Play the Wild Card

John 20:19-23

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said,

“Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Pentecost is the second holiest day of the Christian year.  Easter is first and Christmas is third, but among the three, Pentecost is the only one that the world hasn’t been able to capture, domesticate, commercialize or tame.  It is the Holy Day that came neither with a simple word nor meek and mild in a manger.  Instead it came racing over the face of the earth, overtaking the world with a blazing inferno fed by a violent wind.  It blew the disciple out of hiding and made them sound drunk to the rest of the world.  Because of that we have, as the Church, done our very best to hide that Holy Spirit well away… because… well… scary!  

We happily play the card of the life giving, world creating power of God the Creator.  We love the card that tells the story of God the Son who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  But when it comes to playing the card of an untamed gale force wind, that drives the inferno of uncontrollable flame we call the Holy Spirit… well, we’ve all too often shoved that card right back up our sleeves.

But the day is surely coming, says the Lord… In fact I would say that the day has surely COME… when the luxury of the Church only playing those comfortable cards alone will no longer do.  To faithfully address the horrors of THIS world… a world plunging ever deeper into darkness… we are being called, on this day of Pentecost, to do what we as the Church have been afraid to do for over 2000  years… to boldly and unashamedly play that untamed and completely wild card called the Holy Spirit.    

Just one of the many ways I think we are being called to play that card is in the way that we Lutherans and Episcopalians address Gun Violence.  We’ve been at it for over 30 years!  It’s been a faithful journey led by incredibly passionate and dedicated people… and still… when we ask the hard question:  How’s it going?  The truthful answer is that Gun Violence is now worse than it’s ever been.  It is now the leading cause of death for people under 20.  There are more mass shootings than ever before.  And so on this Pentecost, I feel like I need to ask, isn’t THIS the time for the Church to genuinely and boldly play that untamed wildcard called the Holy Spirit that we’ve had hidden up our sleeves for all this time?  Isn’t this the time for us as the church to call her hurricane-fed inferno down into this horror and into this crisis in a way that we’ve frankly been afraid to do before because, let’s be honest… that Holy Spirit… She’s wild and completely untamed!  Isn’t it time for us as the Church to call on the Holy Spirit to blow us out of our safe upper rooms where we’ve been doing what we’ve always done?  Isn’t it time to be blown into the streets and call out this demonic plague with the words of the prophets of old?  Language that we will find uncomfortable and will convince those who hear us that we are drunk, high, and completely insane? 

On this Pentecost, driven by that Wild Card Holy Spirit, what would happen if we began to boldly call the gun what it has genuinely become for so many… A god.  A demonic, false god for sure, like Baal or Moloch from the Old Testament... gods who promised safety, security and power in exchange for the lives of some of their children.  What might happen if, with the untamed and wild power of the Holy Spirit, the Church began to say out loud and in public, that THIS Gun of yours is a false god.  It promised you safety and security and it has utterly failed to deliver!  Yet in spite of it's failure it still demands more and more and more of our children’s blood!  What would happen if we called those who have been mesmerized by this false god… this lying god… this god of horror and death to abandon that demonic god before it leads our nation any deeper into destruction? 

Well, it wouldn't sound very Lutheran or Episcopalian... that's for sure and as the guy up here in this dress, I have to say it scares the bejeebers out of me!  But the truth I just can’t seem to shake any longer is that we have marched, made resolutions and social statements, proposed and advocated for legislation, visited legislators, listened to victims and literally pounded guns into plowshares.  We’ve proclaimed the sacred nature of the lives of all people created by God the Father.  We’ve preached the path to abundant life shown to us by God the Son.  We’ve done all of that work for all those years and yet... here we are.  

But what we have NOT yet done is to unleash upon it the cyclone powered blaze of the Holy Spirit so that worshipers of that false god called "The Gun" might be converted from their false god, a god who brings only death and TOWARD the ONE TRUE GOD who raises the dead to life!  Preaching a God who loved the world into being… that’s in my wheelhouse.  Preaching Jesus raised from the dead to show us how to live an abundant life of love, grace, compassion, forgiveness and care... I can do that too.  But pulling out this wild card called the Holy Spirit with her strange, powerful, untamed, and ancient language that names demons and denounces false-gods right to their follower's faces... that scares me to death!  And still the terrible truth persists.  The cards we've played so far aren't working and it is time to do something new.  So, on this day of Pentecost I say with fear and trembling, Come Holy Spirit, Come!  Amen.

