Three Hours of Silence

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. – Luke 23:44-45a

Early in my ministerial career I was blessed to discover the Abbey of the Genesee , a Trappist monastery in western New York.  The monks of the Abbey, in addition to praying for the world and the church, also make available a retreat house for anyone who wants to spend time in silence and solitude, time alone with God.   So for the past nearly thirty years, I’ve made an annual trip to the Abbey for a monastic retreat.

All you get at the retreat house is a small room with a bed in it, a desk, a chair, a lamp and a hook on the wall to hang your clothes.  They also feed you three meals a day for one low price.  There aren’t any daily programs to attend, no special speakers you are obligated to hear.  It’s a monastic retreat; silence is what you go there for – silence to listen to God.

And you get this silence in spades. You don’t talk much to the other retreatants, even when you eat together in the meal hall.  There may be some classical music playing in the background or, on a few occasions, I’ve heard some old taped lecture by Henri Nouwen or Thomas Merton.  But that’s the extent of it.  It’s what the monastery offers to a noisy world and they try hard to keep it that way.

I have, over the years, come to love the Abbey.  It is, for me, a sanctuary from the clatter of the world.  It is a holy, simple place where the typical distractions of most days are absent, and where – because of this pervasive, intentional quietness – I find I can hear God almost as if I have put on my special noise-canceling headphones with the plug end poking right into heaven’s Ipod.

Silence is, of course, not an end in itself.  Not for the Christian anyway.  The practice of silence – and its first cousin, solitude – is the creation of a physical context for praying.  We create quiet places, we carve out silent times, to hear God better. I am quite thankful for religious communities like the monks at Genesee that have helped people like me to cherish the discipline of silence.

The years of retreats to the Abbey have taught me a lot about the practice and spiritual value of silence. I admit that my own temperament probably lends itself to appreciating quietness apart from its historical place in the schedule of spiritual disciplines.  We introverts – introverts in the Jungian sense, that is – need time and space apart from other people to process our thoughts and energize ourselves.  That reason alone has been enough to keep me going back there over the years.

Still, silence as a created spiritual practice is more than a respite for the inner-directed weary.  Silence is, in the big picture of the Christian’s life with God, what you do to get away from the world.  In silence you give yourself the chance to hear the still, small voice of God in a heart-to-heart way about things that you could not otherwise hear in your usual distracted, busy, raucous life in the world.

I am, if you can’t tell by now, an energetic proponent of the practice of silence for the Christian.  I feel strongly about this for the reasons I’ve already given.  But there’s another reason why the lover of God ought to be conscientious about practicing silence.  The reason is found in our scripture lesson for today.

Luke 23 tells the story of the crucifixion of Jesus.  There is the carrying of the cross by Simon of Cyrene.  There is the raising up of three crosses upon Calvary.  There are the two criminals who book end Jesus, the one penitent, the other still recalcitrant.  There is the nailing of the sign: “This is the King of the Jews.” And finally, spoken are the last words of our Lord – “Into your hands, Father, I commend my spirit” – and his death.

In this moment of commitment and death, the sky turns dark even though it is noon.  Luke says it stayed dark for the next three hours.  Three hours of darkness in the middle of the day.  And in the darkness, the only words that were spoken were by a truthful Roman guard who said, “Surely this man was innocent.”

Most of the people who watched the executions went home in deep sorrow, Luke wrote.  The only ones who stayed were Jesus’ closest friends.  They watched in silence as their friend, Lord, and Master died slowly for the sins of the world.

Silence reigned that day for three hours. There was nothing to say except the obvious and already stated, “He was innocent.”

Nothing to say.  But much to hear.  In that silence of the first Good Friday, God spoke to the world and said the most important thing he ever said, before or since.  In the three hour silence God revealed the brokenness of his heart for the world he created and which had become rebellious and estranged.

In the silence of those 180 minutes, the Master of the Universe said to his creation, “I love you.  The distance between us is more than I can bear. Come home, please.”  It was spoken in the silence of a darkened sky and to a world that wept at what it had done to God.  Never was a silence so loud and full of meaning.

If we do not make time as matter of course for quiet times with God to pray, to hear, to converse heart-to-heart, to hear God’s directing words as we make our way along this pilgrimage of life, this story of Luke 23 suggests rather strongly that God will create the silence for us and in spite of us.  God often has something to say to us of infinite importance and he will be restrained for only so long.

My guess is that some of us already know this to be true. Some of us know all too well the grand silence of grief when a loved one dies and leaves a great big emptiness in our hearts.  Some of us have known the silence that followed the end of a job, the loss of a business, the sheriff’s sale of our home. Others have known the silence that follows the failure of a marriage, a runaway teenager, a diagnosis of cancer, an unfair assassination of our character.

