"In the Wilderness" given June 25

 You may not be familiar with this morning’s reading from the Book of Genesis. Having encountered the story, you may not like it. You will find very little in it to recommend Abraham as a hero of faith, or a model for living the godly life, or even as a good man-- much less a father.

He comes across henpecked, weak-willed, emotionally distant as a man, feckless and uncaring as a father. It’s one thing when a wife finally confronts her husband with that ultimate “her or me-- choose now” demand. But it’s quite something else to allow that wife to banish the other woman to die.

In the beginning, Hagar had no choice but to go to Abraham’s bed. We don’t know if there was eventually any sort of love between Hagar and Abram. But, she’d given him his only child—a child who was also being condemned. What kind of lily-livered excuse for a man and a father would allow such a thing to happen?

You’ll find even less to recommend Sarah. Yes, I did say some nice things about her last week. But in this incident, we see the dark side of the mother of monotheism-- a jealous insecure shrew, petty and vindictive and acquisitive, and in the end, downright heartless. What kind of woman-- what kind of mother-- would condemn a child-- even a child not her own-- even a child who by his very presence threatens her marriage, her home, her own child’s inheritance-- to slow death in the wilderness?

Sure, God saves Hagar and Ishmael at the last minute. But when Abraham was looking for his friend Yahweh to bail him out of this painful, difficult choice-- did God intervene with a command not to banish the pair? All it would have taken was a simple “no, don‘t do it, Abraham” on God’s part, and ol’ Abe would have been legitimately off the hook. But God didn’t say no. God wanted Abraham to do the right thing on his own.God respected Abraham and Sarah’s free choice—however cruel and painful the consequences. It must have been hard for God to watch Abraham acquiesce to Sarah’s demand-- send this foreign slave girl turned second wife and her half-breed son away. But God knew how the scenario would end.

God wanted Abraham and Sarah and Isaac-- and yes Hagar and Ishmael too— to choose the good-- to be absolutely free to overcome the situation, and learn and grow from it-- and choose to follow-- choose to come closer to God.

So Yahweh God sat back and let the story play itself out.

Sure, down through the ages, the rabbis and later Christian preachers have justified Abraham’s passive-aggressive inaction and Sarah’s paranoid cruelty. In Galatians 4, Paul says the story is a simile-- comparing Hagar to the old Covenant of Law and Sarah to the new Covenant of Freedom in Christ.

OK, you could argue that Hagar was tactless and arrogant in her behavior toward her former mistress. Sure, you can see Ishmael as condescending and insensitive in his treatment of his younger half brother.

To be sure, Abraham’s union with Hagar was Sarah’s idea in the first place. And it was perfectly acceptable behavior for that time and place-- behavior designed to protect Sarah’s place as mistress of her own household. Though the original Hebrew text makes clear she was actually a second wife to Abraham, Hagar was still a foreigner and still a slave.

And sure, it was actually a requirement in many ancient near Eastern cultures to free a son you had by your slave girl if you weren’t going to name him as your heir. And sure, the order of the passages that come before this story imply that Ishmael might well have been an adolescent at the time of banishment rather than an infant. And of course, you could argue that Theologically speaking, it was necessary for Ishmael to leave the tribe in order for Isaac to become the inheritor of God’ promises.

And sure, Yahweh God did in fact, listen to Hagar’s prayer when she cried out in despair and grief for aid in the wilderness-- even though she was a slave and a pagan Gentile. And sure, Ishmael did eventually receive the compensation that just like his baby brother, he too, would become the ancestor of a great nation-- the Arab people and a partner in blessing. “I will be with him and bless him.“ . And sure, today Moslems honor Ishmael in the same way Jews regard Isaac.

And lastly, if you want to, you can certainly argue that the story has a lot more metaphor and myth than actual history in it. But having said all that-- I still can’t find it in me to let Abraham off the hook-- nor Sarah, either.

One of the great things about these very oldest stories in the Torah is the unflinchingly honest portrait we get of our ancient ancestors in the faith. Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Ishmael and all their relations and descendants jump off the pages of the Hebrew Bible warts and all-- jealous, forgiving, sneaky, forthright, manipulative, idealistic, conniving, honest, generous, greedy, brave, fearful, smart, dumb, petty, great-- in a word-- human.

