Saints Among Us

Hebrews 12:1&2

 

        Yesterday I preached the meditation for the funeral of a saint.  Everyone should have the opportunity to do that at least once. That might sound a bit morbid but I found it to be quite uplifting. Maybe we should recognize the saints among us before they die. They would be embarrassed by our accolades but isn’t it wonderful to bath in a feel good story.

        The most amazing thing about a saint is they allow us to see beyond what is right in front of us. Everyone recognizes problems. Everyone fears potential failures. We struggle with drama because we expect things to go sideways. Saints point out what God and godly folks are doing in our midst. Saints accomplish what we believe to be impossible because saints are not subject to our limited vision. Saints function like a pair of corrective lenses. Remember the first time the optometrist put a pair of glasses on our nose.  I was nine years old before realizing leaves fell from trees. I thought they just appeared on the ground. Saints don’t suffer from limited vision.

        My favorite saint is Alice Taylor. I am certain I have mentioned her but her story is worth hearing again. In the late 1970’s Alice was stuck in an abusive marriage. Alice was also trying to come to terms with discovering she was a lesbian. Her church told her she was damned to hell unless she would renounce her discovery. She tried conversation therapy.  Her minister attempted to perform an exorcism. Her husband divorced her and Alice was literally thrown out on the streets of Va. Beach. She went to St. Columba Presbyterian Church and asked the minister, Nibs Stroupe, if he had any odd jobs she could do to earn some money. Nibs told her if she could sweep floors twice a week she could sleep in the sanctuary. Alice confessed to Nibs that she was a lesbian.  

Nibs responded, “Do lesbians not sweep floors?”

Alice was horrified at the response. She cried out, “I am a lesbian. It would be shameful for me to sleep in the sanctuary.”

Nibs responded, “Who told you that? You are a child of God. Where else should you be but in your father’s house?”

Alice eventually was made the part-time custodian and also she was put in charge of a food and clothes pantry. But the demographics of the community changed as the neighborhood houses were demolished and turned into shopping malls. The church was forced to close its doors. Alice went to Norfolk Presbytery and asked if the building could become a ministry for homeless folks. Her adventure survived at its original location three years. Then Alice moved to a deserted fire station. She used the expanded building to minister to the city of Norfolk. She began a winter homeless shelter that operated within 15 churches. Many of those folks slept in you guessed it, the sanctuary. Eventually she moved to another building and spent every waking hour helping folks get off the street and into affordable housing.  Alice never left the Presbyterian Church. Ten years ago she became an ordained elder. Her partner of 35 years recently graduated from Union Seminary. Alice is now retired but St. Columba Ministry continues to thrive in the Hampton Roads area.

It is true, Alice was bigger than life. Folks throughout the country know her story. I am blessed to have worked with her and our friendship is a highlight in my life. But most saints work in obscurity. That doesn’t mean that the work they do is any less important.

My friend JoAnn married a young man called to be a minister. Spouses of ministers often get buried in the shadow of the one they love. JoAnn seemed happy to stay in that shadow. Malcolm preached. JoAnn sang in the choir. Malcolm ministered to adults. JoAnn nurtured children. My two children, Martina and David, loved JoAnn.

JoAnn and I co-wrote five Vacation Bible Schools. The only resource we used was the Bible. I think that was the beginning of my discovering how much amazing stuff is in this book. Our productions were magnificent. Cecille B. DeMille would have been jealous. But the most amazing part was JoAnn insisting children have a major role in anything we created. JoAnn believed children could visualize the impossible because adults had not yet ruined their imaginations. If you were a child at Winter Park Presbyterian it was like being transported to Never Neverland. Only Jesus was Peter Pan and Captain Hook did not exist.  

While Deb and I went on to new adventures, JoAnn stayed behind in Wilmington. Malcolm died 18 years ago but until last week JoAnn was still going strong. The only complaint I ever heard from JoAnn was that occasionally adults kept limiting what was possible. She undertook her last adventure at 85. She signed up for a Ukulele Camp. Everyone in the camp was under the age of 15, except for JoAnn. Once she completed the camp she asked the worship committee to allow her friends to lead the music one Sunday month. She said it would give the old folks in the choir a break.

