Doing The Impossible

One of the many memorable stops on my tour of the Holy Land was the Church of the Primacy of Saint Peter.  The church is situated along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where a small beach meets the tree line.  The most conspicuous feature of this otherwise unremarkable little church is its foundation. The church rests upon a large, exposed formation of limestone.  The outcropping of rock, sometimes called "the Place of the Coals," is held by church tradition to be the spot where the resurrected Jesus appeared to Peter and some other disciples while they were fishing and made them breakfast over a fire. You can read about it in the last chapter of John's gospel, which you can find here.

Church of the Primacy of Saint Peter
Tabgha, Israel

When I recently read a sermon my father had preached on New Year's Day of 1978, I learned that one of the churches he served - Grace United Methodist Church in Millersville, PA - also was know for a vein of limestone beneath it. Here's how Dad told the story:

"In our Grace Church in Millersville, just after the Second World War, the returning veterans got together and dug out, by hand, a much needed basement room under the red brick church - a real testimony to their faith and devotion. But when the minimum basement area had been achieved, enthusiasm waned. Some argued that the project should be completed, and the entire area under the church building should be excavated. Others said, "No," citing their increased encounters with rock as they had dug in a easterly direction. Ultimately, the naysayers carried the day, and the project was brought to a close. 

Over the years that followed, the tale about the rock grew and grew until the lore was that the church was sitting upon a veritable Rock of Gibraltar. Finally, during my time there [in the 1970's], we reached the point where additional basement space was much needed for our programs. The few naysayers who were there objected on the basis of money, on the basis of need, but most especially on the basis of the huge vein of Lancaster County limestone that everyone knew was there. But the faith that this basement project was the will of God for Grace Church prevailed. The venerable old sanctuary was shored-up for construction, and a mini-bulldozer was sent underneath it to dig out our new basement. And do you know, there was virtually no rock found under that building?

From that point on, enthusiasm for the project multiplied. Needed funds were quickly raised. These and other confirmations came, reassuring us that what we were doing was God's will. The project was finished with a great crescendo of praise to God.

Ever since, I have taken this as more than just a real-life experience. For me, it is a parable that points beyond itself to the question of whether or not we have the courage to answer God's call to do the impossible. Some of our fears are well-founded, based on real rocks; other are not. But in neither case can we afford to let our fears make our decision for us, if that decision is to avoid doing the new thing God is calling us to do.

Does God want it done? Does God want you to do it? If the answer to both of those questions is, "Yes," then you can do it, no matter how impossible it seems on the surface. The promise we are given in Scripture is that with God all things are possible. Believing this, we come to see that when we doubt our ability to accomplish something that is within God's will, we are not really doubting ourselves; we are doubting the power of God."

As Peter approached the resurrected Jesus, who had prepared breakfast for his disciples on the rocky shore on the Sea of Galilee, Peter must had felt both exhilarated and mortified. Here was Peter's Lord, who was very much alive! But here too was a dear friend, whom Peter had abandoned. On the night of Jesus's arrest, Peter had denied three times that he even knew Jesus. The next day, the Romans executed Jesus.

A sign in Jerusalem pointing to
the place where Peter denied Jesus

Peter no doubt figured God was through with him at that point. Fishing seemed like the only thing Peter still was good for. Anything more was impossible. But God wanted something done, and God wanted Peter to do it.

After their fire-side breakfast on the rocky shore of the Sea of Galilee, the resurrected Jesus asked Peter three times whether Peter loved him. Peter responded, thrice professing his love for Jesus. Then Jesus said to Peter, "Follow me!" - just as Jesus had done when he first called Peter to be his disciple. With that renewed call to action, Jesus made the impossible possible again. Peter was back in the business of partnering with God to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

What is God calling you to do in the New Year ahead? Do you think it's impossible? Think again.

From: "Doing The Impossible"
Scripture: Mark 9:14-29
Preached January 1, 1978
Calvary United Methodist Church
Easton, PA 

Silver Star or Stone Manger?

