Will-Power or Higher Power?

Well, we've reached the beginning of another New Year. Have you made your resolution for 2017? I haven't. In fact, I've kind of given up on the concept of New Year's resolutions. I can't tell you how many times I've started off a brand new year with good intentions of keeping a resolution, only to see that promise wither in the cold of January, February and March.

Perhaps this year, I should be considering a New Year's covenant instead of a New Year's resolution. Here's how my father once explained the difference:

"At this time of year perhaps more than any other our minds turn to promises. As we begin a new year there is a certain psychology built into us that gives us a sense of beginning anew. It's a time when we review our life and see what changes should be affected, what new promises should be made, what old promises renewed. In short, this is the time for a New Year's resolution.

But it always seems to me that there is a certain sadness and human tragedy about the New Year and its resolutions. Many resolutions are made about trivial things, and larger ones often are made tongue-in-cheek, for we know full well that they will not be kept. This is a season for human promises made by human beings, and experience has taught us that human-level promises are very fragile, and vulnerable to many threats, and usually end up broken - if not in fact then at least in spirit. By and large, we find it far easier to make promises than to keep them. 

Fortunately, we worship the One who keeps promises. It is only God who never waivers and keeps his Word. It is only from God that we can receive the will to keep our own promises. The word for 'promise' most often used in the Bible is 'covenant.' Simply stated, the idea of covenant is 'I will be your God, if you will be my people.' It is a reciprocal kind of relationship that God offers us. In spite of the fact that we are often useless and spoiled, God in his infinite grace loves us and wants to give us a whole life. It can be ours if we fulfill our part and respond to God in faith and love. 

Entering into a living, vital covenant relationship with God is in no way like making a New Year's resolution or any other human promise. Such human commitments are like a bankrupt debtor promising to pay all his creditors in full. The sooner we ditch our seeming self-sufficiency the better. A covenant relationship with God is not made by telling God what you will do for him. It is, in utter humility and helplessness, opening yourself up to God and letting him come into your life and make you his man, his woman. 

To follow Christ I am not to say, 'Lord, now I'm going to straighten myself out and be your kind of man; I will follow you anywhere.' No, that's not what I say at all. I say something like this: 'Lord, I've blown it. Right now it seems like I can't do anything right. I've messed up my life and my world. If you can still love me, Lord, if you still want me, I'll cast myself on your mercy.'

And, you know, the most amazing thing happens to the person who does that. Because God has promised to love him no matter what, and because he has accepted that promise, a new grace, a new promise-keeping power floods into his life. Now he daily receives from God the strength and love to make commitments to his family and friends and the world and to carry them through. He discovers that some of God's constancy is in his own life and that he is victorious and trustworthy. You see, our promise-keeping power is a part of God's promise-keeping power. 'Apart from him we an do nothing.'

As we begin the New Year, will you join me in renewing your covenant relationship with God? This is a prayer written by John Wesley, the founder of our Methodist tradition, to be used at the New Year. It is one of the most powerful prayers ever written. An honest praying of this prayer will open your life to a real renovation and renewal by God Almighty ..."

The Wesley Covenant Prayer

"I am no longer my own but thine. Put me to what thou wilt. Rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing. Put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full. Let me be empty. Let me have all things. Let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen." 

From: "Promises, Promises"

Preached at: Paoli UM Church, Paoli, PA

The Light Still Shines

In the weeks leading up to Christmas this year, there has been a special candle burning in the sanctuary at Newtown United Methodist Church during our Advent worship services. It's the Peace Light. In Bethlehem at the Grotto of the Nativity, the traditional site of the birth of Christ, caretakers keep a flame continuously lit. Every year a boy scout or girl scout from Austria travels to Bethlehem and lights a lamp from the flame. The burning lamp is then flown back to Austria, and its flame is distributed from Vienna to churches across Europe.  

At Christmas in 2001, the Peace Light was flown across the Atlantic Ocean from Vienna to New York City as a sign of hope in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. For many Christmases since 2001, the Peace Light has come to New York and has spread from there across North America. 

This year, our church was offered the Peace Light by a nearby congregation, and I had the experience of driving a flickering lantern to our church and carrying the Peace Light into the sanctuary. It's a safe bet that I will never carry a burning Olympic Torch into a stadium to light the Olympic Flame, but I did do my small part to complete the Peace Light's incredible journey of nearly 5,800 miles from Bethlehem on the West Bank to Newtown, Pennsylvania -- via Vienna and New York City.

The Peace Light burning in our living room

Instead of having the Peace Light burn unattended in an empty sanctuary between Sunday worship services, Dorry and I have looked after the Peace Light in our home. I never experienced having a candle burning in my home 24/7 before. I've learned that a single candle throws a surprising amount of light in the darkness. When I walk into our living room at night and see the Peace Light burning on the mantle of our fireplace, I'm reminded of the Gospel of John's poetic description of Jesus: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. ... In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -John 1:1, 14, 4-5  (NIV)

My father once observed that "[i]t is always so with light and darkness. No matter how deep and vast the darkness, one tiny light can pierce through it, and the darkness, for all its vastness, is powerless to overcome that light. Darkness is always at the mercy of light."