Once we stop and think about it-- we realize that at bottom, they aren’t a bit different than men and women in our own day. Abraham and Sarah aren’t

so much role models for us, as they are mirrors. It’s because these early biblical figures' lives have raw, rough edges, that you and I are able to identify with them.

The story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar speaks directly to the kind of people we are, and to the kind of lives we lead. Sarah could easily have been that mom in Texas a few years ago who tried to have the mother of her daughter’s rival for a cheerleading spot murdered. Certainly Abraham could have been one of the uncounted legions of men who every day, turn their backs on wives and children and family responsibility without a second thought.

Like Abraham and Sarah, we can become so focused on what we want, that we justify it as right. Then we kid ourselves that it’s best in the long run, even best for our victims. By then, we have totally lost any sort of perspective or integrity.

We all know the occasional uncertainties, the stress and sheer effort involved in maintaining a primary relationship. And like Sarah, Abraham and Hagar, some of us know all too well the painful experience of another person coming between us and someone else with whom we had once had a meaningful and precious relationship.

Like Sarah, we’ve all felt occasionally insecure in our partner’s affections. Like Abraham, we’ve all given in sometimes when we should have stood up in order to avoid a conflict. Like Hagar, we’ve all at times yielded to that insidious “neener-neener-boo-boo” temptation when fate has given us a sudden leg up on a rival-- or better yet a former boss.

We men have all made the mistake of trying to “fix” a situation for someone we loved, instead of simply listening and affirming and understanding when our partner comes to us simply to vent and be heard. And perhaps like Sarah, finding herself suddenly brushed off with a brusque “do what you need to do”, we’ve all been too proud to backtrack on a hasty ultimatum.

And we all know what it is to be in the desert of this world. Like Hagar, like the children of Israel under Pharaoh, we’ve all cried out in the wilderness for succor-- for redemption-- for the strength to swallow our pride, for the wisdom to recognize and heal the other’s hurt. We’ve all prayed for the compassion to mend our broken relationships rather than toss in the towel.

The story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and their sons speaks deeply to the kind of family life many contemporary people experience. Now as then, families come in many configurations. And like the Brady kids, many children today grow up alongside ”brothers and sisters” with whom they actually have no blood relationship to at all. Siblings, half-siblings, step siblings, foster siblings, adopted siblings, and assorted cousins and aunts and uncles being raised together in many families. It must be tough to be a kid in those sort of families-- it’s tough enough sometimes to be in a so called “traditional” family-- where everybody is physical kin to everybody else. We like to say that “blood is thicker than water”, but blood is also a lot more lumpy and messy and painful than water. Even between children of the same parents, there are often bitter conflicts. Grudges and resentments can easily last into adulthood. And sometimes the ways we treat one another as children can last even into old age.

And when it comes to parenting-- mom and dad may say they don’t play favorites. We may even tell ourselves that we love each child individually and in their own way. We may claim that we’re not comparing our children or forcing them to compete with one another for our affection and approval. But it doesn’t always look like that to our kids. And the sad truth is that like Abraham, many parents actually do play favorites among their offspring.

And like Sarah with her fanatical advocacy of Isaac as the one and only heir, concerns around inheritance can wreck family relationships years before either mom or dad actually dies. We’ve all heard stories of relatives sneaking into the house and taking their pick of memorabilia and valuables while the rest of the family is attending the wake. Those incidents occur far more often

than you might imagine. More than once, I’ve had to minister in the midst of those kinds of bitter family squabbles-- even before I’ve conducted the funeral. At such times, I’m reminded that there are advantages to being an only child.

And so deep within us, like Hagar, we too cry out in the wilderness to our God-- for salvation-- for the wisdom to find new ways of relating together and becoming a true family, for the compassion to forgive, for the courage to ask for forgiveness, for the strength to persevere in our commitments rather than banish one another to the wilderness of loneliness and broken relationships and might-have-beens.

The story of Hagar points directly to the life many women are in one way or another living in our time. So many women find themselves trapped in the many wildernesses of our world, crying out in pain and despair. Hagar is a Jew, a Moslem, a Christian. She is brown, tan, pink, black. She cries out for her dying child, for her missing and kidnapped and murdered children. She cries out in every tongue, in every land, on every continent. And the story reminds us that God hears her prayers.

