Advent in a Prison Cell

I spent some time in prison earlier this week -- not as an inmate, but as a visitor. I traveled to Graterford State Prison -- the closest state prison to Philadelphia -- to take an inmate's deposition testimony in a lawsuit he filed against three correctional officers. This is something I do with some frequency. At any given time, at least a third of the cases I am defending are ones brought by inmates who claim that their rights have been violated in prison.

The State Correctional Institution at Graterford

Graterford is Pennsylvania's largest maximum security prison, housing over 3,000 inmates. Built in 1929, it's mind-boggling to imagine the number of people who have passed through this prison during its lengthy history. It's an understatement to say that the facility is run-down. The place is worn, dimly lit, grungy, bleak. And there's something else the place is: incredibly secure. 

To get from the visitor's lobby to the room where I would question this inmate under oath, I had to sign in, have my identification checked, have my hand stamped, pass through a metal detector and have my belongings searched. Then, I had to pass through a "sally-port" -- a short hallway with two sliding security doors at either end controlled by a guard who sat in an adjacent, locked booth.  The two doors are never opened at the same time. The first door slides open, you enter the sally-port, then the door slides shut behind you, making a loud thud as the door's lock engages. After a few moments pass and the officer in the control booth has accounted for the persons standing before him in the sally-port, the second door slides open, and you can walk into the main corridor of the jail. The second door closes behind you with the same unmistakable thud, and you realize that there is no getting out of this place unless or until the staff sees fit to open the doors for you.

In a sermon entitled "A Possibility for Change," my father recalled why his favorite theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer "reported that while in prison he came to a fresh new understanding of what Advent is all about. For in prison, one can only wait, locked up in his cell. The prisoner is totally bound and helpless in his imprisoned condition. He cannot free himself. All he can do is sit and wait for someone on the outside to come and open his door and offer him his freedom. For the prisoner, the good news of redemption can only come from outside himself, from the other side of the cell door."

"So it is with Advent," my dad wrote. "We can do nothing during this period but quietly prepare and wait until the 'Dayspring from on High' chooses to come and visit us. ... We must see ourselves for what we are -- prisoners of our self-centeredness -- hopeless and helpless in and of ourselves, until the appearance of the salvation that God has prepared for us in Christ. The meaning of my personal Advent is that Christ comes and opens my prison door and bids me to step out into His Light. The stepping through that door is the stepping from Advent to Christmas, from prison to freedom, from my sin to God's salvation. There can be no real experience of Christmas without a prior experience of Advent. There can be no real sense of freedom unless one knows the meaning of bondage. There can be no salvation until we realize how lost we are in our sin."

I sat across a shaky, old table from the inmate I was questioning. A court reporter sat at the end of the table, dutifully recording our dialogue. Usually, inmates I encounter are angry and bitter. This one, though, seemed different. As I questioned him, I sensed a lightness about him. He seemed strangely ... hopeful. Then came this exchange: 

Q.  You allege that you injured your back in the altercation that brings us here for your deposition, correct?

A..  That's right. Those guards hurt my lower back.

Q.  That was two years ago, right? Has the injury healed?

Flashing a wide grin, the inmate responded ...

A.  I'll let you know for sure in two weeks.

Q.  Why do you say that?

A.  In two weeks, I'm getting paroled.

... Just in time for Christmas, I thought to myself.

From: "A Possibility for Change"

Scripture: Jeremiah 13:20-27; Romans 7:13-25

P.S.: For more on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Advent in prison, click here.

A Reason to Give Thanks

As I prepared to teach a Sunday school lesson on the topic of giving thanks, I came across a fact from American history that I had not known. While we credit the Pilgrims and their Native American counterparts for the first Thanksgiving feast, and although George Washington declared America's first national day of thanksgiving and prayer, Thanksgiving Day was not established as a national holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation "invit[ing] my fellow citizens in every part of the United States ... to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens[.]"

If I had to guess the year in which Thanksgiving became an annual holiday in the United States, I wouldn't have guessed 1863 -- the height of the Civil War. It was a time when our nation's grief and pain may have been at their worst.  With brother fighting brother, the war left an estimated 620,000 men dead -- roughly two percent of the nation's entire population. What could have caused Lincoln to ask the entire nation to pause for a day of thinks and praise in the midst of such devastating loss?

In a Thanksgiving Eve sermon entitled "A Reason to Give Thanks," my father wrote that "people who know their Lord know how to thank him in plenty and in want." Dad observed that the Apostle Paul called upon Christians to "give thanks in all circumstances." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV). "Note that he does not say, 'Give thanks for all circumstances,' but 'give thanks in all circumstances.' Everything that happens to us is not a part of some obscure [but] good plan of God. [It's not all] from God. Until the Kingdom of God fully comes, the forces of evil will continue to rage against us. Terrorists commit unspeakable carnage. Volcanoes spew steaming mud over whole towns of people. Hundreds of thousands perish by drought. Cancer strikes. Marriages fail. Drugs destroy. ... These are not the works of God, and it is a weak defense of God's goodness to say that they sometimes result in good spin-offs  For example, God doesn't cause a baby's death to convert a wayward father. 

