"What Are You Searching For?" May 27, 2018

Isaiah 6: 1-8 John 3: 1-17 This is Memorial Day Weekend, which invites us to think about our heritage. This is Trinity Sunday, which directs our worship to the reality believing in 1God 3Persons! But this is also The day the Lord has made, challenging: What are you searching for? It is not enough to want More, or different. What are your dreams? Be careful your dreams, where you insert yourself, because they may come true. During the great Depression, people dreamed of a job, food, a home, survival. During WWII, people dreamed of Victory, ending tyranny & oppression, of surviving as bullets and mortars shot at you. I love the description in 1940’s Movies of getting a Job after the War to be a $15,000/ year Man! In the 1950s and early 60s, Fallout Shelters were built and at school we practiced putting our heads inside our desks seeking survival when an Atomic Bomb went off. A few weeks ago our youngest turned 30, and I recalled that at 30, we were already married 7 years, with two children, two cars, a mortgage, our Graduate and Undergrad Loans repaid, and a Beagle. There was a year in which our Church and I as Pastor, received 5 subpoenas of Law Suits, all I wanted was for people to trust. There were years when family members and loved ones were chronically ill, and our dream was to do our best to help them. What are you searching for? What do you want to accomplish, to volunteer to be a part of with others? BEING TRINITY SUNDAY, THIS MORNING’S SERMON IS IN 3 PARTS: God’s relationship with the Prophet Isaiah is unique! Noah, Abram, Moses each of the Disciples, were “Called”. Most, like Moses, responded to God saying “Not me, I stutter,” “I am not worthy,” “Get my brother instead!” Isaiah is the only prophet to volunteer, saying “Here am I, send me!” The boy Samuel, said words like those, but only because he was told to say them by Eli! Like an overanxious student, Isaiah raises his hand shouting “Ooooh, Oooh, Ooo, Here I am, Call me!” In all the Bible, the only other One to Volunteer, is God. In Isaiah 65 God says “I was ready to be sought out by those who seek God! I said “Here I Am, Here I AM!” to a nation and people that did not Call.” I have always identified with Isaiah, an Ordained priest, son of High Priests, wanting to be a prophet leading the Community to God! There are some of us HARD-WIRED to Speak, others to Listen. I readily admit to being an Extrovert. Some of us listen, to avoid being wrong. We listen, waiting for when and how to offer a suggestion, no matter how interminable the pregnant pause, considering with what inflection, so as to not be misunderstood. When I was in Doctoral Study, it became a game among the other students “How many times can Lindsey be told he is wrong?” Because in the classroom, misunderstandings are only clarified by trial and error. We learn by trying, by testing out possibilities, and if they are wrong: they are wrong and we try again, and again, until better answers are found among all the alternatives. The only wrong answers are to keep trying the way we always have done, because you already know what will happen; or to change only for the sake of change. Stopping at Verse 8, it appears as though Isaiah is a Success story: God Calls and Isaiah answers! But After verse 8, God reports that the one Sent is to go to people who refuse to listen, the changing of people’s hearts, is not possible. But for Isaiah and to God, that immediate outcome is not what matters. Our great heroes are not remembered because they succeeded, but they tried and refused to give up trying. SECOND, Would that those appointing Scriptures stopped the reading from John at verse 15! John 3 would be a passage about Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night, searching for truth, searching for God, searching for understanding, a leader of Israel seeking the Messiah and struggling to reconcile what he knows // with the incarnation of Jesus. Struggling, not only because the Old Testament World and Gospel collide, but because Jesus does not give a logical argument, but mystical spiritual description that life is not about our accomplishments, but about relationship with God. This search for meaning/ understanding is overwhelmed by Jesus’ announcement, that “God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten Son”. That statement undercuts and re-orients everything. Our lives are not about our accomplishments, the point is not to be Right, or to Win! Instead of victory, winning, instead of survival // the spiritual quest, “the meaning of Life is to be in relationship with God!” NO OTHER WORDS have been so twisted by preachers as these. Jesus does NOT say the Only way to GOD is my way; but the only way to the FATHER is through me. Christianity