When I knelt in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity for a photo at the very spot where Jesus is believed to have been born, I didn't experience a moving encounter with God. The scene seemed strange to me. After the passing of more than 2,000 years, the little cave that is venerated as the site of Christ's birth now has a marble floor. There's a 14-point silver star inscribed in Latin to mark the location of the holy birth. Fifteen silver lamps hang above the star from an altar, and the altar area is festooned with an elaborate gold tapestry. The pomp of the place borders on pomposity. It's as if the Church's caretakers tried too hard over the centuries to make pilgrims feel the importance of what they were seeing. They wanted it to be extraordinary, but in the end it didn't seem real.

Phil and Dorry at the Grotto of the Nativity  

I wonder what my father thought of this ornate and unreal place when he visited it thirty years before I did. He once wrote that folks tend to misuse the celebration of Christ's birth to escape from reality. "As we gather in the beauty of this Christmas Eve night, to sing familiar carols, to hear again the ancient story of the nativity, and then to bathe ourselves and our house of worship in the warm glow of candles, we must be careful not to let this night or this season become a mere escape.

The pagan side of Christmas - and I'm sure we all recognize there is a pagan side - is primarily an escape from the cares and tensions and frustrations of daily living. The lights, the revelry, and the frantic activity can create, for a brief time, a world apart. Christmas as a winter festival, as a celebration of the astronomical Winter Solstice, is much older than the birth of Christ. At first, Christmas was a pagan holiday, a welcome relief from the strain and boredom of ancient life in the dead of winter. Only later did the Christian Church take over this holiday, baptize it as it were, and turn it into a celebration of the birth of Christ. And so Christmas, even before it was Christmas, had this atmosphere of escapism about it.

But designating this holiday as the anniversary of the birth of Christ changed its whole direction from escapism to a new confrontation with reality. Christian believers know that in the birth of Christ - in the Incarnation of God in human form -  we see our Heavenly Father taking the world and earthly human life very seriously, seriously enough to become one of us and share our life completely. Christmas is not the story of a spectacular divine pageant in the glorious chambers of Heaven. Christmas is the story of how God's saving love got itself born into stark, cold reality - to a peasant couple, citizens of an occupied land, in a cattle stall, with only humble shepherds to witness the event.

The story of Christmas is so real and everyday in its human pathos that we can identify with it completely. It's like the crazy, stressful, frustrating situations we get stuck in so often. A young girl finds herself pregnant out of wedlock. Her fiance wrestles with the question of whether he can trust her. A forced trip to a distant town to register for taxes comes at just the wrong time for them. There are 'no vacancy' signs everywhere at the end of their long, hard journey. There is the pain of childbirth and the discomfort of a cold stable. There is the hurried flight to a safe country because of a volatile political situation."

Days after visiting Bethlehem, I unexpectedly came upon a very real reminder of the Christmas story that impacted me far more than the silver star on the floor of the Grotto of the Nativity. Dorry and I were touring the ruins of the ancient city of Megiddo (better known by its Greek name, Armageddon). As we walked through the excavated site of a stable from the Old Testament era of Israel's King Ahab, I asked the tour guide about a large, hollowed stone I saw there. He replied, "Oh, that's a just manger for feeding horses." A manger, eh? It was cool to the touch, even in the afternoon sun. It was literally rock-hard. It's edges were rough and unforgiving. It was no place to lay a newborn baby. Yet a manger like this was pressed into service as a make-shift cradle for the baby Jesus. I lingered over the ancient manger, struck by the cold, hard reality of it.

Manger at the South Stables of Megiddo

"From the very first breath he drew, Jesus experienced the brutal reality of the broken world he came to save. He felt the sharp edges of life from the very beginning. And just because this is true, when you or I speak to Him in heartfelt prayer, we can call him not only our Lord and Savior, but also our friend and our brother. Here is a Savior who knows what it is he saves us from, because he's been there. Yes, Christmas is the story of how God infiltrated the real world to save it from the inside out.

What is the reality of your personal situation this Christmas? Where are you hurting? How have you been disappointed? What are you afraid of? Be assured that the God who would stoop to an ordinary birth in an ordinary barn knows the ordinary problems and griefs of all his children. He's been there. He knows and feels it with you. This is the deepest meaning of the name we use for him this time of year: Emmanuel -- God With Us. 

In the mix of this cold, hard reality where he is with us, Jesus turns to us this Christmas and says, 'Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'  As John puts it at the beginning of his gospel, 'The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.'"            

Thank you, Jesus, for being Emmanuel - God with us - this Christmas and every day. Amen.