If I Had A Hammer

Acts 1:6-14

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

When I was a kid, I’d sit in the driveway trying to fix my bike with the wrong tool.  It’s not that we didn’t have the right tool.  We did.  But it was WAY OVER THERE in the garage.  Twenty whole feet away!  My dad would look at me with that dad look.  He had told me many times that if I’d just stood up and fetched the right tool, I’d have it fixed and be riding in two minutes.  Instead I stubbornly spent ten minutes trying to make the wrong tool work. 

In the Ascension story from Acts, Jesus gives the disciples their thing to fix… it was the world they were called to fix.  Not overwhelming at all!  They were to start locally, meeting the needs of their neighbors, creating what some people call “corners of kindness” that would transform the neighborhood into a place where everyone could experience the abundant life God intended.  When they were done there, they were to work out from that spot and cover the county, the state and eventually the ends of the earth.  

But having an assignment is one thing.  It’s like being assigned the task of pounding a nail. But having the right tool to do the job... having the right hammer as well... THAT makes it a real calling!  At the Ascension the disciples were assigned the task, but it wasn’t until Pentecost (which we celebrate next Sunday) that God gave them the right tool to do this job.  

That’s how God works.  God never gives us a task without also giving us the right tools needed to do the job.  When Joshua took over from Moses, he got both the task and the tool to make it happen when Moses transferred to Joshua the Spirit of Wisdom.  When Elijah turned the prophet business over the Elisha, he didn’t just tell Elisha “good luck!”… No, he gave him a double share of his spirit.  Elisha then had both the assignment… and the right tool to make it happen.

Jesus gave out the disciples’ assignment at his Ascension.  He told the disciples that their job was to, as Bishop Curry says, “transform the world from the nightmare it is for so many into the promise God has for it”.  Jesus was saying, “Here’s the nail I want you to pound.”  We too are Jesus’ disciples, and just like Jesus’ original group we too are not expected to do this work alone, nor are we expected to make it happen all at once.  Just like those original disciples we too are to start working right where we are and then go out from there.  

So we have our mission.  We’re to start locally and move in the direction of working globally.  We’re not alone.  Others have been given the same assignment, to pound nails as well, and on Pentecost we have been promised we will get the hammer we need to do the job.  But, before we start whacking away, it would be a good idea to stop and take a good look at the nail YOU’VE been given personally.  Look also at the nail our particular congregation has been given together.  Is it a common wire nail, a smooth box nail, a cut nail, casing, concrete, slating or roofing nail... is it a blued lathe, plaster board or shingle nail or is it a brad?  Even though we all have been given the same mission... to make the world work the Jesus way... even though we’ve all been asked to drive a nail... the nails we have been given are different and each of us has been called to work on changing the world in a slightly different ways.  AND, we need to remember also that many of those different nails have different hammers to drive them.  Christ Trinity, Old Parish, Grace, Saint Paul’s, Zion… we’ve all been given our nails… we’re all out to change the world, but we do not all have the same nails NOR have we all been given the same hammers by the Holy Spirit. 

Here’s a completely random example.  Let’s say there was a congregation that realized that the people in their community had drifted apart due to plague and politics and a fear of scarcity.  The part of Jesus’ mission of changing the world that this congregation had been given… this congregation’s nail… was to find a way to bring their neighbors together again.  It’s not the nail other local congregations had been given.  It was particular to them.  Now, remembering that God does not give a nail without the right hammer for the job as well, that particular nail was given to a particular congregation gifted with talented cooks, creative thinkers, many interesting community connections, a slightly unconventional approach to tackling complicated issues, and the extremely rare gift of not taking itself so dang seriously.  THAT was this completely hypothetical congregation’s very specialized hammer.  It had been custom forged especially for them by the fire of the Holy Spirit.  It was made specifically to pound THAT particular nail which they had been given... the nail, that when pounded in, would begin to bring a community that was drifting apart, back together again.  

Do you see how it works with this totally hypothetical congregation?  Where the needs of a particular town on some random country highway intersect with the gifts of a particular church also on that highway, THERE you have a people called by God to change the world in their unique and particular way.  They would begin, right in their own front lawn and right there on that lawn, the particular hammer given by the Holy Spirit would meet their particular nail given by Jesus, and then as hammer met nail, nothing less significant would begin to happen than the world beginning to change.  Amen. 