Silence of any length is, for some of us, uncomfortable. The sustained silence that follows pain and suffering, therefore,  can be downright terrifying.  We give ourselves a chance to hear God in the grand silences of tragedy if we have trained the ears of our hearts to hear him in the smaller controlled silences of a disciplined life.

So do not think for a moment that, in silences that are so grand, so dark, so Golgotha-like, that God has withdrawn his presence from you.  It may feel very much like God has abandoned a person in the darkest, most silent times of life.  And a person would be forgiven if they wondered if indeed he had – Jesus himself asked aloud the same question under the same circumstances:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Still, it may be that you’re just not used to listening in the silences of your own creation, of your own devotional life.  In every silence, God speaks to those who would listen.  You can take it to be true:  the larger the silence and the blacker the darkness, the more important the words of God we will hear.

— Preached on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at First UMC, Shelby Ohio, as part of the community Lenten series.

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Fishing with Nets

Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.  But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” – Luke 5:5

Our scripture lesson today is one of the early stories in Jesus’ ministry where he calls Simon Peter, James, and John to follow him.  These three were partners in a fishing business in Capernaum.  Jesus met them by the water as they were tying up loose ends after a night of fishing.  As the story goes, Jesus asked if he could step into one of their boats.  He wanted room to teach the crowd of people who had gathered around him as he was standing on the shore.  After he had finished teaching, he remained in the boat and told Peter to push off from the land and do some more fishing.

The immediate problem was that the fishing trio had just come in from an unproductive and unsatisfying night of work.  They hadn’t caught anything, and, presumably, the nets and gear were already cleaned and put away. They were ready to go home and rest.

Peter protested mildly. He was a professional fisherman, after all, and Jesus was only a carpenter.  But to his credit, Peter did as Jesus suggested.  In fact, the gospel quotes Peter as saying:  “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”  They shove off, cast their nets where Jesus says to throw them, and sure enough, they pull in the biggest catch they’ve ever had.

The last scene in the story is of the three Galilean fishermen walking away from their boats to follow Jesus.  Jesus says that from then on they would still be fishermen, but fishers of men.

The church has long used this story of the miraculous catch of fish as a jumping-off point for evangelism.  Countless churches have had men’s outreach groups named “The Fishermen’s Club” or something like it. Many a Christian has worn a small piece of jewelry in the shape of a small fish hook as a reminder of their calling to invite others to follow Jesus. (They should be nets, of course, but the intention is there.)  And children and adults alike have sung songs about it: “I Will Make You Fishers of Men,” “Keep Your Lure in the Water,” and others.

Evangelism is certainly one of the things the church ought to do.  Understood rightly, it’s one of the great privileges we Christians have: to offer to others the same good news we have received. Christianity, unlike the exclusive, ethnic, and sometimes secretive religions of both Jesus’ and our time, is an open faith.  Anyone who wants to believe the story and come into the family of God can do so.

Evangelism is nothing more than telling the story of God’s redeeming love in Christ to people who might want to hear and believe it.  In fact, the word comes from two Greek words:  eu, which means good, and angelion, which means message or news. So, to be an evangelist is, quite literally, a story-teller with a good ending or one who reports good news.

What Jesus did when he connected fishing on the Sea of Galilee with “fishing for men” was to say that he intended Peter, James and John to be story-tellers like he was.  This good news/story-telling is a lot like casting a net into the waters, Jesus says.  You cast your net and you pull it in and you see what you caught. This is how we are going to get more people to follow us.

As an interesting and not unrelated aside, this imagery of casting something broadly is reflected also in the parable of the sower – another story often used for evangelistic efforts.  That story, you will remember, is told in all three synoptic gospels. (In Luke it’s in chapter 8.)  It is about seed that is spread – broadcast, really – on different kinds of ground, some of which is fertile and some which is not.

So some seeds sprout and grow into larger plants and some do not.  But the seed represents the good news of God.  The sower is anyone who tells the story.  Whether any seed germinates and grows is dependent upon the quality of soil – the spiritual sensitivity of the hearer.

Evangelism, in our day, has often gotten connected with the modern skills of salesmanship, marketing, and public relations.  These are highly developed, finely focused means for selling the products and services of our day.  And the church has not been uncreative, lacking, or slow in trying to use them.

I saw recently in southwest Ohio a church that made it clear just what kind of people they were trying to reach.  On its brightly lighted sign along the highway was the offer of free Starbucks coffee if you came inside.  Note they weren’t simply offering free coffee, as other (unrefined? boorish?) churches might do; it was Starbucks coffee. Clearly these people knew who they wanted in their church.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I happen to like Starbucks coffee and buy it often.  But I am not unaware of its upscale image.]

My own denomination recently began a public relations campaign called Rethink Church.  And on the outside of the brochures about the campaign are photographs of hard wooden pews in an empty building — signifying many of our present churches, I gather.   On the inside of the flyer, however, are pictures of handsome, fit, successful young twenty-somethings all smiling.  Rethink Church is about getting these young, prosperous, and good-looking people inside the doors.

