you are more mystical in your outlook, naturally drawn to the depths, comfortable below the surface of things, on the path of the contemplative, and the Gospel of John with its portrait of Jesus Christ as fully human but more than human both at the same time is your Gospel. And some of you feel all the feels, weeping easily with those who weep and laughing heartily with those who laugh, you are on the path of compassion, and the Gospel of Luke with its portrait of Jesus Christ walking is such beauty is your Gospel.

I’ve heard the Gospel of Luke described as the “Gospel of Favorite Bible Passages.”  There are passages in the Gospel of Luke that appear in none of the other Gospels, and many of these passages that are unique to Luke are among the best known and most beloved passages in all the Bible. For instance, there’s the Christmas story – the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) and the Visitation (Luke 1:39-45), the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-56) and the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79), the Census of Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:1-2), the journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth (Luke 2:4-6), the night in stable because there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:7), the shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night and the angels in the sky (Luke 2:8-9). Can you imagine a Christmas Eve service without singing and telling the story of Christ’s birth without these details? Well, only Luke tells us about them.  

In a couple of weeks it will be Easter, and there are details in the story of the Passion of the Christ that only Luke tells – Jesus weeping over Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Luke 19:41-44), the two thieves, one good and the other bad, dying on the crosses beside Jesus on Golgotha (Luke 23-39-43), and the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter  Sunday (Luke 24:13-35).  These details add a dimension of tenderness to the otherwise brutal Gospel story of Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cruel cross of Calvary. They help “the blood of Jesus touch our hearts.”

And then there are the parables. We would not know some of the most important stories Jesus told had Luke not repeated them to us – the Parable of the Good Samaritan (10: 29-37), the Parable of the Friend at Midnight Friend (11:5-8), the Parable of the Rich Fool who built bigger barns (12:16-21), the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31), the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican and the Sinner who went up to the Tempe to Pray (18:9-14), and our Scripture lesson this morning, maybe the best known and most loved story Jesus ever told – the Parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32).

Helmut Thielicke (1908 – 1986), the German Lutheran Theologian who was one of the greatest Christan preachers of the Twentieth Century, believed that we have popularly misnamed this parable and thereby have obscured its real meaning. By calling this the Parable of the Prodigal Son rather than by his own preferred name for it – the Parable of the Waiting Father – Helmut Thielicke said that we’ve buried this story’s lead, obscured the identity of its main character, neglected a good half of its plot, and just generally missed its main point. To call this story the Parable of the Prodigal Son is to completely ignore the statement with which it begins (Luke 15:11) – “There was a man (he is the main character of the story – it’s about him) who had two sons (that’s two boys, not just one).”

Here this morning I want to focus our attention on that father’s second son, the “elder brother,” the boy we tend to ignore.  I remember the very real sense of relief I felt the day I found him and his story in the Bible. His presence there was my personal assurance that the Gospel included me, that I fell within the scope of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. I was a church kid. There was never a time growing up when I didn’t think of myself as a Christian.  I came up through the children’s church and the junior department of the Sunday School, and I had the attendance medals and annual award ribbons to prove it.

My conversion wasn’t dramatic. There were no Damascus Road pyrotechnics. Christ didn’t find my passed out in a gutter somewhere or lurking in a dark alley in a bad neighborhood late at night doing something immoral and/or illegal.  Instead Christ found me sitting in a pew at church. I was the son who stayed home. There was no riotous living in the far country for me. I didn’t have much of a wayward youth. There was virtually no prodigal in me, and that meant, at least I thought to myself for the longest time, that I really didn’t have much of a testimony.  

Testimonies were a pretty big deal in some of the circles I ran in when I was in high school.  Your personal story of conversion, the dramatic account of the workings of God’s grace in your life, was your spiritual pedigree, the proof that you were truly Christ’s, and I’d heard some pretty powerful ones in my day. There was the testimony of Nicki Cruz, the New York City gang leader Christ who was found by Christ through the ministry of David Wilkerson as told in his book “The Cross and the Switchblade.” There was John Newton, the depraved slave-trading ship captain that Christ got hold of and then used to help end the slave trade in Great Britain, whose hymn “Amazing Grace” was his testimony.

“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.”

And there was this guy I went to high school with who was widely known to be the biggest doper on campus, who went away one weekend to get high, and who came back to school on Monday morning with a great big Bible in his hand and Jesus Christ living in his heart, the old him having passed away and the “new” him having been born again. By comparison, I didn’t have much of a testimony, and that made me question if I had really been saved, and even if I needed saving in the first place. It was the older brother, the other son in the parable of the waiting father who made room for me in the Gospel story.

Just a little bit later in the Gospel of Luke (18:9-14), we’re told another one of Jesus’ stories, another one that we wouldn’t know today if Luke hadn’t told it to us. It’s the one about how two men went up to the Temple one day to pray, a Pharisee who laid out all of his moral and spiritual credentials trying to impress God, thinking that this was how he could curry God’s favor, and a Publican who, mired in the muck of his sin, could only cry out for mercy.  

The Pharisee in the story told God that he was thankful that he was not like the publican. Today, when we hear this story, we tend to be thankful that we’re not like the Pharisee. It was after preaching this story in the early days of my ministry, as I was shaking people out of church, that a man I’d never seen before and never saw again, grabbed hold of my hand, looked me straight in the eye, and told me not to ever forget that God loved and Christ came for the Pharisee too!  “I think you’ll find, as time goes on,” that man told me that there will always be “more Pharisees than publicans sitting in the pews of your churches listening to your sermons, so be sure to give them the Good News too.”

So, just exactly what is this good news?

Well, it’s that just as the waiting father ran out to embrace his prodigal son when he saw him on the far horizon (Luke 15:20), so that same father went in to find his older son who refused to celebrate the prodigal’s return to reassure him that he was loved too (Luke 15:28). In Ephesians chapter 2 Paul talked about God’s saving work as a matter of Jesus Christ going to preach peace to those who were “far off” (think prodigal sons and Publicans), and of Jesus Christ going to preach peace to those who were “nearby” (think older sons and Pharisees). The Good news is that God “seeks and saves the lost” (Luke 19:10), both those who got lost in the far country and those who got lost at home.

Now, I know, “lost” is not language we use very much in churches like ours anymore. “It can just sound so arrogant, so condescending, as if we Christians have it all together while the ‘lost’ need to get their act together.  As if we’re the brilliant (and blessed) insiders with all of the answers and ‘they’ are the (dumb and doomed) outsiders with all of the questions” (Joshua Ryan Butler).  But “’Lost’ doesn’t mean “worthless. It means “wanted.” “Lost” doesn’t mean “passed over.” It means “pursued.” “Lost” doesn’t mean “inferior.” It means “valuable.” “Lost” doesn’t mean “loathed.” It means “loved.”

George Eldon Ladd, one of my professors in seminary, told us that the only truly “new and novel” thing that Jesus taught us about God was that He is a “seeking God” – a God who “takes the initiative to seek out the sinner, to bring the lost into the blessing of His love.”  The people in Jesus’ day thought that it was up to them to find God, but Jesus Christ said that it’s God who comes in search of us.

More than one preacher through the years has pointed out that the story about the “Waiting Father” Jesus told is not just a story about two sons, but three. “There was the lost son who returned home. There was the son who was lost at home. And lastly, there was the Son who told the story -the Son who left home to seek and rescue His lost brothers. …This is the great irony that many of us miss. The one who told the story was our elder brother, who left His Father’s house to bring home His lost brothers. Jesus left His Father’s house and went to seek the lost for His Father. He was the opposite of the elder brother in the parable. That elder brother watched his father mourn over the son who had gone astray. But he did not go after him for his father. He was not there when his brother’s funds were depleted. He was not there when his younger sibling hit bottom. He was not there at the swine trough, saying, ‘Come on, brother, let’s go home.’” But Jesus did.  “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, wherever you’ve gotten yourself off to, whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, He’ll come.  He’s already looking for you.  And when He finds you, what He’s going to tell you is – “I love you.  I miss you. Let’s go home.”

“Getting Some Movement Back into Our Movement” | Acts 2:1-4

Around the corner and down the block from the church that Mark and I served together in Dallas was the Biblical Arts Center. Before a fire reduced the whole place to rubble and ash in the summer of 2005, the Biblical Arts Center was home to one of the largest paintings in the world, Torger Thompson’s 124 feet long and 24 feet high painting (That’s a third the size of a football field!) of “The Miracle at Pentecost” that was presented to visitors several times a day in a light and sound show with a musical score by Ralph Carmichal, the Christian composer whose songs you’ve heard, and maybe even sung.

I saw “The Miracle at Pentecost” dozens of times through the years. I always took my family and friends who were visiting from out-of-town to see it, and it was one of the field trips that we took with the kids from our Pastors’ Classes at Northway every year together with their families and sponsors. The script for the show was Acts chapter 2, and when it got to the part about a sudden sound coming from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, some huge fans hidden in the ceiling would begin to blow through the space hard enough to ruffle your hair.

I have a book on the shelf of my library called “Bible Stories You Can’t Forget No Matter How Hard You Try,” and that’s what those big fans, and flashing lights, and special sound effects, and stirring music of the multimedia presentation of “The Miracle of Pentecost” at the Biblical Arts Center in Dallas did with the Bible story from Acts chapter 2 for those of us who saw it. It made it one of those Bible stories you can’t forget no matter how hard you try!

 When an idea gets associated in our thinking with a feeling or an experience that we’ve had, then it becomes so much more memorable than just some words on a page, and so, when the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit it almost always does so using vivid images to which we can easily relate. In her “Prayer to the Holy Spirit,” the 19^th century English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) captured many of them when she spoke of the Holy Spirit –

As the dove that launches us heavenwards.
As the water that purifies our spirits.
As the cloud that abates our temptations.
As the dew that revives our languor.
As the fire that purges our dross…

…And as the wind that forwards our goings.

