Why Are You Sleeping, Lord?

Where is God? Whether it's events in the news or happenings in our own lives, there are so many situations crying out for divine intervention or at least some divine encouragement; yet, God seems distant. We read the Bible, and God is talking to Abraham, wrestling with Jacob, parting the Red Sea for Moses and the Hebrew people. Why don't we experience God in such tangible and powerful ways today? Is God asleep on the job? 

This always seemed like a modern problem to me. Then I read these words, written thousands of years ago, in Psalm 44:

Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep?

Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.

Why do you hide your face

and forget our misery and oppression?"

Times have changed. The scenery and players have changed. But we have continued to struggle for millennia to relate to our Creator. Is God sleeping? My father once answered that age-old question this way: 

"God is not dead in our day, as some have claimed. God is not sleeping, as the Psalmist suspects. If God seems dead to us, it is we who are dead. If God appears to be sleeping, we are the ones who have dozed off. Isaiah once spoke God's word when he said, 'I am doing a new thing, do you not perceive it?' God is forever doing new things in our midst, but the sad truth is that we seldom perceive it. We're a little bit like the fellow that looks and looks at the clouds and sees only clouds. He can never see a profile of Abe Lincoln or a butterfly or any other design.

Clouds over Wolf Run Lake, Albrightsville, PA

How to see God in your common experience; this is the problem. Here are five suggestions that may help:

First, begin tearing down the barrier between your sacred and secular life. God gave you a whole life. It didn't come with a religious compartment and a non-religious compartment. Many people wonder why they can't find God in church. It's because God is not real to them outside church. Try this for a change: Refer all things, even the smallest, simplest thing, to God. God is there in the smallest experience. God knows. God cares. Train your heart and mind on the fact that God is present even in the most mundane circumstance. Bring it again and again to your conscious awareness, and see what a difference it makes in your life.

Second, talk conversationally with God, even out loud if you're alone. Instead of worrying about your problems or the problems of others, talk to God about them. When there is thanks to be given, do it then and there. Don't save it all up and let the pastor or choir do it for you on Sunday morning. This ongoing conversation with God will help you recognize and openly acknowledge God's presence anywhere, any time.

Third, enter fully into a fellowship of believers, and draw strength from others who are engaged in the same struggle to wake up to God. Turn the small groups and classes and informal friendships in your church into places where problems and weaknesses can come to the surface without fear of condemnation and where we can see each other through and point to God in the experiences of each other. Being in fellowship with other believers can help you see your life in perspective again, and you can do the same for them.

Fourth, disengage from your busyness. Give God time and opportunity to reveal God's self to you. Don't shut God out with a cluttered life. Sometimes God is not in the wind or the fire, but rather God speaks in the quietness, in a still, small voice. To hear that voice, you must quiet yourself.

Fifth, be honest and specific with God. Don't think that you have to sweet-talk God with all that fancy religious jargon. Tell God exactly what's on your mind and how you feel. There's a good chance that if you come through as a real person to God, God will come through as a real person to you.

All of this sounds like easy and simple advice, but let me tell you it's not that easy or simple to follow. You must really apply yourself. It is the cost of discipleship. But let me share my own testimony with you: The rewards far exceed the demands. To know God's presence. To move from knowing God as a concept to knowing God as a person. To discover that God is really there in your daily experience. To know that Abraham and Moses have nothing on you so far as meeting the real God is concerned. That is to have life and have it abundantly."

From: "Why Are You Sleeping, Lord?"

Scripture: Psalm 44

Preached at Grace United Methodist Church
Millersville, PA

The Inclusive Church

It was painful to watch the live stream on the internet Monday. I felt sick to my stomach as the 2019 General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted not only to continue policies banning same sex weddings and barring gay and lesbian clergy, but also to strengthen enforcement of those hurtful policies. I knew that my denomination was taking a step that would deeply wound so many people -- claiming all the while to be doing God's will and following God's word. 

The United Methodist Church's discriminatory policies had their start back in 1972, yet this week's vote of the General Conference still seemed like a jarring contrast to the welcoming nature of the local congregations in which I had been raised and had come to love Christ. This sent me diving into my father's sermons in search of some glimpse of the Methodist spirit I recalled from childhood. 