I’m all in favor of encouraging the younger generation to find their place in the kingdom, of course.  But what I’m really in favor of (and I think God is with me on this) is everyone else being inside, too.  How about a brochure with pictures of the disabled, or the overweight, or the imprisoned, or the poorly dressed, or .. well, you get the idea. I mean if you want to fasten your sights on some people more than others, let’s go after the ones Jesus tended to go after – the ones the world tends to ignore.

You see what happens when you trade the images of fishing and farming for marketing and sales, don’t you?  You trade the broadcasting of seeds and nets and leaving the results of what you get in the hands of God for the increasingly narrow selling of your message to those whom you alone have decided you want in your church.

I am not so sure Jesus intended his disciples to be so focused.   This broadcasting of seeds and the throwing of nets may not be simply primitive illustrations of evangelism which can be tossed lightly aside by us.  They may very well be the appropriate illustration of what Jesus meant we are to do and how we are to do it.

We have a story to tell, so tell it, Jesus says. Leave the catch up to me.  Even though I’m a carpenter, I know where the fish are better than you do.

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At the Table Together

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. — I Corinthians 11:20

Among the stories in the news this past week was the awarding of the Summer Olympic games in 2016 to the city of Rio de Janeiro.  The Brazilians are happy, of course, and so is the whole South American continent since this will be the first time the Olympics will take place down there.

Rio had been in contention with Madrid, Tokyo, and Chicago.  From what I’ve read, a great deal of effort and money is expended by every hopeful city with the hope of convincing the Olympic Committee that they’re better than all the other cities for hosting the games.

What made this year’s choice of Rio de Janeiro such news was also the quick exit of Chicago as a possible site.  It was the first to be “voted off the island” despite the presence of a stellar group of Windy City representatives such as Oprah and President and Mrs. Obama.  There were those in the media who took it for granted that the charm and prestige of such highly visible Americans would lead to a slam dunk for Chicago to be chosen.

But it did not happen and, ever since, the hometown writers have been expending no small amount of ink wondering what went wrong.  Chicago does not even have the luxury of having come in a close second.  It was last among the four candidates.

Nobody likes to lose of course, but Americans seem to be excessively prone to hand wringing and second guessing when it happens to us. We are a competitive people, you know.  Whether it’s in the school yard, at election time, in the market place, or even in church, we play to win. And when we play hard, we take it hard when we lose.

Still, for many of us, this life of winning and losing – this world we have created of winners and losers – is so familiar to us that it’s hard to imagine life being any other way.  If we win, we celebrate.  If we lose we take it hard and determine to win the next time.  Second place is first loser. The world, we have come to believe not a little simplistically, is made up of two kinds of people – winners and losers.  It’s how we categorize the members of the human race.

We take this situation for granted and so easily that it often comes as a surprise – if we understand it at all – to read in the scriptures that in the kingdom of God, the last will be first, the weak are the strong, the givers are the real getters, and the dying are those who are finally learning what it means to live.

This is not an idea that is easily digested even by those of us who are, by confession, citizens of the Kingdom. In fact, I am of the opinion that there is not an idea in all of scripture that is resisted so regularly as the one that says that coming in last is God’s idea of true victory.

There is still a lot of America in us American Christians.

But it’s in there, this upside-down kingdom idea of success.  It’s plain as day and not infrequently mentioned.

It doesn’t matter how many motivational speakers you listen to – even those who claim to Christian preachers – about working hard and playing hard so you, too, can be a winner.  We hear quoted Philippians 4:13:  “I can do all things in Christ” as if it that’s all there is to the gospel.  Nope, in the kingdom, things aren’t like that.  For God, you’ve already got too much of the world in you.  What you need more than anything is to lose a lot of it just to make some room for the spiritual treasures God wants to give you.

All of this is what lies behind the Apostle’s words to the Corinthians when he wrote to them about the disturbing way some of them were conducting the Lord’s Supper.

It seems that there were, among the members of the church, some who were relatively wealthy.  When these wealthy Christians came to worship and the sacrament of Holy Communion was offered, they brought picnic baskets full of food for themselves and just for themselves.  They spread the table cloths, laid out the good china and silver, set the bottle of wine in the ice bucket and ate a full meal.

Such an ostentatious display of wealth was bad enough, but they did it while other members, poorer members, looked on and were not invited to share in the bounty.  They called the meal the Lord’s Supper, but it was nothing like it.  It was exclusive and divisive and had no place in the church.   What did Paul think of this?  He said it wasn’t the Lord’s supper at all.  He said that they were doing more harm than good.

It’s hard to imagine a church doing more harm than good.  Even with our faults, we’re still usually on the plus side as far as being a good thing for the world.