The writer of Hebrews wrote, “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us put aside every excuse and run the race that is set before us.”

I know while I was telling these two stories, some of you were reminded of saints in your life. They may still be living. He or she may be sitting next to you. They are those folks, young and old, who are not limited by age. They are those folks who are not limited by labels. Sainthood is not an exclusive club. Every one has been given a Godly vision. It just takes some of us longer to understand the talent we have been given. It’s easier to recognize sainthood in others.

So here is what I want you to do. Take a moment and think of someone who has been a saint in your life. Now I am going to count to three. When I say three call out the name of that person. Say it loud and say it proud. They have run a race for you. Here we go 1…2…3.    

That was awful. Say it like you mean it. Say the name loud enough so God can hear you. One more time.  1…2…3.

How did they become a saint? What was her story? What did he overcome? What was the constant anchor in her life? For Alice and JoAnn it began with a faith in a living God who would not let church or culture or limited thinking push them into the shadows. They found the courage and perseverance to move forward because they never doubted God had put them here for a purpose.  To paraphrase the words of Martin Luther King, “Everyone can be a saint because anyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree. You don’t have to have a million dollars. You don’t even have to make your subject and noun agree. All you need is heart full of grace and a soul motivated by love.”

I am going to count to three one more time. This time say your own name. Say it loud and say it proud. 1,2,3.  

        What you heard was the roll call of the saints. Now go out there and make God proud.          Amen.

Does God Still Have Faith in Us?

Isaiah 1:10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3

 

        I am tired of waking up every morning and seeing the flag at half mast.

 

        I am tired of politicians blaming everyone and everything but themselves.

 

        I am tired of commentators claiming they are experts when they have no idea what they are talking about.

 

        I am tired of wearing out my knees praying to a God who seems to be absent.

 

        If the book of Isaiah had a preface these complaints would have been the laments of the prophet. Jerusalem was a mess. Assyria had destroyed Israel and appeared to be headed for Judah. King Uzziah, one of the most corrupt kings of Judah was on his death bed. The majority of the inhabitants of Jerusalem lived in poverty. The Temple was essentially closed for worship. And the few faithful that were left prayed to God for relief from their misery. The answer was hardly what they expected.

        The Book of Isaiah begins with these words. “Your prayers, your sacrifices, your worship is an abomination to me. You remind me of Sodom and Gomorrah.” You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to know that God was not happy. The text continues. “I can’t bear listening to your prayers. You have deceit on your lips and blood on your hands.”

        This is a dangerous text. The sacrifices of the people have been rejected. They went looking for God and found how risky that can be. The people cried out for salvation and were told, “You are the source of your pain. Are their forty or twenty righteous people among you? Is there even one in your midst who is faithful? Are you worth the energy it would take for restoration? Even if I did what you ask, what guarantees do I have you won’t return to your wicked ways.”

        Having released all that wrath God regained emotional control and declared to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

        Wash yourself,

        Learn to do good.

        Seek justice for the poor.

        Stand beside the oppressed.

        Defend the orphan.

        Plead for the widow.

 

        If you do this, even though your sins are like scarlet, I shall make them as snow.

 

        When I read this text my initial thought was, “Can it really be that easy?” But then my suspicious mind wondered how often the folks in Jerusalem actually saw snow. Was this a once in a lifetime experience. To my great surprise I discovered it snows in Jerusalem three or four times each winter. Forgiveness was possible. The real question was, “How do you thaw a frozen heart?”

        I attend Sunday School every week. It was a habit I started as a child and I never got over it. I promise you a favorite topic of any Sunday School class is faith. The first question is always, “Do you have faith in God?” Nine out of ten folks will respond, “If I didn’t, do you think I would be here this morning.” Allow me to ask a different question. “Do you think God has faith in us?”

