Do Not Doubt

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 20:19:29:

Nicknames are interesting things. Sometimes they seem strange, sometimes they hit the mark, and sometimes we might not even know what they mean or where they came from. And as nicknames go, sports stars often end up with some great nicknames, especially those who are the best of their craft. There is Walter Payton, known as Sweetness, and Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, and Jack Nicholas, the Golden Bear.  But of course, the best nicknames come from baseball.  There is Stan the Man, and Cool Papa Bell  and Double Duty Radcliff. Some nicknames become so famous, like Babe Ruth, Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean that we forget their real first names.  But for every great nickname like Mr. October or Hammerin’ Hank there are also those nicknames that are a little less glorious, a little more likely that people probably wish they would have gone away, like Luke Old Aches and Pains Appling, or Ernie the Schnozz Lombardi, but perhaps the worst nickname belongs to Hugh Mulcahy who, because he never had a winning record in any complete season in which he pitched, was known as Losing Pitcher Mulcahy.  I am sure that if you were to have met Mr. Mulcahy he would not have appreciated you calling him by his nickname and just wished it would all go away.  But just like those nicknames are a little unfair, so too is the nickname that has been forever appended to Thomas, who, for some reason, for 2000 years has been the poster boy for doubt, an idea that is not really fair either to Thomas or to the concept of doubt.

Today we begin a new worship series entitled the nots of Jesus, which has nothing to do with ropes, but instead with the things that Jesus tells us not to do. Normally we talk about the things we’re supposed to do like forgive or feed the hungry or be peacemakers, but there are actually quite a few things Jesus tells us not to do, and so we’re going to spend the next nine weeks, which seems like a lot, but doesn’t cover all of the nots, looking at, interpreting and trying to figure out how we should not be doing certain things. And that’s sort of the point because often the things Jesus says not to do are things that also often cause us to tie ourselves in knots. And so, we’re going to find ways to free ourselves through Christ. And today we start with the injunction that gets read every year after Easter and that is Jesus telling Thomas “do not doubt,” form which Thomas gets his terrible nickname, and so I’d like to take just a moment to give a defense of Thomas, which I think will also help us to get at the subject of doubt and what it means for us.

Evangelical

Here is my message from Sunday. The passages were Acts 2:1-21 and Matthew 28:16-20. It was Pentecost Sunday:

In 1910 a series of pamphlets began to be published, focused out of the Presbyterian Church and Princeton Theological Seminary, it was entitled The Fundamentals, and sought, in their words to state “the fundamentals of Christianity.” Those who subscribed to the ideas being presented in these pamphlets began to be referred to as fundamentalists, which is where that term comes from. But, fairly recently, as these things go, as the term fundamentalist began to be applied to other groups, like fundamentalist Muslims, or those who subscribed to a very strict idea of a religion, with little to no wiggle room to believe other things, and the desire to blow things up to prove their rightness, Christian fundamentalists began to change how they referred to themselves, rejecting that term, and instead calling themselves evangelicals, which, in my opinion, has sort of corrupted that word, and the rest of the church really needs to try and reclaim it from simply meaning fundamentalist. Now it’s not that fundamentalists didn’t also have overlaps with evangelicalism, because they did, but evangelical had meant much more than what it tends to mean now.

And so when I say that the Methodist movement was part of the evangelical movement that doesn’t mean what we tend to think it means currently, instead it was about, much as we’ve talked about already when it comes to Methodist beliefs, about a lived religion that not only sought to make the believer’s life better, to bring about personal transformation, and then from a Methodist perspective to bring about a transformation of the world, but that also sought to spread that message to the world. Or as John Wesley would say, “to spread scriptural holiness across the whole land.” And so, as we already heard, Wesley said that there was no think as private religion, or only personal religion, that it had to be social, and that also entailed spreading and offering the good news to others, and that gets back to an original understanding of being evangelical.

For Thine Is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory Forever. Amen.