2016 has been a year in which many of us found ourselves enveloped in darkness from news of terrorism, or war, or mass shootings, or racism, or our hate-filled political rhetoric. These are "dark social and political situations that permeate us from the outside."  At other points in the year, we have been shrouded in "a darkness that comes from within. It is the darkness of hopelessness and despair we feel when we get bogged down in the tragedy and pain and sometimes just plain boredom of everyday life. There is no heavier, seemingly impenetrable darkness than what we feel when life wounds us in one way or another, and we cry out to God, and God doesn't seem to be there. Terrible, terrible things happen in families, in the workplace, in marriages, in the human mind and body. Evil is very much alive in the experience of every one of us, We cannot deny it. Each one of us is to some degree enswathed in the darkness that comes from within."

It was into this darkness -- from without and within -- that Jesus was born. One Christmas Eve, my father asked his congregation, "Can you imagine how cold and dark that stable must have been? That stable is the world. It is no small thing for God to enter that darkness. There are the cries of a young mother in labor, bearing her first child in a strange town far from home. There is the pain of a father's helplessness as he tries to assist at his own child's birth. It is not easy for God to send his Light into our dark world. It costs God much; ultimately, there is a cross." 

This birth -- this arrival of the Light in the midst of darkness -- announces two things we desperately need to hear: "First, God cares. God knows and cares about the darkness that engulfs us. Your personal darkness is unique; it is different than that of every other person in this church. Yet, God knows and cares. This is the first thing we need to hear. Second, God conquers. God's light still shines, and it conquers the darkness. No darkness can stand up to God's light. This is the significance of that little child born to refugee parents on a dark, cold night in a musty stable. What could be a more powerful reminder that God's light still shines than the birth of this beautiful baby in such a dark setting?"

"This child born in a hostile environment among strangers, this child cradled in a cold, dark barn, this child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, this child tells us precisely -- because of WHO HE IS -- that God's love extends to the most humble person in the most desperate situation. This child is the Light shining in the darkness. This Word can bring joy to the multitudes. This Word can bring joy to you! See this scene of the nativity for what it really means: The Light still shines!" 

Merry Christmas, friends!       

From: "The Light Still Shines"

Scripture: John 1:1-18

A Thanksgiving Fix For A Divided Nation

The pollsters at Gallup released survey results yesterday showing that a record-high 77% of Americans view this nation as divided. More than a third of Americans are dreading Thanksgiving dinner this year because of inevitable conversations, and confrontations, about the recent presidential election. News outlets are reporting that tensions are running so high that folks are uninviting friends and family members to Thanksgiving dinner because of their differing political views. We've never seen anything quite like this before. Or have we? When I dug into Bill's Barrel to read some Thanksgiving sermons, I quickly found one discussing how polarized American society was in 1977. Here's what my father had to say that year on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday: 

"Our community, and all communities, stand in a desperately divided condition today. We hear so much about polarization in our nation, and most of us who have our eyes and ears open know that it is not just an empty phrase or a gimmick cooked up by the press. It is real. If you circulate at all and talk to people in your community, and if you examine yourself, you cannot help but be terrified at the chasms individuals and groups are dredging out between each other. 

It has really come to the point where we must ask if true community does in fact exist any more. Or are we rather just an aggregate of unrelated people who share nothing with each other and just happen to live in the same geographical area? The barriers between us range from indifference, to quiet prejudice, to outright enmity. People live across the street or across the hall and don't even know each other's names. Symbols, like long or short hair, black or white skin, or different accents become walls that keep us from learning to know, appreciate and help each other. 

But this is not a new problem even if it takes on greater proportions today. If you read the gospels, you get a glimpse of the great distance between peoples in the day and place where Jesus lived. Talk about a polarized community -- that was it! Gentiles versus Jews; Pharisees versus Sadducees; Jews loyal to Rome versus rebellious Jewish zealots; Jews versus Samaritans; clean versus unclean. It's hard to imagine such a small country with so many sub-groups trying desperately to avoid each other and clashing when they couldn't. Sometimes, this was carried to ridiculous extremes. 

Samaria stood in the middle between the Jewish province of Galilee to the North and the Jewish province of Judea to the South. In Jesus's day, any good Jew traveling from Galilee to Judea or from Judea to Galilee would not take the shortest and most sensible route through Samaria, but in order to avoid the Samaritans (who were considered heretics and mixed breeds) would travel clear around Samaria, losing much time and energy. Or take another example: Learned rabbis decreed that when the wind was blowing from behind a leper toward a healthy person, the leper had to stand at least 50 yards away.

These examples sound ridiculous to us because they come from an ancient time. But if we could somehow get outside of our skins and watch some of the things we do, I'm sure our polarizing ways would seem equally ridiculous. A white family goes to the expense and trouble of uprooting themselves and moving if a black family moves in nearby. Property-owning taxpayers vote to keep out apartments, assuming that renters will bring an undesirable element. Students throw rocks and mock the police unmindful of how the very law they flout guarantees their freedom. Middle-class neighbors, comfortable and without much to do on a Saturday afternoon, sit on the patio knocking "lazy" welfare recipients. We have not come much further in building real community than had the many factions in Jesus's day."