We live in a world pocked with evil because God allows freedom to us and to his natural creation. The only unconditional blessing God promises to us is himself, his own presence, in both times of trial and in times of rejoicing. The ultimate reason for giving thanks is that God is God, and he is with us.

Do you remember being ill as a child and your mother or your father just sitting there with you, holding you through the long night? There was precious little they did or could do to relieve the distress of your illness, but somehow their just being there was enough. It is so with God, who is like a father and a mother to us, and even more besides.

My friends, thank God tonight and tomorrow and into all eternity that he is Sovereign Love, that when times are bad and can't get any worse, his presence is our promise of ultimate hope and justice. Yes, we have many reasons to be thankful, but none outshines God himself. Thank him; praise him; love him for himself alone. He is our reason to give thanks!" 

Dad's sermon brought to my mind the last words of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. On his deathbed, Wesley is reported to have said, "The best of all is, God is with us!" God is with us indeed. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!

"A Reason to Give Thanks"

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-28

Our "All Saints" Cheering Section

Did you know that Halloween comes from “All Hallows’ Eve” or the eve of All Saints' Day? On the Christian holiday of All Saints' Day -- celebrated November 1st -- we remember what we profess regularly in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe … in the communion of the saints.”

My father once explained the communion of the saints this way: “The Church of Jesus Christ is the locus of a deep and abiding eternal communion which exists between all true believers, living and dead. Our loved ones do not leave us when they die; they are translated into an existence that is more real than the life that we know. There they live and rejoice as the Church Triumphant, a constant source of strength and encouragement to us who continue here as the Church Militant.

This is not just a pious platitude, at least on my part. From time to time I am refreshed and invigorated as I remember persons, now dead or living far away, who have been significant guides on my own faith journey; and not just as I remember them, but as I sense their real spiritual presence looking over my shoulder, chastising, forgiving, encouraging, cheering me on.

• I think of Eleanor, a woman who taught me that it really is true, in the words of the song, that you can ‘take this world’s goods and give me Jesus.’ Jesus was literally all that Eleanor had, and she was completely satisfied. It is because of her that I know that spiritual truth to be true.

• I think of Donna, now living in California, who has a unique gift of leading others in small group ministry. She just knows how to help people open up to each other and to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of her that I know it is possible to be fully dedicated to Christ and open to the Spirit, and yet to bring all sorts of people together rather than to repel or divide them.

• I think of Paul, a man of God who cared for his mentally ill wife for over 40 years rather than institutionalize her, and still gave of himself in amazing ways as a church leader, a fraternal leader, a business leader. But what he did for me, and still does from the heavenly gallery, is to encourage and affirm me in my ministry. His ministry to me was that precious one of honest and loving feedback. It is because of him that I know that God can use me to communicate the Gospel and to touch lives with God’s love.

The saints who surround us give us enormous energy to persevere in the race of the Christian life. One of our most serious enemies these days, individually and as the Church, is apathy, fatigue, depression. As those of us who lead the Church see our supply of willing volunteers and workers and contributors get sucked away by competing activities and institutions of the secular world, a dark pall settles over us. We feel alone. We are tempted to give up.

But if we have any spiritual sensitivity left at all, and if we can get to a quiet place away from the din of the world, and if we listen carefully, we should ‘hear’ their pulsating cheers – low and distant at first, but gradually louder and close by: ‘Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!’ These are the voices of those who have gone before us in the battle and who have fought against overwhelming odds and have triumphed. They are Abraham and Sarah and Moses and David, and my Eleanor and Donna and Paul, and your Frank and Mary and other saints. They surround us even now like a great cloud of witnesses, chanting the victory they know through the Risen Christ, enjoying the hope that once kept them going through dark days and thin times – the hope that is still set out there before us!

When I look only within myself to overcome the sadness and depression, I sink deeper and deeper. But when I listen to their voices – that great cloud of witnesses – I know that I must persevere; I can persevere by grace until He takes me home."

“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9

From: "Run with Perseverance"

Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-39; 12:1-4, 12-14

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

Be Opened!

Smart phones don’t make you smarter. I’m beginning to think they have the opposite effect. Take my morning, for instance. I’ve accompanied my wife, Dorry to a conference in Chicago, so as she headed off to her morning session I decided to find a Starbucks for some coffee. Here’s how it went:

I reach for my trusty iPhone, open Google Maps, type in “Starbucks,” and am informed that there's one located a mere six-minute walk from the hotel. Off I go, dutifully following the blue-dotted route doled out by a server at Google. My phone tells me to walk around the backside of a nearby shopping mall. I comply without giving it a second thought. I come around corner after corner of this huge, multifaceted mall building, walking past loading docks and dumpsters. Mall employees and delivery truck drivers eye me cautiously, wondering why someone is wandering the backside of the mall. After walking far longer than six minutes around the footprint of this giant mall, Google Maps tells me that I have passed my destination … but I’m still circling the building with no Starbucks in sight. Could it be in the mall? I walk inside, find an old-school store directory sign, and learn that the Starbucks is indeed inside this mall on the second floor.

