Rebirth of Vision

Matthew 1:18-25

December 22, 2013

Prescott American Baptist Church

Prescott Church was born with a vision for peace, equality, respect and social justice. This Christmas is a time for a rebirth of your vision, a time to experience a new way to see how God is at work among you and with you. And when you think about it, isn’t that how we live into our faith? Every year we move more deeply into God’s vision for us as the Christ child is born and reborn into the manger of our hearts.

I shopped at Target between Black Friday and December 15^th. I’m guessing that many of you did too. Now we are told that hackers broke into the system and stole the card information from 40 million shoppers. Once we swiped our card, we were robbed. Our name, card number and the three secret digits were in the hands of anonymous hackers. Nothing we can do about it. It’s done. And our spending was no longer in our control but in the hands of crooks, smart crooks, out there somewhere, completely out of our control. 

It’s just one small example of what we cannot control in this life. We get up in the morning, get to work on time, do what’s required with as positive an attitude as possible. We reduce our salt and sugar intake because it’s good for our health. We smile at the customer because it’s good PR. We help the boss because it’s good for our career. We drive defensively and get home safely. And like you, I pat myself on the back many evenings, thinking that I have done a good job of checking tasks off my list, getting things done in a timely fashion and maintaining all that’s of value in my life. Of course I am choosing to be unaware of all that exists outside of my control. But when we stop to consider- we realize how all of us are so very vulnerable, always exposed in one way or another to the hackers.

Joseph, a carpenter before he became the husband of Mary, must have been a good guy. He realized that the young girl he planned to marry was pregnant and he first decided to dismiss her quietly. No fuss. He wasn’t willing to expose the girl to public disgrace. Her pregnancy was a disappointment, a true turn of events for Joseph. But he was a good guy and he wasn’t going to add more pain to what was already painful enough.  

Apparently Joseph was the kind of guy God might trust with a dream. An angel explained to Joseph that Mary’s child would be of divine origin. “Don’t be afraid,” the angel urged Joseph. But everything Joseph had imagined for himself and his family has been turned upside down. Everything he trusted was being challenged. He had never intended to be part of a scandal. He was a carpenter who planned to work hard, do what was right and live simply.  He knew, I suspect, even as we know that nothing is ever perfect and most things that matter aren’t easy. Joseph probably knew there would be surprises in life. He had a good heart, a faithful heart, the kind of heart God might trust with the gift of a dream.

The people of Prescott have stayed close to God. Your history marks a clear path of social justice. You were pioneers in the struggles for civil rights and gender equality. Early on you chose to have respect for diversity. You are good people, a congregation with a good heart. The kind of people God has trusted with the gift of a dream. 

Joseph woke up from his dream and shook his head. What to do now that he was awake and aware? What to do now that he realized how his life would be changed? What to do now that he was being asked to give all control to God while God refused to give any definite answers to his questions? How did this happen? And the real question: Is this fair?

Dreams are interesting. I consider my dreams when I remember them.  I journal about them, pray about them and look for what they might mean. Sometimes I learn important lessons from my dreams. I can see more deeply into my own brokenness, my need for something more.

Through a dream, God sent an angel to Joseph. And the angel reassured the man, basically saying, “Although this is nothing like what you had planned, God’s plan is to do something wonderful. Despite the fact that according to Jewish custom and law you are in a socially unacceptable situation, remember this: You are in a situation with God.” 

Joseph’s life was hacked. His plans shredded. The carpenter opened his life and his soul to return the gift, not as in taking it back because it was the wrong color or size but as in establishing a mutual gift of trust between God and the man. A mutual trust was born. 

And Joseph took Mary as his wife. He named the baby Jesus, the one who will save us from our sins, the one who will show us how to let go of control completely for the sake of trust.