Hagar lives in a shack in Appalachia, with no running water, no toilet, no garbage pick-up, and with her food stamps and medical card cancelled. She sleeps with her family on an inherited piece of sidewalk on the open streets of Delhi. She survives in a refugee camp in Nablis or Kabul or somewhere else all too much like it. She cries for her innocent baby dying of AIDS in Africa-- even as she lies dying herself. She weeps in China for her child buried beneath the rubble of a school or apartment building that turned out not to be earthquake proof. And this story reminds us that God hears her prayers.

And so deep within us, like Hagar, we too cry out in the wilderness to our God-- for all the children-- missing and kidnapped, molested and neglected, abused and murdered. And the story reminds us that God hears Hagar’s prayer-- and ours, and calls us to do something about it.

And in the Middle East today-- the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael-- brothers and sisters in their shared humanity and in their common ethnic heritage, and in much of their religious tradition, still squabble-- with tanks and jets and rocks and suicide bombs-- over the land promised to them both.

So the story of Hagar and Ishmael’s expulsion is still being lived out. But the story also gives us hope that there is a possible closure to this sad tale. It’s a closure provided by God. And it offers the only way out from this tragic blood-soaked tale for all of Abraham’s descendants. It is the only closure that can finally end the cycle of pain and deadly strife between Palestinian and Israeli. And it’s also a closure for those of us who continue to live out our lives and relationships trapped in endless loops of resentment and mistrust and anger.

God’s closure lies in precisely what Abraham is not in this reading-- he is not a hero of faith, not a model for the life of integrity. Someone else is-- Ishmael. Ishmael was eventually able to come to terms with all the pain of his tragic past, and walk away from it. Ishmael is the only one in this tragic tale who is able to grow into what we would call a mature faith in God.

Somehow he found it within himself to move on from his pain and resentment. Somehow he found it in himself to forgive the father who had abandoned him and his mother to the elements.

Genesis 25 tells us that when Abraham died, somehow-- with the help of God-- Ishmael was able to bridge the gap of his alienation from Isaac, and join his half-brother in a son’s duty, building a tomb together, burying and honoring the father who had been willing to sacrifice them both at different times.

I wonder what they said to one another as they worked together side by side? I wonder if we were able to listen, what that meeting of Isaac and Ishmael might teach us and teach our world?

In any argument, there’s got to be someone willing to take the first step toward reconciliation. And surely at that moment in the story, through tears of grief and frustration, God at last smiled. Somebody got the point!

Mississippi John Hurt performs "Here Am I, Oh Lord, Send Me (Don't You H...

"She Laughed" given June 18, 2017

I have to wonder if she knew-- this tough old woman, veteran of so many grim decades wandering through the desert and the foothills-- crouching now behind the tent flap. She knelt there, eaves-dropping on her husband's conversation-- no doubt her wifely privilege as she saw it. But did she have any idea at all who it was speaking this outrageous piece of nonsense? Bring forth a son at her age, indeed!

These strangers feasting on her fresh-baked loaves, curds and milk and roasted calf might be anyone at all. Merchants, bandits, wanderers from oasis to oasis. Granted there was something out of the ordinary about them, something strangely noble about their bearing, something almost lordly about the way they had approached. Otherwise, Abraham wouldn't have had her prepare such a feast-- hardly the "cup of water and morsel of bread" he had offered the strangers in the first place.

What had happened? Who might these mysterious three be-- Angels traveling in disguise? Three kings coming bearing gifts to grace the birth of some royal progeny among the cities of the West? Bandits? Whoever they were, they had no business meddling in her personal affairs. How dare they talk of children! How dare they pry loose the scab that had still not fully formed over the wound that had festered for so long between her and her husband!

For who knows how long, she had to put up with the airs of that haughty Egyptian Hagar concubine and her half-breed son. And before that-- to have been passed off in fright as her own husband's sister, shoved into Pharaoh's harem just to save Abraham's neck. Hadn't she borne enough humiliation over the years without this final cruel insult from strangers?

