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

A Trip to Jerusalem

Friends of mine, Bob and Michelle, recently returned from a trip to Israel. At the same time they were there, two pastors I know – Max and Scott – also were touring the Holy Land. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip these four pilgrims made because they posted many pictures of the sights they encountered. Every time I perused my Facebook news-feed, I saw photos of places I long had only imagined – the Mount of the Beatitudes, Jacob’s Well, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, the Garden Tomb and more. I had fun following the travels of these four friends across Israel to Jerusalem. But following their journey on a laptop from my La-Z-Boy recliner is no substitute for the powerful experience of visiting Jerusalem in person.

A View of Jerusalem - by Bob Irving

We soon will reach Holy Week, when we remember the most famous, and most world-changing trip to Jerusalem ever made. The Gospel of Luke says that “[w]hen the days drew near for him to be taken up, [Jesus] set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  Luke 9:51 (NRSV).  As my father once wrote:

Jesus knew what the end would be if he went, and yet he decided to go. He decided to take the trip to Jerusalem, to the upper room, to Gethsemane, to the trials, to the Via Dolorosa, to the cross. For ten chapters in Luke’s Gospel (from Chapter 9 to Chapter 19), Jesus is en route to Jerusalem, aware that his passion awaits him. It is not only a physical trip from one place to another, but also a spiritual trip – a movement toward final, irreversible commitment to his Father’s will, an acceptance of the cup of suffering and death for the sins of the world.

“This is a stupid trip,” said his disciples repeatedly. They knew what would happen if Jesus went to Jerusalem. Again and again they begged him to stay home in Galilee where he was safe and at peace among friends and relatives who would pat him on the back and tell him what a fine preacher he was. And again and again Jesus told them that his end was suffering and death, and that he must go, but they did not understand. They followed him to Jerusalem because they loved him, and perhaps too because they still hoped against hope that he might exert some earthly authority. They followed, but not because they understood the meaning of his trip.

In countless ways, I dare to suggest, we too say that this is a stupid trip. We say it by the way we live our own lives. We seek comfort; we avoid conflict; we disdain sacrifice. We claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, and yet this is one trip on which we do not want to follow him.

Actually, the decision of whether or not to take this trip with Jesus centers around these questions: What is the real world like, and what does God want me to do about it? Jesus discovered that the real world was not just happy times in Galilee with friends and neighbors and dying of old age. He discovered that there was a Roman Empire and a whole world ripe to receive the message of the cross – a whole world that needed his service and suffering. He discovered that he was God’s man to do the job. To fulfill his own truth, to accomplish the purpose for which God gave him life, he must make the trip. Jesus wasn't stupid or foolhardy. He recognized the dangers and the cost involved. But he also recognized that he would be less than he was meant to be if he stayed in Galilee.

The real world is bigger than my back yard. The real world has more needs than those that arise from my family and friends. We all have our own ways of drawing our world as small as possible. To one person I must say that the real world is more than a comfortable chair, a can of beer and a football game. To another I must say that reality extends far beyond your children. To still another I must appeal for him to recognize that one cause, no matter how worthy, is not enough. And to another that life is more than your job or your daily routine. You alone know what parts of the real world your self-imposed blinders shut out. But allow yourself to see it or not, the reality – and often the ugliness – of the real world is there, and you are called to go there, to make the trip from Galilee to Jerusalem, from your artificially contrived comfort within narrow boundaries to the whole, real world where God calls you to live and serve.

In your Jerusalem there are so many lonely and neglected people. There is gross injustice. There is hunger of body and spirit. There is illness and suffering. There is hatred and violence. There is crime and war. There is pollution and rape of the environment. There is a whole creation broken in bits by man’s sin, waiting like Humpty Dumpty to be put back together again. This is your real world. This is the destination of your trip – your Jerusalem. And if you think about it, you will know what it all means specifically for you.