is unique in emphasizing “Seeking relationships of faith”. And the most wonderful part is that before we chose God, God already loved us, loved us so much as to try to change our reality. Different from Isaiah, where a person attempts to convince others to change, to listen; here The Prime-mover, the Artist of Creation, enters into Creation itself, and does so not from a desire to win, not to change the world, but simply purely because God cares, God loves the world so much. THIRD, This is Trinity Sunday, appointed as a corrective for the Church, because many of us have come to believe in Jesus and only Jesus, as if we could extract Jesus out of the Bible; or as a Dualistic faith with God and Jesus only; when since the Day of Pentecost, since the adoption of the Nicene Creed, the Church has claimed A Trinity. This is not an argument from logic but from faith. Throughout the entire Bible, God extended Covenant Relationship with individuals, with families, with Nations, with the world. Covenant-Relationship, not a contract, not a Law, but a straight-forward Relationship of Trust: Follow wherever God leads, and God will be God, and we will be God’s people. YET everyone broke the Covenant. We tried to make ourselves God, or to find meaning in National Pride, in Accomplishment, in Success. For thousands and thousands of years across races, tribes, empires, people sought their own desires; instead of trusting God. The point of the Covenant is, simply being faithful, trusting no matter what, loving with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Having loved the world so much as become mortal, Jesus never broke Covenant with God and the world. The Spirit continues to Call us to dream and to work at Trust. Christian faith is unique, even counter-cultural because our faith is based on a relationship, call it faith, hope, love. You cannot be part of Creation alone.

"THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT" May 20, 2018

I Kings 19: 9-13 Ezekiel 37: 1-15 Acts 2: 1-21 Several of you have shared my own feeling, the last few weeks. I recall Doc’s Mother Anne Nichols questioning when we are able to again have the Meat and Potatoes of both parts of the Bible, rather than 2 helpings of dessert from Gospels! The last 50 days, following the 40 days of Lent, we have been in the Season of Easter. During these 3 months of the suffering, death and Resurrection of Jesus,,, Just as with the passing of our loved ones we wonder if/when we will ever find normal? This is the Day of Pentecost, meaning 50 days after, which actually far more than a Birthday for Christianity, or the day of Peter’s Sermon calling 5,000 to be Baptized, marks God’s Gift of the Spirit! The “Jewish Pentecost” marked 50 days after Exodus’ Passover, The Jewish Feast Day “Shavuot”, remembering God’s Gift of the Law and 10 Commandments through Moses on Mt Simai. There is importance, of what we read in concert with this Acts 2 Passage as to where we find our emphases. In Genesis 1, The Spirit brooded over the waters of chaos in the beginning. If read with Genesis 2, where God forms humanity and breathes life into the creature from dust of the earth, we focus of God’s Breath. Genesis 10 and the Tower of Babel, we are made to hear the dialects of language and diversity, first divided, so we will not settle building towers to ourselves as gods, now resolved in uniting the one true church and body of Christ! In Kings, we listen for the Spirit of God coming in the still small voice which challenges “What are you doing here?” Ezekiel 37 the hand of God leads us to witness Redemption, that even at humanity’s greatest hopelessness, when we are completely dead and cut-off, spiritually dry, God can Call Life, Faith, Hope and Love into Being. Taking our clue from the Biblical word “ruach” which occurs 10 times in Ezekiel, and 5 times in Acts, which simultaneously means Spirit, Breath of God, Wind, my prayer is that we will hear that we are each instruments of God bearing the Gift of the Spirit to others. Throughout Genesis, Exodus, Jonah and the Psalms, God speaks through Creation, through Storms, Stars, Mountains. God could have simply called Israel to new life; could have called all the people of dispersed languages together on Pentecost without the Apostles; God could have been present to Israel again in Lightning, Earthquake, Fire or Wind; but in every case, God chose to speak through using people like us, to question “What are you doing in life?” “Can lifeless bones live Call them to be! Call the Spirit to come and breathe life anew!” “A fire was lit under each to Go out into the world, living your faith, rather than locked away by fears!” We hear of 3 SPIRITUAL GIFTS: King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel have prostituted themselves