A son indeed! Now? When all the fun and frolic of the marriage bed was a wistful memory and she herself was a dried up stick? Once her beauty that had once caught the eye of Pharaoh—now she was withered up into wrinkles, skin and bone.

How absurd, a son indeed! As absurd as the promises of that crazy God who travelled with them. That same God they had followed away from a prosperous life and a stable home in Haran to these endless, arid lands, where tents and flocks moved on from year to year, where one never settled down.

Maybe that's who was behind this mysterious visit-- Yahweh, Abraham's God who promised land and sons and kindred like the stars of the sky. Poor Abraham, doddering old fool-- deceived again. Poor old Abraham, still believing after all these years of endless disappointment.

Well, Sarah would not fall for it this time. Abraham could mumble all the promises he wanted to from his precious God, but she wouldn't risk it, wouldn't believe, wouldn't allow herself to hope again. It couldn't be done. All she had to do was look at herself. The very idea-- at their age. It was enough to make her cry-- or laugh. And so Sarah laughed.

Those old patriarchal stories from the dawn of time don't on the whole, show women in a very favorable light. Poor old Sarah here seems all too much like Eve, an accessory, a scapegoat, someone who at best, is in the story in order to portray the more foolish, willful aspects of humanity--laughing at God.

And yet, there's something about Sarah-- a saving grace-- something we can all relate to. Despite his all-too-human failings, Abraham is hard for me at least to identify with. I don't find his behavior or his slippery morality very admirable. And his faith is too hard, too cold, for me. A man willing to sacrifice his own child is not my idea of a hero of faith.

But it makes me smile to think that Sarah laughed. It gives me hope that the mother of all the Biblical faiths, the wife and companion Abraham cherished (most of the time)m and who cherished him through thick and thin, betrayal and heartbreak, could still chuckle at the absurd promises of their God—land, descendants, a place to call their own.

And they are just as absurd today-- incredible to say the least. A world of peace when all around are wars and rumors of war? A world of truth when lies are the commonly accepted currency between people? A world of justice when exploitation and oppression are the daily lot of most? A world of beauty when the pall of smoke and pollution defaces more and more of the surface of the earth? A world of love when fear and hate has caught the human heart within its icy grasp?

O yes, we all should welcome Sarah in this story, with her harsh, despairing laughter. Because the truth is, if there is room for laughing Sarah in God's plan, there's even room for us, who laugh at God with our behavior in our own time.

We watch someone we care for sicken and die. We hear the promise of life beyond the grave proclaimed and we bow our heads. But deep within us there's a hollow laugh that says, "I wish it were so. I hope that’s the way it will be,That's a lovely promise, but can it really be that way?"

We listen to the preacher go on about Faith, Hope, and Love... And we nod our heads and rise to leave. But deep inside we hear that hollow laugh, that voice that mockingly tells us, that life doesn’t always work out like that.

We gaze with wonder upon a sunrise. We listen to the sweep of a symphony. We weep and rejoice at the beauty of a novel or a play or an idea. Yet all the time, that cynical laughter within calls out to us that things don't really work out that way.

And so Sarah laughed to herself. And then, she found herself laughing again, nine months later, when she bore a son to Abraham. "God has given me good reason to laugh", she joyously proclaimed, "and everybody who hears of this will laugh with me."

For the laughter Sarah had known, the laughter of deep pain and uncounted tears had been transformed beyond all hoping into new and clean and holy peals of laughter in the life of the one they called "Isaac". (Isaac you see means, "the laugher" or "the one who laughs").

And many, many years later, another woman, a young woman this time—a virgin, probably terribly young, heard the messenger of Yahweh God tell her that she would bear a child, a son, named "Emmanuel" which means "God with us". And she said, in the face of all her tears and fears and turmoil,

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior."

I can recall when I was told that I was going to be a father for the first time. I was young, so young, I had absolutely no idea what lay before me. But at that moment, my heart filled with joy and I found myself laughing-- out of surprise, joy, astonishment, relief, simple wonder at the miracle, or all of the above-- I don't know. But my heart was full and I laughed. In the 126th Psalm we read,

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those in a dream.

Then our mouths were filled with laughter

and our tongues with shouts of joy.