Delivery is Changing

 John 14:15-21

”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Clyde was 6’ 6” and probably 370 pounds.  He was a mostly bald, African American Baptist preacher and I met him in a Lutheran seminary preaching class.  Everyone in that class was smaller, younger, more Lutheran, and a lot whiter than Clyde.  Clyde had been the pastor of a nearby, rural, Baptist church for years and years.  All that time he had been working on his seminary degree, one course at a time.  

Our preaching professor was Dr. Ridenhour.  He was crusty on the outside but gooey on the inside.  The first day we only saw the crusty as he gave us his VERY clear expectations for our preaching.  Every sermon BETTER have a “Word from the Lord” in it.  That meant it needed Gospel in it… Good News… It needed to remind folks that God’s love and grace, had been given to us as a GIFT in Christ’s life, death and resurrection.  It also needed to remind folks of what God has done, is doing and promises yet to do AND it BETTER do all that in language the folks in the pews could understand and not with any highfalutin, seminary words, either!  Everyone knew this was not just a suggestion.  Dr. Ridenhour was known to stand up during a student’s sermon and hike up his pant legs if it was getting “too deep” and it was rumored that one time he had even climbed up on his desk and hiked up his pant legs when it got REALLY deep! 

So, for the first few weeks, Dr. Ridenhour gave us some techniques we could use.  He warned us about some common pit falls and maybe even scared us just a little bit.  Then, for the rest of the semester, we preached.  Each of us had our turn twice that semester.  After each sermon, the class shared their thoughts and then you met one on one with Dr. Ridenhour.  That’s how it went… a bunch of white, German and Scandinavian Lutherans… and Clyde.  

The first time it was Clyde’s turn to preach, he tried to preach like the rest of us did… like white Lutherans.  It was heartbreaking.  Heartbreaking because clearly he had learned in his life to expect, that in a room full of white folks, he would be expected to do it “our way.”  When he finished, we apologized for our part in continuing to create a world that led him to that conclusion and then we asked him to PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE be who God is calling YOU to be the next time you preach.  

This is the lesson Jesus was trying to teach the disciples in the Gospel for today.  Jesus was reminding the disciples that the Gospel… the Good News… God’s care for them… God’s love for them… God being present with them… would not change… BUT… BUT the WAY that care, that love and that presence would be DELIVERED to them, could be and would be VERY different.  

For the last three years those disciples had received God’s care, love and presence by way of Jesus… Immanuel… God with us in the flesh.  Soon though, God’s care, love and presence would be given to them by another, different, Advocate… by the Holy Spirit.  The delivery would be DRAMATICALLY different.  What would be delivered, however, would not change.  

The next time it was Clyde’s turn to preach, he felt free to be the preacher God had called him to be.  He had his floppy Bible in one hand and his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his balding head in the other.  He gave us a Word from the Lord!  He preached it!  The core was there.  He proclaimed the Gospel.  It had Good News.  He reminded us of the gift of God’s love and grace, given freely.  He reminded us of what God has done, is doing and promises yet to do and it did it without any highfalutin, seminary words, either!  Now, I’m POSITIVE that if it hadn’t had all that at it's core, Dr. Ridenhour would have had no hesitation to climb up on his desk and hike up his pant legs as he would have for any of the rest of us!  But that wasn’t necessary… we all got “A Word from the Lord.”  The CORE was the same.  The DELIVERY was different. 

This wasn’t just a lesson for the disciples or just for a seminary class.  This is a lesson for all of us, in every place and in every time.  Things change.  The way we do ministry, the way the church looks, the style of delivery, the faces in the congregation, the gifts of the pastor, the talents of the priest, the places in the community we are called to go… ALL of it HAS changed, is changing, and WILL continue to change… over and over and over again.  HOW we love God will look different.  But loving God won’t stop.  HOW we love our neighbor will look different.  But loving our neighbor won’t stop.  

Do you see?  God loves us LIKE Jesus loved the woman at the well.  God doesn’t ONLY love women at wells.  God opens our eyes LIKE Jesus did for the man born blind.  God doesn’t ONLY open the eyes of men born blind.  God turns death into life LIKE God raised Jesus from the dead.  But God doesn’t ONLY give Jesus new life… God gives us ALL new life as well… “Because I live”, said Jesus, “you will live also.”

