Passive Aggressive or Intentional Love, April 28, 2013

Acts 11: 1-18 John 13: 31-35 How do we make major decisions? Not simply what shall we do this afternoon, or what shall we eat, even decisions which are larger than ourselves and our life, determining whole new directions for future generations, for the church, the community, the world? As human beings, we love to debate, to challenge one another and thereby challenge ourselves. We love to amass our arguments and doctrines, relying upon our favorite philosophical conviction or author. But truthfully, minds are not changed, positions are not changed, Glorification does not come by arguments. We are changed by story, story of actions that change peoples' lives. I think it is for this reason, Jesus told parables. When I came to the Northeast the Interim pastor described that something you need to remember is 175 years ago when the great Western expansion took place, those who stayed in the Northeast said to those who left, “You go ahead, follow your dreams, and when you fail, we will be waiting right here for you to come back.” Passive Aggression is one way in which we emphasize our intentions and objections. I am told that years ago, a CEO received a personal check for $1,000,000 from the Governor of Texas, asking if they would move their headquarters. Personal gain and incentive can make decisions easier for us. I am also told that that CEO turned down the personal check, feeling loyalty to this community and the State of New York. So loyalty and commitment are also deciding factors. Recently I came across a paper written by Irving Janis & Leon Mann describing that every decision entails risk and anxiety. Janis & Mann identified that common patterns of decision-making include Defensive Avoidance, Over-Reaction's impulsive responses, Hyper-vigilance's collection of data and studies, assessing Political Ramifications, Tentative Adaptation, Procrastination, Fractionalizing, Hedging Bets, Maintaining Strategic Reserves, Staggering Decision-Making, and only making Reversible Decisions. The authors' assumption being that as in medicine, the professional leader attempts to control stability, while tweaking a single medication, instead of trying to change the world, we could tweak a singular element and witness what difference took place in six months. That paper was published in 1992, before all the changes of computerization and the world economy. In the stories appointed for us from the Bible this day, Jesus and Peter each are confronted with major shifts determining their future, the future of the faith, of the community of believers, and of the world. At the Last Supper, Jesus humbled himself by stripping and kneeling to wash the feet of his disciples. Judas walked out in order to betray Jesus. Jesus already knew Simon Peter would deny him three times in the next few hours. In the midst of all this betrayal and confrontation and escalating conflict, Jesus gives the disciples the 11th Commandment. In addition to the 10 Commandments of Moses, underscoring them all as a Foundation: “Love One Another”. The direction seems so innocuous, so basic. We want some deep involved theological creed like Predestination, Transubstantiation, or Papal Inerrancy, something definitional like Circumcision or following a Kosher diet, instead, what has always identified Christianity is this covenant commitment: Love One Another. But especially, within the context of having just been betrayed, knowing these very people would deny even knowing him, washing their feet and intimately commanding them/us to Love One Another, represents a whole different orientation to life, which can only be described as Glory. Having been without sin and betrayed and abandoned and alone, suffering for the sins of the world even through death and burial, and still loving us, that is not what is taught at Business School in how to lead. But I remember one dark night when my parents had had a fatal car crash with a drunk driver and my family and I were in crisis, and I came home to a dark house and suddenly there was an elder of the church standing in my kitchen. I recall standing before the Dinka tribe at Pok Tap, as the Chiefs described that half of all the women giving birth die in delivery, half of all women and I confessed that my own birth mother had died in my delivery. I remember when my father died, and I could not put two words together, and members of the church volunteered to preach about their experience of faith. Okay, but that was the Messiah and Love, there could not be a much simpler conviction. Is anyone against God Loving Us, questioning that the Son of God sent into the world because God loves the world so much, that Jesus would also love? What about Prejudice, what about Fear, Oppression, Hate? After healing Aeneas who was lame, and raising Tabitha who had died, and staying with Simon the Tanner, Simon Peter had a dream. Recently, I was meeting with prospective members and described that we had recently had a Seder Passover Meal. They questioned that that is a Jewish Feast, and I described that Yes, Jesus was Jewish, the Disciples all had been Jewish, observing