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  

Advent in a Prison Cell

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

The State Correctional Institution at Graterford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flashing a wide grin, the inmate responded ...

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

Q.  Why do you say that?

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

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

From: "A Possibility for Change"

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

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

A Reason to Give Thanks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A Reason to Give Thanks"

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-28

Our "All Saints" Cheering Section

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From: "Run with Perseverance"

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

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

Be Opened!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From: "Be Opened"

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