and led the nation to bow down to foreign idols of Baal, or as I like to say worshipping the Golf Baal/ Foot Baal/ Basket Baal. Recognizing there is a competition for the hearts of the people, a contest between the 5,000 Baal Prophets, versus Elijah the prophet of God. Bowing down to the Idols they had made, making a show of their suffering, even causing themselves pain in order to attract attention, the 5000 prophets cannot get a response from their fertility gods. Elijah, 3 times has 7 jars of water poured over his sacrifice to God, washing everything clean, and standing in the wet clay of the earth, the man of God prays that God would make God’s Spirit known. Lightning comes down out of heaven, consuming the sacrifice, altar, and water! Then the Prophet of God decapitates all of the 5000 Baal Worshippers. After which, Elijah runs away, afraid not only of retribution from the Queen and King who worshipped Baal, afraid that he stands isolated and alone in his beliefs before the world, BUT also that he has scared himself by having power to call on the name of God and God responds! At times our successes can frighten us. Having succeeded once, can I do this again, is it expected? Did God use me, or do I have power to control God when I desire? Am I all alone in righteousness and power. To which the Prophet witnesses that he may see fire, lightning, earthquakes and wind, but God will not necessarily be in them when he wants. That his zealousness/ jealousy may not only be FOR God, but being Jealous OF God. AND that as much as the Prophet may assume he stands before the world knowing Right vs Wrong, knowing God, that God has 5000 other priests, too. The Second, takes place 400 years later at the end of the Babylonian Empire, after Israel lay in ruins, Chaldea, Egypt, Syria, Assyria, all the nations of the Ancient world were destroyed, DEAD, dispersed to the far ends of the earth, those left enslaved as Prisoners of War for generations; where you not only face devastating loss and exile, but even the touchstones of memory are cut-off. Fat, skin, muscle, sinew picked clean, your bones scattered. This is a dark place of Depression. Remember the scene in the Cartoon The Lion King, where Simba is cast away beyond the Place of Jackals, the Elephants’ Graveyard, the skies are black, and all hope has been sucked from the dried out marrow of your scattered bones. Ezekiel hears the question Can these bones live?, stated differently: Can there be Hope even generations after everything is cut-off and the reasons forgot? Forget the Mitch Miller song, forget Disney’s dancing skeletons, forget computer animation… Even after everything else, when a person of faith/the Son of man believes and asks scattered bones to re-assemble, organs, muscle, sinew and skin to appear; when the people pray and demand hope beyond hope, the Spirit of God can even resurrect the dead. 600 years later, under the oppression of the Caesars of the Roman Empire, months after the Betrayal, Abandonment, Arrest and Crucifixion of Jesus, when all the world knew Jesus dead, and 10 days after a small group of his own believers claimed to have seen him go away to heaven, those left behind were gathered in fear, when the promised Spirit worked through them to call together people from the four corners of the world to listen and believe. 50 days after, Passover, when God gave through Moses The LAW, God was gave us a relationship with God and one another. 50 days after Easter’s Resurrection of Jesus God was once again gave us relationship a Gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s motivation for us to hope and believe, to trust and to love, even 2000 years later, when intimidated by our own successes, when the dried marrow of our hope has been sucked out of our scattered bones, after the Savior, still to believe, and to take responsibility for acting in faith. Similar to the story of the Day of Pentecost when the diaspora of peoples were united as one, the second half of Ezekiel 37 is direction from God to take two sticks, writing on one Judah, and on the other Essau, names associated with the two Kingdoms of Israel, and that the sticks can be joined together. What the Professional Biblical commentators describe is that the Nation will no longer be divided, but reunited. The other day Jim Tracy stopped by and out of his truck extracted these 2 brass rods that he joined together as a Dousing Rod. This is not in any Commentary, but what I believe is that the joining of two together as one serves to direct the magnetism in our bodies to find what cannot be found alone. It occurs to me that individually, we each struggle and seek to believe, but joined together, like the two sticks of a Dousing rod, we can find what is hidden, the gift of God’s Spirit with us.