We have spent the last few weeks preparing for the birth of Jesus. We allowed ourselves to imagine a world of peace where lions and lambs would be changed and neither would be a threat to the life of the other. We dreamed of a future when swords would be beaten into plowshares. We have given ourselves over to the work of preparing a place in our lives for the Christ child to be born. 

What’s important for us to acknowledge now is how much we need the miraculous gift of salvation. It’s important for each one of us to recognize that the gift of this child, this Jesus, this Savior among us is something we need. Or else the miracle has no real meaning. 

Every year we come back around to the manger and we look into the face of this baby. It’s hard for us, those of us who have made great plans for our lives and worked to see them through, those of us who live comfortably and conveniently… it’s hard for us to acknowledge that this infant in a stable is able to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  

In preparation for this sermon I have spent time this last week acknowledging the places in my life that require a Savior, the deep needs of my soul that I cannot meet by my own power. Maybe you would like just a minute here to consider that too. What is this infant going to save you from when he comes into your life this year? ***********************

This poor, homeless and illegitimate child has power over the things of our life that we cannot control.  He has come to give us a rebirth of vision, a new way to see how God is at work in us and among us. He has come to show us how to live with truth and to trust the mysteries that come with God’s love.

In one way or another hackers come into our daily lives and make it clear that we need a Savior. Christmas allows us like children to trust, simply wake up from our dream and trust the one who trusted us with the dream. 

As the baby was born, so was Joseph reborn. He let go of the need to plan, to control, to understand. He looked into the face of this child and experienced rebirth, a rebirth of vision. A way to see life through the eyes and heart of God's perfect love.

Prescott Church was born with a vision for peace, equality, respect and social justice. This Christmas is a time for a rebirth of your vision, a time to experience a new way to see how God is at work among you and with you. And when you think about it, isn’t that how we live into our faith? Every year we move more deeply into God’s vision for us as the Christ child is born and reborn into the manger of our hearts.

Amen

Lions and Lambs

Isaiah 11: 1-10

Matthew 3: 1-12

December 8, 2013

Preached at Prescott Baptist Church

It is the second Sunday of Advent and we are waiting, actively preparing our hearts and our lives to be mangers, birth places (once again) for the Christ-child. We have so much hope for a better world, a world where the poor will be noticed and fed, where the meek will receive power, a world where all creation will be redeemed.

Both of our texts today, Old Testament and New Testament, take us into the wilderness. The prophet Isaiah shares a vision of a wild place where the predator lies down beside its prey. 

Our Gospel text in Matthew invites us out into the wilderness with that outrageous John the Baptist where he gathers in and baptizes the crowds, telling them about one who is to come, one who will lead us all out of the wilderness, one who will redeem the world and everything in it.

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” Isaiah tells us.

“Prepare the way of the Lord!” John shouts. “I baptize you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit…”

The power has gone out at my house the last two days. The ice has over-stressed the transformers and they have exploded with sonic booms.  Suddenly the lights go out, the computer shuts down and the heat is off. Darkness surrounds us. The cold settles in quickly. And we are in a wilderness experience.  Lost and wandering. What can you do without power? 

I stood in the middle of our street and talked with our neighbors, Jeannie and Phil. We were bundled up against the cold: coats, scarves, gloves and hats on our heads. I looked down the street and saw darkness in every house to the east and to the west. It’s frightening to me- how dependent we are on Memphis Light Gas and Water. I lit candles in the house and sat beside them—waiting for the power to return. 

This season of Advent is a time to acknowledge our powerlessness and our need for a savior. There will be no place for a Messiah to be born if we are not able to humbly repent and prepare a place for his birth in our lives. 

I was baptized at the age of fourteen at First Church of the Nazarene in Nashville, TN. I was one of about ten adolescents in line that Sunday evening.  I walked down three concrete steps into a baptismal pool. Dr. Ted Martin was the pastor who tilted me back across his arm and submerged me under the water. I hoped my red plaid jumper would not float to the surface. I also hoped that the water of that baptismal pool would wash away my sin, my fears and give me a whole new life. I walked up the steps on the other side of that pool and went right back into the life I knew. I was the same person after I was baptized; my identity had not changed and I was not given power over my own human impulses and frailties. Baptism didn’t change who I was. But it did name clearly who I belonged to and who I could turn to for the gifts I needed  for a life that mattered: courage, faith and hope. 