So what is the solution for such a Balkanized state of affairs? My dad sought the answer in Thanksgiving: 

"A true community is born when we can say thanks to God. What a unifying revelation it could be if all of us could really apprehend the fact that same God who makes it rain in my suburban middle-class township also makes it rain on the inner city, on the rural farming community and on the affluent neighborhood, on the hard-scrabbled borough and on the quaint college town. Now that sounds simple, I know, but I think there's a point. If all of us, despite our differences, could see by faith that our life comes from a common source in God, if we all could suddenly grasp that our common needs are all served by the same Lord, that our thanksgivings rise to the same Father, then most assuredly, the gaps between us would quickly close.

It is said of animals who are natural enemies that during times of flood they can be found sitting side by side quite peaceably on some high piece of ground. Why? Simply because they have been forced to recognize that this small piece of dry ground is their one and only salvation. How parabolic that is for us! Here we are bickering and feuding, expending valuable energy, sometimes even spilling blood to maintain the differences between us, and so few of us ever stop and look up to get the big picture. So few of us manage to apprehend by faith that when each individual breaths out thanksgiving for life, it all rises to the same God.

A true community also is born when we say thanks to each other. In Jesus's day no two people stood further apart, both figuratively and literally, than a healthy Jew and a leper. When Jesus heals a group of ten lepers, they go on their way, but one suddenly turns and breaks ranks with the rest, runs back and falls at Jesus's feet, giving him thanks. This man, who is not only a leper but a Samaritan, returns to thank a Jew! This is a real breakthrough. The Gospel draws people together into Christian community. 

Christ lends a wholeness to life, not only to individual life but also to shared life between people. Christ brings us together into a relationship of mutual gratitude and appreciation. Somehow Christ gives us the ability to see differences in other people not as barriers, not as something to fear, but rather as blessings. What the other fellow has that I don't have is something he can offer to me for my enrichment, and something for which I should thank him. God very often chooses to bestow his blessings on us through others. This is how God works. How stunted and narrow our lives become when, because of our differences, we cut ourselves off from the good gifts God would give us through others.

This Thanksgiving, it is really up to us to choose what we would make of this event. It could be merely a time to turn inward and thank God for our private prosperity, but I urge you to go beyond that. Our community is as polarized and fragmented as any American community today. It is our job as the Body of Christ in this time and this place to be the reconciling agents in our community. The way to begin this leavening work is to remember that all people, despite their differences, owe thanks to the same God and, because of their differences, owe thanks to each other." 

From: "A Community Gives Thanks"

Preached at: Community Thanksgiving Eve Service,

Easton, Pennsylvania (1977)

Scripture: Luke 17:11-19; John 4:1-14

Day by Day Faith

The weather was nearly perfect as Dorry and I walked around the Garden of Reflection, a beautiful memorial garden near our home. It was just what I needed. Yesterday was the end of a hectic, even frantic work week that left me on edge, and the stakes only get higher in the week ahead. But today, I've set all of that aside. Today, I'm just enjoying the day. 

Dorry at the Garden of Reflection

A day like today - sandwiched between a trying week behind me and a daunting week ahead - usually threatens to pull me into a spiral of anxiety. When I'm harried by what's behind me and worried by what's ahead, everything looks worse, every challenge appears insurmountable. But that didn't happen to me today. What made the difference? Was it something I ate?

I found a sermon in my dad's barrel that recalled God's promise to give the people of Israel something to eat each morning as they wandered through the wilderness after escaping slavery in Egypt. "Every morning, they found a strange white substance on the ground. They saw it and called it manna, meaning 'what is it?' The manna tasted like wafers made with honey. Morning after morning, as the people gathered their manna, the way of God's provision should have become clear to them. Those who out of fear and greed went around madly gathering as much as they could discovered that when they were through, they had nothing left over. Likewise, those who only gathered a little found that theirs was sufficient for their needs. A strange substance this manna, to shrink and stretch like that, just according to the attitude of its user. And perhaps it was not so strange after all. It is simply God's manner of giving - enough, and that is all."

"The promise of God was that the manna would be there every morning - fresh and new upon the ground. But there were some who thought they better save some manna for the next day, just in case. Just in case what? Well, just in case God didn't keep his promise. They didn't say that out loud; usually, they just rationalized. You know, 'Make hay while the sun shines.'  But the next morning, the rotten, stinky stuff pungently reminded them of their little faith. As they held their nose with one hand and they scraped it out of their bowls with the other, they must have come a little closer to understanding this God who was leading them to the promised land with no more guarantee than his word, his promise. What a contrast between that beautiful, white manna eaten on the very day for which it was given and that wormy, moldy ooze stored away for the future by anxious men of little faith."

"This graphic illustration foreshadowed the words of Jesus many hundreds of years later, as he stood on a hill and said: "So do not worry saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' ... [D]o not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:31, 34). 

"God's blessings are meant to be used, and to be used as they are given, a day at a time. They are for now; they do not secure the future. Thus it is that we pray, as Jesus taught us, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Our Israelite fore-bearers - worshipers of the same gracious, giving God whom we worship - learned about daily bread as they went through the wilderness on their way to the promised land. We too are the people of God, on a journey through the wilderness of this world, pointed toward a promised land that our Lord often called the Kingdom of God. God has called us to a mission; God has promised us the presence of his Spirit on the way. And yet our meager faith finds it difficult to grasp that promise firmly. In our wilderness there is plenty of food and water, but fear grips us because there are so many other things that threaten our material security: bombs, pollution, economic uncertainty, crime, illness, family break-down, just to name a few. Each of us has our own special enemies - those things that worry us and make us forget God and his promise."