Still, that is exactly how Paul described the state of affairs in Corinth.  In the church, there is not supposed to be winners and losers, hungry and well-fed, rich and poor, quick-witted and dim-witted, popular and ostracized.  The church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be an alternative community – visible and open to the rest of the world – where the old categories of losers and winners fall away in favor of brothers and sisters.  We’re supposed to be where people go who are tired of getting beaten up by the never-ceasing competition of the world.

More harm than good?  Indeed, this is how Paul describes a church that still looks and acts too much like the world.  For Paul, the world doesn’t need a church that merely appropriates its competitive ways even if it quotes the Bible as it does so.   When a church acts like the world, it is  deceiving the very people to whom it is supposed to be witnessing.  It would be better if such a church did not exist at all, wrote the Apostle.

What the world needs is a better way, indeed a different way altogether, of finding meaning and purpose in this short life we have on earth.  The losers in the world’s games of life – and there are many – need to know there is someplace where they can go and find the sustenance and acceptance and love they are not getting in the world.  In the Kingdom there are no winners and losers because everybody is at the table.

Paul thought it was about time the Corinthians did as much. If he were among us today, I’m certain he would think the same about us.

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No Big Thing

Communion Meditation For April 5, 2009 – Palm Sunday

Text: Mark 11:1-11

They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?”  They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go.  – Mark 11:4-6

Bethany and Bethphage were two small villages less than two miles outside the city of Jerusalem.  From these two towns began the journey of Jesus into the city, the journey we call the Triumphal Entry and from which begins the story of our Lord’s Passion.

These communities lay on the main route from Jericho to Jerusalem and were evidently close together.  Bethany today, on the Mount of Olives, is still a viable suburb of Jerusalem.  It is regularly visited by buses full of Holy Land tourists who are there to see the supposed tomb of Lazarus and the house of Martha and Mary.  In fact, Bethany is now called el-Eizariya, a derivative of the name of Lazarus.

The Bethphage of the gospels, however, is for all practical purposes lost.  Archaeologists suspect it is the spot on the very top of the Mount of Olives where there are some obvious ruins but little else.   But no one knows for sure.  We do know that all four gospels tell the story of the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and all four of them say that it started up on the Mount of Olives in either or both of these two villages.

In Jesus’ day when the Romans were the mighty force they were, triumphal entries into cities – and especially Rome – were not an uncommon sight.  When a Roman army would finish yet another battle and conquer yet another city, thereby adding to the size and prestige of the empire, a parade would be organized in the general’s honor.   The victorious general would lead his army through the gates of a city, parading the captured people who would soon become Roman slaves if they were lucky, or thrown to the lions if not.  A triumphal city entry was an advertisement of the magnificence of the Empire and a warning shot across the bow of any other group 0f people that they could be next.

The New Testament never calls what Jesus did that day a “triumph.”   But it is clear from the things people were saying as they waved palm branches when he passed by: “Hosanna! … Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” and so forth that the early church considered it something like a Roman Triumph.

From the viewpoint of heaven, it was the most glorious triumphal parade the world has ever witnessed, greater than the triumphs of any emperor or general.  It was the one time that Jesus received his due, public praise for being the promised Messiah.  Regardless of what the crowds were hoping for in Jesus – and, truth be told,  they were still hoping for a political leader who would rid the Jews of the yoke of Rome – the words they expressed were appropriate.  Jesus was the “King who comes in the name of the Lord.”

But the parade didn’t last long, really.  Mark says that when Jesus was finally inside the city walls, he went to the Temple — apparently without the crowds – “he looked around at everything” and since it was late, he went back to Bethany with “the twelve.”

From the viewpoint of the world, the “Triumphal Entry” turned out to be relatively insignificant, a blip on the world’s radar screen.   It started in a small Olivet village and ended with an after-hours visit to the Temple.  It wasn’t even big enough to warrant calling out the Roman guards, all Hosannas to the contrary.  (The guards could have come, you know, as seditious as it might have looked.  That they did not is an indication that the whole precession was not very big.)

But from the viewpoint of heaven it was a glorious sight.  It wasn’t the size of the crowd or the time it took to get from Bethphage to the city gate or the lowly donkey Jesus rode or the quiet, crowdless visit to the temple that heaven used to measure its significance.   Heaven never looks at size to evaluate the worth of anything.

In the kingdom of heaven, small things matter greatly.  Small things like mustard seeds and children, the yeast in a loaf of bread and (need we be reminded?) a baby in a manger – these things are enough to change the world and turn around wayward lives.  As the Lord said to Zechariah when Zerubbabel started to rebuild the temple :  “Do not despise these small beginnings….” (4.10)  And as Jesus himself once promised, if we have been faithful over a few things, he will, someday, give us authority over many things.