Eventually, with a coffee in hand, I trudge back to the hotel, not knowing that my embarrassment isn’t yet complete. As I walk through the hotel lobby and past its restaurant, I see a huge sign, as tall as me, announcing: “We proudly serve Starbucks coffee!” Yes, I had walked right past that sign, with my head buried in my phone, when I first set off on my misadventure. And if I had bothered to speak with anyone who worked for the hotel as I headed out in search of Starbucks, I'm sure they would have pointed out the sign to me.

My father passed away before the invention of the iPhone and before the rise of our internet culture. He nevertheless saw where we were headed: “It seems that there is so much communication in our world today, and yet so little of it. We have instant communication with any place in the world via satellite, and yet poor communication between husbands and wives feeds a skyrocketing divorce rate. There is a veritable flood of information at our fingertips by turning a TV dial or picking up a newspaper or magazine, and yet we don’t know the people who live across the hall or down the street or, dare we say, under our own roof. We exchange information; we banter back and forth about minor matters, but we do not truly communicate in the sense of sharing life with life. We hear but do not listen. We speak but say nothing.”

My dad believed that there was a good case to be made for defining “sin” as a breakdown in communication between persons or between humanity and God. Dad preached, “Sin is not only hostile acts or overt crimes – robbing a bank, abusing drugs, committing adultery. Sin is also being unable to hear the person God has put next to you in life who is trying to say something to you in a way that is different than you are ‘programmed’ to hear. And somehow, you pass each other like two ships in the night.

We are deaf. We fail to hear what God is trying to tell us through the words and actions of those around us. We are deaf to catch the sobs of grief, whether across the seas, or across the railroad tracks, or across the street, or across the dinner table. We are too hard of hearing to catch the rumble of discontent coming from those who are oppressed, or to discern the thunder of coming storms. And as is the case with many hearing defects, speech is affected as well. Because we don’t listen to others, we are sure they don’t listen to us, and we say nothing significant to them. We do not risk revealing ourselves or reaching out with words of comfort and concern. This closed-eared, tight-lipped self-sufficiency breeds ulcers, strained and tense relationships, mental breakdowns and general unhappiness – not to mention the great social problems of our time."

In Mark 7:31-37, there’s a fascinating story of Jesus healing a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. Jesus takes the man aside from the crowd, puts his fingers in the man’s ears, spits on the man’s tongue, and shouts, “Ephphatha!” – which means “Be opened!” The man is healed in that strange and wonderful private encounter with Jesus.

Dad saw this deaf and mute man “as a symbol for the isolated, twisted and partial lives we live under the power of sin.” The man’s healing is a sign that “God is acting through Jesus Christ to restore his fallen, fragmented creation to its former beauty and wholeness. How does God do this? God comes to each of us individually today in the person of the Holy Spirit, and he takes us aside from the multitude, privately, as Jesus did with the deaf man. Go with him when he tries to take you aside from the press of your work, the anxieties of your family, your health, your business and all your diversions. Go aside with him so that it is only you and him alone to confront this problem you have to work on – this terrible barrier to communication that sin has placed between you and him, between you and others. Hear him say the gracious words, ‘Be opened!’ Feel the power as his love penetrates that barrier and loosens and relaxes you so you can open to him as as a flower opens to the sun. Jesus is stronger than the barrier of sin. He can push it aside and invite us to open up and restore our relationship with him.

One of life's most startling and profound experiences is to hear Jesus saying, ‘Be opened!’ It is like water coming out of your ears after you’ve been swimming. Now you hear things that you couldn’t hear or could only partially hear before. And because Jesus has spoken and you have heard him, and communication has been restored between you, now you find a similar thing happening between you and those around you. To be open to God, you find, is to also be open to others. The two go together naturally."

As I was posting this, Dorry sent me a text asking if I would find us a place to have dinner together after her seminar has concluded for the day. I’ve learned my lesson. It's time to put down my iPhone, walk down to the hotel's concierge desk, and strike up a real conversation with a real person. It's time to be opened.

From: "Be Opened"

Scripture: Mark 7:31-37; Isaiah 35:4-10

Clearing A Space

Most visitors to the office suite where I work find the watercolor painting that hangs in our conference room to be off-putting. It depicts an old county prison, viewed from the cemetery of a neighboring church. Ominous tombstones stand guard as silent sentinels outside the prison’s walls, while thick black smoke billows from the prison’s chimney into a sky already choked with dark clouds.

"The Old Montgomery County Prison from St. John's Graveyard"
by: W.L. Zeigler

Imagine the surprise of those who comment on the painting when I respond that it portrays my favorite spot in town. That little cemetery, tucked away behind an empty church and an abandoned prison, is a lush patch of green in the mostly gray city-scape of Norristown, Pennsylvania. Sunlight filters through the rustling leaves of the cemetery’s large shade trees. Shadows dance across the plot’s mossy grass and grave markers. Birds find sanctuary in the canopy above, singing in delight after finding a place to roost that’s not made of brick or stone. It is a peaceful place that’s surprisingly full of life.