HOW God’s love for us shows up will continue to change until all the world can see it… but God’s love… the Gospel… the  Good News of God’s unconditional love, compassion, presence and the new life we have been given in Christ… THAT will never change.  And THAT, my friends, is a Word from the Lord!  Amen.   

Fuhgeddaboudit

 John 14

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 

And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

 

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it. 

I’ve preached this text a lot!  About five times more at funerals than on Sundays though.  I met with a guy once to proof the bulletin for his brother’s funeral and the man’s face sank as he read this Gospel.  I asked what was wrong.  He said, “Well, I haven’t been to church in about 60 years but back then you got a mansion.  What happened to the mansion?”  I told him it was because too many people, like you, stopped coming to church so they had to cut back.  Okay, I didn’t tell him that.  I actually tried to undo that picture in his head and tell him that Old English “mansion” was really any kind of home, but it wouldn’t work. 

Nothing worked.  In fact, it worked just as well as me saying to you “Do NOT think about a green alien!”  You’re thinking about a green alien right now, aren’t you?  Now, whatever you do, DON’T think about his antennae.  You just did it!  You added antenna!  Even though I told you not to! 

The truth is, the human brain doesn’t UN-THINK things very well AT ALL… BUT it can mentally ADD stuff, say, purple spots on a green alien, in a split second… see you just did that too, didn’t you?  But just try and STOP thinking about it for even a few seconds.  Yeah.  It turns out there’s not a very good reverse gear in the old noggin.  Smarter people than me call this “framing.”  We humans easily add new “frames” to the pictures in our minds.  But once a frame is there, it’s nearly impossible to take it out.  That’s why when something bad happens and someone says, “Just forget it!”  It NEVER works.  That’s why when people say, “Let’s not talk about that terrible thing and maybe it will go away!”  It NEVER goes away!  Instead, it just adds a “guilty of thinking about it” frame to that memory as well.  Not helpful.  

BUT, by adding frames, our minds can see things in new ways, find new meaning, purpose and reshape our lives going forward.  In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin teaches his class how to fight a magical creature called a bogart.  A bogart is a shape shifter and they take on the shape of the thing you fear the most.  The way to fight a bogart is NOT to try to stop thinking about what you fear.  Instead, the way you fight a bogart is to add a humorous frame to the thing you fear.  One student's greatest fears was professor Snape, so he imagined Snape in a new “frame” wearing his grandmother’s clothes. Another student's greatest fear was spiders, so when the bogart turned into a giant spider, he added the frame of it with roller skates on each of it’s eight legs.  

Jesus did just that in this lesson.  He added new frames, one after another like little stepping stones to get the disciples to see new possibilities even in something as horrible as his death.  Remember, this lesson takes place in the upper room on the night of the Last Supper.  Jesus had just washed their feet, predicted Judas would betray him, and given them the new commandment to “love one another.”  But Jesus didn’t ask the disciples to stop thinking about his impending death.  That would have been impossible. Instead he began to add new frames, which began to give his death new meaning.  With those new frames, he began to show them that somehow his death would prepare a place for everyone.  The Disciples worried that they would get lost! Jesus didn’t tell them to STOP worrying.  Instead he added another frame, telling them that they won’t have to find it. Jesus himself would return to lead them there himself.  STILL worried that they would never be able to make it to that promised mansion or even a crappy little dwelling place, Jesus adds yet another frame, asking them to simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other, one Jesus-like step and then another, always toward the truth, just as Jesus did throughout his life.  Then, step after step after step they would eventually discover the truth… that they ALREADY had a place in God’s heart and walking this way would reveal the truth that a life immersed in God's infinite love was already theirs.  

All of us have a place prepared for us deep within God’s loving and compassionate heart!  A place where each of us were lovingly placed in our Baptisms… a place we already live… whether or not we realize it.  We help one another realize this truth… the truth that all of us, already rest safely in God’s embrace… by walking together in the world the Jesus way.  

This life of ours can get pretty dark from time to time and our brains aren’t made to simply forget the darkness.  Instead we need to follow Jesus’ lead and add frame after frame of light on top of the darkness.  We can do it for ourselves, but we can also do that for one another.  Even that little seemingly insignificant little frame you add can be an incredible gift reminding them of their place deep within God’s heart.  Then add another and another until they see, not darkness ahead, but a dive ever deeper into God’s eternal love.  Amen.