        That hardly seems to be a fair question. Isn’t faith all about what God will do for me? Didn’t God create me? Didn’t Jesus die for me? Didn’t God resurrect Jesus for me?  Did you ever consider that those questions are the beginning and not the end of our relationship with God?

        Here is another strange question. What if us getting into heaven was never God’s primary objective? What if God’s primary goal is helping us to make earth more heavenly?

Quoting the Book of Hebrews, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.”

Could it be that from the beginning God has hoped that we would have the conviction to:

       

 

 

Learn to do good.

        Seek justice.

        Stand beside the oppressed.

        Defend the orphan.

        Plead for the widow.

 

        That takes a lot of faith on God’s part because it seems our convictions toward those objectives are often lacking. Like those folks in Jerusalem we appear overwhelmed by the tragedies that surround us yet we continue to insist any solutions are too far difficult or constitutionally out of the question. So we pray to God for a miracle.

        Might I suggest you read Hebrews 11. After defining faith, the author takes us to Sunday School. Remember Sarah. She became pregnant at 90. Yes that is a miracle, but you think God raised Isaac? Sarah fed, bathed, and nurtured the child until he left home. Deb keeps our grandchildren for a week and it about kills me. How did Sarah manage? She had faith in God and God had faith in her.

        Moses saw a burning bush. Yes, that was a miracle. But then Moses took on Pharaoh, crossed the Red Sea, spent 40 years in the wilderness and every single day the children of Israel whined. Why did Moses sign up for all that misery? He had faith in God and God had faith in him.

        The walls of Jericho fell before Joshua. God pulled them down. But Joshua spent the rest of his life getting 12 tribes to act as one nation.

        The easiest thing David ever did was kill Goliath.

        God brought down fire on Mt. Carmel but that was only the beginning of Elijah’s work. Consider Jeremiah and all the prophets? They were ridiculed, jailed and murdered. But did they deny their faith? Maybe. Did God desert them? No!

        Finally the writer of the Book of Hebrews points to Jesus. We remember all the miracles like feeding the 5,000, walking on water, resurrecting Lazarus, restoring sight to the blind. We forget the majority of his work was teaching 12 illiterate men, lifting up the oppressed, standing beside children, recognizing the poor and blasting the religious folks for failing to be moral. Jesus consistently sang one son. “God loves you. So why can’t you have faith in one another?” Yes, Jesus had faith in God, but God also had faith in him.

        So where do we place our faith? Is it in God? Is it in an economic system? Is it in leaders who tell us they know what is good for us? Is it in dreamers? Is it in those incapable of dreaming? Is it in anyone? That question might be far too complicated. So let me ask another. What do you think God expects of us? Has God’s vision radically changed since the time of Isaiah?

        I like to think of myself as an optimist.  I have always believed America to be the land of the free, a land of justice and righteousness, a land capable of putting an end to violence, inequality, racism, and greed. But many Americans have never experienced the opportunities I had from birth.

        So I wonder, if God grows tired of waking up to the flag at half mast. I wonder if God is growing tired of everyone blaming everyone but themselves. I wonder if God is growing tired of talking heads that have no idea what they are talking about. I wonder if God is growing tired of our divisions and lack of moral integrity. I wonder if God is growing tired of waiting for us to have the courage to do more than pray.

        What are we waiting for? Snow in December?

                                        To God be the glory.   Amen.

       

  

 

         

I Taught You How to Walk

Hosea 11:1-11

“I Taught You How to Walk”

 

I can never remember a moment I did not love my children. Granted, David and Martina are now both grown. Each has their own family which includes that wonderful component call grandchildren.  So you might accuse me of romantically claiming the parenting adventure was one joy filled journey with only great memories. But you would be wrong. I always have and always will love my children. But there were times they nearly broke my heart.