In the Biblical languages, in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, the word for “Spirit” is the word for “breath” or “wind.” In Genesis 1:1-2 it was the Spirit – the wind of God – that blew over the face of the deep. In Genesis 2:7 it was the Spirit – the breath of God – that gave life to the man who had been formed from the dust of the earth.  In Ezekiel 37:9-10 it was the Spirit – the breath and wind of God – that moved over the valley of dry bones bringing them to life again.  In John 3:8, when Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and was told that he needed to be born again, born from above, born of the Spirit, Jesus said that it was like the wind that blows where it will, and you don’t know where it’s coming from, and you don’t know where it’s going next, you just know that it’s here because you can hear it and feel it. And in Acts chapter 2, our Scripture reading this morning, on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh, it sounded like “a mighty rushing wind.”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), the Prince of the 19^th century English Pulpit, in his famous prayer for revival asked God to send upon the church “a season of glorious disorder.”  He asked God to send “a sweep of the wind that will det the seas in motion and make our ironclad brethren, now lying so quietly at anchor, to roll from stem to stern.” The word in Acts 2:2 that gets translated as “rushing” is a word that literally refers to this, to a force that pushes things around. The Spirit is like the wind that drives big sailing ships through the sea, that spins windmills on the great plains, and that rips the roofs from houses during a tornado and then drops them in a field miles away. The Spirit, like the wind, is a force that gets things moving.

One of the very first things that Pope Francis said right after his election to the Papacy was that when the Holy Spirit shows up the church is going to be pushed outward and onward, and chances are pretty good that the church isn’t going to like it one little bit. “The Holy Spirit annoys us,” he said. “The Spirit moves us, pushes us forward. [But] we want the Holy Spirit to calm things down. We want to tame the Holy Spirit, but that just won’t do. We think it’s better to be comfortable, but that is not what the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit brings.” What the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit brings is momentum.

Jesus told His disciples right before Pentecost that they would receive “power” when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and that they would then become His witnesses beginning in Jerusalem, and then expanding outwards to Judea, and then expanding outwards again to Samaria, and then expanding out again to Rome, to the very ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). These ever-widening circles of influence and impact are the work of the Holy Spirit. “In the book of Acts, it is the Holy Spirit who pushes people beyond the present borders of their community. …The Holy Spirit pushes the church beyond itself. The Holy Spirit makes mission happen” (John Howard Yoder).

A good way to read the book of Acts is to track the way the Holy Spirit breaks into somebody’s life and then pushes them across some well-marked boundary into the world of an “other,” into the world of somebody who is different, somebody scary, somebody thought of as “dangerous,” or “difficult,” or maybe even “damned.” And so it was that the Holy Spirit pushed Barnabas and the whole Jerusalem Church into Samaria, to those apostate half breeds Israel had so long despised, to embrace them as their brothers and sisters in Christ (Acts 8:4-25).

The Holy Spirit pushed Philip, one of the church’s first deacons, into the chariot of an Ethiopian Eunuch – a racial and sexual stranger – to tell him all about the great love that God in Christ had for him (Acts 8:26-40).  The Holy Spirit pushed Ananias, a follower of Jesus Christ in Damascus, to go and find some man named Saul on a street named Straight to heal his body and soul, and Ananias went even though he knew full well that this Saul had come to Damascus from Jerusalem specifically to persecute him and his fellow Christians (Acts 9:1-19).  The Holy Spirit pushed Peter the 30 miles up the coast from Joppa to Caesarea, into the home of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius, to share the Gospel with him and his whole family, and to convince Peter that God plays no favorites, but that anyone who reverences God and does what is right is acceptable to Him – even a Roman soldier (Acts 10)! And the Holy Spirit pushed Paul and Barnabas out of the best church the New Testament tells us about, the church in Antioch, to go out into the Gentile world to preach the Gospel and make Disciples (Acts 13:1-3).

Every story the book of Acts tells after it opens with that story about how the Holy Spirit came upon the first church in Jerusalem like a mighty rushing wind on the day of Pentecost is a story about how the Holy Spirit pushed the church to get on with the mission of showing and telling everybody, everywhere, from our front doorsteps to the ends of the earth,  all about how much God loved them, and this is what the Holy Spirit still does.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has long thought and talked about itself as being a “Movement.” Born on the American frontier, our founders weren’t particularly interested in the safety and familiarity of the established church with all of its sacred traditions and old divisions firmly entrenched.  No, they felt the Spirit of God blowing the in a new direction, to a different place, and our founders courageously moved out into that future.  We began by thinking and talking about ourselves as a “Movement” because we understood right from the beginning that God had somewhere for us to go, and something for us to do, and we still think and talk about ourselves in this way – “We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.”

So, is this what people see when they look at us? If a stranger walked in here this morning and took a look around, would they be able to tell what it is that we say we’re all about? Being a “Movement” suggests some actual “movement.” To be “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world” means intentionally crossing over into the worlds of those who are different from us, and divided from us, because we know that God in Christ loves them just as much as He loves us, and that God in Christ wills their well-being, both temporal and eternal, just as much as He wills ours (John 3:16; 2 Peter 3:9; I John 2:2; I Timothy 2:4; Ephesians 1:9-10). This is why the Holy Spirit is given to us, and this is what the Holy Spirit is doing with us.

Thomas Kelly said that there are two movements to the Christian life. First, the Holy Spirit pulls us out of the world and into the heart of God where He assures us that we are loved, truly and deeply. This is, at least in part, what our weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper is about. Each week as the bread is broken and the cup is poured in remembrance of what God in Christ was doing on the cross, the Spirit of Christ whispers in our ears – “I did this for you!” And then the Holy Spirit hurls us out of God’s heart and back into the world where he asks us to carry its hurts and hopes with Him in infinitely tender love.

In 1958 David Wilkerson was the successful pastor of a growing church. One night, while he was praying in his study, he felt the Holy Spirit wanted him to open the copy of “Life” magazine that was sitting on his desk, and when he did, David said that his attention was immediately drawn to a picture of some boys, seven members of a violent street gang in New York City, who were on trial for murder. As David looked at their picture, what he saw was their frightened, bewildered eyes. They were lost, and David began to weep for them, and that’s when the Holy Spirit pushed David Wilkerson.

“Go to New York City,” the Holy Spirit told him. “Go help those boys.” Now, it absolutely made no sense for David Wilkerson to do this. He had never been to NYC, and he had no particular desire to ever go to NYC, but when the Holy Spirit pushed him to go, David went, and because he did God used him and the ministry he eventually founded, Teen Challenge – to do extraordinary things. 78% of the people who go through the drug recovery program at Teen Challenge today remain sober and substance free. 93% of them have no more trouble with the law. 91% of them get reconciled with their families and friends. And nearly all of them report having a life-changing experience of God’s love, acceptance and forgiveness in Jesus Christ. That’s what the Holy Spirit pushed David Wilkerson to do. So, what is the Holy Spirt pushing us to do?

There are two critical elements to being “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” First, we’ve got to understand what it is that God is doing in Jesus Christ. Dr. Peter Kuzmic, a Professor of World Mission at Gordon Conwell Seminary in Boston, said it as well as anyone.  “Why should we burden ourselves with the burdens of the world and allow [ourselves] to be disturbed by statistics of war, disease and poverty?” he asked. “Why should we let the turmoil of the world disrupt the tranquility of our hearts? May I suggest that there is only one compelling reason—’For God so loved the world.’” This is the first element of being a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. It’s knowing that this is what God wants, and that this is what God is doing, and the second thing is the specific nudge of the Holy Spirit.

Kennon Callahan tells us to pay close attention to the things that keep us awake at night. “In those moments when you are trying to fall asleep but can’t quite do so because you are preoccupied with some person and their hurt or hope, what is the specific shape of that hurt or hope, and how can you help?” I was taught to call these feelings “burdens” when I was a young Christian, and I was told to view them as invitations from God to cooperate with Him in His work of compassion and repair. Repeatedly the Gospels tell us that Jesus was “moved with compassion.” Jesus was burdened by the needs of people, and it caused Him to act in mercy and might, and in exactly the same way, when the Spirit burdens us with a human hurt or hope it’s because God wants to use us as His instruments of His mercy and might for those people in that situation. This is what it means to be “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.”

In just a moment now we’re going to sing a hymn you may not know. It’s not even on our hymnal anymore. But I can’t think of a better hymn for this moment. In seminary they told me that every Scripture positions us on the brink of a decision. Every word that gets preached demands a choice. What are we going to do with what it is that God in Christ has told us and shown us that He wants? And what will we do about those nudges of the Holy Spirit that we feel in our hearts, those little pushes He uses to send us to places we’d probably never go and to people we’d probably never be with otherwise?  The hymn – “I Feel the Winds of God Today” – is a map of the kind of response that a church that thinks and talks of itself as a “Movement” is called to make – Let’s stand and sing…

I feel the winds of God to­day;
Today my sail I lift,
Though hea­vy, oft with drench­ing spray,
And torn with ma­ny a rift;
If hope but light the wa­ter’s crest,
And Christ my bark will use,
I’ll seek the seas at His be­hest,
And brave ano­ther cruise.

It is the wind of God that dries my
Vain re­gret­ful tears,
Until with brav­er thoughts shall rise
The pur­er, bright­er years;
If cast on shores of self­ish ease
Or pleasure I should be;
Lord, let me feel Thy fresh­en­ing breeze,
And I’ll put back to sea.

If ev­er I for­get Thy love
And how that love was shown,
Lift high the blood red flag above;
It bears Thy name alone.
Great pilot of my on­ward way,
Thou wilt not let me drift;
I feel the winds of God to­day,
Today my sail I lift.

“O Master Let Me Walk With Thee” | Genesis 5:21-24

A Reflection in Honor of Jean Lowrey Hayes

Jean was a walker.

Most mornings she and Jerry were over at North Park Mall well before the stores opened to walk its length and breadth in climate-controlled comfort – cool and dry in the summer, warm and dry in the winter. This was a lifestyle choice for Jean, a healthy habit. In an interview to create a family record of her life, when Jean was asked what she wished she had known sooner, she answered, “healthy eating and exercising is the wisest thing to do.”

Jean understood that a daily exercise regime doesn’t just happen. You’ve got to prioritize it. You’ve got to carve out the time for it in your daily schedule, and then you’ve got to guard it zealously. There are lots of days  when you just don’t feel like it, and that’s when you’ve got to be disciplined. A healthy habit is just that – a habit – something you do until it becomes a natural reflex, part of the rhythm of your being and doing. For many years, this is what walking was for Jean.

In I Timothy 4:8 Paul talked about the value of physical exercise. “Bodily exercise has some benefit for us,” he explained, “but godliness benefits us in all ways, holding promise for our lives right now but also for the life to come.” In addition to the physical act of walking, walking has long been used as a symbolic way of talking about the personal adoption of a teaching as a way of life. When a student attached himself to a teacher in the ancient world, there was a personal commitment being made by that student to walk the path set out by his teacher’s teachings.