Around the same time that the UM Church first declared "the practice of homosexuality [to be] incompatible with Christian teaching," my father preached a sermon called "The Inclusive Church." It was aimed at issues of race rather than sexual orientation, but it spoke to me in light of the week's discouraging events in the United Methodist Church. Dad wrote:  

"This is how it is within the Church of Jesus Christ: All men and women, distinct and different as individuals, without sacrificing any of that identity, are bonded together into one body where differences are appreciated and accepted as enhancements, not threats, and where all are made to share and work and live together by the presence of the Holy Spirit within and between them.

As we look at our diverse brothers and sisters in Christ, we must ask why are we together? Why are we concerned about making the church inclusive? It's not so that a minority can be given more worth and be brought up to some supposedly higher level of the majority. Nor is it for the majority to prove how open-minded and good they are. It is because we all have one Father who made each of us inherently worthwhile, so that in his sight no person is more or less important than another. And Jesus Christ came into the world to bring his salvation to all people. If we all share the same forgiving Father, why can't we all live in the same house as one family?

At the heart of the tough decision Paul and others made to include Gentiles in the early church's mission was the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples on the night of his betrayal: 'Love one another; even as I have loved you.' So long as it was possible to interpret that commandment in terms of their own small Jewish circle, the difficulties the disciples had with it were minimal. But once the 'one another' began to be enlarged to include all kinds of people, including many kinds the disciples had been brought up to avoid, there were some real decisions to be made.

How far did Jesus intend to go with his 'one another'? Thinking through his whole mission and message, the disciples could come to only one conclusion. No limits could be set. Love for one another had to include Greek and barbarian, male and female, slave and free, Roman and African, as well as their own kind. 

After all, to his command to 'love one another,' Jesus had added a pretty strong qualifier: 'even as I have loved you.' The disciples knew only too well what that meant, for the love of Jesus never had been selective, never had been dependent on the qualities of the one to be loved - after all, Jesus had loved even them! And they also knew how he had loved them to the end, stopping at nothing, not even his cross. How could they take the love of someone like that and claim that it was meant for only this group or only for that class? How can we? God help us!"  

There, at the end of that type-written line on the manuscript, Dad had added two hand-written words of hope to end his sermon: "God will!"

"The Inclusive Church"
Scripture: John 13:31-35
Preached at Grace United Methodist Church
Millersville, Pennsylvania

Doctors, Nurses and Jesus

I've had to search for a new doctor and dentist after moving last year. I found a great doctor. At my first office visit, she asked me about the stresses in my life. As I told her everything going on with me, she frowned, grabbed a prescription pad, scribbled something on it, tore off the page, and handed it to me. Her prescription for me was four simple words: "Take care of you!" I've put that prescription where I can see it every morning as I start my day.

In his sermon "God in Person," my dad shared some stories about beloved health care professionals he remembered from his childhood:

"As far back as I can remember as a child, Dr. Anna Klemmer was our family doctor. She became a doctor long before it was common for a woman to do so. She was a warm, vivacious, self-assured, genuine type of person. I can remember my mother talking about Dr. Klemmer and saying, 'I don't know how much she knows about medicine, but I always feel better just talking to her.' And she was absolutely right about that. Just being in this woman's presence was strangely reassuring. Having grown up and moved away from home, I lost contact with Dr. Klemmer for many years. But our paths crossed again. I found her, a few months before her death, living in a nursing home where I happened to be visiting another patient. In her time of need, I tried in my own small way to be the person for her that she had been for so many others.

Each of us could talk about someone who was there for us in a time of need. Another one I remember was Bertha. Bertha was the large, kind-faced, grandmotherly woman in a white dress and white shoes who served as Dr. Nightingale's nurse. Dr. Nightingale was our elderly dentist as I was growing up. He was a very nice man but a practitioner of exceedingly primitive dentistry. These were the days of the old, slow-speed drills, and Dr. Nightingale only used Novocaine for pulling teeth, not filling them! Bertha was his substitute for Novocaine, and not a bad one at that. Her main job was to stand beside you and hold your hand and emit all the motherly forms of comfort while Dr. Nightingale ground away at your teeth. It really seemed as though she were feeling it with you. Somehow I remember Bertha more vividly than the pain. 