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Acts 2:1-21 and Matthew 6:5-13:

Today is Pentecost Sunday which represents the beginning and end of many things. The first is that it represents the end of the season of Easter and the celebration of the resurrection and the beginning of what is known as ordinary time. ordinary in this sense not meaning common, but from the word ordinal, or number, and so next Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost, and so on all the way until we reach Christ the King Sunday and the beginning of Advent in November. It also represents that end of Jesus’ in person ministry on Earth and the beginning of the mission and teaching of the disciples through the formation of the church. It is the end of one way of the disciples experiencing God, through the person of Christ, and a new way of experiencing and knowing God through the gift of the Spirit, because Jesus said that when he ascended to the Father that he would not leave us alone, but would send the Spirit, the advocate to be with us. And so the gift of the Spirit represents a new beginning, and when we receive the Spirit what did Jesus say we would also receive? Power. And that will become even more important in a moment. And as we celebrate our graduates today we recognize that graduation is the end of one phase of life, whether high school or college, and the beginning of something entirely new. Something different. And so these beginnings and ends are also seen as we complete our series on the Lord’s Prayer, not only because we end the series, but because the last part of the prayer leads us from prayer into the world.

As I’ve been saying the Lord’s prayer is typically seen as having six petitions, after the opening of our Father, or literally the Father of us. There are three petitions about God, for God’s name to be hallowed, for God’s Kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done. And then there are three petitions about us, for our daily bread, for forgiveness and for God to lead us and deliver us. And then we close with what is known as the doxology, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever” or sometimes “forever and ever. Amen.” And I’m hoping that you all noticed that this part of the prayer was not included in the prayer as we have heard it from Matthew’s version every week for the past six weeks. Nor is it included in Luke’s version of the prayer found in chapter 11. And why it’s not in the gospels but is found as we say it as Protestants begins to be encapsulated in why it’s called the doxology.

For us know, when we hear the term doxology, many of us think immediately of the song that gets sung after the offering, and it sort of has the same purpose. A doxology is a hymn or phrase added to the end of a psalm, canticle or hymn in praise of God. This has roots in Jewish practice, and so would have been very familiar to Jesus and the disciples. And for most of us, hearing the Lord’s Prayer without the doxology just seems rather strange, and it’s a rather abrupt end. This has led some scholars to speculate that it probably didn’t originally end this way, that because doxologies were used in Jewish prayer that the Lord’s Prayer probably included something similar, even if it wasn’t these exact words, but that his ending wasn’t known to either Matthew or Luke, or more likely to the source from which they got their material. And yet, for those of you who were raised Roman Catholic, it doesn’t sound strange at all because you were used to praying it without the doxology being there.

And so then the question becomes, if Matthew and Mark didn’t know these words, or potentially didn’t know them, then where did they come from and where they originally a part of the prayer? And the answer is we simply don’t know. The majority of the early church fathers who wrote commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer, do not have anything about this ending, nor is it contained in the Vulgate, which is the Latin translation of the Bible. But, we do know that the doxology was known and can be dated to the early church because of a book that is known as the Didache, or sometimes also called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. As the second title indicates, it is a collection of teachings about the early church and it is broken into three parts. One is on ethics, the second is on the rituals of the church including baptism and the Eucharist, and the third is on the organization of the church. There is much debate about the dating of the document, with some speculating that at least parts of it date to as early as the council of Jerusalem in 49-50, which would make it one of the earliest documents we have. Others date it towards the end of the 2nd century, with a general consensus of most scholars now dating it the 1st century, but probably towards the end, or at least that being when it was compiled. But, the point is, the Didache also contains a version of the Lord’s Prayer, which it instructs people to pray three times a day, although the times for the prayer are not given. And the Didache says that we are to pray thus: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, as in Heaven so also upon earth; give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into trial, but deliver us from the Evil One, for thine is the power and the glory forever."