"What God gave us yesterday was for yesterday, not today or tomorrow. Will we simply open ourselves anew to whatever blessings God gives us today? That is the way God gives, and that is the only way we can rightly receive - a day at a time, enough for our needs."

"What a new, fresh security the Israelites must have felt when they learned God's way of giving. How it must have freed them of anxiety and released them to stop worrying about themselves. How it must have freed them to love others and give of themselves throughout their demanding journey. It is so simply and matter-of-factly stated at the end of the story: 'They ate manna, until they came to the border of Canaan.' (Exodus 16:35)."

"So may we eat, and so may we be satisfied, and so may we be freed to give to others as God in Christ has given to us."        

This morning, I ate manna of a sort. I ate a breakfast that I helped to prepare and share with two homeless families staying at a nearby shelter. As God gave them food that they needed, God gave me some much-needed perspective. If these families in such great need can count on the goodness of strangers to feed and house them until they can get back on their feet, surely I can count on God to sustain me - day by day - through the challenging week ahead.  

"Manna in the Wilderness"

Scripture: Exodus 16; Matt.6:25-34

Preached in 1971

Grace United Methodist Church

Millersville, PA    

On Rainbows & Church Unity

Sometimes I pull an old sermon from my father's barrel and I find that it reads as though it were newly penned to be preached today. With Christians now so sharply divided over hot-button political, social and theological issues, these words that my dad wrote for his congregation in 1984 might as well have been meant for us over thirty years later:

"Too often we see partnership and unity in the Church replaced with factionalism and suspicion. An outsider observing us would wonder whether we consider it more important to be about our mission or to quarrel over issues such as female ministers in the Church, or whether we should use only male terms to refer to God, or conservative versus liberal theology, or the place of homosexuals in the church and its ministry, or many others.

Unfortunately, today in many people's eyes it is not enough to say you are a Christian. If you do, you will be pressed further to reveal whether you are a liberal or a conservative, whether you're straight or gay and where you stand on those issues, whether you're high church or low church, whether you're charismatic or fundamentalist or evangelical, whether you advocate a theology of liberation or feminism, whether you are part of a denomination or an independent.

Christians are preoccupied with choosing up sides over various hot issues and consolidating their strength to protect their own turf. This is a very serious challenge to partnership and unity within the Church; it is damaging to our credibility and our Christian witness before the world. In the days of the early Church it is reported that outsiders looked at the Christian fellowship and said, 'See how they love one another!' It seems today that our factionalism is more of a distinguishing mark than our love for one another.

Our partnership and unity as Christians comes from the fact that before the cross all of us are absolutely equal. The criminal and the PTA president, the unemployed laborer and the corporate executive, black and white, male and female, socialist and capitalist, gay and straight. Before the cross, the only thing that differentiates us is whether or not we have accepted God's forgiving, transforming love. All of the other stands we take on social issues, political issues, economic issues, moral issues are minor compared to the stand we take at the foot of the cross. The cross may have been on a hill, but at the foot of the cross the ground is perfectly level. No one stands higher than anyone else there.

Solidarity is often little more than an enlarged form of self-interest. Communities and churches that are made up only of 'birds of a feather' are not the fulfillment of the Gospel. We call Jesus the Light of the World, so it might be helpful to think about how light works. We know light by what it lights up, by the way it is reflected. Light is the perfect mixture of the full spectrum of colors. Most objects which the sun's rays hit will absorb some colors in the light and reflect others. We see only the colors that are reflected. Those colors, we know, are an outstanding variety of shades and contrasts -- never just one uniform color.

It is exactly the same with each different person on whom the Light of Jesus Christ shines. He shines on each one of us, and we each look slightly different because we each reflect slightly different parts of his light. And so, one of us under Christ's light is a fighter against social injustice, while another is zealous for personal conversion. One advocates order and dignity in worship, while another calls for freedom and spontaneity. One pushes for change, while another cautions us not to lose the value of tradition. Doesn't every human being color the pure light of Christ to some degree and in some direction? Should this always be understood as the tragedy of our imperfection? Or might it be a blessing of diversity, like a rainbow that in a sense opens up or unfolds the sunlight?

Through his cross, Christ revealed himself most fully as the Light of the World -- a light that at one and the same time enhances our differences and yet draws us together because it shines on all of us from one true source. We should not be frustrated with diversity and contrast in the Church. We must thank God for every new tint that shines forth to the world. None of us individually, but all of us together in true partnership, can reflect the pure light of God to a darkened world. This is the Good News we have to give: 'God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.'"  

From: "Toward a New Partnership in the Church"
Scripture: Philippians 1:1-11; II Corinthians 8:1-7, 9:10-15
Preached at: Paoli U.M. Church, Paoli, PA  (1984)

Spiritual Weariness

I'm on vacation ... a week away from the pressures of work and the daily grind of life. This break came at a good time, at a point when I felt like weariness might have otherwise swamped me. I'm sure you've been there. Who hasn't? Getting away from it all certainly helps to give us a fresh perspective and to refuel us for the journey ahead.