This is what the Psalmist was doing when he prayed – “Teach me thy way, O Lord, that I may walk in thy truth” (86:11). It’s said that the most perfect summary of the Prophetic Religion of ancient Israel is Michah 6:8 – “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what is it that the Lord requires of You? To do justice. To love kindness. And to walk humbly with your God.” I’ve had friends in my life who’ve asked me when they’ve seen me –  “How’s your walk with God?” They were talking about this. Christ’s standard invitation in the Gospels was – “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). In the musical “Godspell,” the disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you going?” And Jesus answered, “We will walk. We will talk. We will talk about walking.” And that’s what being a Christian involves.

This is why when the very first followers of Jesus wrote their letters to people about what it means to be a Christian, they consistently talked about it as a matter of walking – “walking in newness of life” (Romans 6:4), “walking in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16), “walking by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7), “walking in love” (Ephesians 5:2), “walking in the light” (Ephesians 5:8), “walking in the truth” (3 John 1:3-4), “walking in the commandments” (2 John 1:6), “walking in good works” (Ephesians 2:10).  In the book of Acts the very first Christians were called followers of “The Way” (9:2; 19:9;23; 22:4; 24:14;22). To be a Christian in the New Testament was not just a matter of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior so that your sins could be forgiven and you could go to heaven when you died, but equally, it was a matter of naming Jesus Christ as your Lord understanding that He left us an example that we should follow in His steps (I Peter 2:21). It was “a long obedience in the same direction.”

The church across the street – Jean’s church – is a church with two names. Northway is a congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Every Sunday morning in my 21 years as Northway’s pastor, right after the morning Scripture lesson had been read, the reader would always say – “May we be doers of God’s Word, and not hearers only.”  That’s James 1:22, and it is the perfect description of what it means to be a “Disciple.” Our tradition likes to say that the great truths of Scripture that we consider with our heads distills into deep feelings of affection in our hearts which in turn issue in the purposeful movement of our hands and our feet. One of our favorite hymns as a church expresses approach to the Christian Faith perfectly –

“O Master, let me walk with thee in lowly paths of service free;
Tell me thy secret, help me bear the strain of toil, the fret of care.

Help me the slow of heart to move by some clear, winning word of love;
Teach me the wayward feet to stay, And guide them in the homeward way.”

Jean grew up in the Central Christian Church of Mt. Vernon, Texas. Her strong Christian Faith was developed sitting in its pews and going to its Sunday School. And the kind of Christian Faith that Jean was taught there was a practical kind of Christian Faith that was supposed to be lived.

“Guideposts” – the magazine of the Dr. Norman Vincent Peal organization – used to have a monthly feature called “The Quiet People.” It told the stories of ordinary people who lived their Christian lives with integrity, strength, and grace. They were the stories of people who typically eschewed the spotlight, people who didn’t want to draw attention to themselves, people who didn’t need the acclaim, but people who instead just wanted to quietly go about their lives being good and doing good because they were following Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, and this was Jean. She was a walker, not just as a healthy habit that she developed through lots and lots of early mornings at the mall, but as a holy habit that she developed over her 89 years of faithful and graceful living, and that is still going strong today.

The book of Genesis tells us about a man named Enoch who “walked with God” (5:22). In a long list of Adam’s descendants, all of whom died, Enoch stands our because the Bible tells us that “Enoch walked with God; and (then) he was not, for God took him” (5:24). This is the first time the Bible talks about life after death, and the way it does so is to talk about it as a walk that starts here and now in this life, and that then, one day, shifts to another time and another place. As St. Catherine of Siena put it, eternal life is like a bridge that we walk on with one of its piers driven in time and its other pier driven in eternity. The Bible wants us to know that we were created for this walk, and that it’s a walk that never ends. As the last stanza of that hymn we Disciples just love to sing puts it –

“In hope that sends a shining ray far down the future’s broad’ning way.

In peace that only thou canst give, with thee, O Master, let me live.”

Jean walked with God, and her walk goes on.

St. Tarcisius – The Boy Martyr of the Lord’s Supper

Jonathan Black is a systematic theologian. For several years he taught at the theological college of his Apostolic Church in West Malvern, UK. While he was there, he instituted the practice of daily Lord’s Supper for his students and the staff in the college chapel. The buildings which now house the college of Jonathan’s British Pentecostal denomination had originally been built for a school of the Roman Catholic Church. The chapel reflected this earlier spiritual tradition.

Behind the Lord’s Table there was a stained-glass window with somebody named Tarcisius in it. The image was that of a young boy holding a palm branch – an iconic symbol of martyrdom – and clutching some kind of packet to his heart as he looked out over the community gathered at the Communion Table. Spending time in that chapel, under that image, every single day to break bread in remembrance of Christ and Him crucified led Jonathan and some of his students to begin to wonder about who this Tarcisius was, what was in that packet, and why he merited that privileged spot in the chapel – the stained-glass window above the Lord’s Table? Well, Jonathan is a scholar. He knows his way around a library, and so he set off to get acquainted with this Tarcisius whose iconic image was in the picture window above the Table where he and his friends met every morning to be with the Lord. Here’s what he found out –

“Tarcisius, it turns out, was a very early Christian martyr. He lived in Rome in the third century where he was part of the Church (tradition says that he was an acolyte – an “altar boy” – someone who assisted the person who presided at the Lord’s Table). During a time of fierce persecution (possibly during the Emperor Valerian), Tarcisius was given the task of taking Communion to the members of the Church who had been imprisoned for their faith, (In those days, someone would be sent directly from the church service to take the elements to the sick and imprisoned from the same table around which the whole congregation was gathered for Communion so that the whole church was sharing in the same supper at the same time). On the way from the Communion service to the prison, however, Tarcisius was attacked by a pagan mob who demanded that he hand over the sacrament (it was in the packet that he clutched to his breast in the image in the window). But Tarcisius refused. Instead, he clasped it more tightly to protect it with his life. Tarcisius was stoned to death when he wouldn’t hand over the Communion. His martyrdom would go on to be lauded in poetry by a leader of the church in the city –

‘Tarcisius was carrying the Sacrament of Christ

When unclean hands sought to profane it.

He preferred to lay down his life,

Rather than betray the Holy Body to rabid dogs.’

Tarcisius became a martyr for the Lord’s Supper, He gave up his life rather than give up the Communion bread, because Tarcisius knew that the Supper wasn’t something to be taken lightly, as this wasn’t just merely bread anymore.” (Jonathan Black – “The Lord’s Supper” – Chosen | 2023)

If you’ve been following the news at all in the past few days, then you know that there has been something of a controversy about one of the staged tableaus of the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. Some Christians have seen a reflection of Da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper in the staging of a gathering of LBGTQ+ people at a Table for a feast. It is far from certain that this was the intent, but as they say, “perception yields behavior yields destiny.” Many Christians saw an image of something that is sacred to them in this scene, perceived it as mockery, took offense, and have said so in no uncertain terms. St. Tarcisius, the boy martyr of the Lord’s Supper, clutching the packet of Communion elements to his breast in a death grip, could very well be their patron saint.

What E. Stanley Jones called the “long distance dueling” has begun. Well-meaning Christians are “shelling” the blasphemous positions of others, or what they believe are their positions, and the result is a lot of noise, smoke, confusion, and what E. Stanley Jones called “not a little un-Christian feeling.” He compared this mindset to that which produced the Crusades from the 11th through the 13th centuries. He wrote – “The crusaders conquered Jerusalem but found in the end that Christ was not there, for they had lost Him through the very spirit and methods by which they sought to serve Him.”

Other Christians have seen something else. If what got staged on a rainy Paris evening a few nights ago for the Olympics was in fact a reference to Da Vinci’s Last Supper (something that is in serious doubt), then the presence of people the church has traditionally marginalized and demonized at that Table, in that image, is a powerful statement of what my church says it’s all about – “We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has welcomed us.”

St. Tarcisius was martyred while carrying the elements of Communion to people who were not at the Table in church. Because the Lord’s Table is a place to which everyone (the “whosoever” of John 3:16 and Revelation 22:17 – KJV) is invited, and at which everyone will be welcomed, St. Tarcisius, the boy martyr of the Lord’s Supper, could very well be the patron saint of this part of the church too.

The Holy Spirit pushes people to God, but the Holy Spirit also pushes the church towards people, to establish contact and broker conversations with them. “Widening the world” – that’s what the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder called this work that the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit “widens the world” geographically, sociologically, and spiritually. The Holy Spirit pushes Christians outside their comfort zones to the people and places where Jesus Christ needs a witness and a servant. One of the very first things that Pope Francis said after his election was that when the Holy Spirit shows up the church is going to be pushed outward and onward, and chances are pretty good that the church is not going to like it one little bit. He said –

“The Holy Spirit annoys us. The Spirit moves us, makes us walk, pushes the church to move forward. [But] we want the Holy Spirit to calm down. We want to tame the Holy Spirit, and that just won’t do. The Holy Spirit gives us consolation and the strength to move forward, and the moving forward part is what can be such a bother. People think it’s better to be comfortable, but that is not what the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit brings.”

St. Tarcisius was martyred protecting the Lord’s Supper from the hands and hearts of those who sought to desecrate it while on a mission of taking the Lord’s Supper to some who were not at the Lord’s Table where the church gathered. This is the push/pull that frames the controversy that the tableau at the Paris Olympics has fomented in Christian circles.

The Jesus who said – “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you” (Matthew 7:6), is the same Jesus who said – “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), and – “Let the little ones come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). As both of these instincts coexisted in St. Tarcisius in the third century, so they coexist in the church and Christians today, and learning how to live with them, and with one another, is one of the great challenges we face as people whose unity is the evidence that Christ gave the world to test the truth of His Gospel (John 17:20-21).

The New Pastor’s First Sunday

This morning our new pastor will be leading worship and preaching the first sermon of her ministry with us. I could not be more pleased. I prayed for this day and for this person to come, and now that we’re here, I’m filled with hope, confidence, and that blessed peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7).