St. John's Episcopal Church Graveyard - P.W. Newcomer

On particularly stressful days in the office, I make a habit of taking a break to get up from my desk, leave my office building, and walk around the corner to that old cemetery. There I gather myself, I pray for wisdom, courage or patience, and sometimes I just listen. Those little walks do so much more to change the trajectory of my day than another cup of coffee or a snack that I don’t really need.

My walks to the Saint John’s Church cemetery came to mind when I was reading a sermon my father preached entitled “Clearing a Space.” In that message, Dad asserted that the exhaustion and stress that so many of us experience goes much deeper than a time management problem. “It is a spiritual problem with a spiritual solution. The place to begin is to understand that God is the one who renews. This reorientation of our lives is not something we can engineer or empower. True spiritual renewal begins with God. 

What do we have to do? We must clear a space in our lives and give God a chance to do his thing. Spiritual growth is not so much what we do as it is what God does in us when we give God the opportunity.

The classic spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation are the tried and true means of clearing a space for God in our cluttered lives. Prayer and meditation over God’s word help us to put the nitty-gritty of our lives in perspective, to spend more time on what is important and less time on the less important.

However, we must be careful because prayer itself, if done in the wrong way, can be just another thing to do in an already over-crowded schedule. It can become a way of keeping God out rather than letting Him in. We discover this when we come to realize, at what is a rather advanced stage of Christian maturity, that prayer is primarily listening to God. Soren Kierkegaard once said, ‘A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.’

It is so helpful (and I urge you to try this) to create in the course of your busy day, while you’re walking down the hall or driving in your car, little windows to God, not telling him anything, but just consciously giving him room to shed his light, his perspective on what’s going on right now in your life. Just pause and remember that God is there; listen. How can God ever speak just to you if you never allow yourself to be alone, listening for him?

Of course, the spaces we create for God in the course of the day do not in themselves produce change; they only provide the place where change can occur. In the end it is up to us to say ‘yes’ to the God who confronts us in those spaces, to say ‘yes’ and accept his Lordship, not only over the spaces, but over all of life that lies between the spaces. When we do that, slowly but surely, we will find life changing for us. Old desires will diminish in intensity. New interests and activities will replace them. Life will become more relaxed, more purposeful, deeply satisfying.  The dreariness of the treadmill will be replaced by the excitement of running a race, and we will give others the gift of our time instead of feeling that they are ‘taking our time.’

Best of all, God will be an immediately present personal reality rather than an indistinct figure on the back shelf of our mind. I invite you to clear a space here and there in your busy life, then step back and be amazed at what God will do with it.”

From: "Clearing A Space"

Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

Kale Chips

“What am I going to do with all this kale?” That’s the question that ran through my mind when I inspected the contents of this week’s half-bushel crate of vegetables from our community produce co-op. The green beans, tomatoes, red onions and eggplant were destined to end up in familiar dishes. But kale? I’m not exactly a foodie. I’m more of a traditionalist when it comes to my culinary tastes. Having recently reached my 50th birthday, are my taste buds really likely to change at this point?

I couldn't stomach the thought of throwing away this green leafy stuff without giving it a try, so I did a google search to see what I could make with kale. I quickly found an article that proclaimed kale to be “over” as a trendy food because it has become so mainstream. “Well, if kale is no longer hip, maybe it’s safe for me to try it,” I thought. 

I found an easy recipe for kale chips and got to work. At first, the smell of the baking kale leaves wasn’t exactly appetizing. It was as if a brussel sprout had crawled behind our range and died there. But the smell improved as the leaves began to brown at the edges. The end product – a batch of light-as-air, crispy kale chips – was intriguingly edible, at least to me. Dorry wasn’t impressed, Wes wouldn’t even try them, and Adrienne spit hers out after a mere moment of chewing. Our dog, Sparky, on the other hand, wolfed down the one kale chip that I offered him to see if he would eat it. “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?” I said to myself – more in reference to me than the dog, who is only a year old.

Phil's First Batch of Homemade Kale Chips

I don’t think kale chips had been invented while my father was alive, but a man who enjoyed such edible oddities as cup cheese and red beat eggs would not have shied away from eating a baked kale leaf. Dad didn't believe that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. He wrote that this old saying “suggests that after a certain point in life a person becomes fixed and rigid. He or she can no longer absorb new information or adopt new ways of living and looking at things. The cement of the mind has hardened and there is no longer any way of making new impressions on it. Now I don’t know if you believe that or not, but I don’t. It might be true about dogs, that you can’t teach them new tricks, I don’t know. But I know that it is not true about people.

One of the wonderful things about the Gospel as Jesus first proclaimed it and as the apostles continued proclaiming it is that it always assumes the ability of the hearers – no matter how young or old – to change and to grow. This is the meaning of the Gospel. ‘It is the power of God unto salvation.’ It is the power of God to change a life – any life – and make it full and rich and wonderful. No one is beyond the change that the Gospel offers because the change does not depend on the person himself. It is a change that God works in us. It is by God’s power that we change. As Paul said, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’

And this change that Christ offers us is a change of the whole person. A new vigor of body, mind and spirit is felt by coming into harmony with God’s will.