I recall once in Jerusalem, sitting in the outer courtyard of the Dome of the Rock, traditional site of Solomon's Temple, and third holiest place of Islam. There was a group of us sitting together resting, maybe a dozen or so, Ray Rhodes our former Superintendant, said something witty--I forget what it was, but it was not in any way disrespectful. And somebody laughed-- not a rude guffaw, just a mild chuckle out loud.

"This is a holy place! No laughter here!" Screamed somebody from a couple of hundred feet away.

He had it wrong. There is room for laughter in a holy place. There is honest laughter in our God. This religion business does not have to be-- should not be a grim and desperate undertaking. Our God is not interested in the survival and purity of faith at any price.

Faith in the God of Sarah and Abraham--and that includes Judaism, Christianity and Islam-- is meant to be a faith of freedom, a faith of life and affirmation. The Biblical faith is meant to be a faith that can and will transform even the bitter laughter of despair into the radiant joy of birth into New Life.

And our faith is a faith that teaches us, through pain at times, that all the sufferings of the present are not really worth comparing to the glory that is held in store for us--for all in God's design.

That's the word that Sarah brings to us in her sad laughter at the tent-flap. And that's the word she brings to us in her full and joyous laughter at the birth of her son. This we know, through God's own Son, the child of Mary, the child of promise, the child of laughter, Jesus Christ our Lord.. And so Sarah laughed to herself. And likewise you and I have room to laugh as well.

Make Friends video statement (English subtitles)

"Be One" given 6/11/17

Matthew opens his Gospel in a very Old Testament sort of way. He begins with a genealogy—a list of the ancestors of Jesus Christ back through the generations.

Matthew 1:17 tells us that:

“There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, another fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and yet another fourteen from the Babylonian exile to Christ.”

Sometime if you're curious about all that, I invite you to read the list in Matthew 1. But if you read it carefully, you'll notice something odd. Unlike other family trees listed in the Bible, there are actually some women included in the long list of Jesus' forbearers.

And that makes this genealogy unique in the Bible. Not in every single generation of course—Matthew wasn't that progressive—he only names four (actually five if you count Mary), women in 42 generations-- Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.

Each one of these four women has her own story included in the Old Testament. Each was crucial in carrying forth the faith and line of the people Israel.

Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah, who was widowed twice, who then had to trick Judah into impregnating her, in order to keep the family line going through their son Perez. In the eyes of respectable society, she would have been little more than the prostitute she impersonated.

Rahab was a pagan Canaanite prostitute, who sheltered the men, sent out to spy on the city of Jericho by Joshua, and later married one of the spies. In the eyes of respectable society, she was nothing more than a turncoat and opportunist. Yet she and Salman the spy were the parents of Boaz. (Who was what some unkind people call today “an anchor babay')

Ruth was a widowed Moabite who, in the eyes of respectable society, was nothing more than an unwelcome emmigrant and gold digger who lured Boaz into marrying her in order to save her and her mother-in-law, but even more, to carry on her late husband's family line. They were the parents of another anchor baby, Jesse. Jesse was the father of King David.

This morning's reading from the Hebrew Bible tells us that after King David conquered the supposedly unconquerable city of Jerusalem and made it his capital, rather than slaughtering or enslaving its' Jebusite inhabitants, (as any other conqueror of that time would have done), he spared them, and incorporated them into his kingdom as free and equal citizens.

Bathsheba was one of those Jebusites--in the eyes of respectable society, nothing more than a social climber and a seductress. But never the less—she was a respectable married lady, who was spied upon in her bath and seduced by David. Her inconvenient husband Uriah the Hittite was then purposely set up by David to be killed in battle. David and Bathsheba were to become the parents of Solomon—nothing more than a usurper—a half Jebusite king. In the eyes of Jewish society.at that time, and even today, Solomon wouldn't technically evenbe considered Jewish--since his mother was not Jewish.

And of course, we all know who Mary was—in the eyes of respectable society, nothing more than another unwed teen-aged mom.

Three of these women were foreigners—despised goyim-- originally pagans. All of them were incorporated into the people Israel. All five of them, by circumstances or by choice, found themselves standing outside the narrow restrictions of what was considered “normal” and respectable in their society. And yet their unconventional but necessary actions preserved and continued the faith of that society—preserved and continued God’s plan.