We don’t normally associate the Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry with the reminder that in the kingdom bigger, noisier, and splashier are not as greatly valued as small, quiet and plain. But that is the real meaning of it, when you think about it.  What was important was that there were a few voices who shouted Hosanna.  There were a few who waved palm branches.  There was one donkey owner who let Jesus ride that day.  And there were twelve disciples who visited the quiet temple grounds with Jesus in the growing darkness of the evening.

Not many of anything.  Nothing big or splashy.  But it was the kingdom of God, the reign of Christ, in a nutshell that day.  Jesus is always happy with a few if they are also happy to see him.

If we had lived back then, would we have been among the few who waved palm branches and cried “Hosanna!”?  Would we have been willing to throw our coats on the ground in front of Jesus as our small way of giving him praise?   We cannot always wait until a larger crowd forms before we decide if Jesus is worth praising and following.  That day may never come in our lifetimes.

But if you find yourself among the few, be glad and be confident.  It’s how many things of the Kingdom appear to be in the world.

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Forty Days

Communion Meditation for
March 1, 2009

Immediately the Holy Spirit compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness. He was there for forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. Mark 1:12-13

The Bible often uses the number forty when it wants to describe a long period of time. Moses spent forty days on Mt Sinai with God. Elijah walked forty days to get to Mt Horeb. God made it rain for forty days and forty nights in the days of Noah, the Hebrews wandered for forty years in the wilderness before they got to the Promised Land and Jonah gave the Ninevites forty days to repent.

So when the gospels tell us that in the early days of the earthly ministry of Jesus, he was led by the Holy Spirit to spend forty days in the desert as preparation, they meant that he spent a fairly long time out there with no other company than God.

Mark only tells us in the scantest of words that Jesus went to the desert for forty days and while he was there, he was tempted by Satan, but also cared for by the angels of heaven. We are compelled to read the other evangelists for more detail. Luke and Matthew fill us in about the particular temptations Jesus faced and his responses to each of them.

It is from this forty days of wilderness experience by Jesus that the early church created the season of Lent. The forty days of Lent is an opportunity for the Christian to increase his or her spiritual discipline. Lent, as you know, runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday; the forty days do not include Sundays – Sundays being mini-Easter celebrations, as it were.

Lent is also a penitential season, a time for sober reflection on and renewed commitment to one’s life with God. The solemnity of Lent leads us to the joyous celebration of Easter.

But why forty days? Why such a long time of spiritual earnestness in the quest for a more prayerful, a more Christ-like life?

Forty days sounds almost quaint to our modern ears, doesn’t it? It’s a nostalgic nod to times past when everything moved more slowly, when everyone had more free time to spend on the needs of personal growth.

It’s not that we are less concerned with our spiritual lives than our ancestors were, of course. It’s just that we are so much more effective, more efficient in everything we do anymore – including spiritual development. Forty days seems like overkill. We can go to a week-end Walk through the Bible seminar, sit in on a one-day marriage enrichment event, or attend three-hour Saturday workshops on prayer and get everything we need. Or so we think. Forty days on one thing? Who has time for that anymore?

But I think our forebears knew something which we moderns often ignore. Spiritual formation is always about more than learning new information on how to pray, how to read the scriptures, or how to get along with spouses. It’s about forming new habits to replace old ones. It’s not about learning something new, it’s about doing something new – or more accurately, becoming someone new.

What they knew and still try to teach us is that we are farther away from the image of Christ than we’d like to think we are. Our sins are more deeply ingrained and have deformed us than we like to admit. And it will take a lot longer time to change old, worldly habits into new heavenly ones than we think it ought to.

Christian discipleship is about more than trusting in the promises of God that will lead us to become happier, wealthier, better adjusted people. If you listen to television preaching, or read only popular devotional books by famous Christian authors, you will almost certainly come away with just such a definition of the Christian life – that the whole purpose of the salvation story is to help us manage our lives more effectively.

The old-timers had no such spiritual fantasies. They knew that the human problem is not about how to manage the old life, but how to crucify it and be reborn anew. For them, they knew how strong was the power of sin and knew even more how essential was the power of the Holy Spirit working over a long period of time in cooperation with our will to move any of us toward even a faint likeness of Christ.

This is, I am sure, the reason Lent is forty days long. It means it takes a long time for God to change us into the sort of people he desires and we do ourselves no favors by being impatient with either him or us.

Friedrich Nietzsche – no Christian, but a wise philosopher nonetheless – once wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is. . . that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

Recognizing this, we give to God the season of lent – a period of time that really means for as long as it takes.

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On the Occasion of My Daughter’s Wedding

Meditation for the Wedding of Elizabeth Stonebraker and Brian Weaver
June 14, 2008

We love because He first loved us. — I John 4:19

I stand here as both one who is familiar with standing behind pulpits and as the father of the bride.  To deliver a message in a public worship gathering – which is what I have done nearly every Sunday morning for the last thirty years – is still a humbling experience for me.