I began new ministries five times in my 40 years as an ordained minister serving local congregations across the State of Texas. I knew the importance of a strong start, the power of first impressions, and the hard work that’s involved in the first days of a new ministry. “All beginnings are hard” is what a medieval Jewish Bible commentator once said. Rabbi David Ackermann of Temple Beth Am Israel in Narberth, Pennsylvania, explained – “This phrase describes the moment when our ancestors stood at Sinai and received the gift of Torah. Torah came with expectations and demands and getting started wasn’t simple.” All beginnings are hard as anyone who has ever started a new job, or moved to a new place to live, or begun a new relationship, or entered a new phase of life knows.

I navigated five ministry beginnings as a pastor. I know the steps of this dance. But this is the first time I will navigate the beginning of a ministry as a parishioner, and I know the view will be different from where I now sit in my pew than from where I used to stand in the pulpit. After having been the Fred Astair in this dance before, now I will be the Ginger Rogers. I will learn to follow, knowing full well that the success of this new ministry doesn’t just depend on the one who leads from the chancel of the church. Those of us who sit in the nave of the church have a part to play in the success of this new ministry too.

In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Hebrews, a chapter full of exhortations in a letter of exhortation (13:22), four of them have to do with church leaders, or more specifically with how church members are supposed to relate to their leaders.

Verse 7 – “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life and imitate their faith.”

This first exhortation to “remember our leaders” is about what it is that we expect them to do (“speak to you a word of God”), and who it is that we need them to be (People with lives worth considering and a faith worth imitating).

“Give me a word.” That’s what people traditionally asked a spiritual mother or father to give them. “Abba (Father)… Amma (Mother)… Give me a word.” Christianity is premised on this idea that God has given us a Word, and that there are gifted and called people in our midst who can help us hear it. We want this. We need this. Especially in trying times, times when people are being pushed by their circumstances into places of great worry and deep fear, people need a word, a true word, a sure word, a trustworthy word, a life-giving word.

Back in the day, when the church bell rang early on a Sunday morning, theologian Karl Barth (1886 – 1968) said that it was to announce to the world that “something great, something crucial, something momentous” was just about to happen. Church was about to begin, and people were being called, through the ringing of that bell, from “cherry tree, symphony, state, daily work, and other things” to church where the Bible was about to be opened, read, and expounded. Traditionally, people came to church expecting to hear from God. They came believing that God was going to speak to them from His Word, and they came ready, even eager, to hear what God had to say. And so, part of my commitment to our new pastor is to come to church expectant and receptive – “teachable.”

Verse 17 – “Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account. Let them do this joyfully, and not sadly, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

Charles Kemp, my Professor of Pastoral Care at Brite Divinity School when I was student there in the late 1970’s, told us to always be kind to everybody we met because we didn’t know what burdens they were carrying. Well, we know that a pastor carries the burdens of a church. A pastor keeps watch over the souls of a congregation. A pastor will one day answer to God for the people entrusted to his or her care.

One of the themes of 2 Corinthians is about how easy it is for us to “lose heart” as people of faith. Specifically, in 2 Corinthians 11:26, Paul named his own “Apostolic Anxiety” for the spiritual well-being of his churches as one of the things that weighed him down. Kevin DeYoung has written about this familiar source discouragement for ministers –

“Ask any pastor who really takes his/her work seriously and s/he will tell you of the pressures s/he feels in ministry — people in crisis, people leaving, people coming, people disappointed by him/her, people disappointing to him/her… And most pastors feel a burden for all those other things that they could be doing: more evangelism, more for the poor, more for missions, more to address global concerns, and more to address social concerns. …Pastors wonder if the church is still responsive to their preaching; if the leadership will ever be responsive to their leading; and if the congregation will ever grow like the churches they hear so much about. On top of all this, every pastor has his/her own personal hurts, his/her own personal mistakes, and his/her own spiritual health to attend to. We are all weak.”

Studies show that ministers think most about quitting on Monday mornings. It’s after Sundays that ministers struggle most with the inertia of their congregations, the impossible demands of their calling, their own imperfections, and the insecurity that inhabits their souls. I kept a box of encouraging notes that people sent to me in appreciation for something I said or did for them in ministry, and I would bring it out and read through some of them on my dark Mondays. And so, part of my commitment to our new pastor is to be a vocal and consistent source of encouragement to her and her ministry so that she can do her work “joyfully, and not sadly, to our advantage.” I’m getting her a box and putting my first note of encouragement in it. You can write her notes too.

Verse 18 – “Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.

Paul began most of his letters with the assurance that he was praying for the people to whom he wrote, and he ended many of his letters with the request that the people to whom he wrote pray for him (Romans 15:30-32; 2 Corinthians 1:10-11; Ephesians 6:19-20; I Thessalonians 5:25; 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2; Colossians 4:2-4; Philippians 1:19; Philemon 22). Wilhelm Lohe (1808 –1872), a German Lutheran Pastor who is widely regarded as the epitome of a faithful minister, wrote – “The minister who does not pray for the flock is not a true shepherd,” and Christopher Poshin David, a Presbyterian minister in India today writes – “When the churches cease to pray for ministers, ministers will no longer be a blessing to the churches.” Prayer is the spiritual bond that holds a pastor and a parish together in love and care. And so, part of my commitment to our new pastor is to pray for her every single day.

Verse 24 – “Greet all your leaders and all the saints.”

To be able to “greet” someone you have got to be with that someone. This last exhortation is about proximity, connection, presence, and affection. Traditionally, the membership vows in the Methodist Church included a commitment by the people joining to faithfully participate in the life and ministries of a congregation “by their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service, and their witness.” Few things are more demoralizing to a pastor than church members not showing up, and few things are more encouraging to a pastor than church members being faithful to the life and ministry of their church by the gift of their presence. And so, part of my commitment to our new pastor is to be in church every Sunday morning when I am in town and am physically able to be there, and when I’m not, or can’t, to worship with my home church online and “in the Spirit” (Revelation 1:10).

A Eulogy for Donna King Bohlcke

Saturday, May 11, 2024 | 10 am

Northway Christian Church | Dallas, Texas

This is the second time I’ve been asked to eulogize my friend Donna King Bohlke. The first time was six years ago. I was just about to retire as the pastor of Northway, and Donna was slipping further and further away. Don wanted to celebrate all that Donna was and all that Donna meant to us while she was still aware enough to appreciate it, and so, we had a tribute lunch for Donna here at the church, and I prepared my first Eulogy for Donna. It was a wonderful day.

A “Eulogy” is literally a “good word.” One of my father’s maxims that got deeply engrained in my thinking and being through repetition was, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.” Well, a Eulogy is “saying something nice” about someone who has taken their leave of us. In the book of Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha we have the classic eulogy in the Biblical tradition –

¹ Let us now sing the praises of famous people,
    our ancestors in their generations.
² The Lord apportioned to them great glory…

⁷  …These were honoured in their generations,
    and were the pride of their times.
⁸ Some of them have left behind a name,
    so that others declare their praise.
⁹ But of others there is no memory;…
¹⁰ But these also were godly people,
    whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten;…
¹⁴  …their name lives on generation after generation.

Last Saturday afternoon as I visited with Don and Donna’s daughters about the “good word” they wanted to hear from me about Donna today, I was given something that one of Donna’s grandchildren wrote, he called it his “eulogical (a new word he just made up) thoughts –

“You could always count on Granny to make a family gathering a true event. The eclectic food spread, the games, and making sure everyone was taken care of. She’s the most technologically savvy grandmother I knew. She had a long fulfilling life, not without heartache, but showed her love for her family and friends in so many ways.”

And we know the truth of those “eulogical” words about Donna, don’t we?

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956), the 20^th century English critic and essayist, famously observed that – “Mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.” “A guest is someone who is invulnerable, who is waited upon and showered with attention.” Bruce Larson explained. “A host is someone who puts her guests at ease and afforms their worth in a thousand different ways and makes herself vulnerable to them, giving up her privacy and providing food and lodging.” And then Bruce Larson added, “It seems to me that Jesus Christ, who is ‘the Host’ in all pf life, is calling those who believe in Him to become hosts in every situation; to become those who can be vulnerable, put other people at ease, love them, listen to them, and affirm them.”

The “eulogical” story Don told me he really needed to hear this morning was about the time when he and Donna were living at Traditions, and she was still lucid. One morning she looked over at Don at the breakfast table and asked – “So, what are we going to do today that will make a difference in somebody’s life?” That’s how “hosts” think. That’s what “hosts” do. And Donna was a “host.”

Donna and I painted icons together. You will see some of her icons on display here today. Icons are sometimes called theology in line and color, and that’s how I came to them. It was my faith seeking understanding that led me into the world of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and you can’t sojourn in that world for very long before you start bumping into icons. I came to icons by way of theology and church history. Donna came to icons by way of creativity, beauty, and generosity. She created a community through our icon painting workshops here at the church. In our icon partnership, I was the head and Donna was the heart. She was a “host.”

It’s said that the first icon an iconographer is supposed to paint is one of the Transfiguration, the way that Christ became light on a mountaintop in Galilee before His Passion. The whole point of icons is to bear witness to the way the Word who was with God, who was God, became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1;14). They are windows into the mystery of how the divine and the human cohere in Christ, and they foreshadow the way that we who bear the image of the earthy shall also bear the image of the heavenly (I Corinthians 15:49).

Iconographers paint an icon of the Transfiguration first because every icon they will ever paint will be an affirmation of the transfiguration, of the way that we are being changed into the likeness of Christ from one degree of glory to another through beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6).

At one of our icon painting workshops here at the church, Peter Pearson, our teacher and friend, made an off-handed comment one day about how Orthodox Christians believe that when they are painting the icon of a saint that what they are really painting is an icon of Christ. It’s Christ being formed in us that you are supposed to see in the icon of a saint. Saints are “the many faces of Christ” we see, and since Biblically anyone who names Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is a “saint,” we are supposed to be able to see Him in us and through us. As a hymn we sing on Pentecost each year just about this time puts it – “Fill with Thy Spirit till all shall see, Christ only, always living in me.”

In one of his poems, Tagore (1861 -1941), the Bengali author, said of someone in his life – “You brought the harp into my house and you brought the lamp…(and) after you had taken your leave I found God’s footprints on my floor.” In Donna’s welcome I experienced Christ’s welcome. In Donna’s care and concern I experienced Christ’s care and concern. In Donna’s generosity I experienced Christ’s abundance. And in the way Donna walked in beauty she opened my eyes and heart to the beauty of Christ. When I look, everywhere Donna was in my life, I see the footprints of Christ. I painted icons of Christ with Donna, but more important than that was the way that Donna was an icon of Christ for me.