the Passover, following the Commandments, being Kosher. In Peter's Dream, he witnesses an immense white sheet being let down from heaven like a Table cloth. In it are every kind of Non-Kosher living creature, Reptiles and Fish and Birds and four-legged creatures. Three different times, Peter rejected what was offered as being profane, and three different times a voice came from heaven asking how what God has provided for you could be profane? After this revelation from God, after the experience of actually going to the house of the Roman Centurion Cornelius and Baptizing him and sharing a meal with this Gentile, Peter was called on the carpet by the Circumcised Jewish Christian leadership for why he had done what he had done. Peter described that his decision-making began with Revelation for God, and that when he went to do what previously had been considered profane (entering the home of a non-Jew, a Roman Centurion named Cornelius), he had gone in the company of 6 other believers. But also, that after witnessing this dream 3 times, and being in the company of others from the church, Peter witnessed that the same Holy Spirit came upon these Gentiles as had come upon the Apostles in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost. Realize the effects of Peter's actions are not simply that he shared a sandwich with Cornelius, but that Christianity was opened for all of us who had not previously been Jewish. Had this been Saul who had become Paul who had the dream and went to Cornelius, the Apostles might not have accepted, but this was Peter of the original 12. There is a story by Isak Dinesen called Out of Africa, in which the author describes that one day a boy named Kitau appeared at her door and asked for a job as a House servant. Everything worked out well, until one day Kitau announced he would be leaving and asked her for a Letter of Recommendation to the Muslim Sheik in the next Village. Dinesen offered to pay Kitau more, but that did not interest the boy. Kitau had decided to become either a Christian or Muslim, and in order to decide had come to live with Dinesen, and now wanted to try living with the Sheik to see which fit him better. Dinesen recalled in the book, that she had wished she had known this was what Kitau was doing when living with her, as it may have changed how she acted or what she did. But is that not the point of following the Commandment to Love One Another? It is simple enough to passively demonstrate our animosity and aggression by not participating, it is easy to take life and our faith and ethics and convictions for granted but to Love Intentionally is what we are commanded to do.

"Pillars or Caterpillars" April 21, 2013

John 10:22-30 Acts 9: 36-43 Would you rather be seen to be a Pillar, or a Caterpillar? The one is a stalwart part of the community, seen to be holding up the ideals, whose words and ideas shape the future, and who as an individual is remembered. The other is a bug. Oh but what an industrious bug! Like an inch worm constantly moving, digesting all of life, transforming everything with which it comes into contact, be that on the ground, under the ground, or up in the trees, ultimately forming a cocoon and transforming itself into a butterfly to fly, traveling thousands of miles to pollenate flowers and trees on differing continents. Our readings from the Bible this week tell the story of several different individuals, some of whom are Pillars others Caterpillars. First there was Saul, a leader among the people, who had persecuted the Christians inciting others to stone them to death for espousing dangerous ideas. Saul who had a conversion experience, in which he recognized that what he was doing wounded God, and changed he was baptized as Paul. Paul came among the disciples and was feared and rejected, until Barnabas stood up in solidarity with him. Together Paul and Barnabas traveled all the known world preaching, healing, starting churches, and spreading the good news. Paul we remember as a Pillar of the Early Church, yet Barnabas his companion, a Greek who often got Paul out of trouble, is all but forgot. Peter, whose name had been Simon, Andrew's brother, one of the 12, is recorded here and elsewhere healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching the Word of God, carrying on the ministry of Jesus. Among those in our story are Aeneas, Tabitha, and Simon. All we know of Aeneas of Lydda was that he had been bed-ridden paralyzed for 8 years. Peter looked upon Aeneas, commanded Aeneas to get up and make his bed, and he did! Not the Mayor of a City. Not a great Military Hero, Aeneas was a man who was suffering, and all his family and friends suffered with him, until one day he was able to rise. In similar fashion, when Jesus had been preaching in a crowded house, a group of friends wanting a paralyzed man to be seen by Jesus, had gone up on the roof of the house, with shovels and picks they had dug through and opened the roof, then tying his pallet to ropes, they had lowered the man down, suspended before Jesus. Seeing the devotion of the friends, Jesus had told the man to take up his bed and walk, and he did. Of