Nor is the process of change something that occurs once, and then it’s all over. We are not just ‘saved’ and that’s that. This change, this salvation, is an ongoing process. We are constantly being saved from our old self-centered ways. As the apostle Paul put it, ‘we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’

And so, while it may be true that old dogs can’t learn new tricks, our Christian faith makes it abundantly clear to us that change, learning, moving from the old to the new is always possible for the child of God. When we are filled with the Spirit of God, our minds and hearts are always open, sensitive, receptive and supple – ready to receive new blessings that God has in store for us at any minute.”

Perhaps kale chips can serve to remind me of an important truth -- that faithful Christians are open to the life-saving power God has in store for us in new directions, new ventures, new friendships, new ways of drawing closer to God. “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” Revelation 21:5 (NRSV).

A Message at the Lititz Home

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 3:18-4:18

Preached July 19, 1972 

Being Present

One week from today, our son Wes returns home to Newtown after finishing his summer internship in Pittsburgh. I’m not only excited to have our son home again; I’m excited that our entire family will be under one roof. For most of the summer, while Wes was in Pittsburgh, our daughter Adrienne has been home with us. In a few weeks, Adrienne will trade places with Wes: She will head to Pittsburgh for her sophomore year of college and Wes will live here in Newtown while attending graduate school. But for those precious few weeks in August before Adrienne leaves for Pittsburgh, we will all be together again.

Without a doubt, my favorite part of our family life is dinner-time. We almost always make the effort to eat dinner together as a family. We sit down at the dining room table – seated in the same places every time for reasons no one can explain. Then we say grace, usually holding hands as we pray, “God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food …” We dig in to the food set before us on the table, but there are usually some interesting topics of discussion on the table, too. As we talk about what each of us has been doing that day, we may end up hearing about a new idea Dorry has for her congregation, or debating the merits of the latest lawsuit I am defending, or discussing the best way to handle a disagreement among friends, or commiserating about a tough day at school.

For me, our family dinners have become a special time, a time not only for refueling but also for reconnecting. It’s a sacred time, this ordinary meal. And while our family dinners are a valuable experience no matter how many of us are seated at the table to enjoy them, it is obvious when one of us isn’t home. Someone is missing. Someone hasn’t recounted the triumphs or struggles of their day. Someone wasn’t there to lend their unique and valuable voice to the conversation.

My dad once compared the church to a family meal. He said, “The church is not a restaurant, where you’re not missed if you don’t show up for dinner. The church is a family, where there’s an empty place at the table if you’re not there.”

“The Epistle to the Hebrews makes it clear that the purpose of meeting together as Christians is not to earn a star for perfect attendance. It’s not to show up on Sunday and sit in a pew and passively soak it up like a sponge, saying ‘I sure hope I get something out of church this morning.’

The purpose of meeting together, according to the writer of Hebrews, is two-fold: (1) to stir one another up to love and good works, and (2) to encourage one another. We come to church to build people up, to love them into being more loving, to listen to their pain and to offer Christ’s healing touch. This means that our presence must be a positive, participating presence. The Christian presence is a loving, sharing, accepting, giving, non-judgmental presence. All of this grows out of why we are together in the first place. ‘Christian presence’ is directing the full force of our presence on the matter at hand. It is truly ‘being there’ in a focused, attentive, caring manner. Our ministry of ‘presence’ in this high and holy sense is vital to the growth of the church.

Obviously then, when we neglect to meet with the body, when we withdraw our presence, the body is missing one of its vital parts. Our absence hurts. Most of us don’t realize how much our irregular attendance habits affect the church. We think it doesn’t matter because the only person we’re hurting is ourselves. Not so! Someone is not being encouraged; someone is not being stirred up to love and good works because we are not there. The body misses us when we’re not present. For we are not just a collection of unrelated individuals. We are, in the words of Ephesians, 'members of one another.' Ephesians 4:25 (RSV)”

"And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another[.]" - Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV)

From: "The Stewardship of Presence"

Scripture: Hebrews 10:19-25

Preached at Paoli UM Church, Paoli, PA

A Humble Nation

Independence Day weekend is upon us here in America! Flags, fireworks, family and fun … a patriotic celebration of our proud nation’s founding. But what should patriotism look like for the American Christian? My father had a one-word answer to that question -- "humility."

“We … are a nation who in the beginning seemed to be called into existence for high and holy purposes. In our Declaration of Independence, we gave ourselves to high ideals of responsibility as a nation under the guidance and nurture of God. It was not unlike the covenant the Israelites made with God at Mt. Sinai and many times before and since. From that point on for both nations it was a hard struggle to survive but one which paid off – or shall we say one which God richly rewarded. We both inherited a land and society ‘flowing with milk and honey,’ and our flocks and herds and our computers and investments multiplied.

But as for the Israelites, so for us, trouble began when we succumbed to the human tendency to forget the Source of our blessings. We began to worship other gods. ‘Praise science, praise military might, praise private enterprise, from whom all blessings flow!’ And, you see, this kind of idolatry is really just a worship of self, a subtle way of saying, ‘Look what I have earned; look what I have scratched for and created. I’m pretty good! I’m pretty great! I know how; my way is best.’