However, to be the father of a daughter and deliver her to the care and future of a young man on her wedding day is not without its emotional freight, either.

My daughter Elizabeth asked me if I would say something today as I did for her sister’s wedding several years ago. I am glad to do so and I will not take long.  I appreciate the advice Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave to promising public speakers:  “Be brief.  Be sincere.  Be seated.”

But giving my daughter to anyone – even a young man with the excellent qualities of Brian Weaver – is not quite the same as giving a sermon.  Other preachers in this assembly may know what I am talking about.   When a sermon turns out to be something less than what one hoped, there is always next Sunday, a chance at redemption.

There are, however, a limited number of daughters for me.  For better or for worse, this is all I’ve got.  When I give this one away, I have no others; she’s the last in a line of two.  I’m not sure I could go through it again, anyway.  It’s no easy task to give away those things you love the most.  And my daughters are, after my wife, those things closest to my heart.

I do want to say before I say anything more how very happy I am that Liz and Brian found each other.  To Brian’s family, let me say without hesitation that both Pam and I are deeply thankful to you that you raised such a fine young man for our daughter.  I hope you feel the same way about her.

They have been together for the past couple of years and, from what I have seen, they act, often, as wise married couples do after many years.  They treat each other with respect, ignore each other when necessary, enjoy doing together many of the same things, and seem to be friends.

They have their own dogs, too, which according to one writer is good practice for marriage life.  Will Stanton once said, “Getting a dog is like getting married.  It teaches you to be less self-centered, to accept sudden, surprising outbursts of affection, and not to be upset by a few scratches on your car.”

The wisdom that goes into successful relationships is not anything that comes naturally, of course.  We Christians believe that what comes naturally is usually nothing but self-serving behavior.  Selfishness is always destructive to relationships and however it plays itself out, it needs to be checked and eventually discarded.  Love, on the other hand, is learned behavior.

What is more, true love is not quickly learned.  “Love seems the swiftest, but is the slowest of all growths,” said Mark Twain.  “No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

If we have learned anything at all about love, it is only because someone has shown us what it looks like.  The most significant teacher of love is, of course, God.  As the New Testament says, “We love because He first loved us.” (I Jn 4:19)   Or to put it another way, anything we know about love, we get it from God.  This is the big story of the scriptures and the promise of the gospel.

But if God is the first teacher of love, it is always a lesson that is mediated through flesh and blood.  Love is never disembodied; it is always incarnate.  We learn about love from those who love us.   We teach about love when we love others.   As the New Testament also says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn 13.35)

Weddings in the popular mind are celebrations of romance.  While I would be the last person to dismiss romance as an insignificant experience for any of us, it is well to keep in mind that the Christian wedding is about not primarily romance, but the virtues of promise keeping.  Romantic love is temporary and emotional.  And while it brings us together, biologically speaking, it is not what keeps us together, spiritually speaking.

What keeps us together as husband and wife is the promise to stay together even at those times when we do not have especially warm, romantic feelings for the other person.  This will happen – Brian and Elizabeth – I assure you.  There will be times in the days to come when you will not want to be married to each other.  I hope not too many, but it happens to the best of us.  I’m just warning you.

But you are making a promise today not to let your feelings, which are always temporary, overcome the gravity of your vows.

When those occasions arise when you would rather not be in the same room with your spouse, you still have to keep your word.  You may want to take the dogs for a walk, for instance.  It’s one way of keeping your promise.  It’s also therapeutic since the dogs always love you no matter what – a godly trait, if I may say so.

Long-married couples can appreciate what Joyce Brothers once said about her own marriage:  “My husband and I have never considered divorce.  Murder sometimes, but never divorce.”

When we keep a promise in the face of difficulties, what we are also doing is giving God the opportunity to help us become more mature people, better people, than we were before whatever it was that bothered us.

There is no maturity in impatience, in mean-spiritedness, in running away at the first sign of trouble.  There is a great deal of personal maturity when people work through difficulties – together and separately – and discover their own set of tools in the creative business of a marriage relationship.

Alfred Adler, the psychologist who began his career with Sigmund Freud and later broke away to start his own school of therapy, once stated, “We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a ‘getaway.’ We cannot love and be limited.”

Marriage is one of God’s great gifts to most of us so we can become better, more mature, more interesting individuals than what we would be all by ourselves.  There is a softening of individual quirks that takes place in a committed, lifelong relationship.  Far from being a limiting, constrictive institution, marriage is the freedom to discover who we truly are and what we can truly become.

It is also a wonderful opportunity to experience a joy that is better than mere happiness.   It is a joy that comes with the knowledge that one is doing God’s will and becoming God’s person. This gift is what we celebrate today with you.

What we are happy about is that God gave you one another to travel this adventure together.  You are two people who are created in God’s image and who, in your commitments, give to yourselves and to God the chance to make you into people who are even more delightful than you are now.