But what is the best prescription when our weariness is spiritual? What if our frustration is not simply from the stresses of a job, but with a God who seems absent or at least asleep at the switch? My father once wrote that such spiritual weariness "is epidemic among us today. It's easy to grow weary of a God whose only claim to divinity is what he did back in the hazy past. It's like dozing off while listening to the reminiscing of a once-great person, all of whose excitement and accomplishments in life lie in days gone by. That kind of god becomes dull and old-hat, lacking in power and relevance for the now of our lives. Consequently, our church-going, our praying, our Bible reading, and even our Christian service becomes obligation, dull routine. Finally, it may even fade away entirely."

"People lament. They say, 'What has happened to the Church? It has lost its power, its zest.' The answer is that the Church -- you and I (for the Church is not something other than you and I) -- the Church is looking for God in the past rather than in the present. It is not enough to study the Bible to find out what God did back then. It is not enough to recall what God did in years past in any congregation. Isaiah says, 'Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.' Now he didn't meant that it was wrong to go back to those things. He certainly did enough of that himself in his prophecies. But we go back to what God did then in order to get a handle on the present, to be able to discern what God is doing now, not to live back there. We are failing to ask, 'What is God doing among us now?'"

"What is God doing in my life, my job, my family, my marriage? What is God doing in my church? What is God doing in the world? These are important questions. The Biblical promise is: 'Ask and ye shall receive.' It is absolutely certain that if you ask these questions in faith, really wanting to know, you will be overwhelmed. Your life, your church, the world around you will dance, alive with the Spirit of God. You cannot grow weary of a God like that."

"I recently heard of a pastor who begins each meeting of the congregation's governing Board by asking the members a question: 'Where have you seen God at work -- at work anywhere -- since the last time we met?' The answers bring a sense of excitement and thrill to the meeting and to the church itself. These people are training themselves to look for God's activity, and they are finding God every day, in their families, in their neighborhoods, in their church, even in the news headlines. It is a search that never goes unrewarded."

"God is alive and moving right now. The more you sensitize yourself to this, the more you realize that the earth is crammed with heaven, and no situation, no matter how terrible, is outside the redeeming activity of God. The Bible is not God's prison, and heaven is not just our retreat where we go in the sweet by-and-by when the world is finished using and abusing us. 'Behold, he is doing a new thing right now. Do you not perceive it?'" 

So now I have some questions to ponder as a paddle my kayak across the lake: What new thing is this God doing in my life, my family, my marriage, my workplace, my church, my world? I'm guessing that the answers to questions like these could be as energizing as any vacation.

From:"Weary of God"

Scripture: Isaiah 43:14-25    

Family: It's A Given

Cousin Jeanie, who had organized our family reunion, stood at the front of the picnic pavilion and exclaimed to the assembled Newcomers,"This all began with four knucklehead brothers: Bill, Ray, Bob and Charlie Newcomer." Those four men -- my grandfather and his three younger brothers -- are no longer with us. But all of their living children, plus my mother who represented my dad, came forward to stand on the stage. Soon spouses joined them, then their children, then the spouses of their children, then their grandchildren, until all the Newcomers were standing to form a living family tree. It was quite a sight: the most Newcomers I've ever seen in one place. Some I've known all my life, others I've only seen sporadically, and a few I was meeting for the first time. Yet, we were all family. 

  

My Mom (far left) with the Children of Bill, Ray, Bob & Charlie Newcomer

My father once wrote that being with family gives you "an appreciation for what it means to learn to live with people who are given to you, not people you choose to live with, but people who are given. Certainly the particular children we have are given to us; we did not choose them from a large selection. Sometimes this is true of someone else you might live with -- an uncle or a grandparent. One time a number of years ago, two college girls in tears knocked frantically on our door. They had been put out of their rooming house across the street by a local density ordinance. They had no place to go. We took them in and they became a part of our family for a year, and a real blessing, too! What else could we do? They were given to us. I've always felt it important to accept those who are given to me."

"You say, 'Yes, but there's one person in my family whom I choose -- my wife or my husband.' That's true, and there's a real sense of free choice in the first months or even years of marriage, but it's not too long until that wears off and our marriage partner has a certain 'given-ness' about him or her in our eyes. You know what they say: 'You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family.'"

"Jesus ... [uses] the family to teach us how to love and appreciate and care for those who are given to us. It is easy to love and appreciate and care for the people you choose. But the family is where we first learn to deal with people who are given. And the main blessing that Jesus provides for us in this respect is to teach us that love is a matter of the will, even more than a matter of our feelings. Chosen people are easily loved because we feel like loving them. Given people are not as easily loved, and so we must will to love them. The will to love is largely unknown in the secular world. It comes from Jesus Christ when we want it and ask him for it. It transforms the family into a group of people who, though they did not choose each other, have a strong mutual love that sets them apart from so many other families where there is mutual distrust and dislike and bare toleration of each other."

"This love for those who are given is such an important thing to learn in the family because it is a valuable asset to have in so many other areas of life where people are also given to us. A choir and its director are given to each other; a United Methodist Church and its pastor are given to each other; a teacher and a class are given to each other; an employee and a boss are often given to one another; neighbors are given to each other. Every day we can, by God's grace, will to love those who are given to us. And we can first learn how to do this in the Christian family." 

From: "The Family: Conformed or Transformed?"