Real life, human life in the highest sense of that term, cannot be lived in your closet. Real life cannot be lived where you have drawn your shades to hide the world’s ugliness from your eyes. Real life is in the shape of a cross – a willing acceptance that we will suffer if need be to put things right in this world in His name.

As Jesus travels to Jerusalem, am I traveling with him, or am I just watching on my laptop from my recliner? Will I follow Jesus to Jerusalem, or just follow him on Facebook?

From: "The Trip to Jerusalem"

Scripture: Luke 9:51; Luke 19

Rethinking Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is a time for confession, so here’s one for you: I confess that Ash Wednesday has never been one of my favorite Christian holidays. After all, who wants to be reminded of his sin and mortality? The words that are usually spoken when the ashes are placed on a worshiper’s forehead sound so grim: “From dust (or ashes) you have been made, and to dust (or ashes) you shall return.” 

When I recently read my father’s last two Ash Wednesday meditations, though, I learned that he had a surprisingly upbeat take on the meaning of the day. Here’s what he had to say that is causing me re-think my dour view of Ash Wednesday:

“Over and over again we read in the scriptures about Godly men and women who ‘repent in sackcloth and ashes.’ This is a sign of humility, not humiliation. That is, we need to realize that a realistic assessment of our worth in human terms depends on the grace of God and not our own doing. It is not that we are not worth something. The modern adage is true: ‘God doesn't make junk.’ To put it in scriptural terms, ‘God saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.’ However, it is necessary to point out the underlying fact that God made it. The goodness is all derived goodness. We live in the glow of God’s reflected glory. God is love, and all love comes from God.

It is sin that has spoiled God’s creation. Sin twists and mars and makes ugly.  That is why we symbolize it with ashes on Ash Wednesday. The message of Ash Wednesday is negative in a positive sort of way. It says that only by taking a realistic and not inflated assessment of ourselves can we really make, by God’s grace, something worthwhile out of our lives.

*          *          *

The answer that, hopefully, we will learn along this Lenten journey which is before us is that God saves us not by condemning us but by loving us. We listen to Jesus as he stands by the woman caught in the act of adultery. He says to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.’ [See John 8:1-11] The effect of his words is not to push her further down into the dirt, but to lift her up and help her believe in herself and what the power of God working in her can make of her. This is God’s way with us.

Yes, we are dust, but it is Almighty God who made us out of dust and breathed his own breath, his own Spirit, into us. To negate a human being is to blaspheme God the Creator. The way to raise a creature of dust to a new and higher level is to affirm what God has done and is doing in that person. This opens the door even wider for more of God’s transforming activity in that life. Being negative and judgmental never works. It only begets negativity, hostility, and finally hopelessness. On the other hand, the positive approach, the affirming word, begets openness to you, openness to God, and a new attitude of hope.

What grabs me most, what changes me down to my core, is the realization that God loved me and valued me so highly that he sent his son to die for me. He did that all for me! What affirmation I feel when I realize how far God was willing to go to save me. Can I do any less than so love and affirm you?”

So as I go to worship this Ash Wednesday, it will be with a new focus: God is calling me, through these ashes, to acknowledge that my worth comes from him as my Creator, not from my own efforts -- which are only possible because of God, after all. And what am I worth as God's creation? I'm worth the greatest sacrifice ever made, and so are you.

From: "Ash Wednesday Meditation" (1988 & 1989)

My Elijah Moment

It’s been a while since I've posted on Bill’s Barrel, and there’s a reason why: I have been consumed by my work over the past month or so. I can’t think of another time in my practice of law when I've had more challenges, more frustrations, more difficult cases, facing me at once. One crisis is averted, and two more rise up to replace it. The strain of it all has left me feeling anxious, agitated and inadequate. It has robbed me of restful sleep. It has sapped me of my patience. It has made me question my abilities. This wave of stress crested one particularly tough morning when I left a desk covered with problems to dash to my appointment to give blood at the office blood drive. The Red Cross nurse who took my racing pulse frowned and asked, “Are you nervous about something?” Unable to donate, I walked away feeling utterly dejected.