Lord God, we’ve gathered here this morning as Donna’s family and friends to remember her life, to thank-you for the gift that she has been to us, and to comfort and encourage one other in this time of her passing. We rejoice that because Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior, is the resurrection and the life, that even though Donna has died, yet she lives together with everyone who has ever believed in you. Give us the faith to see in death the gate to eternal life, and the kind of love that can sustain us to the end of our days and that will see us through death to the dawn the new beginning that Donna has now entered, we pray in Christ’s name and according to your promise. Amen.

“How to Get More Out of Communion”

Christian Men’s Fellowship Breakfast | Saturday, May 4, 2024

First Christian Church, Garland, Texas | Dr. Douglas Skinner

This is a Communion Token…

Most denominations begin with a flash of spiritual insight. Something that’s gotten lost or been neglected by the larger church gets discovered by a person or a group of people in the church, and as this rediscovered practice or idea becomes explosively real for them, they turn to the larger church, asking them to make room for it in their life. When these pleas go unheeded, these people separate themselves from the larger church to begin a new expression of the church, one that more prominently features the idea or the practice that they’ve recovered. What they’ve found matters enough for them to say – “We are no longer that — from now on we are this…”

Most denominations can point to the moment of spiritual courage when this happens, when their founders acted on their convictions, even though doing so immediately put them at odds with the church to which they had previously belonged.

• This is the story of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Cathedral in Wittenberg on the errors of the church in which he himself was a priest.

• This is the story of Menno Simons rebaptizing people upon their public profession of personal faith as an act of spiritual defiance to the State Church which regarded anyone born within its borders to be members.

• This is the story of John Wesley who was excluded from preaching the Gospel from the pulpits of the Church of England of which he was a minister, and going outside to preach the Gospel from the front doorsteps of those same churches, and in the village square, and out in the middle of open fields.

• This is the story of William Seymour, a poor African American preacher, who conducted a meeting at a storefront church in Los Angeles at the turn of the last century, and midwifed the birth of the modern Pentecostal Movement – the most vibrant expression of Christianity in the world today – as the Spirit of God drew people from every race and place, filled them with power, united them with purpose, and sent them out with a message of promise and a personal experience of Christ’s indwelling presence.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) began with one of these flashes of spiritual insight and moments of spiritual courage as well, and it all had to do with this (the Communion Token).

Our Scottish Presbyterian Roots

On the family tree of churches, we are a shoot off the branch of Scottish Presbyterianism. That “X” shaped cross on the red Communion Chalice that is our denominational symbol, that’s a St. Andrew’s Cross. If you hear – “St. Andrews” – and think golf, then you’ve got it! “St. Andrews” is the oldest golf course in the world, and where is it? It’s in Scotland, in the very place where legend says that St. Andrew the Apostle preached the Gospel and planted a Church. This is why St. Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland.

Another tradition about St. Andrew is that he didn’t consider himself worthy to die on the same kind of cross that Jesus died on, and so just like his brother Peter who was crucified upside down, when it was time for Andrew to die for his faith, he asked to be crucified on an “X” shaped cross. That “X” shaped cross is on the national flag of Scotland (it’s on the national flag of Great Britan for that matter), and it’s part of our denominational symbol as well because we come out of Scottish Presbyterianism, and communion tokens were part of the settled practice of that church.

Communion Tokens

You see, the only way you could get a seat at the communion table in a Scottish Presbyterian church back in the day was by having one of these (a communion token), and the only way you could get one of these (a communion token) was by convincing somebody like me, an ordained minister, that you were “worthy” of a seat.  Now, as awful as that sounds to our ears, understand, their motive was good. It truly was.

In that same passage we quote every Sunday morning at the Lord’s Table about how on the night when He was betrayed, our Lord took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it, and how after supper He took a cup and said that it was the new covenant in His blood (I Corinthians 11:23-26), well, right after saying all that, Paul went on to warn his readers about eating the bread and drinking the cup in an “unworthy” manner and thereby becoming guilty of “profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (11:27), eating and drinking it to their condemnation (11:29-32).

“This is why many of you are weak and sick,” Paul told the Corinthian Christians, “and (it’s) why some have you have died” (11:30). I think this is a description of their spiritual rather than their physical condition. I think Paul was saying that some of them were spiritually weak, and spiritually sick, and spiritually dying, and the reason why was their inattentiveness to and  carelessness with the things of God, something that was evident in the way that they were approaching the Lord’s Supper. They were trifling with spiritual things. They were taking for granted God’s grace. They were presuming upon His kindness. They were profaning the body and blood of the Lord.  So, the Scottish Presbyterian Church “fenced” the Lord’s Table. They erected barriers and then policed the gates to ensure that only those people who were spiritually prepared could sit at the Table and commune, and they would have argued that it was for people’s own good that they did this.

Thomas Campbell (1763 – 1854)

Thomas Campbell (1763 – 1854) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who served a congregation in Ireland. He had grown weary of the squabbling in his church over things that he thought were matters of private interpretation, things best left to the freedom of each person’s conscience. He was troubled by having to exclude people from the Lord’s Table because they had convictions that were at slight variance with the official stances of the church, often on matters that the Bible never addresses. Grieved by the divisions in his church, Thomas Campbell resigned his ministry position, and immigrated to America where he hoped that new ways would be more welcomed in the new world.

When he arrived in Philadelphia in 1807, it just so happened that the American version of his Scottish Presbyterian Church was meeting in session, and so he presented himself to them, was immediately endorsed as a minister, and was given a circuit of churches to serve in the Alleghany River Valley just outside of Pittsburgh. His primary job there was to go from church to church to celebrate Communion with them.

Since in Scottish Presbyterianism only an ordained minister could preside at the Lord’s Table, there were lots of Scottish Presbyterians in remote places on the American frontier who rarely got Communion. And so, it was Thomas Campbell’s job to ride into those out-of-the-way villages to preach, and teach, and pray with the church members there for several days to get them ready for a Communion service, all the while taking careful note of who showed up at his meetings, and assessing the state of their souls.

But because ordained ministers were far and few between in those isolated areas, other kinds of Presbyterians would invariably show up at his meetings as well. They were fellow Presbyterians who read the same Bible in the same way that Thomas Campbell did. They recited the same creed and adhered to the same Confessions as Thomas Campbell did, but because they had taken positions on some secondary matters that were at variance with the positions that Thomas Campbell’s branch of Presbyterianism had taken, he was prohibited from sharing Communion with them. “No Communion token for you!”

In one of these remote areas, during one of those Communion weeks, in a moment of real spiritual courage that was the result of, if not a flash of spiritual insight, then at least a slow burning spiritual realization, Thomas Campbell put the Communion tokens away and he opened the Lord’s Supper to any believer there who in their hearts felt spiritually prepared to meet with their Lord at His Table, who had heard Him inwardly say, “Behold I stand at the door and knock, if you open the door I will come into you, and sit with you, and sup with you” (Revelation 3:20). It wasn’t long after this that Thomas Campbell was charged with heresy by his church, tried, convicted, and stripped of his ministerial credentials. But by then, it really didn’t matter to him. He’d moved on to a new place spiritually.

Declaration and Address (1809)

This is a facsimile copy of Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address” that was givento the delegates of the Centennial celebration of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) held in Pittsburgh back in 1909. It’s a real treasure. But it’s just for show. This is my working copy of this same document (a tattered book held together with a clip). This (my old, tattered copy) is what got me here. You see, I wasn’t born into this church. Just like that bumper sticker you see that says, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here just as quickly as I could,” I made my way to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in high school.

At its heart, Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address” is a set of principles, which when taken seriously, change the way we think as Christians and operate as a church. Four of them are at the very heart of “why we do what we do the way we do it” –

The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.

Division among Christians is a horrid evil, fraught with many evils.

It’s the neglect of what the New Testament actually says and the acceptance of human opinions as our authority on matters of faith and practice that has caused every division that has ever plagued the church.

While we are all free to have our own opinions and interpretations, nothing should be made a requirement on the church’s faith and practice that is not as old as the New Testament.

You can’t say things like that, believe them, and still have things like this (Communion Token).

Alexander Campbell (1788 –1866)

It was based on the principles of Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address” that the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper became the most characteristic feature of our life together as a church. Even people who know nothing else about us can usually tell you that in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) we celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Alexander Campbell (1788 –1866), Thomas Campbell’s firstborn son and his successor to the leadership of the Movement that his “Declaration and Address” launched, said that in the future, if we were to be “conspicuous” for anything as a church, that it be for the attention we give to the Bible and to its ordinances. Alexander Campbell called the Lord’s Supper a Gospel ordinance that’s “pregnant” with the grace of God, and he said that it was “silly” to think that somebody could be spiritually vital apart from their personal and habitual participation in the Lord’s Supper.

Not Magic

But this doesn’t just happen.

The Lord’s Supper isn’t magic.

You can’t just show up on a Sunday morning, take a bite of bread, have a sip of wine, and think that it’s going to be of any benefit to you spiritually. In that same passage where we get the words of institution that we say at the Lord’s Table every Sunday morning, Paul told the Corinthians that even though they were going through the motions of a communion service when they got together, that it was “not for the better but for the worse” (I Corinthians 11:17). He told them – “When you meet together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat” (I Corinthians 11:20). This was the concern that our Scottish Presbyterian forebears tried to address with these (the Communion Token), and our Founders were not indifferent to this concern, they just weren’t convinced that this (the Communion Token) was the best way to address that concern, after all, hadn’t Jesus told us to “judge not, lest we be judged,” and that rather than worrying about the speck that’s in your brother’s eye, we should rather be attending to the log that’s in our own (Matthew 7:1-5)? And in Romans 14, hadn’t Paul specifically asked – “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” – explaining, “It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand… [so] let us no more pass judgment on one another…” (14:4;10).

The way Paul told the Corinthians to address his concern for their “worthy” participation in the Lord’s Supper was not for them to stand in judgment on one another, but rather for each one of them to carefully examine themselves (I Corinthians 11:28), to “see whether they were holding to our faith, …to see if Christ was (truly) in them” (2 Corinthians 11:5).  This isn’t something that anybody else can do for you. There’s nobody with a Communion token out there somewhere who can truly know what’s going on inside you. This is only something we can do for ourselves, as Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, famously said – nobody else can do your believing for you, or your living for you, or your dying for you. So, “Let a man examine himself,” Paul told the Corinthians, “and so eat the bread and drink the cup” (I Corinthians 11:27). But, how do we do this? Where do we begin? How do we start?