This passage is important then for several reasons. One is because even though the doxology is not found in our earliest and best manuscripts of Matthew and Luke, it is found here, and so we know that it probably dates to the earliest days of the church. Second, because this version is a little different than Matthew and Luke’s versions, which are different from each other, we also know that this prayer was circulating amongst many different Christian communities, adding credence to its probable origin with Christ himself. Which leads into the third point which is that we know that this prayer is not just important to us today, or it didn’t gain in importance over time, that it was important to the earliest church because the Didache instructs praying it three times a day. It doesn’t explain why Mark and John don’t include the prayer, at least not in the form we have it and pray it, but it clearly shows that the Lord’s Prayer was widely known and important to the church. And the doxology was also know. In the Orthodox Church, the doxology is offered just before communion. In the Protestant tradition, Luther included the doxology in his translation of the New Testament into German, and so he was obviously aware of it, as did William Tyndale in his English translation, which I have referred to several times on translation issues of why we pray it the way we do in English.

But let’s get to the rub of what this means for the prayer and for us, and to do that we return to what we also discussed last week in the petition about temptation and the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In either the second or third temptation, depending on which gospel we are reading, Jesus is taken up to the highest point in Jerusalem, and in Luke’s version says, “And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” And so, what the devil says here are all the kingdoms that could be yours, and we should ask what it means that here the devil says that they are his, and with them comes glory and authority, which I think we could also see as power. 

And so we should be seeing again a direct connection here between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world that we talked about when we petitioned for God’s Kingdom to come, and also remembering that I said that one of the reasons I think Reign of God is a better term is because we instantly think about geographical boundaries when we think Kingdom. That’s what the devil is offering. But the reign of God is not just about geography, it’s also about hearts and minds and lives. That we are going to be a part of the reign of God. We are participating in it through everything that we do; in seeking to do God’s will and seeking to bring glory to God’s name. And so what the doxology to this prayer reminds us of is that it’s not about us, or the Kingdoms of this world, it’s about God. Because it’s about God’s Kingdom and God’s power and God’s authority, and to know that those are different than the world.

And that should become clear because of what comes immediately before this right? Because what have we just prayed for? Bread, and forgiveness and leadership and delivery from temptations and evil. And again as we touched on, the kingdoms of the world, and in particular for the first hearers of this prayer the Kingdom of Rome. And Rome wants you to think they will do all of these things for you, but who do they bring that about? The same way that all kingdoms of the world bring it about through violence and repression. But God’s reign is different, and we are saying that whereas Rome may promise these things, they don’t and won’t always deliver and some days you may be on their good side, and some days you may not, and more importantly their promises are not forever. But God’s promises are forever. And so we read in 1 Chronicles, which may be where the doxology originated, or is at least inspired by, which has David proclaiming, “Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our ancestor Israel, for ever and ever. Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.”  (1 Chron 29:10b-11) That is this has been a prayer of celebration for a 1000 years, and it continues not just in the prayer but we even hear a similar claim in Revelation.

And what God is also willing and able to do is to share and call us to participate in that Kingdom, because what do we receive when the Spirit comes upon us? Power. The power of the Spirit comes upon us to do God’s work in the world, to bring God’s kingdom to the world, to do God’s will in the world, to bring glory to God’s name, by feeding the hungry and giving forgiveness and seeking to live always in God’s righteousness. And so what God’s Kingdom and power and authority remind us is that it’s not about us, and I know that’s really hard for many people to hear and so let me say it again. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s not about us, it’s about God and seeing the world the way that God sees it and not just calling for the Kingdom of God to come, but seeking to bring it about, and we see that in the story of Pentecost.

Because Jesus has already told the disciples that when the Spirit comes upon them they will receive what? Power. And so tongues as of fire come upon them, and this is not destructive fire, this is the fire of life and the disciples are driven from the room in which they have been locked up in and go out into the world to preach the good news, to, quoting from the prophet Joel, dream dreams and see visions and prophesy about God. These are not their dreams and not their visions and not their words, these are the words of God that they are proclaiming, inspired by the Spirit and guided by the Spirit and empowered by the Spirit. And that word for power here is dynamis, from which we get words like dynamic and dynamite. This is to live into boldness of God. it’s like having the boldness of a child who has not eaten their dinner but just ten minutes later comes up and asks if they can have dessert or a snack. That’s bold. And so this is an engaged and active and explosive thing that we are called to, to participate in. And so Jesus says, when you receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, here’s what you are going to do. The power of the Spirit we have is not for us. It’s for furthering the work of the Kingdom. So when you receive this power, Jesus says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