All of them--by their unconventional lives and actions were used by God—whether they knew it or not. God's HolySpirit didn't simply use them to preserve the faith of Israel in their own generation. The Spirit used them to ultimately produce a Savior—a Messiah—Jesus Christ.

He was an unconventional, multi-racial, multi-ethnic Messiah. Not simply a solely Jewish Messiah, but a Messiah with compassion and care for all peoples. He was a Messiah in love with diversity and at the same time faithfulness. He was a Messiah who loved the spirit of the Law of Moses rather than the restrictive letter of it.

He refused to condemn fallen women, healed and taught on the Sabbath, dined with sinners, accepted the outcasts of society, taught non-violence, loved those who persecuted him, pardoned those who repented, and forgave--even on the cross. He was a Messiah who often acted outside the narrow restrictions of what the world considered “normal” and respectable, in order to transform and save it—and us.

And the Holy Spiirt today calls us to follow this same Jesus. Calls us to be prepared to be unconventional in our lives and faith as needed to build his Commonwealth—no matter who we are. As Peter says in this morning's reading from Acts 10,

“God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as God says, the door is open.”

Right now in our country, and in our denomination, we desperately need to hear and heed those words. Right now, self-serving politicians and rabid racists are playing on our prejudices and fears of people of differing tongue and origin, people of different faith and culture, people of different color and genders.

People who, like those four ancestors, and like Jesus himself, find themselves standing outside the narrow restrictions of what is considered “normal” and respectable in the eyes of our society. People who are forced to be unconventional when needed. And yet our society needs those people. Our faith needs those people—needs each and every one of you, and even me.

Throughout its’ history, the Biblical faith has never grown and spread as a homogenous, single ethnicity, single language or culture. Like a beautiful garden, the Gospel has flourished and grown best and fastest when it has been fertilized and cross pollinated and transformed by the music and insights and theology of people of differing and unexpected ideas, differing and unexpected cultures, differing and unexpected ways of understanding the Bible, differing and unexpected ways of worship, even differing and unexpected ways of understanding how to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

And likewise, our struggling country needs that so precious diversity and courageous willingness to be unconventional when needed, if it is to grow and prosper and be transformed into a nation that reflects our founders' highest ideals of justice and equity and become a place of refuge and liberty for all its' many and varied precious peoples.

And likewise, our beloved denomination also needs that so precious diversity and courageous willingness to be unconventional when needed, if we are to grow and prosper and be transformed into a holy people who embody our Lord's Will for us as a body of mutual respect and Shalom for all its' many and varied precious peoples—the Body of Christ.

In the night he was betrayed, Jesus prayed in the Upper Room for those who followers,

                                  Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life

That you conferred as

 a gift through me,So they can be one heart and mind

As we are one heart and mind.

Not one language. Not one culture. Not one way of worshipping. Not one theology. Not even one way of reading the Bible.

But one heart---fixed on loving our neighbor one mind—fixed on mission and service,—one Lord—showing us the way of Justification—One Faith—in Him who loves us—one Baptism—which unites us all in Him. Amen. Let us pray,

Help us accept each other

as Christ accepted us;

teach us as sister, brother

,

each person to embrace

.

Be present, Lord, among us

and Bring us to believe:

we are ourselves accepted

and meant to love and live.

"The Gift of Listening" Pentecost 2017

Two wonders, two miracles are the subject of this morning’s texts. Two gifts. Luke is telling us about the first Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit descended upon a group of people, “Jews from every nation under heaven,” and transformed them into the Body of Christ—the church. Notice the first thing they did as the church, on the first day of the church.

They listened. And then they heard – heard a sound “from on high.” It seemed to them, the heavens opened and there was a voice. Then they spoke. They preached. They testified to the great good that God was doing among them. Jesus sent them his Holy Spirit, down from his throne in heaven. And they in turn sent up their prayers to him.

The crowd out in the street scoffed, saying, “They’re drunk!” The mob couldn’t imagine God Almighty speaking to a bunch of “ignorant and unlearned people.” Nor could the crowd imagine mere maids, janitors, teenagers, and old people preaching.