Scripture: Romans 12:1-2

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

May 8, 1988 

No Forgiveness, No Peace

The news this past week has been horrible. One morning, I picked up the newspaper and read a headline saying, "Traffic-Stop Sheer Horror."  A black man from Minnesota had been shot and killed by a police officer in a mere traffic stop for a broken tail light. It was the second fatal police shooting of a black man in as many days, the other occurring in Louisiana. Then, when I picked up the newspaper the next morning, the banner headline read, "Dallas in Shock." A man with a rifle, looking to avenge the week's earlier deaths, turned a peaceful protest into a blood-bath -- shooting twelve police officers, killing five of them. How do we effectively address such violence, such anger, such injustice? Where does it end? 

My father's ministry began in the Boston area during the racially turbulent 1960s. On the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., my father preached a sermon he simply titled, "Reconciliation." There, Dad said that racial reconciliation has two key ingredients. The first is justice: "Justice is making up for past wrongs. It is everyone getting what is deserved and enjoying equal rights and equal opportunities."  My father said that "[e]very muscle of our bodies and every cell of our brains and every dollar in our pockets must be strained to the limit to achieve justice in our society." 

As vitally important as he believed justice to be, my father saw that justice alone is insufficient to bring about true reconciliation: "So many leaders will tell us falsely that 'justice' is the be-all and end-all of reconciliation between the races, or any other at-odds groups, of which there are so many. They are wrong! Justice alone will never bring reconciliation because, strictly speaking, as long as men are men and sinners, there will never be total justice. ...

"You know, there are some debts we owe to other men that we just cannot pay. There are other debts that we can only begin to pay. At the point where my ability to pay my debt to you falls short, that is where you must begin to forgive. And only because you forgive can we be reconciled. Forgiveness is the meat of reconciliation, its main ingredient. Dr. King realized that the meat of reconciliation is forgiveness -- thus his philosophy of non-violence. ...

"Men are human; they sin against each other. Even in a perfectly ordered society, they hurt each other. And so if there is to be peace, there must be a constant flow of forgiveness. The history of the church -- from the day Stephen was stoned to the day Martin Luther King was shot -- shows us that sometimes no reparation is possible and forgiveness is the only practical action which can be prescribed. We must recognize that we are indebted to each other. If we want to live together and work together, we must learn to forgive."

So where do we go from here? From the evil, loss and division we witnessed last week? My father believed that, "as Christians on this day, we have the audacious right to proclaim that unless the  divided world recognizes and understands the word of reconciliation spoken by God at the cross, it is without hope of survival in any sense."

"What does God do at the cross that reconciles us to him? He forgives. He forgives. In Christ, God bears our sin and suffers. Loving us with unfathomable love, he forgives us the thousands of misguided ways we have attempted to be masters of our own fate. He forgives. By the cross, God shows us that he forgives the great corporate and social evils that we have helped set in motion, but over which we no longer have control. He forgives. ... There is nothing I can do to pay the debt I owe God for what I have done to my neighbor and therefore to God himself. But God loves me, and so he forgives. ...

"Who would think that the cross would give us the pattern and the source for ordering our social relations? But I submit to you that if it did not, what would it be worth?

From "Reconciliation"
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Preached Good Friday, 1969
Adams Shore Community Church, Quincy, MA  

P.S. - For more from Bill on Christian faith and racial reconciliation, I urge you to read the post: Bill on Martin: A Call to Action. 

Jesus Scares Me

I recently came across a sermon my father preached when I was two years old. Examining the relationship between parents, children and faith, Dad asked, "Parents, where do you supposed your child first begins to pick up an idea of what God is like? From you, of course. From the way you cuddle and nurse and talk to the child. And as the child grows, his or her concept of God is further colored by contacts with other significant adults. We call God 'father' because we think of God as being like a good father. Children have no other way to visualize God except in terms of adults.

Bill with Phil

The other day, my young son Philip looked at a picture of the bearded Jesus and asked me who it was. I said, 'Jesus.' Philip answered, 'Jesus scares me.' And that set me to thinking about how Philip or any child will come to know God. Not by first seeing pictures or hearing stories, but by experiencing God's love channeled through me."

It turns out that I did come to learn many valuable things about God's nature from the love that was channeled through my father. 

Dad was always concerned for my well-being, was always looking out for me ... and so is God.

Dad was both playful and serious ... and so is God.

Dad was called to serve many others beyond his family. There were the members of his congregations who looked to him for guidance, the grieving who needed comfort, the sick who needed to be visited, the needy who came looking for aid. So it was for Jesus.

And with the many demands that others made on my Dad's time and attention when I was a kid, there was plenty of opportunity for me to be resentful of his ministry ... to wish that he was just my dad and not everyone else's pastor. But I understood -- no doubt because Dad made such a point of it -- that his ministry was our family's ministry. We all were part of it. He wasn't appointed to a church; our whole family was. His work was our work, too. God is like that -- choosing to work with us and through us for the good of others, for the good of all.

Dad ended his sermon by saying, "I thank God, as I look back across my life, for the people who disciplined me, the people who taught me, the people who spoke the words and who gave the gentle shoves that challenged me. I have forgotten the people who didn't care, those who were afraid to advise, the ones who were too busy to teach. I remember only, and I thank God for the men and women who saw to it that I came to love and serve God in Jesus Christ through the church."