Being swamped by your circumstances can leave you feeling isolated, alone, broken. That is certainly how the exhausted and defeated prophet Elijah felt when he was forced to flee into the wilderness because Queen Jezebel, who worshiped the false god Baal, had threatened his life. As my dad put it, “Here is a broken human being who God alone can bring back to fullness of life.”

In his sermon “Resources for Times of Stress,” Dad explained what God did to restore the despondent Elijah:

“The Lord sends an angel who ministers to his body with food and water, an indication that in this period of stress, as with most of us, Elijah had not been taking care of his body. … [O]ur bodies are closely entwined with our minds and spirits and affect our attitudes and thoughts.

After eating, Elijah lays down to sleep – to rest his body rather than to escape his despair. All of us need the peaceful rest that the angel allowed Elijah. God created us for a rhythm of work and rest, work and rest. We cannot be healthy without this rhythm.

Then the angel awakens Elijah [and] sends the physically stronger, but still spiritually broken prophet to Mount Horeb, the Mount of God. You know the story. The Lord wants to know why Elijah has come. Elijah tells his tale of woe – his former loyalty to God, the ineffectiveness of his work among the people, his frustration and loneliness. God knows that Elijah needs a new vision of Him. Elijah needs to know God’s presence and power again. A great and strong wind rends the mountain and breaks its rocks, but the Lord is not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord is not in the fire. Then after the fire comes a still, small voice. It is as if the Lord is saying to Elijah, “Stop. Be quiet. Cease all your anxious striving. You cannot tune in to me in all the confusion and vain busyness of your life. Take time. Be still. Give me an opening."

Again, Elijah tells his tale of woe to the Lord, ending with the familiar words, "I, even I only am left." Oh how that feeling haunts us. But God’s final words to Elijah point out several resources that are precious for every one of us who has become overwhelmed by feelings of frustration, failure and loneliness.

First, God gives the prophet some work to do. He is to be on his way to anoint a new king. God still has important work for him to do. Past failure does not mean future uselessness. It means we can bring a new sensitivity and a new positive humility to our next task because of our failures. Now we have a better handle on who we are and what we can rightfully expect of ourselves.

Next, the Lord tells Elijah to anoint Elisha to be the next prophet of Israel in his place. This is an encouragement to any man who feels like his life-long cause has gone up in smoke and that his years of labor are a total loss. Provided he cares about his cause and is not simply trying to build a monument to himself, it is heartening to know that God raises up others to continue and complement what we have done. I am a part of God’s plan, not the whole of it. This is an important truth to remember.

Finally, the Lord reminds Elijah that, contrary to his feeling that he was all alone in his fight against paganism, there are still 7,000 people in Israel who have remained faithful to the Lord and have not bowed down to the pagan god, Baal. Do you feel alone in your struggles and trials? Don’t believe it for a minute. This is one of the Tempter’s most successful means of deceiving and destroying us. "Isolate and conquer." This is why the Devil hates the church and tries so mightily to fracture and divide it. He knows that such a fellowship – where we discover that we are not alone and where we share our mutual woes and bear our mutual burdens – is his undoing. There is untold strength in having true Christian friends nearby – people you don’t have to pretend to and people who will at the same time offer you support. The Lord always provides at least a remnant with whom we can stand strong. The community God calls together (we call it the church) is his most powerful means of sustaining us when life threatens to engulf us.

And so the Lord brought Elijah through this period of frantic fear and stress. God offered him food and water and rest for his body. God offered him God’s own presence in the stillness. God gave him new tasks and therefore renewed purpose. God gave him other people to support and care for him. God’s resources for our times of stress have not changed. They are there for you now in your stress. They are God’s way of giving you back your own life.”

Thank you, Dad, for reminding me of the resources God has provided to help me through this rough patch.

From: "Resources for Times of Stress"

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-21