And so America[,] conceived in and dedicated to God’s mission, [has] wandered and strayed from high and holy moorings, [is] given to exaggerated opinions of self-worth, [and is] unmindful that its privileged position, far from being a mark of God’s special favor, is rather a call to heavier responsibility in doing God’s work in the world. … It is pride, pure and simple. It is arrogance, a forgetting of Whose we are and what we are here for.

I believe Jesus would disagree with those who are saying that what America needs most is a recovery of its national pride. I think he would press instead for a new national humility. [I’m] not suggesting … that we should get rid of patriotism. But [I am] saying firmly that a true love of country, true patriotism includes humility – humility in seeking God’s will for the nation instead of telling God what he should want.

How does a nation discover God’s will? (And that is exactly what you do; you discover God’s will; you do not make it up to suit yourself and then give it to him.) We solve that problem by following the example of Jesus the Christ, who knew and did God’s will perfectly. You know how he did it? He did it by making no claims for himself; he emptied himself of all self-will, of all desire to do everything except serve his Father. He was absolutely humble. That is how you discover God’s will. Only when you have emptied yourself of your own will can God’s will flow in. And that is as true in the life of a nation as it is in the individual person. Humility is the key word.

How often we hear people say, ‘America is a proud nation.’ How much better it would be to say, ‘America is a humble nation’ – that is, a nation which realizes that God is in charge of the flow of history and that God has an overall plan and purpose. And so it becomes a humble nation’s task, through free speech and press and debate and democratic action, to discover what that will of God is.

• Such a nation will be a servant of the world instead of a ruler. It will spend far more on relieving pain and suffering than on creating it. 
• Such a nation will be open and flexible, admitting its mistakes, always trying new ways, never ceasing in its search to know what God wants it to do.  
• Such a nation will really listen to its critics since it well knows that God often speaks through the opposition and even the enemy.
• Such a nation is always testing its policies and measuring its stance by Christ’s rule of love.

There is no conflict between love of God and love of country when rightly understood. Christian patriotism means helping our beloved nation humbly take the right course under God.”

"On Whose Side Is God?"

Nahum 1:1-8

"Kingdom Of The Humble"
Zechariah 9:9-10 
"A Nation On Its Knees"
Joshua 24:1-15, 24

Wheat & Tares Together

Toward the end of his career, my father began a sermon with this story about the church where his ministry began:

“The first church I served as pastor after seminary and ordination was in Quincy, Massachusetts. Soon after I arrived there one of the old-timers told me of an incident that occurred early in the history of the congregation when the local bartender applied for membership and the pastor proposed to take him in. This caused a furor among the ‘saints,’ and a heated debate ensued about the nature of the church: Was it a pure fellowship, or was there room for persons who were not altogether righteous? The pastor left no doubt about where he stood on the matter, for one Sunday when the people arrived for worship they found a freshly painted sign hanging over the front door that read in big bold letters: FOR SINNERS ONLY.”

My dad believed that rooting out supposed “rotten apples” to purify the church could compromise the very nature of the Body of Christ. He said, “We do not choose those with whom we are to fellowship in the church; they are given to us. Left to our own devices we would choose to fellowship with people who are pretty much like us, people with similar tastes, values, etc. But in the true church it is not our similarities that bind us together; it is Christ that binds us together. God populates the church with all sorts of diverse members who might not ordinarily choose each other’s company, but they are thrown together as a ‘holy experiment.’ The experiment is meant to prove that God’s love in us enables us to reach across all barriers and embrace each other in spite of our differences.

My father’s words bring to mind for me an issue that was not the particular subject of his sermon – namely, the ongoing debate over full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church. What is to be done about the rift among Methodists on same sex marriage or the ordination of gay clergy? One side accuses the other of ignoring scripture; the other side lobs accusations of bigotry. Sometimes, it seems like the only thing both sides can agree on is their inability to continue living in fellowship with each other. As the controversy drags on, there are whispers of a coming church split. Could this be the demise of the great denomination that I call my spiritual home?

In Matthew 13, Jesus told a parable “about the wheat and the weeds, or as we used to say, about the wheat and the tares, growing together in the same field. … Tares were one of the curses against which the ancient Mid-eastern farmer had to labor. The tares were a weed called darnel. In their early stages the tares so closely resembled wheat that it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. By the time both had developed their seed heads they were distinguishable, but by that time the roots of the darnel and the wheat were so intertwined that you couldn’t pull out the weeds without uprooting your grain. Both had to be allowed to grow together until the harvest, and then the darnel was separated out as part of the winnowing process.

In the parable, the servants ask the master the same question many of us ask today as we look over the church at the trouble-makers, the dead wood, the free-loaders, the undesirables: ‘Master, do you want us to get rid of the weeds?’ And still the answer comes back: ‘No, let them grow together ‘til harvest time; then I will separate them.’ 