"I Believe in the Resurrection" May 13, 2018

John 17: 1-19 Acts 1: 1-11 There are some passages of Scripture which preach themselves: The Burning Bush, the 10 Commandments, Jesus’ Calling Fishermen, 10 Lepers healed 1 returns thanks. AND THEN there is the Ascension. What are we to do with this, on Mother’s Day? The disciples asked the natural question, “Resurrected, having conquered Death, will you now restore the Kingdom?” but are told that is the wrong question, Only God knows. Ascension is about asking “What do we really believe?” Being a parent is more than biology, there is a question of who you are that you pass on to loved ones. Throughout the last 75 years there has been a Quest for the Historical Jesus, this is at least the 3rd such quest in Christian History. Searching for historic proof, that Jesus actually existed, taught, preached, healed. But there comes a dilemma: Whether our goal is to document existence of the Galilean Rabbi who pointed us toward God, or for witness Jesus is God in human form providing us Salvation? Ironically, the Muslim Koran recognizes Jesus as a Prophet, a man of great wisdom. But Islam believes God is absolutely Sinless, Pure, Divine, Holy; or stated differently, that the World is too corrupt for God to enter in and become one with humanity. Acknowledging Jesus as a Man, Islam describes Mohammed also as a Prophet, but who at Jerusalem was transported to Heaven to receive the Word from God and return to life. Christianity is the only faith believing God loves the world so much to become One with us. Instead of beginning with a Human Person being elevated to Heaven and returning to earth; that God became One with Humanity, and after experiencing life sacrificing everything in death was resurrected to heaven…Not that he returned to Heaven but that there was a resurrection of the body, as means of our salvation. The Apostles’ Creed does not deal with whether Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, or whether he told the Parables, or whether he was Baptized by John, or gave us the Sacrament of Communion, or 11th Commandment to Love One Another. The Creed is about the intersection of the Divine and the Human. The Creed does not explain the How or the Why, only the importance of the bond. God Made Heaven and Earth. Life, Reality is not an accident, not the occurrence of fate, God made us. I believe Jesus to be God’s Son, conceived by the Holy Ghost born of Mary, who suffered under the power of the State, died and was buried. He descended to Hell. What a powerful affirmation! “God Suffered”, which not only means God can Feel, but of all feelings God knows anguish and pain, just as every human experiences! And that nothing, not even Hell, or the barriers of the Past that people died before the Historical Jesus of Nazareth came into history, can stop the depth of God’s love. How, Why? Those are material quests; immaterial, over against God became human for us, then died for us, and even death could not stop or prevent God’s love for us. In combination with this, we have this beautiful prayer of Jesus in John’s Gospel. WHY did Jesus not fix all the problems of this world? Why did Jesus not end Poverty, or stop War once and for all? Instead, Jesus prayed for those whom he loved, who had been given to him by God in this life, AND THAT IS WHAT WE DO. We cannot stop all the problems of the world, but we can love and pray for those whom we know. So our responsibility is simply to get to know more people, because God knows people through us! Years ago we had neighbors who were newly weds that had a baby. One afternoon, she came to me in a panic, saying she had tried to feed her baby with a bottle for the first time, and now he was so lethargic and bloated, she wondered if she had given too much! I told her that ultimately it would come out one way or the other, and made her a cup of tea. 30 years ago I had the opportunity of going through the Church to the Soviet Union. But when we arrived all of our arrangements had been cancelled by the State. For Ministers this was no problem, we just contacted the local priests and resurrected plans, but half of the group were Presbyterian Judges and Attorneys promised to see the Court System and talk with Legal Experts. Finally, the last afternoon, when everyone was exhausted, it was announced that we had been given audience with the Highest Appellate Court justice in the Juvenile Court System. The Judges and Attorneys all rallied, and I went along. Without introducing who was whom, we were introduced as American Legal Experts and one Presbyterian Minister. The Official made a speech, and the Judges asked questions, after which the Soviet Judge