that man, we know not what happened to him, neither how he had become paralyzed nor where he went, what he did once healed, even his name we do not know. But the devotion and commitment of the friends, or the healing power of Jesus we might not know, except for this man like Aeneas. Tabitha had been a leader in the community. She was compassionate, caring, a woman of good works. She was a knitter, and seamstress, making clothing for all in need. But the reason she is in this story, the cause of Tabitha, also called Dorcas, being remembered at all, is that she died. Once dead, her friends sent word to Peter, who came to Joppa. Hearing their mourning and the testimonies to her life, Peter called her by name and raised her from death to life. What she did afterward, how she felt about this experience, what she saw, how long she lived, we have no account, only that her life, her acts of compassion and caring for others were so fondly remembered that her friends had petitioned Peter to come to her. Then there was Simon the Tanner, who gave Peter lodging. A Tanner took the carcasses of dead animals and butchering the meat, skinned the animal, and using harsh chemicals and sharp blades worked the hide into leather. Being surrounded by death, regularly handling blood and flesh, Simon would have been ostracized as unclean, a sinner. Working with chemicals and smoke, no one would have wanted to be near him. Yet, just as Jesus ate with Tax Collectors, and healed and preached to prostitutes and sinners, so also Simon Peter stayed with Simon the Tanner. Pillars are routinely remembered for what they have said, what they have done, it may be positive, it may be negative, but as individuals they embody that part of our community. The Pillars of our community may be the pioneers and first settlers. Our Pillars often were Captains of Industry, Politicians, those immortalized in stained glass windows of churches. With cultural fascination, we have also made markers, pillars, of the Oklahoma City Bomber, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, now the two who planted bombs at the Boston Marathon. Little about Caterpillars is remembered, often not even their name, but relationship with them, daily life at their side, changes our world. So often, while the Governor or the Astronaut may be the one whose name we remember, the ones who make a difference are the Police Officers in a Suburb who go without sleep for 48 hours straight. Or the firefighters and first responders who rushed into a factory fire to rescue others. This passage from Jesus' life is odd for the season of Easter. According to the passage, everything about this setting was controversial, with people expecting schism. Thousands of years later, we remember Chanukah as that season like Advent with the spinning of the Dreidel top. But after Alexander the Great and the Greeks had conquered the world, Alexander died, and governance of the conquered territories was divided between his Generals. The Seleucids had dominance over Jerusalem and Palestine. Their leader not only erected a statue of himself in Solomon's Temple as if he were a God, but also had a pig roasted on what had been the Jewish altar for Burnt Offerings. Judah Maccabeus had led an uprising among the people, a revolution to overthrow and remove the Seleucids. Chanukah was celebration of that revolution, celebration and Rededication of the Temple. At the season of Chanukah, Jesus was in Jerusalem, walking in the Temple of Solomon, and the people came putting him to the test. In our English Translations of the Bible, the sentence is “How long will you keep us in suspense?” Actually the Greek word translated here as suspense, is “psyche”, so the their question was “How long will you undermine our psyche?” What they were asking was are you like the General who claimed himself to be God, or are you like Maccabeus who led revolt against foreign occupation? To which Jesus says “Neither, but like a Shepherd.” You listen to voices that say what you want them to say. You listen only to yourselves and are unwilling and unable to listen. My sheep attend to my voice. They know me and follow. In Philosophy, we learned from Descartes: “I think therefore I am” as proof of our existence. But in terms of faith and motivation, ethics and values, the opposite is true, our existence, the things we do shape our ideas and ideals. If you want to make changes, do not talk about it, get involved and do. Ultimately, this is a passage about Election. Election and Salvation are not about the after life, not about what happens to us when we are dead. If in this life, all we are concerned with is success, amassing possessions and reputation, we live our lives as if finite. Like Adam, we live as mortal creatures, and we die. If we live, searching, following, creating and redeeming, then life is ever moving and alive, and so also after this life. Years ago, a woman came to me planning for her husband's funeral She wanted him described as A Pillar of the Community. David had been the inventor of an industrial process by which plastic pellets came flowing down one tube and were heat vacuumed into the