There is a dynamic here, a movement that is at the very heart of the Bible’s story about who we are and what we are doing here. God reaches down, speaks to us, enabling us to reach back up to God, to speak to God, and then to one another in witness. . That’s the movement, and it’s three-way. Downward from heaven, up from earth to God, out into the world..

You will note that same movement in today’s service. The first part of our worship is mostly our listening for God’s word. We gather and listen to Scripture. Then we listen to the sermon. So much of our Sunday worship is concerned with sitting and listening because that’s the most difficult thing for us.

“Is there any word from the Lord?” That’s the question the preacher hears you asking every time he or she enters the pulpit. Is there anything that God has to say to me today, now, here?

Some modern people say that they never hear God saying anything to them. And, some modern philosophers speak of God as Deus Absconditus, the God who hides, the God who absconds.

Maybe the problem isn’t so much that God has moved away from us but that we have removed ourselves from God. The media bombards with so many messages, so many words, sounds, and signs, so many conflicting world-views and ethical stances-- mostly in the form of advertising. Is it any wonder that we don’t hear the voice of God amid this ringing, relentless, constant cacophony?

Have you ever heard some doubter say something along the lines of:

“God has never spoken to my life. I’ve tried prayer; it’s like I’m just talking to myself. I don’t believe in God, or at least don’t believe in a God with a voice”?

A good response to that statement might be to ask the doubter,

“When’s the last time you have been in church? What spiritual disciplines do you practice?” The answers you are going to get, of course are “not recently” and “none.”

It’s like my saying,

“I always wanted to be a world-class tennis player. Of course I haven’t been on a court or picked up a racket since college. So I guess there’s really no such thing as tennis.”

God still speaks today, but not necessarily in the ways of past eras. God will speak to the people of each time in the language they’re most likely to hear and accept.

After all, how would people today react to an OT type prophet like Isaiah (Isaiah 20) taking off all his clothes and preaching naked as a sermon illustration? We’d call the cops and have him put in jail.

What would we say to a modern day Hosea taking back his faithless wife time and time again, loving her, forgiving her every time, continuing to have children with her? We’d take him aside and suggest the name of a good divorce lawyer.

For that matter, how would you or react if we unexpectedly heard the voice of God speaking from a burning bush? We’d call the nearest Mental Hospital and check ourselves in.

So on this and every Sunday morning you and I gather, sit here for a while in the silence, focus our thoughts and attention, and listen. This is one of the great gifts of Sunday worship. Yet our listening, our yearning for a word, our need to focus and be attentive to God, must not obscure the great, initial wonder behind this Sunday’s scripture.

Our God speaks. If the Bible’s testimony is as true, then our God is a relentlessly, unceasingly self-communicative Creator. There is something about this God of ours that loves to address (and to be addressed by) humanity.

Call it loquaciousness or call it love. One sure sign that two people are in love is that they long always to be with one another. More than that, they want to talk with one another – the telephone, email, whatever – hours upon hours of talk. The talk is so important because our speech is our primary way of expressing ourselves, of sharing ourselves, giving to and receiving from others.

That’s the way that God seems to be with us. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends, just as the risen Christ had promised. When the wondering crowd in the street asked what all this ruckus was about, Peter made reference to the prophet Joel’s words. The prophets of Israel were one of the many ways over the centuries that God has attempted to speak to us.

Why are we so surprised to read that the disciples went out from the Upper Room at Pentecost, speaking to people in their own languages? It would be more surprising if

all those folks understood each other’s language.

We assume that English is the same for everyone. Have you ever tried to communicate with someone from Cornwell? Or Australia? Or even Mizzipi?

The English a geologist uses may be as meaningless to a social worker, as the social worker’s is to the economist, and the economist’s to a preacher. Even when you and I use the same words, those words have shifts and shades of meaning according to the hearers’ region, training, experience, and interests.

The fact is, people always hear the spirit of God in their own language, their own idiom. So the poor finds that the gospel speaks in terms of abundance. It speaks to the ill and wounded about healing; to the imprisoned about justice, to the oppressed

about liberation, to the war-weary about peace and harmony with others; to the criminal about repentance; to all of us about life as we’ve lived it.