Thank you, Dad, for seeing to it that I know and love God. I'm happy to report that Jesus doesn't scare me any more. (Well, at least his beard doesn't.) Happy Father's Day!

From "Lent to the Lord"

Scripture: 1 Samuel 1:19c-28

January 21, 1968

Adams Shore Community Church

Quincy, MA   

A Mother's Nurture

Something felt a little upside-down as we sat around the restaurant table, eating a meal with my mom to celebrate Mother's Day. It was a real treat, I'm sure, for Mom to have all three of her kids there to celebrate with her. After all, my brother, Mark is living in the UK and rarely gets to come state-side. But, as conversation continued, it dawned on me that we were engrossed in discussing everything that was going on with Mom's kids and grand-kids ... not so much about what was going on with Mom. As she so often does, Mom was focused on us, more than on herself. 

Mark, Lisa, Mom (Barb) and Phil

When I think back on my childhood, the word that I would use to describe Mom is "nurturing." In a sermon my dad preached on Mother's Day in 1982, Dad observed that "nurture" comes from the same root as does the word "nourish." That was Mom (and it still is)! You never lack for nourishment at Mom's house!

In that Mother's Day sermon, Dad explained that nurturing "has to do with feeding for growth -- nourishing us physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally for mature adulthood." Dad went on to say that "[o]ne of our basic modern problems is that no one wants to nurture anymore. Women used to do it, and because it was all we ever let them do, now they are reacting against it and doing it less and less. Men have hardly ever done it, although they are certainly capable of it. Old people want to leave it to the young. The young want to have their freedom and not be tied down. ... With all the emphasis these days on power and self-determination and doing your own thing, we view the role of nurturer as something to do if you can't find anything better. It's as if it were unmanly -- or now unwomanly -- to nurture children or those in our society who are weak or need help.

Where did we ever get the idea that nurture is beneath us -- as women, or as men? Where did we ever get the idea that we are being less than we can be if we feed and comfort and teach and listen and care? Are we not created in the image of God? And are we not supposed to grow in God's likeness? What is God like? ...

We call the God we worship 'Father,' and we picture a creator and judge, but that is not the full Biblical revelation of God's nature. Think of the Lord as gentle shepherd, the one who nourishes and cares. God is the one who provides manna in the wilderness for God's hungry people.

I always have found it interesting that one of our most precious Christian doctrines -- the doctrine of new birth -- sheds a light on the nature of God that is not traditionally masculine at all. We can be 'born of God,' we can be 'born of the Spirit.' Do you know what that means? God is our spiritual mother as well as our spiritual father. What I mean by that is: As one person, God does for each of us everything that we traditionally have divided up between male and female roles. God combines within God's self the creating function as well as the sustaining function, strength as well as tenderness, self-control as well as the free flow of emotions. God is the perfect person, and by God's grace we strive for that wholeness. 

Strength and tenderness ... Yes, in spite of what we may think the two can combine. And they can combine in each one of us, regardless of our sex, because they are combined perfectly in the God in whose image we all have been made."

Thank you, Mom, for the life-giving nurture that you provided (and still provide) for your children and grandchildren. And thank you to my wife, Dorry, who is an amazing nurturing presence in the lives of our kids. May we all learn from the nurturing example of our mothers ... and of our God ... so that we can mature into whole and healthy people.  Happy Mother's Day!

From: "Nurturing for Maturity"

Scripture: John  19:23-30

Preached: Mother's Day 1982

Calvary United Methodist Church, Easton, PA

The Cost of Discipleship

On this date in 1945, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi regime for playing a role in a movement that resisted Hitler, even to the point of attempting assassination. Bonhoeffer was my father's favorite theologian, not only because of what he wrote, but also because of how he lived and died.

A couple of Bonhoeffer's works from Bill's library:
The Cost of Discipleship & Letters and Papers from Prison

My father's sermons include many references to Bonhoeffer's life and writings. In one of those sermons, Dad described the fateful choice Bonhoeffer made which set him on a path toward his death:

"Bonhoeffer, who along with other Germans fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, came to America seeking refuge and peace. And yet there was no peace for him. In the steamy heat of a Summer night in 1939, Dietrich walked up and down Times Square in New York, agonizing over the news from Europe. Alone, he tried, as Christ did so many years before, to reject the cup of suffering he knew would be his. The next day, he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr: 'I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this same time with my people.' And so he returned to Germany; he led the underground Confessing Church; he plotted against Hitler; he was arrested, imprisoned and finally hanged. Neither Bonhoeffer nor Jesus were stupid or foolhardy. They recognized the dangers and the cost involved. But they also recognized that they would be less than they were meant to be, if they stayed in America, or in Galilee."

My father never expected that every Christian would be called upon to make the same sacrifice as a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but he did believe that all Christians are called to the single-minded devotion to Christ that landed Bonhoeffer in Tegel Prison:

"What is involved in following Jesus? We must put Him and His Kingdom of love and justice and righteousness first in our lives. Don't let anyone kid you. This is difficult, and if you do it seriously it will get you into as much trouble as missing your father's funeral. We are called to be totally committed to Christ in the midst of, within, all our daily routines and responsibilities ... to follow Him in our work, our home, our marriage, our leisure, our civic responsibilities.