So let’s break that down just a little bit. They are to be witnesses to the Kingdom and power and authority of God, to proclaim the good news, first in Jerusalem, and where are the disciples when told this? In Jerusalem, so witness where you are at the moment. Then be witnesses in Judea, which is the territory in which Jerusalem is located, so go out to the surrounding areas, and then comes a harder one. Be witnesses in Samaria. Samaria is to the north of Judea and south of Galilee, in the in-between, which might be good in itself, witness in the in-between places. Except Samaritans and Jews hate each other. And so Jesus is saying go to those people that you don’t like, who don’t look like you, or think like you or act like you. God and be witnesses amongst those people. Sure they might be Red Sox fans and therefore have made bad choices in their lives, but offer them the good news. Offer them bread and offer them forgiveness and offer them love and offer them the Kingdom. In fact, offer them the power of the Spirit so that they too can be witnesses and work beside each other. And then, finally as if to make it even clearer, Jesus then says and be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. Witness to everyone, because that’s what the Spirit will give you the power to do.

Many years ago, someone gave me a poem, and I don’t know who wrote it, not for lack of trying to find out, but it says:

You cannot pray the Lord's Prayer and even once say "I."
You cannot pray the Lord's Prayer and even once say "My."
Nor can you pray the Lord's Prayer and not pray for one another,
And when you ask for daily bread, you must include your brother.
For others are included ... in each and every plea,
From the beginning to the end of it, it does not once say "Me." 

The Lord’s prayer is not about me or you, it’s about us as creatures made in the image of God seeking to turn our lives, all that we are and all that we have, over to God. to humble ourselves before God, in order to do not what we want, but what God wants, even taking the cup from which Jesus drinks and the baptism into which Jesus was baptized. It’s about that call to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s not our power, it’s not for our glory and it’s definitely not our Kingdom, because all those things are God. and to make that very clear, not only do we say those words, but then we close with Amen, which means something like this is the truth or may it be so. These are not just words that we day because we are taught to say them, or because it’s just what we’ve always done. These are the words of life. These are the words of discipleship.

Who is called to hallow God’s name? We are. Who is called to bring God’s Kingdom here and now? We are. Who is called to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven? We are. Who is to bring everyone this day their daily bread? We are. Who is to seek forgiveness and give forgiveness? We are. Who is called to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves, our baptismal vows? We are. But we don’t do it alone, because we have the power of the Holy Spirit guiding us and leading us, supporting us and pushing us, lifting us up and calling us to go forth even to the ends of the earth to not just spread the good news but to be the good news. We have heard that passage from Isaiah several times that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. And the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, for we too have been anointed, and when we accept that Spirit, when we claim that Spirit, when we live in that Spirit, we receive what? Power. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, and we have been empowered us to be God’s words and hands and feet in Jerusalem, where we are in all, Judea and Samaria, to friends and foes alike, and to the ends of the earth, so that one day every tongue will confess and ever knee shall bow down at the call of our Lord and savior Jesus’ Christ’s name so that God’s Kingdom will indeed come and God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.

Heart of Power

This was my message for Pentecost Sunday. The text was Acts 2:1-21:

I have to say that I think Peter’s response in the Pentecost story that the disciples are not drunk as some suppose, because it’s only 9 am is one of my favorite lines of scripture. The way he says it, means we could possibly see him saying, “now if it was three or four, maybe” and thank goodness no one had yet come up with the phrase “it’s five o’clock somewhere.” And the reason why people believe they might be drunk is that many pagan groups, especially mystery cults, used alcohol or other drugs in order to bring about ecstatic or altered states, and so the disciples could certainly be mistaken for that. But what I want to focus on today, at least to start, is the line that begins today’s passage: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” It’s not quite clear if this is just the disciples, including Matthias who was just added to the 12, along with some of the women with them, or the 120 who were followers at the time, although since they are in a house together, it’s probably the smaller number. But there they are all together, and of course this year at Pentecost we are not altogether. We’re not seeing people in wearing red, or singing together the songs of the Spirit. But, like the disciples we sit and wait.