asked if she could ask a Question? Turning directly to me, she asked, In your church, if a very young girl became pregnant and tried to take her life what would you do? I responded that probably, I would have been the one who married her parents. At her birth, I would have carried her in my arms, committing to pray for and support her. SO Hopefully, because of this relationship, we or her parents would have picked up clues she was planning to take her life, and try to stop her. BUT If we missed it, when it happened, we would rush to go to her home to comfort her parents and honor her life. The Justice snapped that in the USSR this was Illegal, Ministers only preach the Sermons give them, to leave the Pulpit is PROSELTYZING! But the ones suffering were the children. As we said good bye, the Justice stopped and hugged me. Five years later, we had a 14 year old in Confirmation Class, who was Pregnant. A friend described an ancient Wood Cut, a simple print of black ink on white paper, of the Ascension as told this morning. There were the disciples looking up into Heaven, and the strangers in white, and Jesus being resurrected from the experience of this life to be at the right hand of God forevermore. But the most wonderful thing, was that in addition to Jesus being resurrected by God into Heaven… on the ground coming up to the spot, there were footprints! Simple witness that the same Jesus who was the Rabbi, who healed people, and preached the Sermon on the Mount, was God in human form, leaving very real proof of being. In recent months, we have said goodbye to several people whom we loved, but all around us are proofs in us, that they were here, that God was here in their lives. Did they permanently change the world, bringing about restoration of the Kingdom? That is not what they tried to do, but we enjoyed this life together, we loved each other.

"The Reason For Faith" May 6, 2018

John 15: 9-17 Acts 10: 44-48 Social Media has changed human understanding of “Friendship”. But while we may now have hundreds or thousands of contacts, the relationship of Friends is different. Real Friends are intimate. To be Real Friends requires time together, letting down barriers, experiencing life and struggles and laughter together, that “virtually” cannot be done. Cambridge University published a study, that “real friendship” requires sharing a minimum of 200 hours together, literally if you worked at getting to know one another like a full-time job, making Friends would take 5 weeks, most of our friends are only acquaintances or likes. Possibly that may also be influenced by the depth of experiences shared. I had a grandfather, whose name was Charles Herb, and doing factory work for 40 years he was known by co-workers on the line as “Herb”, when finally his best-friend asked him: “Hey Herb, what is your last name?” Over and over again, the Church receives phone calls from strangers saying “I am so lonely! I go to concerts, I go to the beach, I go to movies, I go to the Mall, but in these crowds I am all alone. How do you make friends?” The irony of this passage from John is that while Jesus says to his disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, but friends, and greater love hath no one than to lay down their life for their friends” he already knows that within moments everyone of those whom he claims as his friends whom he loves, shall abandon him, deny him, betray him. But the point of the Love of God for us, is that even so, knowing full well everyone is going to betray and abandon God, still God loves us. The other day, I overheard an email conversation among my family about the Bible. Their conversation repeated the old-line about the Bible, that The God of the Old Testament is God Judgment, and the God of the New Testament is a God of Love and Friendship. I do not believe that! Instead I believe that this morning’s readings identify a shift in human development from the Reason for Faith in the first 8000 years, and the Empires of the last 2000. Regardless of how humanity came to be, created out of the dirt and breath of God, microbial organisms in the cesspool of genetic material, or left off here by aliens… as Nomadic tribes, each and every person’s Reason for Life was Survival. There are still those times in our lives today, where all we can focus upon is getting through the day, trying to avoid pain and suffering, Living a selfish-life. But the challenge that came to Abraham, later to Moses, is to live in relationship to God. Instead of imagining ourselves as the Center of the Universe, to witness all God has done for us to enjoy, and as part of Creation: to give thanks. There is something extremely comforting