This will mean raising your children in a distinctly different way from many of your neighbors. It may mean conducting your work or business life according to principles that cause you to make less money or to get passed over for a promotion. It will affect what you eat, drink, wear, ride in or live in. It will mean that you will not automatically go along with the crowd in your opinions about social, political or economic issues. And you know those bull sessions with the boys or the girls? You may not be able to roar with laughter at all the jokes, or agree with prejudices that are expressed there. It will mean taking unpopular stands and getting used to feeling out of place around some of your neighbors and friends and relatives. 

Total commitment is the Lord's expectation of every Christian. Our duty is to single-mindedly translate Christ-likeness into every area where we play out our lives, regardless of the cost." If we do anything less, won't we be less than God meant us to be?

From: "A Trip to Jerusalem" & "Total Commitment"

Scripture: Luke 9:51-62

My Candidate Quandary

On Monday, the Iowa caucuses will be held, kicking off voting in the 2016 race for U.S. President. I am fascinated by presidential history; yet, this presidential election has me feeling something between annoyance and depression. When I look across the assembled field of candidates, I find impossible to imagine any of them as the next Teddy Roosevelt or JFK. Heck, I'm not trying to find Abraham Lincoln in this crowd. I'd settle for a James Garfield. Is this the best we can do? 

A friend of mine named Dave had an interesting take on this situation. He recently wrote: "Some say we lack great leaders and they may be right. But I am more saddened by what a small minded and hard-hearted people we have become. It may be that we no longer produce good leaders because we fail to be a good people." Dave's words on Facebook caused me to dig into Bill's Barrel to see if any of my dad's old sermons spoke to this leadership void and its possible causes. There I found a sermon called "On Being a Christian in the Voting Booth," in which my father suggests, as Dave suspected, that our leadership problem begins with us:

"Isn't the voting booth one of those places where we customarily leave Jesus outside while we go in with other things on our minds? Somehow, when the curtain closes behind us in that booth, the fact that we are Christians seems secondary to the fact that we are Republicans or Democrats, or veterans, or taxpayers, or hot on one particular issue that affects our self-interest. The way political campaigns are conducted, and the way past elections have gone, this selfish attitude toward the vote is quite clear. The voting booth is one place where the person is actually encouraged to let his prejudices and his selfish interests take over and be expressed in his vote.

As Christians, we cannot accept this. We are called to love and sacrifice for our neighbor, as much in the voting booth as outside it. How can we talk about 'going the second mile,' 'turning the other cheek,' 'feeding the hungry,' or 'proclaiming release to the captives' if we are not willing to vote for candidates whose policies are most in keeping with our Christian ideals? To be a Christian in the voting booth means to lay aside self-interest, prejudices and party labels. It could mean voting for a Democrat if you're a Republican, or for a Republican if you're a Democrat. It could mean voting to raise your own taxes if that revenue is needed to improve society. It might mean voting for someone whose policies could negatively affect your job, if  those policies are good for the nation's people. There is no end to the 'strange votes' you may have to cast if you take Christ with you into the voting booth, if you dare to say to Him in there behind the curtain, 'Thy will, not mine be done.'

We can be as selfish with our vote as we can be with our money, our time, or our abilities. It is this selfish voting that has gotten our country into the trouble that it's in today. We are polarized into so many opposing groups, each jealously guarding and looking out for its own interests, each voting accordingly, and not giving a care about other people and their needs and feelings. It is time that Christians make a loud, clear witness with their vote. We care about what happens to all people -- black and white, rich and poor, rural and urban. We will vote to care even if it causes us to sacrifice. After all, sacrifice should be nothing new or unusual to us as Christians; it should be our way of life.

And so being a Christian in the voting booth means judging each candidate on his [or her] merits by our Christian standards. These are questions we must ask ourselves if our vote is to become an act of Christian witness:

• Even though the candidate may not be a professing Christian, how closely is that candidate allied with our Christian principles? 
• How does a candidate fare when measured by the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? 
• Does the candidate not only have the qualities of great leadership, but will he [or she] lead us in a way that is consistent with the coming Kingdom of  our Lord? 
• Do the candidate's policies promote the God-given dignity and equality of all, or does the candidate favor certain interest groups  and thus tend to divide people from each other rather than draw them together?
• Does the candidate recognize that 'law and order' and 'justice' are equally important?
• Does the candidate believe that we should be a real neighbor to the world's people -- not the sort of neighbor who goes in and takes over, imposing his own will and inviting hostility and resentment?

These kinds of questions are not easy to answer. It is not very easy to judge the real person who stands before us as a candidate, what with all the image-building and news managing that goes on. Educated guesses are needed in making the final choice, and sometimes neither candidate measures up very well to Christian standards. Even then, there is a responsibility to choose between the lesser of two evils. This too is the form Christian witness may take in the real world. 

We cannot expect that after due prayer and study all professing Christians will vote for the same candidates. But each Sunday we all pray, 'Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.' So it is up to you to decide who best expresses, not your own selfish will, but the will of your Lord Jesus Christ." 

From "On Being a Christian in the Voting Booth" 

Scripture: Romans 13:1-7; Acts 5:27-42

Preached at Grace United Methodist Church

Millersville, Pennsylvania

November 5, 1972