Our Old Testament reading illustrates for us Isaiah’s vision of a peaceful kingdom, a time that is coming when the new king of kings will reign, when power will be in the hands of a righteous and just ruler.  Predators and their prey will live side by side.  Babies will play unharmed near poisonous snakes. Woody Allen once gave his own interpretation of this vision: “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. But the lamb won’t get much sleep!”

I wonder… is it only the predator who will be transformed in this coming peaceful kingdom? What about the prey? I want to think the peaceful kingdom will be a place where even the lamb is set free from its fear, from that rush of adrenaline that comes with knowing you are food to another beast.  And more than that. I want to imagine that the lamb discovers in the coming kingdom the sound and the force of its particular roar. The peaceful kingdom will be a place where the little child realizes she has her own kind of power to contribute to the peace and harmony of creation.  

We are together on this second Sunday of Advent waiting and hoping for all creation to be converted. The peaceful kingdom is a place of conversion. The vulnerable will find themselves set free—even with and especially with their vulnerabilities. The powerful will recognize their need for humility. And all creation will exist in relationships of mutual respect. 

It’s hard for us to imagine here in this wilderness where we live, in this place where we just hope the electricity stays on and we get enough to eat. In this wilderness city where we hope we are not the next victim of some violent crime. In this wilderness where we know we need a savior. In this wilderness where we recognize and regret our own contributions to what has gone wrong in the world as we know it. In this wilderness where we are called to repent and make a way for something new, something better.

Our modern day prophet, Nelson Mandela, died this week. A true hero has left this life and gone on to his eternal reward. He was 95 years old when he gave up the fight. And his life was a fight from start to finish, a bold fight against injustice in the wilderness of apartheid. Mandela spent 27 years in prison.

It is reported that a child asked him after his release from that long period of exile, “What was it like to be sent to jail when you didn’t even steal anything?”

Mandela replied, “Oh, but I did steal something. I stole freedom for South Africa’s people.”

In our Gospel reading, John the Baptist is out in the wilderness associating with the poor and the powerless, stealing freedom for them. The people pour into the wilderness to confess their sins and to be baptized, to be converted into new creatures set free from the weight of their pain and guilt.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “The River,” a four year old boy, Harry, is picked up from his city apartment by a new baby sitter, Mrs. Connin. The heavy, older woman is very religious as so many characters are in O’Connor’s stories. She takes the child, Harry, to the river for a baptismal service. The boy lives with his parents who are not mature, not nurturing parents. Harry has been ignored during his four short years on earth. He has no past experience of being noticed or respected as a real person. He had never heard of Jesus except when he heard his parents curse. He had no idea, until Mrs. Connin showed him a picture of Jesus, that there was such a man. 

The woman leads the boy through the woods, walking on pine needles. It might as well have been an amusement park for Harry; it is all so new and strange for him. The preacher, a tall young man, was standing about ten feet out in the stream where the water came up to his knees. He was calling out in a twangy voice, his head tilted upward. 

“There ain’t but one river and that’s the River of Life made out of Jesus’ blood. All other rivers and oceans come from that one river. This is the river you lay your pain in, a rich red river of Jesus’ blood.” (If you’re familiar with O’Connor’s work, you’ll recognize this as the way most of the preachers in her stories talk.) 

Harry leaves Mrs. Connin’s side and moves forward, deciding that he wants to be baptized by the preacher in this River of Life. 

“If I baptize you,” the preacher looks into the face of this child, “you’ll be able to go to the Kingdom of Christ. You’ll be washed in the river of suffering. Do you want that, boy?”