in knowing that we do not have to be in control, that there is a God, and we have a place as a part of God’s plan and Creation. The Word of God that came to Abraham and Sarah, the Reason for Faith in God was simply to follow God, leaving the past, trusting believing God would be God and God would love you. Writing this in stone we made Laws, but what God gave Moses was a Covenant. Mark Twain described the difference between Laws and the Covenant with God is the difference between a Lightning Bug and Lightning! Contracts are legally enforceable requirements, demanding that you do or not do specific things, enforced by an authority of power and the State. A Covenant is personal and relational, evolving, a covenant is trust between friends. A covenant is a living, spiritual bond. The 10 Commandments were laws built on one Covenant: Honoring Your Parents, Not Killing, not Committing Adultery, not Stealing, not Lying, not Lusting, Coveting… all are based on One basic Reason for Faith, that we love God. There was a time, when humanity imagined God was far distant. That God had created this world like a great machine, setting it in motion. Today, scientists are learning more and more each day that this Creation, the whole universe is a living organism, a living being an ecological network, with every element interdependent. What changed between the First Testament and the Gospels, was not only the rise and fall of the Pharaohs, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, Rome’s Caesars, but also the reality that human development all the Laws, and Religious Contracts had not furthered humanity’s love of God. The Reason for Faith was unfulfilled! Rather than a God of Judgment and Punishment, versus a God of Love, there is only One true God. AND a miraculous thing happened, that one true God loved the world so much, that although we had rejected God over and over, God chose all over again to commit to love us. Instead of a Rainbow in the Heavens, instead of being Cut in Circumcision, carved in Stone, or carved into our Hearts, God’s next Covenant was in becoming One with us in Jesus Christ. HERE in some of the last words of Jesus, Jesus establishes a new understanding of the Reason for Faith: GOD LOVES YOU, LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Jesus’ 11th Commandment is to Love One another as friends. A few weeks ago, the Presbytery installed a new Pastor at the King Ferry Church, and I went, sitting in the congregation, and heard the Presbytery ask the minister 20 different questions of commitment and responsibility, then two questions of the congregation of the Church : Will you Trust this person? Will you accept and follow their decisions as they seek to lead the people of God? In the Presbyterian Church we ask those same questions at every ordination whether as Pastors, Elders or Deacons, because our being the Church demands that we trust. Larry Weiss has often questioned me, that instead of Religion, Faith, Beliefs, I routinely describe our relationship with God and one another as Trust. In the 21st Century, we have great skepticism of institutions, like Religion and the Church, Beliefs and Practices and Faith are continually being doubted, because there have been leaders with feet of clay. But for me, I know that all of us can identify with the issue of Trust. We have loved and been loved, we have trusted our parents, teachers, employers, those in leadership and we have been wounded, we have broken trusts. The Reason for Faith, is having experienced broken trusts, still trying to trust, to know and be known. Peter was invited to a huge leap of faith in human development. For Centuries it was religious LAW that Jews were Circumcised and practiced Kosher dietary laws, to the extent that they could not enter the home of a Non-Jew, or have a Non-Jew enter their house. Sleeping beneath the stars on the roof of the house of Simon the Tanner, Peter had a revelation, a great sheet filled with every manner of creature, and the sheet was lowered to him as the voice of God declared “Peter, Rise and Eat” and he responded that he had always been pure and separate from the things of this world. If instead of CONTRACTS we sought to fulfill the COVENANT, if instead of being limited by LAWS we followed the Holy Spirit of God, what would life be? Suddenly there was a knock at the door of the house, and Gentiles, led by a Centurion of the Roman Legion named Cornelius said he had been sent to bring Peter. When before Peter’s eyes, the Holy Spirit came upon these non-Jewish, uncircumcised, non-kosher soldiers. Then Peter questioned having received the Holy Spirit, can we refrain from offering Baptism of Water?