particular shape and color of a bottle, filled with liquid product, and a cap formed, all without the bottle collapsing or the contents being changed. David's creation had revolutionized the world as now everything from Pasteurized Milk to Liquid Plumber could be produced in a bottle without the cost of glass, without being as fragile or heavy as glass. Yet sixty years later, when he died, there was a good deal of controversy about how to recycle all the plastic bottles. About the same time, in that community, we had a terrible epidemic. The epidemic was not bacterial. Among the High School students there came a feeling of hopelessness. Oddly some were among the brightest and most successful, who felt as though they had already accomplished everything. Others felt as though home life was a disaster, so how would their lives as adults be any different. In a matter of days, we had had a horrible number of suicides. As a local pastor, I went to the school and met with the Guidance Counselors. They suggested, let's invite anyone who knew those who had died and are grieving, and those who have thought about taking their lives, to gather for an impromptu assembly over lunch. The entire student body filled Gym instead of going to lunch. The Guidance Counselors formed the students into small groups to talk and to listen to one another. For the remaining four months of the school year, we gathered for all who wanted to talk and to listen and to be heard and valued by one another. So tell me, Inventor or Guidance Counselor, who changed and transformed the world? Which were the Pillars and who are the Caterpillars?

"Seeing Differently" April 14, 2013

Acts 9:1-6 John 21: 1-19 One of the shifts from the 20th Century into living in the 21st Century is that in that earlier time even a dozen years ago, there was belief that Everything had meaning, while in the 21st Century so much is coming at us so quickly that we each have made of life our own Facebook collection of experiences. According to our Timeline our birthdate was on this date, we graduated from College here, we got married, we went to this concert, we went to the Grand Canyon, we had children, all as separate individual events in time and space. But rather than there being so many individual balls bouncing through each of our lives, there are connections and developments of thought, one event does link to another, like balls of yarn and each experience changes us such that we can never again see things as they used to be. Recently in a small group we were reading the narrative of the crucifixion and the reactions to Easter. The Roman Centurion who having watched Jesus suffer professed “Surely this was the Son of God.” Mary who told the Disciples “I have seen the Lord!” Thomas who confessed “My Lord and My God!” And we asked, “After Simon Peter denied Jesus 3 times, and on Easter witnessed the empty tomb, why do you think Peter went home?” And someone responded “To hide from Jesus finding him.” Surely Peter was a mess of emotions. Jesus had prophesied that he would be “The Rock,” Peter himself had affirmed “Everyone else may fall away but not me” and 3 times when confronted he not only said “He was not a Disciple,” “He was not like the disciples,” “He did not even know the man or want to!” If Jesus had stayed dead, Peter would have had to deal with his guilt, but he would only have himself to deal with. With the Savior being out there, at some point they were going to meet again, at some point Peter knew Jesus would look Peter in the eye to ask the questions of this morning. There is a wonderful completeness about John's Gospel. In the 20th Chapter there were resolutions about what happened to Jesus after the resurrection in Chapter 19. Having appeared to Mary, then to the the disciples, then to Thomas who has doubts, Jesus confronts doubts with faith. There was this lovely conclusion to the Gospel, but then there is this Epilogue, about what happened to the body of the disciples, what happened after the Easter for Peter. After weeks of feeling melancholy, Peter says “I am going fishing.” Maybe you have felt like that. There is something about returning to what is familiar, going back to what you knew, especially being out on the water listening to the rhythm of the waves. However, having been commercial fishermen, Andrew, Nathaniel, James, John and Peter, were not the kind to bait a hook or tie a fly and wait quietly for a single nibble. Going Fishing represented a return to work. Yet, all night long they had sweat and toiled, throwing out the nets, and hauling them back through the heavy water time after time, dredging up everything. Yet working all night long, dredging everything up, they had caught nothing. Even having once been successful commercial fishermen, they could not just go back to the way things had been. The disciples had had an experience which changed them they could not simply go back to what they had been. Curious, that after Mary having mistaken Jesus for the Gardener, after two of them walking all the way to Emmaus listening to him teach, after the Disciples not recognizing him when Jesus came and breathed upon