“Yes,” the child answers. 

“You won’t be the same again,” the preacher warns. “You’ll count.”

You’ll count. Once you recognize the true source of power in this world and give your life to that source, you cannot claim to be insignificant. You cannot look back and pretend that you belong to the wilderness. You will find yourself in that river of life that leads to the peaceful kingdom where all creation will be free, redeemed and existing in a state of mutual respect. 

We are already on the second Sunday of Advent. Time passes so quickly. But it is all we have in the wilderness. This is our time to prepare for the one who is coming to steal freedom for us, to make it clear that we count. We matter because of our Savior’s power.  

Amen

Beating Swords Into Plowshares

December 1, 2013

Prescott Baptist Church

1^st Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5

Our Old Testament text gives us a chance to imagine the future, a future that we can hardly imagine because we have seen so much conflict and war. Only the foolish would beat their swords into plowshares.

My partner, Anna, and I were at Epcot, this past week. Epcot is one of four parks at Disney World in Florida. Disney does a terrific job of providing an ideal place, a positive experience for visitors. Clean. Smiling. Welcoming.  Fabulous landscaping. Authentic accents from around the world. Fun rides. Cheerful songs being sung by happy people and animated characters.  Good food. There is no conflict there. Every possible need has been given consideration.

We went to Epcot, 300 acres of park dedicated to the celebration of human achievement. The first ride, Spaceship Earth, was a celebration of human communication. Immediately, as the ride began, we were told to smile and cameras flashed. The spaceship took us back to a time when human speech began, moved us on to cave drawings, rounded a corner and paper was invented. Then the printing press. 

The climax of the ride was the opportunity for Anna and me to establish our hopes and vision for our future life together. The computer asked us a few questions about what we like and what we enjoy. Then a video popped up on the screen, a movie starring Anna and me. Our happy faces were imposed on little cartoon characters enjoying a perfect future together, the very future we imagine and long for. A dream come true right before our very eyes! Disney is all about making dreams come true.

The prophet Isaiah is leading us into a dream, a dream of the future. And this is the way we will enter our Advent season. Our worship experience today marks the beginning of the New Year for our faith. The word Advent comes from the Latin word “adventus” which means “coming.” Advent is our set-aside time to wait and prepare for the coming of new life, new hope, the future Reign of God.

Isaiah sees this future: The Lord’s house on the highest mountain. And he sees more: All the nations streaming toward the mountain to be taught the ways of God, to learn how to walk in the light of God’s love. It’s interesting to notice that this same vision is described word for word by the prophet Micah, Micah 4: 1-5.

This scripture passage is often referred to as a “floating oracle of peace,” a promise of the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom to come on earth. Can you see it? It’s not easy – I recognize the challenge.  We live in a competitive world. We are too familiar with envy, greed, resentment, betrayal, mistrust, violence, fear and hate.  We’ve seen the video images of people being beaten,  stabbed and shot on Black Friday at Walmarts and stores across the country. The highest prize: a good deal on a flat-screen television. 

We are a generation in need of reassurance as surely as those who lived in Isaiah’s time. We are a people who long for light in the darkness of our own days. Isaiah takes us to a mountain top and shows us what is true and what we long for: a day when people from every nation, every culture and every race will look to God for divine instruction, a day when all people will enjoy an end to war.  We long for God’s peace. This is the prize that satisfies our longing. And we are now entering the season to wait and prepare for the prize of peace on earth.

Advent proposes impossibilities. We can easily relate to Mary’s story and her bafflement when the angel announces to her, a virgin, that she will give birth to a child. “How can this be?” We are entering a season of mystery; a time when being baffled is part of our faith’s natural cycle. 