I relate these childhood memories to make this point: It is the mysterious companionship of another - the focused attention of a person who is totally there for you for as long as necessary - that often provides the bridge that we need over our troubled waters. The crisis times in our lives are made significantly easier to bear if there is someone there to share them with us. The difference between someone who can cope with the stresses of life and someone who cannot often is the presence or absence of another concerned person.

The good news for us all is that the Eternal God has taken on our humanity in Jesus Christ to become that concerned person. The Eternal God has come into our world as our brother, our friend, that person we all need and crave. Jesus is a man and God all rolled up in one person. When we know him as a man, we experience a sharing of mutual woes and burdens. When we know him as God, we know that this sharing will not run hot and cold, but will be constant and forever. It's because he is both man and God that Jesus is our Savior. He came specifically to minister to us in our pain and poverty and illness and confusion and aloneness.

The Christian faith's unique message to us in our brokenness is the Incarnation - God becoming flesh in the Son. The other great religions of the world are founded upon a system, or a philosophy, or a certain code of ethics. Not so with Christianity. Our faith is founded on a person, Jesus Christ; and therein lies its power and immense practicality in helping us overcome our problems and cope with life's burdens. Though all others may fail us, we always have Him. He is there for us in times of trial and rejoicing. Crying with us. Laughing with us. He is always there. He is always enough."

From "God in Person"
Scripture: Isaiah 9:2-7
Preached at Calvary U.M. Church
Easton, Pennsylvania
Sunday, December 25, 1983

A Theme For The New Year

As I searched through my Dad's sermons for material for a New Year-themed post, I stumbled upon an outline from a talk he gave for a secular community group around New Year's Day of 1989. I was startled when I realized the timing of this message. Dad had lost a kidney to cancer just months earlier, but he didn't know that his cancer would re-emerge and take his life in the year ahead. 

Here's the heart of Dad's New Year's talk, which I've re-created for you from his notes ...

Did you make a New Year's resolution this year? I didn't make one. I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions, mostly because of the trouble I inevitably have keeping them. In fact, I recommend that you choose a theme for the New Year instead of a resolution.

I've asked a few friends what their themes for this new year might be. One suggested "Fun and Frolic." Another came up with "Limber and Trimmer." Here's my suggestion: "Nothing Wasted."

Why "Nothing Wasted"? you may ask. One of the most debilitating fears that attacks us is the fear of failure. We can't imagine anything worse. Inherent in that fear is the feeling that when something doesn't go the way we planned, when we lose, when tragedy strikes -- that this is all wasted time and effort. There is no good to come out of it.  Everything has gone "down the tubes."

So many of our choices in life are based upon "not failing" rather than "trying it." We make safe choices which do not challenge, stretch and test our abilities. Sometimes, this fear of failure causes us to get stuck in familiar ruts. We don't do jobs we could do, we don't get to know people we could get to know, we don't go places we could go -- all because we are afraid to fail and we look at failure as a waste. So we stay right where we are. Prisoners of our own fears. Stuck in the status quo.      

There is another way. We can risk failure if we can put our trust in God -- the ultimate safety net.

I believe I can talk about God here. I think it's safe to assume that community-minded people such as yourselves are here because of a responsibility you feel -- dare I say a spiritual responsibility -- to make your community a better place in which to live. And so, I'm going to talk about God.

God is always there to catch us when we fall. Not if we fall. When we fall. Failure is inevitable; it is how we view it that counts. When we realize this, nothing in life is wasted.

I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German-Lutheran pastor and professor who was jailed by the Nazis during World War II. Under similar circumstances, many of us would be done in. What a waste! Right? No! From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer wrote: "Much as I long to be out of here, I don't believe a single day has been wasted. What will come out of my time here, it is too early to say. But something is bound to come out of it."

I was in the hospital for major surgery this past October. What a blow! What a waste! That's how I was tempted to feel. But I also felt God's hand. Odd as this may sound, I can't begin to tell you the good that has come out of it: mental and spiritual health, confirmation of my faith, love and support of family and friends, greater sensitivity as I minister to the sick, an ability to take life one day at a time, to prioritize and attend to the important things first.

I am learning that nothing that happens to you need be considered a waste. "Nothing wasted" -- I recommend it as your theme for 1989.     

Notes from: "A Theme For The New Year"

Presented on or about January 1, 1989

to a community group in Paoli, PA

Grace In The Tall Weeds

Ever feel like you're stuck? Like you're struggling to walk through tall weeds that hinder your progress and obscure the path forward?