The parable teaches us not to be so quick with our judgments. The servants wanted to weed out the darnel quickly. If they had, they would have destroyed the wheat as well. Often the ‘cleansing’ itself causes more damage to the fabric of the fellowship than the dirt you are trying to get out. Many churches have been ruined by people who were ‘in the right’ rather than by those who were ‘wrong.’ 

The parable also teaches us that the only person with the ultimate right to judge is God himself. Now we all know that in order to live every day in this world, we have to make judgments about other people, about certain practices, whether they’re right or wrong. You can’t get away from making judgments. But what we must beware of is thinking that our judgments are final, that our judgments are ultimate, that our judgments are also God’s judgments. No! The Christian realizes that any judgments he or she must make are tentative, partial. We judge of necessity but always do so in fear and trembling knowing that a higher Judge stands over us.

Only God is qualified to make the final determination. How glad I am of that! What a burden that lifts from my shoulders! What new freedom I have because I know that God will judge and I don’t have to. ‘Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.’ Only God can see into that part of my fellow church members that one must be able to see before one can make a correct judgment. I can’t see past the externals, and so all I can do is patiently love and forgive and serve those who are given to me in the church, whatever their type, until that day when God gathers his children to himself.”

Could it be that the key to a truly United Methodist Church isn’t unanimity on issues of human sexuality but humility in our judgment of each other? “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” –John 13:35 (NRSV)

From: "Wheat and Weeds Together"

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Preached at Paoli United Methodist Church

The God Of Our Fathers

With Father’s Day fast approaching, I reached into Bill’s Barrel and found a sermon from 1987 entitled “The God of Our Fathers.” In it, Dad had this to say:

“I’ve been a proud father lately. Last month I saw my oldest son graduate from college. This past week, my second son graduated from high school, and though there was no ceremony as such, my daughter is moving this year from elementary school to junior high. 

All of this convinces me that I am, without a doubt, getting older. When I think of getting older I ponder more deeply about the age-old question of how to pass on my faith to my children and all those who come after me. How is the Christian experience transferred from one generation to the next? How does the God of our fathers become the God of the fathers’ sons?

As I watched the high school graduates walk across the platform to receive their diplomas last week, some of them more than a foot taller than me, looking fit and very adult, I said to myself that these young men and women, though they are in adult bodies, still have many life lessons to learn before they are truly adult. The most important of these lessons comes from a person-to-person encounter with the same God their fathers and mothers met and walked with for generations before them.

When we meet Jacob in today’s lesson (Genesis 28:10-17), he is a young man on the run. Morally and spiritually, he is proving to be a boy in a man’s body. He has just deceived his father Isaac, stolen his brother Esau’s inheritance – all with the help of his doting mother Rebekah – and is fleeing for his life from his family home in Beer-sheba.

Many of us, of course, never take our immaturity and selfishness to the point that Jacob did, but he stands before us today as the epitome of a person who was certainly exposed to the faith of his parents, who grew up in a home where God’s name was honored, who had all the opportunities to embrace the God of his fathers, but whose self-centeredness and drive for worldly things and earthly pleasures blinded him and barred him from taking God seriously. Jacob was in the right family, but as yet he had not really met the Lord, the head of this family.

You don’t have to be young to be like Jacob in this respect. Some of us get busy doing our own thing in life, and we get pretty old without ever having dealt seriously with God. Many of us seem to think that if our mother or our father or our husband or our wife has a relationship with God, we’re somehow covered too. Not so! You might be able to put your car in your wife’s name, or your bank account in your wife’s name, but husbands, your religion can never be in your wife’s name. And the same goes for wives. One of the truest Christian clichés I know is the one that says, ‘God doesn’t have any grandchildren.’ Indeed, God only has children who have worked out their own relationship directly with him in fear and trembling.”

So, how did the God of my father become my God? I was raised in a pastor’s home, went to church every Sunday, and never rejected the family faith in some fit of teenage rebellion; yet, my father’s God didn’t truly and fully become mine until Dad passed away.

It was May of 1989. I was twenty-three. Dorry and I had been married and on our own for less than a year. My adult life was just beginning, and suddenly Dad was gone. His death hit me hard. How could a loving God do this to my father, to my family, to me? Why did this have to happen? Where was God in all of this? I was tossed about by crashing waves emotion -- feeling hurt, scared, angry, then adrift. 

In the midst of that roiling sea of grief, I somehow realized that I faced a choice: I could rage against God and ultimately dismiss Him as a waste of time, or I could cling to this God I couldn’t understand and bring Him my pain, my sorrow, my doubts. I made my choice and prayed that God would see me through the storm. In that prayer, Dad’s God truly became my own.

"The God Of Our Fathers"

Preached at Paoli United Methodist Church

June 21, 1987

Bill's Easter Benediction

On Easter Sunday, 1972, my father spoke these words to his congregation at the close of his sermon:

"My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there is no better day than this – the day of the Resurrection – for us to drop our vain striving and defenses and let the Living Christ work a resurrection in us. Pray that He will close your eyes and ears to the world when it dangles false freedom before you and calls you away from commitment to the Lord. Fall in love with one another; be concerned for your fellow man; walk uprightly; work long and hard. Plunge without any reservation at all into this life-long commitment to the Risen Savior, and see what a new person He makes you."