At Easter I talked about living in a liminal time or a liminal space, the in between between what was and what has not yet been. That’s where the disciples found themselves after the crucifixion, in the in-between, and even after they had encountered the risen Christ they were still really in that liminal space because they didn’t know what was going to happen, where the movement was going, what they were going to become. Instead they were still receiving instructions from Jesus and he tells them to stay in Jerusalem, and tells them that soon they will receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which originally had been promised by John the Baptist, at that when the Spirit came upon them they would receive power, and it’s a lot more fun to do that when you can shout power back at me, and they would take that baptism of the Spirit and the power they had received, they would be Jesus’ “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And so they remain in Jerusalem and are there for the festival of weeks, which was a spring harvest festival that took place 50 days after Passover, and thus was also called Pentecost, pente being 50. But here’s where things changed for them, and ended their in-between time.

Resurrection of the Church

Here is my sermon for Pentecost Sunday. The text was Acts 2:1-21:

I want to start this morning telling you the story of a church that I know of, that some of you have probably heard about as well. It was founded by a fairly charismatic minister, who was known to preach good sermons. They didn’t have a permanent home where they met, but instead met where they could, and while they would get higher than normal attendance on the big holidays, sometimes more than a hundred, their normal attendance was in the twenties, although there were only around a dozen who could be counted on to be there all the time. Just as soon as it seemed like they were moving in the right direction, that they were about to see some huge growth, people would decide that this wasn’t the right church for them because it challenged what they had been taught as children, or it just wasn’t big enough, or stable enough, or it was too challenging, or they couldn’t be anonymous, or too much was required, or whatever the reason was, they just decided it wasn’t for them. But they did all the right things, although some of them were a little unusual, but it just didn’t seem like they were ever going to be bigger than they were. And then their pastor suddenly died, and no one knew what was going to happen, because one of the things that happens when charismatic leaders die is that their movements tend to quickly dissipate, unless another leader steps into the void, and it wasn’t clear that any of the members of this church had the skills or graces or ability to fill that hole. And so the members of the church gathered together, and they worshipped and prayed, but they didn’t know what their future held, and they were a little scared and a little nervous and a little anxious and timid, they hoped something might happen with their little church, they loved it after all, and while the people weren’t perfect, and there was some conflict, over all it was a good place to be, and they didn’t want to find another place to go, and so they gathered together into a room to discuss what they should do, to hold the dreaded all church meeting, and then something miraculous happened.

Does anyone want to take a guess as to what church this was, or where this took place? It was the original church with Jesus as its head, although traditionally we would say that there was not, in fact, a church yet, because today, Pentecost, is seen as the birth of the church. But we forget what the group of was like just 51 days before when they had no idea what was going to happen, and then they encounter the risen Christ, but that still didn’t mean that anything was going to become of this group, and so as we have been talking about resurrection stories, I think it’s important to recognize the resurrection story of the disciples to become the church. According to the author of Luke, who also writes Acts, and we should see them as a complete whole, Jesus has spent the time after the resurrection, until his ascension into heaven, which we recognized on Thursday. I know all of you had ascension parties, right? He has spent that time instructing the disciples, and one of the things he has said to them was that they would receive the Holy Spirit, and when they received the Holy Spirit they would receive what? Power.

I've Got The Power

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Acts 1:1-14:

I want you to imagine that you have found a ring that makes you invisible, no one can see you when you have it on. What would you do if you had such a ring? Think about that for a moment and then share with the person sitting next to you what you think you would do….  Now, that scenario is known as the Ring of Gyges, which comes to us from Plato’s Republic, in which a tale is told by Plato’s brother, Glaucon, of whether someone could actually be so virtuous as to not do something even if they knew they could get away with it. He argues that if we had the power of this ring that we would use it for our own benefit, just as the shepherd boy in the story who has found the ring does; using it to seduce the queen, kill the king and become king himself. If you have the power of the ring how could you not use it for your own benefit, or how could you not exercise the power that you have? I was a political science major in college, and I remember the first time encountering this story in a political philosophy class, but before we had read the Republic, the professor asked the same question I asked you. If you had the power of this ring, what would you do with it? My answer was that I would use it to travel the world without having to pay for it, not exactly honorable, but better than some of the other answers, but I still remember one of the women in the class who said that she would refuse to use the ring. She would not trust herself with it and so therefore wouldn’t give in to the temptations of its power. I remember being amazed at that answer, and perhaps she had already read the Republic, because that’s similar to what Socrates eventually says, which is that the person who uses the ring becomes not its master but its slave because they become entrapped by their own passions and appetites in the use of the ring, whereas the person who refuses to use the ring remains in control over their own lives, they retain their own power, and thus remain happy.