Sometimes, those tall weeds mark the very place where we meet God. I'll let my dad explain: 

"You know, of course, that the Peanuts gang loves to play baseball. In one Peanuts cartoon, Linus the outfielder is shown standing in tall weeds beyond center field, looking frustrated. 'I can't find the ball!' he shouts to the other players. 'How do you expect anyone to find a ball in weeds like these? What did you hit it out here for?' Linus goes on: 'It's impossible! Of course I'm looking! This is hopeless! Nobody could find anything out here! You couldn't find a battle ship in these weeds if it ... Wait ... I found it.'

Linus has just experienced what all of us are privileged to experience and are so apt to take for granted and perhaps even miss - an undeserved moment of grace in the tall weeds of life. What are the tall weeds in your life - the things that get you down and make you feel hopeless before you even get started? Do you ever react as Linus did - virtually paralyzed by frustration and defeatism as the tall weeds engulf you? When Linus happened to glance down at his feet and spied that ball, it was a moment of pure grace. He had done nothing to deserve this find, in fact, quite the opposite. His negative attitude would seem to keep him from ever being able to find the ball. He couldn't focus on the ball; all he could see were the tall weeds. 

It is true that negative thinking prevents us from capturing the victory, and yet it is not true that positive thinking alone brings us the victory. My point is not that we will prevail over the tall weeds if we just believe strongly enough that we can. That is a popular modern gospel, but it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Just believing that he would find the ball might help Linus find it and it might not. No matter what he believed, the weeds might just be too dense. Sometimes no matter how much we believe in ourselves and in the rightness of our cause, the challenges and problems are too great for us to manage. But as Christians we are supposed to be hopeful people. If positive thinking and believing in ourselves is not the basis for our hope, then what is?     

Our hope is based upon those moments of grace that break in upon us, unexpectedly, through no effort of our own, courtesy of God himself. They are like finding the ball in the tall weeds. They are those moments of reprieve, no matter how small, no matter how brief, that remind us that this is still God's world, and we are still his children, and he has not taken his eyes off of us. The Gospel of John puts it this way: 'The Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.' It's pretty dark, but there is still a light - God's light.

The way to experience a moment of grace from the Lord is to stop all the frustrated and frantic flailing about in the tall weeds. Just be still; wait and watch for the Lord to act. ... The message of the Gospel is that in all situations of life, no matter how desperate, God sends his salvation - maybe not the salvation we expect or want - but God's salvation, by God's grace and not because of our efforts. How important it is to remember that. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says, 'I can do all things if I just put my mind to it and try hard enough.' No, he doesn't say that at all! Paul says, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' This is the key to experiencing grace in the tall weeds. Remember it is Christ who created us; it is Christ who saves us; it is Christ who will bring us with him to glory."

From "Grace in the Tall Weeds"

Scripture: Philippians 4:8-13

Preached at Paoli United Methodist Church

December, 1984       

The Profound Mystery of Marriage (Part 2)

Today is Independence Day, and it also would have been my dad's 76th birthday. Thinking of him today made me wonder what advice he would have given my daughter Adrienne and her new husband Earl on the occasion of their wedding last Saturday. It didn't take me long to find a clue in one of his sermons. I suspect that Grandpa Bill might have told Adri and EJ about the "profound mystery" of marriage - that spouses feel most fulfilled and empowered not when they are focused on meeting their own needs, but when each of them is focused on the needs of the other in "mutual subjection" to one another. Dad called this mutual subjection the "binding agent" of a successful marriage union.

EJ & Adri @ Tyler Gardens, Bucks Co. C. College

"What is it about being subject to one another, out of reverence for Christ, that creates such a union?

We must be careful about how we talk about this because subjection is not a welcome word in our society. Today the by-words are freedom, liberty, doing your own thing, self-actualization. Many modern marriages fail because this is the dominant philosophy of both parties. 

There is nothing wrong per se with this modern drive to discover self, find fulfillment, and get the most out of life. The only problem is that in the plan of God, the way to life is not going directly after it. You remember the words of Jesus: 'For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.'

It is really hard to describe, but no less true, that in serving the needs of another one discovers and strengthens oneself. And if this is true in general for all relationships, it is doubly true for marriage, the most intimate of all relationships. Here a wonderful cycle of giving and receiving is set in motion. The more I give to my partner the stronger her self-esteem grows, and the more she is able to give to me, and on and on the cycle goes.