them, after Thomas being invited to touch his wounds and believe, still when Jesus called out from the shore they did not recognize the Stranger. But when The Stranger tells them to cast their nets on the other side, the beloved Disciple suddenly knows who it is! Even more odd, that knowing he was going to jump into the water, Peter put on his clothes? If you were going swimming you would not add clothes, you would strip them off because they would weigh you down. The only other time persons in the Bible ever put on clothes because they were naked, was when Adam and Eve knew they had sinned and did not want God to see what they had done. Now that sounds like Peter. And yet, I think perhaps the narrator tells this part of the story too quickly. If you have been missing your friend, the companion you spent the last three years with who has been taken away,... I wonder if the order of this story might be that Having caught nothing for the whole night's work, the stranger on shore tells them to cast their nets on the other side. Hearing him say this, the beloved disciple said it was Jesus. Overcome with emotion, Peter put on his clothes and leaped off the boat to show Jesus how thrilled he was to see him. I am not convinced whether Peter did a Canon-ball, or a belly smacker, but he surely scared all the fish into their nets, 153 of them. Reaching the shore, Peter came to stand beside Jesus who was cooking at the fire. Peter would have been reminded by the warmth, by the smell of smoke, by the charcoal, that the last time he had warmed himself by the fire was when others had challenged “Are you not one of them” and he had said “I do not even know the man.” Whenever there is discord among us, when we have said things or done things, and we do not know how to forgive, we struggle with what to say. If it not possible to go back to see things as they used to be before, then is it possible for us to go forward? What has to be said, what has to be done to forgive, to accept one another differently? This exchange between Jesus and Peter is like the conversation in Fiddler on the Roof between Tevia and his wife Glode. When there is trouble in town, when their world has changed, when their children are getting married, the husband asks his wife “Do you love me?” and she replies for 25 years I have kept your house, bore you children, milked your cow, shared your bed, “Do I love you?” And the husband confesses when we married we were so young and naïve, shy and scared. My parents said we would come to love each other, so now I want to know: “Do you love me?” His wife, says “After 25 years of sharing your bed, milking your cow, bearing your children and keeping your house, I guess I do.” To which the the husband says “I guess I love you too.” Over the Centuries, scholars have postulated that Jesus asking Peter 3 times, is redemption of 3 denials. Others that there is a nuance of difference in the 3 of love, that because of this experience there is more than a simple AGAPE of sharing being creatures of God, there is true BROTHERLY AFFECTION, even VULNERABILITY. All of which is true, but I think even more, what Jesus was saying to Peter was “If you love me, then DO IT!” Love is not a warm tingly feeling. Love is not an intellectual, philosophical commitment. LOVE requires living your life differently because you are committed no matter what. Saul had been a man obsessed. He saw his own point of view and nothing else. Saul was like the person so committed to their work, they miss what is going on with their family. Saul was the person so committed to their side, they understand COMPROMISE as bargaining “What are you going to give in exchange for my giving in” rather than finding ways to partner together for a new and different way. The change is Saul, to become the Apostle Paul was not a conscious, philosophical decision, I think I want to do this instead. But a struggle with God. That struggle does not come to all of us, and never in the same way for each. Some grow up in the Church, never really questioning, never needing to have a Damascus Road experience just thankful to be alive, but missing the drama. We take for granted all we have, what we believe. When I first came to be your pastor, I had a way of affirming what you had done. Whenever we acted as the Church, I would publicly say “Well Done!” until eventually the Session told me to retire that phrase. More recently, it has been a personal and sincere “Thank you.” But at times we become so busy with cooking meals and cleaning dishes, with serving on committees, with providing music, with responding to all the different balls that drop one experience after another, we fail to notice. In sharing years of marriage. In trying to have a child when it does not come. In caring for children, especially when their lives are at risk. In working at a job when it feels as though you are all alone. In all of life, we change one another by sharing experiences, such that we can never see life as it used to be. Let the scales drop from your eyes and see, that because of you, because of what your life has been, the lives of others are different, even blessed by God.