He is risen! May we be raised with Him and made new, not just at the end of our days, but now.  Amen.

From: "The Resurrection of Commitment"

Scripture: Colossians 3:1-17

Preached at: Grace U.M. Church, Millersville, PA

Rejoicing on the Brink

Thirty-six years ago today, on March 28, 1979, central Pennsylvania experienced the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in America – the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island. Over the next few days, utility company officials, government regulators, news reporters, and even the President of the United States descended on the scene to assess the damage done and weigh the risk of further harm. 140,000 people voluntarily evacuated, but many more stayed put. In the resulting media frenzy, corporate and government spokespersons offered contradictory claims and uncertain advice. For those who lived in the vicinity, including my aunt and uncle, this all was terribly and personally frightening. But even for Pennsylvanians who lived further away, there was a palpable sense of dread.

Three Mile Island

Eleven days after the meltdown, on Palm Sunday, my father stepped into the pulpit before his congregation in Easton, Pennsylvania and preached a sermon entitled “Rejoicing on the Brink.” Here’s the heart of his message that morning:

"No one really knows for sure how close hundreds of thousands of people came to disaster over the last week and a half around Three Mile Island. The prospects of catastrophe were variously described by the electric company, the government, the media, and many independent experts. But all agreed there was a risk, and there were a lot of grim faces on the people involved in that situation. Not much rejoicing in the Middletown area.

The nuclear accident, while certainly important in itself, also stands as a symbol of a more widespread condition developing in our world today. We are getting used to living on the brink of disaster. There are a whole host of problems – certain foods and food additives, industrial wastes, crime, governmental scandal, economic collapse, the energy crisis, nuclear accident or war, earthquake, just to name a few – problems which have become so commonplace in the headlines that we are almost used to them. In the beginning when a new life-threatening problem is discovered, we get disturbed about it for a while, but soon it just takes its place alongside the others. There is a kind of grim resignation to living with the tension created by all these threats to life. You probably noticed this on the faces and in the comments of the residents around Three Mile Island as they were interviewed on TV. No tears, but no laughter either – because more and more all of us are being conditioned to living on the brink. There is growing, I think, a deadly serious, even morose attitude toward life. I even detect this is the children I know; there is not that totally carefree feeling among them that I enjoyed as a child.

In contrast to our modern predicament, we catch a glimpse on Palm Sunday of a man out of the distant past who is also standing on the brink of disaster – his own personal disaster. I speak, of course, of Jesus, mounting a donkey to ride into Jerusalem where he will spend the last week of his life. And he knows very well what is coming; he is not ignorant of the fact that he is flirting with death. His whole life has been geared toward the Cross. One might say that he lived on the brink from the day he was born.

Here Jesus is, with every reason to be terrified, or maybe bitter, or at least grim. But what does he do? He lets himself become the center of a triumphal celebration. The scriptures even tell us he took part in planning it. In one of the Gospel accounts he even insists that the celebration go on, over the objections of some. I think it is a faithful reading of the text to see Jesus enjoying this moment immensely, rejoicing on the brink. He is letting himself be part of this celebration.

If we could see and accept this interpretation of the Palm Sunday, it would be very refreshing and helpful to those of us who nervously teeter on the brink, either in our personal lives or along with mankind as a whole. To see Jesus relax and enjoy, with the Cross less than a week away, gives hope that this kind of peace and joy might just be possible for us as well. But how can we do this? From where does Jesus summon the strength to approach the brink with rejoicing?

Jesus knew what his mission, his job in life was. In the Temple at 12 years of age he said to his nervous parents who had been searching everywhere for him, 'Didn't you know that I must be about my Father’s business?' From childhood on, his whole life was consumed with the mission of doing his Father’s business, of manifesting the love of God to sick, broken, guilty and hard-hearted people.

Some people look at their lives as something like an empty box. To such people, teetering on the brink is horrifying because the box might spill and they will lose everything that they have. But other people look at life as a mission, a calling.  They feel their life is not just theirs to live as they please. God has a plan for them, has work for them to do. And so their whole life is spent discovering and following that mission, seeking to do God’s will for them. Such people are not shaken when they approach the brink because they know that they can never lose the experiences they've had, and that even this impending disaster will become yet another opportunity in their mission, another building block in the Kingdom that God is building through them.

Jesus rejoiced on the brink of his death because he trusted God, because he knew who he was, and because he knew where he was going. If we decide to lay aside everything else and follow him in faith, he will give us the grace to rejoice with him on the brink. Life with him, even if it is on the brink, will be so exciting and full of meaning, that we will never stop praising him. We will know then what Jesus meant on that first Palm Sunday when he said, 'I tell you, if these [people] were silent, the stones would shout out.' Luke 19:40 (NRSV).

He is Lord of all! He is Lord over the brink. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God! Praise the Lord!"

From: "Rejoicing on the Brink"

Scripture: Mark 11:1-10; Zechariah 9:9-13

Preached on April 8, 1979

Calvary U.M. Church, Easton, PA