A featured story on the CNN web-site caught my attention this week. Leon Gersten, a Holocaust survivor, had the amazing opportunity to meet face to face with the man, Czeslaw Polziec, whose family hid Gersten and his family in the attic of the Polziec’s barn for two years, saving them from death by the Nazis. Polziec is Catholic; Gersten is Jewish. The two men reunited this week on a day when the beginning of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day merged on the calendar. It is the first time that has happened since 1888. Two celebrations of gratitude, two men face to face once again with so much gratitude to share.

Gersten is now 79 years old. He has children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “I am alive and my children exist because of the Polziec family,” the man says. 

In July of 1942, the Nazi soldiers came into the Polish town, Frystak, where Leon Gersten and his mother lived with her parents. Leon’s mother was a door-to-door saleslady and she had customers throughout the country side around the town of Frystak.  The Nazis lined up 1600 Jews in the Frystak market place, mostly children and elderly, and executed them all, tossing their bodies like garbage into a mass grave. Leon’s mother disguised herself as a Catholic, putting on a cross. She took her son, her sister, brother-in-law and nephew out of Frystak. She went door to door, knocking and asking for shelter from her customers throughout the countryside. Many refused to shelter the group. Obviously they were a group of Jews on the run. Sheltering them could be fatal.

But the Polziec family did not refuse shelter to the group of three adults and two children. Maria and Stanislaw Polziec lived on a farm in nearby Zawadka with their four daughters and son, Czeslaw. They had barely the means to feed their own family, let alone buy food for five strangers. Czeslaw Polziec was ten years old. Leon Gersten was eight years old. The Catholic family gave bread and potatoes to the Jewish family. They kept guard over the barn when the Nazi soldiers came through. On cold winter nights the Gerstens came into the home of the Polziec family to keep warm by the fire.

One night the Nazis came and they heard the sound of the sheltered people as they scampered into their hiding place. Mr. Polziec said that it was the sound of his own children playing in the barn. The Nazi soldiers beat Mr. Polziec cruelly that night. Leon Gersten still remembers the sound of his rescuer’s cries. But the guests were not harmed. Gersten says his rescuers never showed any sign of resentment toward the Jewish family who put them at such great risk. 

“Should we have let them die?” Polziec responded in a statement to the Jewish  Foundation for the Righteous who brought him to New York City for the reunion. 

“The question alone does not bear thinking about,” he said. “They had every right to live. Nobody who has not lived through those desolate days will ever really understand what my parents did, and I am sure, were they still with us, they would be surprised that an honor has been bestowed upon them. They were ordinary people who did what seemed right to them in a desperate situation.”

Just a glimpse of those swords being beaten into plowshares. The light shines brightly in Gersten and Polziec’s story because of the darkness in the background.  Yet it lights the way for us to imagine this mountaintop where we can go to learn new ways to live in peace. Fear can be replaced with faith. The season of Advent is the time for replacing fear with faith, a time for new visions to be born in our imaginations. 

A vision of peace. It is a vision and a hope shared by many people in many lands and through many generations. In the North Garden outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City stands a statue created by the Russian sculptor, Evgeny Vuchetich. An intense and muscular man is pounding a sword with a mallet. The sword is bending, curving into a plow.  The sculpture is titled: “Let Us Beat Our Swords into Plowshares.” 

John O’Donohue, Irish poet and theologian, says: “When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the Kingdom of Love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.”

And we will let this be our guiding thought during our Advent season. Love is the gift we have been given. Love lights our way and allows us to see the word of God, a time when peace will reign for people everywhere. Look this week for those who have been pushed to the edge. See them walking with you to the mountain top. Give them love to light their way.

Amen

Set Free

Preached at Prescott American Baptist Church

August 25, 2013

Luke 13:10-17

He was teaching. It was the Sabbath day in the synagogue and Jesus was teaching. No word is recorded about what he was teaching before the bent woman entered the synagogue and got his attention. I have had teachers—so have you—who really teach, really live out and model fully the lesson they are trying to pass along to the students.