The conventional wisdom is that subjection is galling and demeaning to the subject. But in the context of mutual subjection in marriage, nothing could be further from the truth. It's true that if you have a low self-image, subjection galls you because it seems to speak to your inferiority. A person with a weak ego is threatened by the servant role. But in the case of the mutual subjection of marriage, at the same time you are being a servant to your partner, she is being a servant to you. In serving you she is affirming that you are worthy and lovable. Thus, feeling good about yourself, you are able to serve her needs without feeling demeaned by this subjection.

It is truly a profound mystery, but it works! It really does, and it gives one of the deepest satisfactions and provides one of the greatest sources of strength available this side of heaven." 

So there is Grandpa Bill's marriage advice for you, Adrienne and EJ. May it serve you well, as you each serve the other.  I love you both. -Dad

From: "Christian Marriage - A Profound Mystery"
Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33
Preached August 21, 1988 at
Paoli United Methodist Church 

The Profound Mystery of Marriage (Part 1)

Several people have asked me why I hadn't posted anything new on this blog of late. Truth is, I've been busier than usual. Last weekend was my daughter Adrienne's wedding. She married a wonderful young man named Earl, who I'm proud to call my son-in-law now. Here's a look at the bride and her groom:

Earl & Adrienne

When Adrienne and Earl chose a passage of scripture to be read at their wedding ceremony, they passed over Paul's famous instructions for wives and husbands set out in Chapter 5 of Ephesians:

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. ... Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her[.] ... This is a profound mystery[.]" Ephesians 5:21-23, 25, 32 (NIV).

I'm not surprised that Adrienne and Earl didn't select this passage for their wedding ceremony. My daughter definitely views marriage as a partnership of equals, not as a chain of command - with the husband at the top no less. Let's be honest: plenty of bad "Christian" marriage advice has flowed from Paul's admonition that wives should "submit" to their husbands. But I wonder if Adri and EJ might have reconsidered these verses if they had heard what Grandpa Bill had to say about them in a sermon he preached about marriage. My dad wrote:

"This passage is like a seed that holds the promise of what marriage later became in the Christian tradition. Of course, in Paul's day, wives were subject to their husbands in both the Jewish and Greek communities. If you were to suggest the equality of the sexes to anyone in the first century, even in the church, you would have been laughed out of the room. Women were property, not persons.

With this in mind, a passage that said, 'Wives, be subject to your husbands,' came as a breath of fresh air to its readers because of what it also said, because of all the qualifiers it added. It said that husbands should love their wives to the point of self-sacrifice. It said that marriage is a true union of husband and wife, so that the way a man treats his wife is ultimately the way he treats himself. 

All of this was a 'profound mystery' says Ephesians. Now, marriage was not a profound mystery to first century men living in a man's world. It was a matter of comfort and convenience; it was a matter of economic necessity; it was a matter of ensuring one's own posterity; but it was not a profound mystery! 

Paul, and other first century Christians, began to liberate marriage from this bondage. They didn't yet realize all of the ramifications of this, but they did know that men and women had to sit together at the Lord's Table, and that Paul had said some startling things like 'in Christ there is nether male nor female.' This didn't automatically result in a full-blown doctrine of Christian marriage. Nevertheless, considering the cultural and historical context, these verses were revolutionary! The seed was sown for the unfolding of the profound mystery of Christian marriage.

Verse 21 is that seed in its essence. The writer could have stopped here and said it all. This is the Word of God on Christian marriage: 'Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.' This is the timeless foundation on which believers build their marriage unions. Did the old writer know what he was saying? In an age of  male dominance and female subservience, did he know he was espousing 'mutual subjection,' wife to husband and husband to wife? Was this a slip of the pen, or was it the Spirit giving us the Word?

Time has told, and continuing revelation has given us the answer: what holds a Christian marriage together and makes it work is not romance, not good sex, not a legal marriage contract, not psychological compatibility - but mutual subjection. Mutual subjection is at the heart of the profound mystery of the marriage union. It is the binding agent." In the words of Ephesians, it is how "the two will become one flesh."  Ephesians 5:31 (NIV).

From: "Christian Marriage - A Profound Mystery"

Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33

Preached: August 21, 1988

Paoli United Methodist Church