From: "Christmas: Confrontation with Reality"   

Waiting

If I could use only one word to describe the first two days of my recent trip to the Holy Land, that word would be "waiting." I waited with anticipation for the evening when my flight would leave for Israel. I waited at the airport to check in, to go through security, and to board my flight. I waited in my seat more than 10 hours as the Boeing 777 crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea en route to Tel Aviv over-night. And because of a 7-hour time difference between Israel and my home, my over-night flight actually arrived in the early evening - meaning that I would have to wait over-night again (this time in a hotel) before I could visit any of the sites on our itinerary. 

The first stop on our Holy Land tour was the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - the traditional site of Jesus' birth. Our tour guide warned us that we would have to wait in line for a long time to see the spot where Jesus was born, even though we were one of the first groups to arrive at the Church that morning. The reason for this wait? Each of the three religious communities which shares responsibility for the site (the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches) had its own allotted time for daily worship there before the Grotto of the Nativity would be opened to the public. So we waited some more. 

Pilgrims Wait to Enter the Grotto of the Nativity     

I wasn't very patient as I waited for the Grotto to be opened, and neither were many of the tourists around me. Two tour guides even got into a heated argument about which group should enter the Grotto first. It would have served us well to have read an Advent sermon my father wrote about waiting. He said, "Waiting is so very foreign to us today. We live in the fast lane. We want things to happen instantly. The idea of delayed gratification of our needs or desires is just not acceptable to us. We live in a world of fast food and condensed books. People go to a counselor with deep-seated problems of long-standing and want a quick solution with one session and a few pills.

By buying into this modern trend we do ourselves a disservice, because waiting is an important and potentially positive part of life. Precious insights, vital discoveries, and new resources of strength can come from the proper kind of waiting. We live by 'clock time.' The years are divided into months, the months into days, the days into minutes. But if we want to get in step with God we must realize that God is not bound by the clock or the calendar. Waiting helps us get synchronized with God. Waiting put us on God's time. God acts in the fullness of time, at the right time. Quiet but active waiting puts us in touch with what God is doing and when God is doing it.

Many years before the birth of Jesus, the Old Testament prophets wrote about waiting for a deliverer who would be like a light for a darkened world. The people to whom the prophets spoke were weary with impatience. They wanted the Messiah now. They wanted God to be on their clock. Hundreds of years went by, and all God said was, 'Wait.' So anxious were they for the Messiah that the masses tried to crown John the Baptist as Messiah when he arrived on the scene. Again, God's message was 'wait.'

In our impatience to solve our own problems or gratify our own desires, we too try to confer messiahship on persons or institutions or philosophies that ultimately turn out to be false messiahs. We can't wait for God's salvation, and so we look to the President of the United States to solve our problems, or to government in general, or to material gain, or to the latest self-improvement fad.

For centuries, the People of God waited for deliverance, chasing here or there after false messiahs, 'but when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman ...'  Advent is a time to remind ourselves that God is in charge, and he knows what he's doing. In order to be so reminded, we must wait for God to act and for God to call us to action. 

Our tendency at this time of the year is to rush too quickly to the manger. Just as the world rushes into Christmas shortly after Halloween, so we follow suit. Not many of us like the slow Advent hymns; let's start right in with festive Christmas carols! And yet the wisdom of the ages tells us to wait. Don't pull out all the stops just yet. But why? What's the value in waiting? The prophet Isaiah counsels us that there is great wisdom in waiting for the Lord. When we wait on the Lord, we act not in the frail efforts of our own strength, but in the mighty power of the Lord's strength. When we wait on the Lord, we receive not the imperfect results of our own hands, but the good and perfect result of God's hand.

Don't rush to the manger too quickly this season. Wait. Stop, look, and listen to the people and events around you. Where is Christ speaking to you? Pray and read the Bible in the quietness of his presence. What is he saying to you? Don't rush to the manger. There are precious experiences along the way that should be savored, experiences through which God can prepare us to meet the Christ."

After waiting so long to enter the Grotto of the Nativity, I was rushed to (and past) the spot where Jesus was said to have been born, pausing just long enough to have my picture taken there. I didn't encounter Jesus at that hectic spot. I met him in the days that followed in the faces and voices of fellow travelers who came to the Holy Land to meet him just as I had.   

From: "Waiting"

Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11, 28-31   

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church