Robert Milligan (1814-1875)

Right after Thomas and Alexander Campbell began the spiritual movement on the American frontier that put the Lord’s Supper at the very center of its life and mission, a Lord’s Supper to which everyone was invited and at which everyone would be welcomed, along came another early leader of our Movement, a man named Robert Milligan (1814-1875), who took the big ideas that the Campbells said about things like the Lord’s Supper, and he made them practical. There was a time that every minister in our spiritual tradition was taught from Robert Milligan’s book “The Scheme of Redemption.”  Today it’s hardly known, and in my mind, that’s telling. We’re out of touch with the spiritual discipline that our spiritual tradition said was the key to the Lord’s Supper having the kind of importance and making the sort of impact on us that it promises to.

The Campbells said that the Lord’s Supper really matters, and then Robert Milligan came along right behind them and said that there is something you have to do if you expect the Lord’s Supper to really matter to you the next time you take it.  After explaining that the bread and wine of Communion are “spiritual nourishment” for the soul in the same way that food and drink are physical nourishment to the body, and warning that any outward religious practice can become an empty, meaningless gesture if it is approached without prayer and care, Robert Milligan got specific about we need to do if the Lord’s Supper is to be a means of grace for us, a “koinonia,” a participation, a fellowship, a  sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ rather than just a bite of bread and a sip of juice.

“The means ordained by God to prevent the growth and prevalence of formalism in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, is the practice of self-examination. ‘Let a man examine himself; and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup’ (I Corinthians 11:28).  If this were properly attended to by all who profess to be followers of the Lord Jesus… what an interesting occasion every Communion [service] would be… but how few, alas, how very few, have ever learned the art and mystery of self-examination!”

For the Lord’s Supper to be the kind of spiritual nutrition that our souls require to thrive, Robert Milligan insisted that we come to the Lord’s Table “prepared,” and to do this properly, he gave four specific instructions. These are the “nuts and bolts” of the spiritual discipline of self-examination that make taking Communion such a powerful means of grace.

The First Instruction | “In the light of God’s word…”

The first instruction was that “the self-examination (before Communion) should be conducted faithfully and honestly in the light of God’s word.” This is an old fashion plumb line. When building a wall and you want it to be vertical, this and gravity will help you know if it is. In Amos 7:7-8 the prophet saw the Lord standing beside a wall with a plumb line in his hand, and the Lord told Amos, “Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people.” The Church, right from the beginning, viewed the Ten Commandments as that plumb line God uses to take our moral and spiritual measure.

I grew up in a church that read the Ten Commandments out loud to us every Sunday morning. It was the first thing we did un worship each week. We would open with a prayer about how we were coming into God’s presence with our hearts open wide, with all of our desires known, with no hidden secrets, and we would ask God cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that we might love God perfectly and worship God worthily. Just as soon as we prayed these words each week, our minister would read the Ten Commandments to us, and at the end of each Commandment, we would say, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.”

Each commandment took our measure, and we always came up short. That’s what the “have mercy upon us” was about. But we wanted to do better, to be better, and so we also always prayed, “incline our hearts to keep this law.” We were in church each week to tell God that we were sorry for the ways that we had done things that week that He told us not to do, and for the way that we had not always or fully done the things that He had told us to do. But we were also in church each week to tell God that it was our intention to lead a different kind of life in the coming week following His commandments and walking in His ways.

For the Lord’s Supper to be the feast of forgiveness and the means of grace that will nourish our souls to walk in newness of life, we need to come to it each week with the Word of God like a two-edged sword, cutting us to the heart, laying open our thoughts and making our desires known (Hebrews 4:11-13). As Jesus said, it’s the sick who need a doctor (Luke 5:31-32). It’s only when we know that we’re wounded that we seek to be healed. This is why Robert Milligan’s first instruction was to conduct a faithful and honest examination of oneself “in the light of God’s Word” before coming to the Lord’s Table.

The Second Instruction | “Searching our Hearts”

The second instruction that Robert Milligan gave us was that our “self-examination before taking Communion should be conducted with prayer: the prayer that God would himself search our hearts, and that he would help us to search them honestly, faithfully, and thoroughly; that he would purify them. And that he would enable us to forsake every false and wicked way.”

Dan Snow is an artisan who builds walls, terraces and structures out of dry stone.  His books are wonderful reads, not just for their descriptions of his amazing work, but for the spiritual wisdom that he has discovered through the years of eating his bread by the sweat of his brow with his hands in the ground.  For instance, he begins one of his essays about building a series of retaining walls at a farm in Vermont by explaining that, “Construction begins with one stone… until there is one in place, there is nothing to inspire the selection of another… every choice is a response to the choices that have come before it.”  He’s talking about working with stones.  As people of Biblical faith, we work with stories, and the very same truth applies.

The way our Bibles are structured, the stories we read at the very beginning of the book of Genesis “set the table” for everything that follows. We are created in God’s image.  Like reflections in a mirror, we are designed to correspond to Him.  We are built for a relationship with Him. I take the story in Genesis 3 of God coming in the cool of the day to walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the Garden as the Bible’s defining picture of what our relationship with God is supposed to look like.  We are built for that kind of intimacy and immediacy with God. Of course, in Gensis 3, right after their tangle with the serpent, when God showed up for his evening stroll with Adam and Eve, they hid from His presence, prompting Him to ask two questions: “Where are you?” (3:9) and “What have you done?” (3:13).  

We don’t get the tone of words from a printed text. So, some interpreters read these two questions in Genesis 3 as the “mad” words of a deeply offended God. I tend to read them instead as the “sad” words of a brokenhearted God. It’s the two questions that God asks in Ezekiel 18:23 – “Do you think that I take any pleasure in the judgment of sinners?” and “Do you not know that I would prefer sinners to turn from their ways and live?” – that help me hear God’s questions in Genesis 3 as more anguished than angry.

In his little book “Our Faith” (1954), the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner (1889 – 1966) gave voice to the what he thought was the toe of God’s questions – “As children lost in a woods, are fearful of the sinister darkness — and then, suddenly, hearing a sound from the somber blackness, a familiar voice, a loving, seeking, helping voice, their mother’s voice — so prayer is our reply to the voice from the Word of God in Jesus Christ which suddenly cries out to us in the mysterious, dark universe. It is the Father calling us out of the world’s darkness. He calls us, seeks us, wants to bring us to Himself. ‘Where are you, my child?’ Our prayers mean ‘Here I am. Father. I was afraid until you called. Since you have spoken, I am afraid no longer. Come, I am waiting for you, take me, lead me by the hand through the dark terrifying world.’”

When Robert Milligan tells us that our self-examination before Communion should be “conducted with prayer: prayer that God would himself search our hearts,” it makes a big difference whether we think that God is mad at us and is just gathering more evidence to condemn us, or if we think that what we’ve done and who we’ve become makes God very sad, and that by searching our hearts, God is looking for ways to repair what’s gone wrong and to restore what’s gotten lost.

In the healing of memories, they tell you to take the hand of Christ and to go back into your painful past with Him in tow, to show Him just exactly what was said and done that wounded you, so that He can speak peace to the hidden storms that rage inside you and to apply grace to the sources of your life’s deepest hurts, and when we ask God to search our hearts in the process of self-examination before Communion, we are, in the same way, not looking to be further shamed and condemned, but rather to be healed and helped, to be restored and repaired.

The Third Instruction | Fasting

The third instruction that Robert Milligan gave us was that our “self-examination before taking Communion should be accompanied with fasting. We’re more accustomed to feasting aren’t we? Somebody once said that in a thousand years when the archeologists dig up our churches and find the remains of church kitchens with their stainless-steel appliances and steam tables, they will wonder about what kind of strange rituals we Christians were performed there! 

This gathering here this morning was built around a meal. It’s a men’s “breakfast.” I’m not sure that as many of us would be here this morning if it had been promoted as a men’s “fast.” That doesn’t even make sense to us. But it did to Christ. When He was criticized by the Pharisees because His disciples didn’t fast like the disciples of John the Baptist did, Jesus explained – “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days” (Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19-20; Luke 5:34-35). Jesus expected us to fast.

Fasting is a way of bringing focus. We choose not to do some things so that we can give our full attention to other things. When our hands are full, we can’t pick something else up. We’ve got to put some things down before we can pick something else up. If you’d stopped by Whataburger for a bag of egg and sausage burritos and eaten them in the car on your way over here this morning, my guess is that you wouldn’t have filled your plates quite as full as you did. William Berault described it well when he wrote –

“A cup must be empty before it can be filled.

If it is already full, it can’t be filled again except emptying it out.

In order to fill anything there must be a hollowed-out space.

Otherwise it can’t receive.

This is especially true of God’s word.

In order to receive it, we must be hollowed out.

We must be capable of receiving it,

emptied of the false self and its endless demands.

When Christ came, there was no room in the inn.

It was full. The inn is a symbol of the heart.

God’s word, Christ, can take root only in a hollow.”

Fasting during times of self-examination before Communion clears the field of distractions so that we can give our full attention to where we are in our relationship with God. It’s a way of saying to God nothing matters more to me than you, and because we don’t live by bread alone, fasting is a way of saying to God, I don’t desire anything more than you.

The Fourth Instruction | The “Sanctification of Time”

The final instruction that Robert Milligan gave us was that our self-examination before taking Communion should be accompanied with what he called the “sanctification of time.” Just as the fourth commandment told our Jewish mothers and fathers to “keep holy the Sabbath day” (Saturday – the last day of the week when God rested at the end of creation), so as Christians we keep holy the Lord’s Day (Sunday – the day when Christ was raised from the dead). In the book of Acts we see the first Christians meeting on the first day of the week to break bread (and bless the cup) in remembrance of Christ (Acts 20:7), and the book of Revelation opens with John “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (1:9).

I grew up in Southern California. I knew nothing about “blue laws” growing up. It was when my wife and I got to Texas for seminary in January of 1977 that I had my first encounter with one. We were at a grocery store in Ft. Worth on a Sunday afternoon buying some groceries and a can opener. The clerk told us that we could buy our cans of corn, beans, and soup, but that he couldn’t sell us the can opener! When we looked confused, he told us that it was against the law!