She entered the synagogue without any expectation that today will be a different Sabbath day than any of the others she has lived. Bent over and looking down, she is accustomed to studying the ankles and feet of her neighbors and friends. Bones are so unforgiving. Once they curl and knot up with arthritis, they pull us toward the ground. She had been looking down for eighteen years. It wasn’t something she expected to change. She went to the synagogue for Sabbath worship because it was her habit, her tradition. Strong inside her like bones,  her tradition of  regular worship was the central architecture of her life. She had been entering that synagogue with a crippling spirit for eighteen years and this Sabbath day seemed like all the others. 

She couldn’t see Jesus, unless his feet fell under her face and into her gaze. She didn’t have to see him. He saw her. And the teacher saw his chance to teach the lesson in an unforgettable way.

She didn’t ask for healing, didn’t request a miracle. She didn’t write out a list of her needs. She didn’t have to say what she needed. Jesus could see for himself that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, had been bent and bound for a long time and she needed a chance to see the faces of her neighbors and friends. She needed to be set free. 

This woman, who gets set free but is never given a name of her own, becomes a living testimony as she straightens up and immediately begins to praise God. She is a testimony to the freedom that God can give and does give to any of us since all of us know what it is to be robbed of life’s fullness and freedom. All of us have been bent toward the ground by one burden or another. 

This week, on Wednesday, we will recognize the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington. It was a march for civil rights, a march for jobs, a march for equal opportunity, a march for freedom. August 28, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to mobilize all of us in this country against the burden of racism, a burden that continues to bend us and twist us and keep us from living freely and fully. We don’t even know how to have a decent conversation about racism. 

Dr. King had a written speech in front of him as he stood before 250,000 people. He was struggling with it, some sentences too awkward to be eloquent. And it was the voice of Mahalia Jackson he heard. “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin,” she urged. And so he left the manuscript and soared freely into a speech that we remember, a speech that inspires us still, after fifty years. A dream. That we might all be free and recognized for our character rather than for the color of our skin. 

Michele Norris , an NPR journalist, created a project she calls “The Race Card Project.” She was curious about people’s individual experiences with race. She sent out postcards and challenged people to write about their experiences with race – telling about it in only 6 words.  Some of the responses:

“She volunteered to sit by me.” 

Drinking from the wrong fountain: Colored.” 

“My great great grandfather owned slaves.” 

“A terrible, unnecessary barrier against love.”

Norris reports that the postcards tell six word tales of heartache, regret, violence, guilt, anger and defeat. The post card stories speak to personal encounters, small unpredictable moments that leave a big impression. 

Fifty years ago a quarter million people stood before the Lincoln Memorial and dreamed of a day when race would no longer define us, twist us, limit us and and bend us over as a nation.

Those who work to maintain the status quo have a job to do. Their voices are loud and the volume makes their voice sound like power and authority. “We do not have a racial problem in this country. We are living in a post racial world. Stop your whining. Get on with being free.”

Yet the President of our nation said recently after the Trayvon Martin verdict: “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. And there are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.” 

Racism continues to bend us over and bind us so that we cannot straighten up and move forward toward the dream. It keeps us from seeing each other, really seeing each other, face to face.

Jesus touches the woman and she stands straight up. Immediately she began to praise God. Her praise and her worship became something new, something far more than dutiful or obligatory. Her praise and her worship were part of the miracle after she was set free from her bent bone stance. This one woman, healed and set free, has sent ripples of connections, understanding and hope through the ages. We know the longing to be touched, straightened up and set free. 

“Tell them about the dream, Martin.” 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of Brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day, even in the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 

I have a dream today…”

Because we share the dream we are committed to the work—every day of the week. Because we share the faith we trust that one day our dreams will be reality. Because we have been touched and healed we know the joy of the bent woman. And that is why we gather here—to be part of the miracle working power of God’s presence among us. To meet the teacher, to learn and to be touched until we are all set free.

Amen