I was serious when I said that you both already exhibit admirable personal qualities in your love for each other.  Everybody who is in the church right now is very, very happy for you.  And we want nothing but God’s best for you in all your life together.   It is up to you, as individuals, now to deliver yourselves to each other as loving, faithful partners in the adventure of true love.

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Plans for the Year Ahead

Communion Meditation
January 4, 2009
Text: Ephesians 1:3-13

His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to
himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. – Ephesians 1:5

My daughter, Elizabeth, asked us several months ago if we would like to go on vacation with her and her husband’s family this coming summer.  They usually go to the beach in North Carolina.  Pam and I like beach vacations so it wasn’t hard to say yes.  But, as you probably know, if you want to go to the Outer Banks in the middle of the summer, you have to make plans in the winter.  Nice beach houses go fast.  So we have.  As of this past week, we have reserved a nice four bedroom house for August right on the ocean.  We are looking forward to it, needless to say.

Perhaps you, too, are making plans for the coming year: plans for vacation, plans to remodel the house, plans to attend your high school reunion, whatever.  As the old saw goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”  January is as good a time as any, and better than most, to think about what you want to do this year.

The Bible, of course, cautions us to hold onto our plans lightly.  Whatever we think we are going to do in the future always has to be qualified with the words, “if the Lord wills.”

The Apostle James wrote, How do you know what will happen tomorrow?  For your life is like the morning fog – it’s here a little while, and then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise you will be boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.  (4:14-16)

So we make plans because it’s the responsible thing to do.  But we do so with a reasonable and faithful caution.  We recognize that God may have some plans for us that just might override our own.

Did you know that God has plans for you and me for this coming year, too?  Whatever we want to do before the year is out, God has in mind some things he wants to accomplish in us and for us. Our scripture lesson for this morning, from Ephesians 1, is all about the plans which God has for those who place their trust in him.

The Apostle Paul says God has had plans for us that date all the way back to the beginning of creation. From long before any of us were born, God’s purpose for us was to be brought into his heavenly family.  Paul wrote, Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. (4-5)

Paul wrote these words to his Ephesian friends because they were evidently wondering what place they, as Gentiles, had in God’s universal purpose for the world.  Everyone knew that the Jews were the chosen people.  Anyone who has read the scriptures knows that Israel has always had a special place in God’s heart.  But what about everyone else?  “What does God have in mind for us Gentiles?” they asked.

This gave Paul the opportunity to explain that, in Christ, everyone is to be considered chosen.  The people of Israel were chosen to bear witness to God and God’s holiness, of course.  But that was only a first step.  Now that Christ has come into the world, Paul says, even Gentiles can know the plans of God.

And what are these plans of God?  Listen again to the Apostle: God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure.  And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.  (9-10)

God’s plans are to bring us together under the authority of Christ.  God wants Jew and Gentile, male and female, Jew and Greek, Democrat and Republican, husband and wife, to find security and hope in the sovereignty of Christ.  God has in mind for the whole world to live under his gracious and loving care.  From the very beginning of creation, when you and I were just a twinkle in God’s eye, God had in mind that we should live together, not in strife and contention, but in love and peace with Christ as our only authority.

It is good to keep these things of God in mind.

We face a year full of unknowns.  We have new leadership in Washington and many of us wonder how this will play itself out here at home and on the world’s stage.  Our economy is troubled and many of us worry about our finances.  Some of us have family concerns. Others of us have job anxieties.  We resolve to improve our health and eat better foods and exercise more.  We determine to save more and spend less.  We want to be more generous in our giving and more liberal with our time to our church and to causes we believe in.  We make plans to go to the beach and enjoy the blessings of family and friends.

It is no bad thing to make plans to improve our lot in life, as we are able to do so.  But everything we plan is to be held with an easy grip.  We make our plans knowing that God has plans, too, plans that might or night not include what we have planned for 2009.  The good news is that whatever this year holds for us, God still holds each of us in the palm of his hand.  He created us out of his love and he purposes each of us to come to know him better than we do now and to love one another more and more.

As Paul wrote …for he chose us from the beginning, and all things happen just as he decided long ago.  (11)

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Praise for Those Who Give Us Wisdom

Communion Meditation for
February 1, 2009
Text: 2 Timothy 3:10-17

You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. – 2 Timothy 3:15

My brother gave me a book for Christmas, The Guide for Guys.  It’s a how-to book.  It has short chapters on how to build a fire, how to deliver a speech, how to survive a bear attack, etc.  The subtitle of the book is “An Extremely Useful Manual for Old Boys and Young Men.”   I am not sure if my brother thinks I am an old boy or a young man, because I am neither.  He may think I’m not very skilled in some basic things about life and wants to help me out.  But whatever his reason, it has been a fun book to read and even learn a few things from.