"Resurrection is Being Sent In Again", April 7, 2013

John 20:19-31 Acts 5: 27-32 The Resurrection is not about God's Final Victory. Over 2000 years later, Midnight Christmas Eve, we all gathered together, to lift the Light of the World, singing “Silent Night, Holy Night,” but when this Gift of God was given, when God became Incarnate the babe was born in a dark dank stable to a frightened couple alone, because the world had no room. On Palm Sunday crowds gathered, shouting Hosanna, but they envisioned a very different victory, where miracles happen, where underdogs become Emperor, where governments are overthrown. On Good Friday, the disciples did not gather to sing and pray, carrying the Cross for Jesus, but instead the Savior bore the cross for all the sins of all the world. He suffered and he died utterly alone. Easter, was not an event with choirs, organ trumpets, chocolate, eggs, lilies and Alleluias. Easter was God raising Jesus from death to life to send him in again. The Resurrection is only understood over against death, doubts and denials, where faith is sent in again. The Resurrection is not only Jesus return from death to life, but the redemption of each of us being sent in again. As a culture, what is memorable are not the ordinary circumstances of ordinary people, but we create caricatures of persons drawn large. Mark Zuckerberg is not simply the Geeky creator of a social network software while a college student, but the hooded pajama defiant youth changing the world through relationships. The problem being that we routinely scapegoat and blame individuals for their failures, rather than seeing the whole person redeemed, and we scapegoat as denial of seeing ourselves by blaming others. Our Christian Culture has accepted Peter as a Saint, and all the succession of Popes as being in the lineage of St. Peter, when each were men, Peter was a man who perpetually got things wrong, and when it seemed Jesus needed him most he denied 3 times. Judas has become synonymous with betrayal. When in truth, I believe there is nothing which the power of God cannot forgive, but what Judas did was to embrace an ending before forgiveness, before resurrection could be given. Thomas we identify as Doubting Thomas, when in fact Thomas was a realist, and according to John's Gospel one of the heroes of the story. When Lazarus had died, Jesus and the disciples were not there. They had not witnessed his illness, his dis-ease, his cold lifeless corpse buried in the tomb. The last they had been at Bethany, the people were ready to stone Jesus and the disciples for what they had said and done. So when news came of Lazarus, Thomas' response was “Let's go, even if we die with Jesus, let us go.” But at the cross, they had witnessed Jesus scourged, brutally beaten, made to carry the cross-piece timber of his own execution, stripped and humiliated, and left to strangle under the weight of his own body. And when he was dead, they took his corpse down, smelling the sweat and blood, the vinegar they had tried to have him drink, the cold lifeless dead and perforated flesh. Thomas was one of them who had placed the body in the tomb and watched as it was buried and sealed up. Because of circumstance, Thomas was not there in the upper room the night Jesus first entered in again. Having witnessed all that, having smelt and seen and touched Christ's death, Thomas names what realistically he must see and touch as proof in order to believe. To be honest, all of us have doubts. Doubt is not the absence of faith. Doubt is essential to belief. Only against the backdrop of death, doubts and denials is faith real. One of my Seminary Professors was Walter Brueggemann, and Brueggemann has named that “the problem for the Christian Church today, is that for most people God is no longer a primary actor in the story of their lives.” It is not that people do not believe in God, they do, we do, it is that apart from Church we do not think about God much. At Midnight on Christmas Eve, on Easter Morning in the Sanctuary, but not in the midst of life. When we bifurcate our lives in this way, death becomes only about loss and burial and faith becomes myth. A television special to watch. But if we accept that doubts and death, failures and denials and scars are part of a life of faith, then our faith becomes far more rich. The question is not whether God exists or not, even as a small actor among the cast of extras in our lives, God is there. The question is not whether we have doubts or whether we believe. Our doubts, the reality of death, all of our reality is what makes the convictions of faith, the redemption of our doubts into a witness that is so powerful. The Gospel of John had begun with a great mystery, a poetic puzzle that defied logic, reason and the imagination. “In the beginning was the WORD and the WORD was with God and the WORD was God. HE was in the beginning with God, all things were made through Him, without Him was not anything made real that was made. In Him was Life and that life was to be the light of all. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome the light.” Then we have the whole story of Jesus' baptism, calling the disciples, preaching and teaching and healing, and the Last Supper, his arrest and death and burial. And on this day, eight days after Easter, when the disciples were all together in this Upper Room with the doors locked for fear, and Jesus entered in again, and said “Peace be with you.” And Thomas' response, Thomas confession of Jesus is “My LORD and My GOD!” To Thomas was given the answer to the riddle of John's Gospel. No one else had ever said this before. Simon Peter had jumped to the conclusion that “Jesus was the Savior, the Messiah sent from God.” A Roman Centurion who had witnessed Jesus' suffering atonement and death had professed “Surely this was the Son of God.” But Thomas, whom all history has named The Doubter, after naming the realistic conditions brought on by his doubts, Thomas confesses Jesus to be “My LORD and My God.” The point is not whether we make mistakes. Whether we sin, whether we have failures, angers, doubts. We DO. We are human. When I was very young, my brothers and I spent summers on our grandparents' farm. What I recall most, were my Grandfather's hands. Whether genetically, or from years of milking morning and night his hands were like hams. And from years of farming, they bore many many scars. One in particular was at the center of his palm. He told the story that as a young boy, he had snuck out to the chicken coop which was the most secure and private hiding place he could imagine. He had taken a box of matches and when the door was locked, he had lit one. He was fascinated by the spark, how by turning the match this way and that he could make it burn faster, until all at once it burnt his fingers and he dropped the match. The match fell on a small amount of straw and the straw began to catch fire. Trying to not get caught and not get into trouble he grabbed a clump of straw to smother the flame. At first it worked, but then the flame grew bigger and hotter. He took a larger clump of straw and with his hands extinguished the flame and being fire he had gotten burnt. The flame put out, he left the chicken coop to go about his chores and play. However the flame was not extinguished and smoldering beneath the straw grew in intensity until the whole chicken coop was burnt to ashes. My grandfather said his father had his doubts and never knew for certain how the chicken coop caught fire, but he had carried the scar on his hand all these years. We each have those scars. The Sanhedrin were the local court, the local authorities who had arrested and tried Jesus. They were the very ones who had condemned and turned Jesus over to Pontius Pilate. The Sanhedrin believed the fire of this Jesus was put out when the spark was buried. But where this had been one man, now his disciples began preaching. They debated how to extinguish their heat, when Gamaliel named that if this fire was from God, nothing could ever put it out. Years ago, I served a church in another community. As a pastor, part of my responsibility is to have no agenda. The Session together are to lead us, but the role of the pastor is three-fold, to be a professional able to guide the Session in implementing what the Church wants to do. To make certain the people of the church are ministered to. To reflect spiritually and about God. In the course of things someone collapsed at the church, and as their pastor I went to the hospital. As they waited in the emergency room I sat with them and held their hand to calm them. The Medical staff reviewed their full history, that they had had breast cancer and lymphoma, and the variety of different medications. I tried to be invisible and to not listen, only to be that hand they squeezed when worried and afraid. But afterward my knowing their scars and vulnerabilities became something they were afraid of. They dropped out of activity in the church. One day I went to visit and brought communion. There is nothing magic about this meal, that like Alice in Wonderland makes you especially small or bigger. But the Sacrament names this life is not about us, not about our scars, but how the Christ entered in no matter what.