I still remember the first night we expelled Martina from our bedroom. The first thing every perspective mother and father does is read a book on parenting. It doesn’t matter if the author knows what he is talking about. We make our choice and claim those words to be holy. Our canon of enlightenment proclaimed that within a month of coming home the child must be given her own space at night. I think this was written by some guy who was jealous of the creature that had invaded his bedroom. None-the-less we, the faithful followers of the parenting guru sentenced Martina to a night alone in her new room. She wailed long and hard. Deb and I sat huddled just outside her door reminding each other that giving into her cries would begin our downfall as responsible parents.   We lost sleep. Martina learned independence, a trait she never relinquished.

David always went to bed without a problem. He played hard and slept hard. But no matter what we did David woke up promptly at 2:30 and he woke up angry. Only a bottle would quiet his demons. Sometimes David was so enraged he wouldn’t even take the bottle. I would pick him up, take him to the den, turn on the TV, and watch the TBS reruns of the Atlanta Braves baseball game. It took desperate measures by Deb to break both of us of that nightly habit.

Parenting is hard. I once asked my one year old daughter to please tell me what she wanted. Once she learned to talk, I swear her first word was “Why?”

Why do I have to eat vegetables?

Why do I have to go to school?

Why do I have to get up?

Why do I have to go to church?

Why do I have to wear socks that match?

Why? Why? Why?

 

I once made the mistake of responding, “Mommy and Daddy know what is best for you.” Neither of my children bought that explanation. We encouraged them to be free thinkers and they didn’t think much of what we thought.

But we did do a couple of things right. We allowed them to fail hoping they would learn from their failures. By doing this we discovered was how different our children were. Failure for Martina was the end of the world. We endured her pain. Failure for David was just permission to take the road less traveled. Sometimes he scared us to death.

We had and still have creative, intelligent, caring, and healthy kids. They never got into drugs or alcohol. They excelled in school, played sports, volunteered regularly at soup kitchens and our local Aids Foundation.   They were independent thinkers. If I said an intersection was dangerous they would build a tunnel to get to the other side. They wanted to learn life on their own. Until they were 21 Martina and David saw Deb and me as old-fashion and hopelessly set in our ways. They loved us, listened to us, respected us, but needed to choose their own path. Sometimes parenting was infuriating. So why did we keep doing it?                          We taught them how to walk.

For thousands of years humans have attempted to describe God. In the beginning God was best understood as the one in the storm. The storms were powerful, dangerous, unpredictable, yet they brought life-giving rain. Humans feared God because the showers of life could turn into the storms of death. As humans evolved so did their understanding of God. They began to speak of God’s personalities. Words like jealous, wrathful, all-powerful, demanding, even unfair entered the conversation. Then a Poet suggested God was caring, merciful, slow to anger, and steadfast in love. This was a radical thought, rejected by most, yet embraced by a wayward people trying to understand their pilgrimage from Egypt to The Promised Land to Babylon and finally back to Jerusalem. The Poet dared to ask, “How could God love us?”

The answer came in these words, “When Israel was a child I loved her. But the more I would call to Israel, the more she would turn to Baal. Yet how can I give her up. How can I let her die? I carried her in my arms. I lifted her to my breast and gave her milk. I taught her how to walk.”

Seminary exposed me to everything I would ever want to know about the doctrines of atonement, creation, incarnation, salvation and sin. But the poet from Hosea told me about God. In this marvelous book, God is described as a parent with memories that are both exuberant and painful. In Hosea, God shows anger and love, a broken heart and a spirit up lifted. Hosea gives us a God who understands separation, midnight feedings, tenderness, frustration and a desperate love which at any moment might be rejected.

I can remember more than once coming home in the evening and experiencing a self-righteous rant from my son or daughter. The topic hardly mattered. Deb and I were considered to be not only unreasonable but the worst parents in the history of the parenting. We knew the pain would pass by morning, but the sunrise was 12 hours away. The door would slam and the child would disappear into the safety of his or her room. I would look at Deb and ask why we signed up for this. And she would whisper, “We can’t give up. We taught them how to walk.”

Such is the love of God.

Amen.