But is that our understanding of power? What does it mean to have power or to be powerful? One definition of power is the act of being able to do something, such as having the power of speech. A second definition, and one that is very important, is the ability to get extra base hits, that is the Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge hits for power. Third definition is the one most of us think of, and that is having the power, control or authority, and those are not the same things, over another in order to direct, coerce, influence or use force to get them to do something that you want or need them to do. But, there is another corollary to that, and that is having power not to be forced by another. So, for example, I have the power to tell members of the staff that they need to be at worship, and I have the power to enforce that statement. But while I may have the authority to say to all of you, you need to be at worship, I don’t have the power to enforce it, because you have the power to say “no” to me. So, we now have some understanding of what it means to have power, but what does it mean when we are told that when we receive the Holy Spirit that we will receive… power. Unfortunately, I can unequivocally say that that power is not the ability to get extra base hits, but what does that power actually look like in our lives? Is our power as Christians different from the power of the world? What does it mean to say we have the power of the Holy Spirit?

Spiritual Gifts

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was 1 Corinthians 12:1-11:

This week, my youngest daughter asked what I was preaching on this week, and then asked how it was that I came up with something different to say each week. I was a little surprised by the question because normally she is spending all her time at the back of the church in the Kid’s Korner, and certainly acting as if she is not paying any attention to what I have to say each week, although occasionally she will make some comment about the sermon, or ask me a question about it, so I know she’s at least occasionally paying attention. But I certainly never expected her to ask how I decided what to preach on, and it’s a question that few people have asked me over the years.  I told her there were lots of things that went into it, and one of the most important was what I thought that we needed to hear, and as a corollary of that what I was feeling called to preach on. 

Now they say that a normal preacher has only one sermon that they deliver every week, just in different ways.  Good preachers have two sermons they give over and over in different ways.  And great preachers have three sermons that they give in different ways.  Now whether I am a great preacher or not, I like to think that I have at least three different sermons that I preach, and yet for the past few months, it feels like I keep coming back to the same messages again and again.  Perhaps I’m like the new preacher who gave exactly the same sermon on loving our neighbor as ourselves for the first three weeks he was at the church.  When the leadership told him perhaps it would be a good idea for him to preach on something else, he said “Once you’ve got a hang of loving all, then we’ll move onto something else.”  Or, perhaps, I’ve simply become a little unoriginal in my messages.

Preach the Good News

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Luke 4:14-21:

In a speech I saw by Bishop Will Willimon, he recalled the first time he went to visit a prisoner on death row.  He said he was a little nervous going in knowing that the person he was going to be meeting with had committed some atrocious crime.  After arriving at the prison he was searched and then given a long set of instructions about what he could and could not do and could and could not say, and when he entered the room he had no idea what was going to happen.  After the prisoner he was meeting with sat down, Bishop Willimon asked him what he wanted to talk about; he said “Do you think the United Methodist Church is doing enough to reach out to a new generation offering them Christ?”  That was not really the question he expected to start the conversation out with.  As they continued to talk, Bishop Willimon found out that the man had become a Christian while on death row.  When asked how he came to Christ, the man said “well I heard a lot about Jesus and he thought he and I had a lot in common.”  To which Bishop Willimon said, “are you Jewish too?”  “No,” the man said, “Jesus was on death row and was executed by the state, and I’m on death row waiting to be executed by the state, so I think we’ve faced the similar things.”