At my student church in Melissa, we were invited home for lunch with some church members one Sunday. I could feel some tension building after the table had been cleared. Finally, after some hemming and hawing, the man of the house cleared his throat and said, “Preacher, I’ve got a question for you.” I braced myself for a question about the Trinity, or maybe the substitutionary theory of the atonement, or about women in church leadership. But no, what he wanted to know was what I thought about playing dominos on Sunday afternoons. I told him that I had never played a game of dominos in my life – a fact which troubled him greatly – but that if I did, then Sunday afternoons would be a fine time for a game. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together as his wife produced a box of dominos, and so began a never phase of my education for ministry.

The “sanctification of time” – keeping “holy” a day for God – is a way of taking God seriously. In practice, its restrictions can be silly, petty, and oppressive, but its intent is good.  You can tell me that Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life, and that church is a high priority, for you. But it’s by looking at your checkbook and day planner that I will see if you really mean it. When something matters to us, we give it our undivided attention.  That’s all that the “sanctification of time” is about. It’s about creating space and clearing the decks for God. Thomas Merton said that he became a monk not because he wanted to find God, but rather because he wanted God to find him, and he knew that his life was so cluttered and crowded, that it would only by stepping into the silence and solitude of a monastery that he would find the stillness where he could be found.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine who does youth ministry sent me a picture of a youth gathering at his church. At his feet on the platform from which he spoke were the cell phones of all the students who were there. He told me that when he told them that they were going to become still to know God, he said that they spontaneously came forward one by one and laid their cell phones at the altar as their way of telling God that they were serious about what was going on there, that they were there to listen for what God wanted to say to them, and that no text or phone call was going to get in the way of that. My friend told me that this was the turning point of his ministry with them. This was when they finally got serious about knowing God and making God known. He couldn’t legislate it. No sign on the wall would about turning off their cell phones would have accomplished it. He couldn’t scold or shame them into doing it. It had to be a response of the hunger and thirst for God they felt in their hearts, and this is what Robert Milligan was talking about in his call for the “sanctification of time” as part of the way that we prepare ourselves for the encounter with God in Christ that the Lord’s Supper promises.

Conclusion

The whole point of the spiritual discipline of self-examination before Communion is not to establish our righteousness, but to diagnose our need. The Lord’s Table is not like a ride at Six Flags with a sign out front that says you must be this tall to get on. If our process of self-examination before Communion leaves like the Pharisee Jesus talked about who went up to the Temple to pray and who “stood and prayed this with himself – ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector, I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I get’” – then we are doing it all wrong! Where it’s supposed to bring us is to our knees where just like the Publican in the story Jesus told would not even “lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner’” (Luke 18:9-14). It’s the stanza of an old Gospel hymn that best describes where our self-examination before Communion is supposed to bring us –

“Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.”

John Hunter, a 19^th century English Congregational minister, wrote one of the most widely used worship books for the churches of his day. Among its resources is an invitation to the Lord’s Table that I believe strikes exactly the “right” in tone and content –

“Come to this sacred Table,

not because you must,

but because you may:

come to testify not that you are righteous,

but that you sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ,

and desire to be His true disciples.

Come, not because you’re strong,

but because you’re weak;

Not because you have any claim on Heaven’s rewards,

but because in your frailty and sin you stand

in constant need of Heaven’s mercy and help.”

The right inward disposition to have for a “worthy” participation in the Lord’s Supper is to come –

“Out of our bondage, sorrow and night…
Into Christ’s freedom, gladness, and light…
Out of our sickness, into His health,
Out of our want and into His wealth,
Out of our sin and into Christ’s self…                                                                                                           

Out of our shameful failure and loss…
Jesus, I come to Thee.”

I can’t do this for you, and you can’t do this for me. There’s nowhere to go for a Communion Token that will guarantee you an encounter with the living Christ or automatically provide you with an experience of saving grace. In that story Jesus told about the two men who went up to the Temple to be with God, only one of them went home in right relation with God, and that was the one who prayed: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Our weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper as a church is the Gospel moment when –

“Upon the cross of Jesus our eyes at times can see
The very dying form of One Who suffered there for us…”

And where –

“…from our stricken hearts with tears two wonders we confess;
The wonders of redeeming love and our unworthiness.”

“Dawdling Beside an Empty Tomb” | Acts 1:8-14

It was 1966. I was an acolyte – an “altar boy” – at my family’s Episcopal Church in Southern California. It was Holy Week. There were lots of services, and we’d just finished the biggest one of them all, Easter Sunday morning worship with all the smells and bells. It was a grand production, even for a small church like ours. We were back in the Sacristy – the room where we robed and kept all the things that worship in a church like that like requires – and as our priest struggled to get himself out of his vestments, I heard him mutter under his breath – “Thank God that’s over!”

Having run the gauntlet of Holy Week services myself as a local church minister for some 50 years (4 of them right here with you), I understand what he meant. He was tired. He just wanted to go home. Eat some chocolate. Have a martini. Get a good night’s sleep. The Church Year is a marathon that ministers run from Advent at the end of November to Easter Sunday in the Spring, and if they are doing their jobs right, then they will stagger across the finish line come Easter Sunday, and collapse exhausted. They’re done, I get it, I really do. But here’s the problem – Biblically, Easter isn’t the finish line. The Gospel story wasn’t over when Jesus got up on the third day. There was still more to come!  He still had things to do!

2 weeks from today it will be Pentecost Sunday, and in the Gospel scheme of things, Pentecost is what Jesus did next. Spiritually, Pentecost is a high holy day on par with Christmas and Easter. In fact, it’s Pentecost that makes Christmas and Easter more than just a recital of ancient history. As an Eastern Orthodox Bishop told a meeting of the World Council of Churches back in 1968 – “Without the Holy Spirit: God is far away, Christ stays in the past, the Gospel is a dead letter, and the Church is just (another human) organization… But with the Holy Spirit: God is with us, in us, the Risen Christ is present, the Gospel is the power of life, and the Church is a fellowship with the Living God.”

At the beginning of the Gospel of John we’re told that Jesus Christ came to do two things. He came as the Lamb of God to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). That’s what we remember and celebrate in the worship of Holy Week. But we’re also told at the beginning of John that Jesus Christ came “to baptize us with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33), and this is what the church will remember and celebrate on Pentecost Sunday.

It’s “inconceivable,” E. Stanley Jones once said, that God would “lay before us the amazing charter of a new life” in Jesus Christ, and then fail to give us the one thing that makes it all possible, namely the indwelling and empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. But this is exactly what happens when we act as if Easter is the end of the story. When we dawdle beside the empty tomb and don’t follow the Risen Christ to where He goes next, or pay attention to what He does next, then our Christianity is going to be unnecessarily and unfortunately truncated.

H. Wheeler Robinson (1872 – 1945), an English Baptist preacher who taught Old Testament at Oxford University throughout the first half of the 20^th century. In 1913, during a very serious illness, Dr. Robinson’s faith failed him. The truths of Christianity that he had preached to others failed to provide him with the peace, strength, and hope  he so desperately needed in his hour of greatest need. Lying in his sickbed, Dr. Robinson said that his faith was like a great big balloon that was hovering above him just beyond his reach, and while a cord trailed down from that balloon, he didn’t have the strength to grab hold of it.

Well, Dr. Robinson eventually got better, and when he was finally back on his feet, he devoted himself to figuring out what had gone wrong. Why had his faith failed him when he desperately needed what faith promises, and his 1928 book – “The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit” – was his answer. From careful research and prayerful soul searching, Dr. Robinson concluded that while he’d held to the form of religion, he’d had no real experience of its power, and the reason why was because he’d neglected what the New Testament says about the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

This is what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit takes what God in Jesus Christ did for us 2000 years ago and applies it to our hearts now. But when we get to Easter and think that’s all there is, we wind up in the same troubling place where Dr. Robinson found himself, with a faith that while true enough, isn’t real in our lived experience. It’s theoretical. Oh, we “believe” in the Holy Spirit, but we don’t “know” the Holy Spirit. It’s been my experience that we feel this absence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and in the life of the church, in three ways. First, we feel it in our poor sense of assurance. Second, we feel it in the slow pace of our personal transformation. And third, we feel it in our lack of urgency to get on with the work that the Risen Christ has left for us to do.

Assurance is that inner sense that we truly belong to God. The New Testament tells us that when we first believe, the Holy Spirit indwells us and begins to bear an inner witness that we really do belong to Him (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15-17). This is not “head knowledge,” a matter of having some information, but “heart knowledge,” a matter of knowing that something is true in the depths of our being.

Thomas Goodwin, an English Puritan theologian and preacher from the 17^th century, described it as a father and his son walking down a country road together. As they walk, that boy knows that his father loves him. This is not in doubt. But then, out of nowhere, that father drops to his knees, gathers his boy up into his arms, smothers him with kisses, and tells him that he loves him. Then, that father stands up and continues to walk down the road beside his son. Now, that boy knew that his father loved him before this display of affection, but now he feels it in his bones. That’s what assurance is, and that’s what the Holy Spirit does. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and when we don’t have it, it usually means that we’re neglecting the Holy Spirit. The slow pace of our moral and spiritual transformation is another sign of a neglect of the Holy Spirit.

God loves us just the way we are, but God loves us way too much to leave us like that. Once we’ve become Christians, there begins a lifelong process of being a Christian. The decision of faith we ask people to make as a church involves a double commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. When we say that “Jesus Christ is our Savior,” what we’re saying is that we have given Him our sins. We’re looking to Christ for forgiveness and for some peace of heart and mind. And when we say that “Jesus Christ is our Lord,” what we’re saying is that we are giving Him our lives. We’re inviting Him in to begin that lifelong work of transforming us into His image and changing us bit by bit and step by step into His likeness. The failure to grow, or for this process of moral and spiritual transformation to slow or even stall, is a result of our neglect of the Holy Spirit, and so is the reluctance of a church to get on with her mission.

One of the first things that Pope Francis said right after he became the leader of the Catholic Church back in 2013 was that when the Holy Spirit shows up the church is going to be pushed outward and onward, and that the church wasn’t going to like it one little bit! “The Holy Spirit annoys us,” the Pope said, and that’s because the Holy Spirit is just so “pushy.” We tend to associate the Holy Spirit with warm fuzzy feelings, but the Holy Spirit agitates us too.