There are a lot of books in the stores just like it.  You may remember several years ago “Life’s Little Instruction Manual” that seemed to start the trend.  If I remember right, it was written by a man who first wrote down simple instructions about everyday things for his young son to know as he grew up. When the man’s friends found out what he was doing, they said he should publish it.  He did and the book caught on like wildfire.

The present interest in instruction books is probably due to the feeling that we live in a time in which the wisdom of our elders is not being passed down generation to generation like it used to be.  I suppose there are a dozen theories why this is so.  But the one that makes the most sense to me is that our culture, in large measure, is critical and skeptical of things that are not new.  There seems to be an automatic knee-jerk reaction to old ideas, old ways, traditions and institutions.

But the resistance to old ideas often throws out the baby with the bath water.  We’ve also lost the wisdom that came with the preservation of traditions.

In the New York Times this past week, David Brooks wrote about a book he read recently and especially liked.   The book was Hugh Heclo’s On Thinking Institutionally.  Brooks began by quoting from a Harvard University report on the purpose of higher education.  Among other things the faculty at Harvard said:  “The aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presuppositions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”  That’s what the Harvard faculty thinks college ought to do with its students.

David Brooks quoted the report as an illustration of how our modern culture has become resistant, and sometimes hostile, to pre-existing arrangements.  The purpose of being an educated person, according to Harvard, is to question everything you’ve ever been taught.  (One is tempted to ask if that also includes what is taught at Harvard, but that is another issue.)

The individualism that is rampant in modern life emphasizes personal inquiry, personal self-discovery, and personal happiness.  And while doing so, it is also dismissive of anything that isn’t brand new and shiny.

Heclo suggests a better way.  He calls it “institutional thinking.”  In fact, he says that for most of history, civilizations have been built upon a respect for certain institutions as a way of learning how to behave, how to be successful, and how to get along with other people.

Institutions include family, school, and marriage but also embrace professions and crafts.  Brooks summarizes, “Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what we’re supposed to do.  Journalism imposes habits that help reporters keep a mental distance from those they cover.  Scientists have obligations to the community of researchers.  In the process of absorbing the rules of the institutions we inhabit, we become who we are.”

Then he quotes Heclo again:  “The institutionalist has a deep reverence for those who came before and built up the rules that he has temporarily taken delivery of.  In taking delivery, institutionalists see themselves as debtors who owe something, not creditors to whom something is owed.”

I thought about those ideas this past week as I was working with our scripture text for today.

In 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul has written to his young charge, Timothy, about his job as a pastor to his church.  Paul told him that, as a pastor, he must remain faithful to the things has been taught.  That is to say, Timothy is obligated as a Christian teacher and preacher to guard the faith of the church which was given to him, not to change it to suit anyone’s preference – either his or the people he talks to – and to live a Christ-like life as a matter of integrity.

There are treacherous people in the world, Paul says earlier in the chapter, which will question the truth of the gospel.  “You must stay away from people like that,” Paul warns.  These people will be “boastful and proud, scoffing at God … [t]hey will consider nothing sacred.  They will act as if they are religious, but they [will not be] godly people.”  They are “forever following new teachings, but…never understand the truth.”

The Apostle says that the antidote to that spiritual danger is to learn from one’s elders what the truth really is.  Your elders in the faith have taught you the scriptures, he wrote to Timothy.  You can trust the scriptures because you trust the people who taught them to you.  So be thankful for your elders.  They have given you a great gift.  They have taught you what is true.

The prophet Jeremiah said almost the same thing six hundred years before Paul.  He preached to the Israelites on the eve of the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile into Babylon.  Jeremiah could see what was coming and he tried his very best to change the people’s sinful ways.  The people had largely forgotten God and his commandments and had taken to worshiping idols.  Judah’s leaders had stopped trusting in God for protection. Instead, they placed their trust in military might and in political alliances.

All this whoring after the things of the world – gods and powers which have no power at all – will lead to nothing good, Jeremiah said.  Repent and trust in the God of your fathers before it’s too late.

What should the people do?  Here is Jeremiah’s advice:  “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls.”  (6:16)

Old ways are not always the best ways, of course.  Sometimes new things come along and they really are better.  Every time I buy a new car, it’s always better than the one I had before.  It rides nicer, lasts longer, and has more features.

But the things you buy and the things you live by are not at all the same.  The things you live by – the great truths about life and relationships and civilization – the Ten Commandments and the gospel of Christ – these things have been true for a long time.  We chase after the glittering promises and the shiny new gods of the world always to our disadvantage.

What will keep us from being tempted by the flashy new ideas and things of the world?  How can we discern what is eternal from what is momentary?  Well, we could do worse than take the advice of Paul who told Timothy:  [R]emain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you.  You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus.  It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do. (3:14-15, 17)

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