That comment came back to me this week as I was thinking about he radical claim that Jesus is making in this passage and what it actually means for us, and what it means for others as well.  We often sentimentalize Christianity, and it’s message, removing some of the teeth and the call, removing the fact that we worship a man who was arrested, tried and executed, not because he was a nice guy, the state tends not to kill nice guys, but because his message, his good news, was seen as a threat not just to the religious leaders of his day, but more importantly because he was seen as a threat to the Roman empire itself.  There are significant costs to being a prophet.  Tavist Smilley said, “You can have people like what you say, or you can offer a prophetic message, but you cannot do both.”

By the Power of the Holy Spirit

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Acts 2:1-21:

On May 24, 1738, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had a remarkable experience.  John had been struggling with his faith, and in particular with the claim made by some that after accepting Christ into his life, he should have been filled with continual joy, never experiencing any doubts about his faith, which is not what was happening in his life.  And so listening to those same people he believed that he had not actually been saved.  And so on May 24, , and let me remind you that today is May 24, John wrote in his journal, “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”  This event, known as the Aldersgate experience, was preceded three days earlier by a similar experience of his brother Charles, who on the one year anniversary wrote a poem, the 7th verse of which begins “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemer’s praise,” which became a hymn of the same name and has been traditionally the first hymn found in any Methodist hymnal, from the first to the present day.

Although John and Charles had already really put into place many of the pieces that would lead to the formation of the Methodist movement, many people consider John Wesley’s heart being strangely warmed to be the date when the Methodist church was really begun, that without that event, we would not be sitting here today.  John himself in writing a letter to his much older brother Samuel said that before this event he was never a Christian.  To give some perspective, Wesley was already an ordained minister, spent more than two hours in prayer every day, plus private devotion, he fasted a minimum of two times a week, received communion 4-5 times a week, and engaged in service to those in need, so if Wesley wasn’t a Christian prior to this, then I would say none of us are Christian, and Wesley himself would later back off that claim.  He came to believe that people could have instantaneous conversion experiences, but for many, if not most, it was an experience that happened over time, and our faith continued to deepen and grow throughout our lives.  Now personally, as a church historian who studies Methodism, I think the Aldersgate experience is a little overdone in importance.  Not to say it’s not important, but I’m not sure we can claim that today, or this moment, are really the birthday of the Methodist movement.  Why Aldersgate is important, however, was because the transformative effect it had in John’s life and because of the power of the Holy Spirit which became present for him in that moment.

Descending Like A Dove

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was John 1:29-42:

Last week we heard the story of Jesus’ baptism from Matthew, at the end of which we are told that the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended upon him.  This week we hear a similar account, except that this time it is John the Baptist who is reportedly telling the story to us, before moving into telling us John’s version of the calling of the first disciples.  Next week we move back into Matthew’s account with Jesus calling the first disciples there, and so I am going to hold off on talking about the calling until next week, and instead we are going to look at the Holy Spirit, because that is one of the questions I hear a lot is who and what is the Holy Spirit.

Now for those of you who grew up using the King James Bible, or liturgies based on the King James, you probably know of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Ghost.  That is still the language we sing as part of the doxology each week after the offering is received (praise father son and Holy Ghost).  The term was changed for several reasons.  The first is that our understanding of ghost is a little different from that of the 17th century, and we don’t want people either thinking of something scary or even something nice, like Caspar the friendly Holy Ghost.  The second reason is that spirit is sort of a closer approximation to the Greek and the Hebrew terms that it is being used.

One of the reasons we don’t understand the Holy Spirit is because the church has not always been very clear about it.  In the Nicene Creed, which was the church’s formalization of Trinitarian theology, in which we say that there is only one God, but God has three parts, it originally said “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”   That is what is still contained in the Apostle’s Creed, but that doesn’t really give us any information.  Later at the Council of Constantinople in 381, this was added to so that it included, “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the father and the son, who with the father and son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”  In the doctrinal standards of the United Methodist Church, we state that we believe in “The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.”  Those are a little fuller statement, but they have more to do with the Spirit’s relation in the trinity rather than about what the Spirit does or how we experience it.