In our Scripture reading this morning from the first chapter of the book of Acts, the Risen Christ told His disciples right before the day of Pentecost that they would receive “power” when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and that they would then become His witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, expanding outwards to Judea, to Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). These ever-widening circles of influence and impact are the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit pushes the church past its current walls to those who are standing just outside them so that they too might be included. The Holy Spirit makes mission happen, and when it isn’t happening, well, you can be pretty sure that it’s because the Holy Spirit is being resisted, grieved, or even quenched by the church.

It’s the awareness of “something missing” felt in our lack of assurance, in the slow pace of our moral and spiritual transformation, and in the inertia of the church in her mission, that prepares us for the “something more” that the experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit brings into our lives. It’s when we hunger and thirst for the reality of the things that we say we believe are true that we start to ask, and knock, and seek, and that’s when Jesus said that the fullness of the Holy Spirit will be given to us (Luke 11:13). In our Scripture reading this morning, right before taking His leave of the disciples, the Risen Christ sent them to their knees. “They returned to Jerusalem,” Luke tells us, “went to the upper room, …and with one accord they devoted themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:12-14).

Just as the Church uses the four weeks before Christmas to get Christians ready for their annual remembrance of Christ’s birth, and the 40 days before Easter to get Christians ready for their annual remembrance of Christ’s resurrection, so the church has traditionally used the nine days before Pentecost to get Christians ready for their annual remembrance of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. There are some things God does for us whether we ask Him or not. I’ve never asked God for gravity. I’ve never gotten up in the morning worried about whether or not gravity was going to be in effect that day! Gravity is one of those “creation gifts” that God gives whether we’re aware of it or not. But the gift of the fullness of the Holy Spirit is different.  It’s one of the “salvation gifts” that the Bible says we’ve got to ask for specifically, and even repeatedly. This is why Jesus sent His disciples back to the Upper Room to ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit’s fullness for the nine days before Pentecost, and why they with one accord they devoted themselves to prayer.

Jeffrey Simmons was an Episcopal Priest who got irritated when some of his church members kept pestering him to go on this retreat where he could “get the Holy Spirit.” He finally agreed to go, not to get the Holy Spirit mind you, but to get those church members off his back. Long before he got to the retreat center, Jeffrey had already decided that he wasn’t going to get cornered, he wasn’t going to let anybody there pray for him. So, Jeffrey found a quiet out-of-the-way garden at the retreat center where he could hide, and that’s where he spent his retreat – hiding!  Still, the Holy Spirit found him.

“Sitting with my back against the trunk of a tree,” Jeffrey wrote later, “I tried to sort out my feelings. I felt trapped, pressured, manipulated… but as the sunlight sparkling through the cool green leaves started to calm me, I became aware of the fact that I (also) felt a little curious, and maybe even a little bit ashamed of myself for not being more (spiritually) adventurous. The whole message of the retreat was – ‘God wants to have a closer and more productive relationship with you, and you can have it if you will just open yourself to receive it.’ I couldn’t argue with that… so I sat under that tree, and I prayed the hardest I had ever prayed in my life, ‘Dear God,’ I prayed, ‘if you have something more for me that I don’t have right now, I’ll take it.’”

Jesus Christ never intended for us to live the Christian life or to do the work of the Church all by ourselves. “You will receive power,” the Risen Christ told His disciples, “when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,” and the coming of that promised Holy Spirit is what the day of Pentecost is all about. But we’ll miss the it if we approach Pentecost as just another one of those days when the church asks us to remember something that happened a long time ago. You see, more than just an historical event, Pentecost is an experience that’s supposed to be repeated in the heart of every believer and in the life of every church – but we’ve got to want it.

Jesus said that our Heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask, and then He sent His disciples back to the Upper Room to pray for the Holy Spirit to come and “clothe them with power from on high.”  In fact, the Rosen Christ told His disciples not to budge until they had been filled with the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. Easter is not the end of the story, there’s something more, and if you sense that “something more” as “something missing” in your life, then it’s time to pray – “Dear God, ‘if you have something more for me that I don’t have right now, I’ll take it.’” Amen.

When the World comes Apart

Death is an intruder, an uninvited guest who crashes the party. We don’t choose the times when death comes, or the places where death comes, or the way that death comes, or the people for whom death comes. Death just comes. It stalks us our whole lives long, and then one day it reaches out and grabs hold of us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Two of my son’s classmates from high school died this week. He’s shattered. Thirty-somethings are not supposed to be grieving the deaths of the people they grew up with. Grandparents – yes. Aunts and uncles – yes. Even parents – yes. But not the people you went through school with as a kid, people who have finally figured out who they are and what they want from life, and who are just beginning to make some meaningful strides in the direction of that future they have claimed for themselves. To be taken then is especially cruel. There is a special anguish to the death of someone who has just begun to live. The death of a thirty-something underscores the sinister nature of death, why it’s called our “enemy” (I Corinthians 15:26).

The author of Hebrews said that we live our entire lives as human beings in the bondage of our fear of dying (2:15). Vitezslav Gardavsky (1923 – 1978), the Czech poet, playwright, and philosopher, traced the outlines of this familiar fear when he hauntingly wrote – “That I die means that I cannot complete my work. I will no longer see those I have loved, and I will no longer experience beauty or sorrow. The unrepeatable music of this world will no longer ring in my senses; never again will I anywhere or in any way move out beyond myself.” Death destroys and denies. It strikes at the very heart of what we say we believe is true and value as good. Death, especially an early death, is a psychic fruit basket upset. It jumbles things.

When our worlds fly apart, the very first thing we need to do is to find the eye of the storm, the still point at the center around which things spin, and where we can be held secure. In the Eastern Church, praying the “Trisagion” is a reliable way of getting there. The “Trisagion” (The “Thrice Holy”) is a prayer that says –

“Holy God,

Holy Mighty,

Holy Immortal,

have mercy on me/us.”

The Eastern Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov explained the meaning of this three-fold invocation of the name of God –

“Holy God –

The Father, the source of holiness is the Holy;

Holy Mighty (and strong) –

The Son, who triumphs over death, is the Strong;

Holy (and) Immortal –

The Holy Spirit, the breath of life, is the Life-Giver.”

The Eastern Church prays this prayer at the moment of catastrophes. It is prayed in the burial service when the body is interred. It’s a prayer that expresses the Church’s faith in the resurrection, the re-establishment of what is normal, what they describe as its “ontological healing.”

According to the “Shepherd of Hermas,” an early Christian text, it is “the name of God that sustains the world.” As the Christ hymn of Colossians 1 explains, “In Him all things hold together” (verse 17). It is through prayer that we seek the experience of this equilibrium, and the “Trisagion” prayer is a specific way of seeking this healing of our woundedness. It’s a way of restoring order to the disarray. It’s a way of asking for peace in the storm by naming the God who stills the wind and calms the sea.

When our days “collapse into chaos” and we are left feeling helpless and hopeless, praying the “Trisagion” it is a way of deliberately placing ourselves and the world back into the hands of the God who made us, who loves us, and who is saving us. This act clears a space big enough for hope to sprout and for ways of helping to break forth.

What the Church wants you to know when there is an unexpected death…

First, stop kidding yourself, and start expecting your death. Every year on Ash Wednesday we get smudged with ashes, a sign of penance and mortality, and we are told straight-up that we are going to die. We are numbered among the things that are passing away as the liturgy says, and spiritual wisdom comes from numbering our days (Psalm 90:12). Every unexpected death is a chance for us to wake up (Luke 13:4). [P.S. – There are no unexpected deaths…]

Second, come to terms with what it is that Christianity is about. The way our Bibles are put together helps us see how underneath and behind all its different stories, characters, ideas. and instructions, there’s a unifying theme, an organizing principle. It’s said that what’s in the Bible solves a problem and answers a question, and it is unmistakably clear to me that the question that the Bible answers, the problem that it solves is death, physical death, certainly, but especially spiritual death. The Bible opens with a warning about what causes death (Genesis 2:17). It closes with the death of death (Revelation 19:14-15), and the promise of a time when death will be no more (Revelation 21:4). And in between that opening and closing, it tells a story that climaxes with Christ dying on a cross and being raised from the dead on the third day. The center of gravity for the Christianity that I know is John 11:25 about how Christ is the resurrection and the life and how that means that we will never die, and Romans 8:31-39 about how because Christ died and was raised that nothing, not even death, will have the power to separate us from the love of God. Because of this, we can trust ourselves and our loved ones when death comes, God made us. God loves us. God holds us. God can be trusted. Christ proves it.

Third, use the fact that you are going to die to rightly order your priorities and values right now. It’s been pointed out that, “No one on his deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at work!” This popular proverb underscores the counsel of Ephesians 5:16 to “make the most of the time.” When we know that we aren’t going to be here forever, or even for very long in the grand scheme of things, it can “concentrate the mind wonderfully,” as Samuel Johnson put it. This is why Jesus talked about laying up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21), and why Paul spelled out what it is that “endures” when everything else passes away – faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love” (I Corinthians 13:13). Cultivating the eternal perspective will invest us in the things that last. Stop thinking that you’ll get to it in time. Time is not guaranteed.

Fourth, keep your bags packed. That’s how good Pope John XXIII put it in his spiritual journal. He said that he tried to live every day knowing that it could be his last, and that he would have to give “a strict account of his thoughts, words, and actions” to the One who sets the standards for what’s good, true, and beautiful. Knowing this is why the last request in the Order for Evening Prayer that I have most often prayed is that we might be given the grace “always to live in such a state that we may never be afraid to die; so that, living and dying, we might be thine.” And this is why in the spiritual tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy, the faithful are taught to pray daily “for the completion of our lives in peace and repentance,” and “for a good account before the awesome judgment seat of Christ.”

In his little book “On the Theology of Death” (Herder and Herder, 1961), the giant 20th century Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (1904 – 1984), pointing to the way that the two thieves on the crosses beside Jesus died, noted that death can be extinction or fulfillment. We all run the course of our lives toward the same finish line of death, but we don’t all run towards it in the same way. Some run “protestingly,” while others run “lovingly and trustingly.” We can experience the end of life as a matter of “falling into the emptiness and the powerlessness of death as remoteness from God,” or as “a falling into the hands of the living God, who is called Father.” And what it will be for us, he said, is fixed by our free choices for or against God now. Not to think about death because it is an unsettling thought to us, is not to take “this earthly life with radical seriousness,” and that would be a terrible waste, and such a shame.