People who are whole and well have no need to hear words of healing, and those who see the world in terms of possessions and wealth will never hear messages about the priority of relationships. Each person hears whatever that person is capable of hearing and responding to.

That’s how it was at Pentecost; that’s how it is today. Every Sunday, when we gather for worship, we gather under this promise: our God speaks. And there is another miracle here. Because God loves us enough to speak to us, we can speak to God. I don’t know which is more difficult: to hear God or to speak to God.

Back to the analogy of human lovers. One of the greatest challenges of romance is finding the words to say to another person. We’ve all heard of those painfully shy people who spend weeks, months, trying to get up the courage to speak to someone in their classroom, someone at work, someone to whom they were attracted. I heard about a young man in high school who wrote out every word of a planned telephone conversation with a girl before he dared to pick up the phone!

“Er, hello.”

“Hey”

“S’up?”

“Nothin’. S’up wit’ chu?” And so forth.

It’s not just that we’re inward directed or shy. It ‘s hard for us to find the right words.

Any kind of intimacy—especially love requires honest self-revelation. And it’s hard for us to reveal ourselves, hard to say what we want to say and how we want to say it. Why? Because much of the time, we don’t even know ourselves! And to be totally honest to anyone about ourselves—especially to God—requires our being able to be honest about ourselves to ourselves.And if this is true in our loving conversations with one another, how much more so our conversations with God?

I wonder if this isn’t one of the main reasons people have for not praying. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know which words to use. Despite the fact that God knows us through and through, the idea of being totally honest before God is scary to some of us.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:26, that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, giving us words that we want to speak to God. What a wonderful gift. The Holy Spirit is not only the face of God speaking to us, She is the way that God is revealed to us, and also the way that we are able to be honest with ourselves about ourselves, and thus the way

that we are enabled to speak to God. The Holy Spirit is that power, that gift of God that enables us to know ourselves, accept ourselves and ultimately to be in loving communion/conversation with God. As we sang in the great Wesley hymn this morning,

“O for a thousand tongues to sing, our loosened tongues employ.”

One of the kindest compliments I ever get is when someone of you say that something I said in worship “spoke to you”. One of the most telling experiences I have is when you complain that I’m “picking on you” in my sermon. When I hear that particular criticism, my only thought is “How egotistical you are, that you think I’d waste an entire sermon on you!!” The truth is that I never have anyone particular in mind when I compose a sermon. If I, or any pastor ever find the right words to say something to your heart in a sermon, it’s not because I necessarily had you in mind.

It’s not because I have the spiritual gift of discernment. Nor is it because I went to a good seminary. It’s not even because I pray enough, or have the correct Theology, or the correct understanding of the Bible. It’s because God’s Spirit gave me the words. And you. If you ever hear anything that either touches you or challenges you in a sermon, despite all of the perfectly good reasons why you might not, it’s because God is giving you the gift of listening.

That’s the reason why, in church, or reading the Bible, you come to a familiar passage and think to yourself: “Great, First Corinthians 13. Here we go again.” But then, sometimes in the listening or in the reading, a mini-miracle occurs--some word, some phrase jumps out at you, grabs you by the ears, and claims your attention. That’s the Holy Spirit.

A reporter once asked a diplomat,

“What is your goal in your current diplomatic efforts?”

“To get people to the table to talk,” he replied.

“Is that all?” the reporter persisted.

“Well, that’s enough,” said the diplomat. “If we can just get people to talk and to listen, about 90 percent of our diplomacy is accomplished. The rest is easy after that.”

Christianity is a “revealed religion,” which is a fancy way of saying that you don’t “get it,” it “gets you.” You can’t intellectually decide to follow Jesus, he has to be given to you. It must come from “on high.” The best Bible study, the best listening to sermons is a form of prayer, that humble listening, that waiting on the gift of God.

And today, Pentecost, is the day when we gather to celebrate that relationship, to give thanks to God for being so communicative, so talkative, so lovingly, self-revealingly conversational. It is also the day that we find the words to praise God as we ought, to speak to God in words and music that are more beautiful than we ourselves could devise so that God might speak to us words more wonderful than we could devise.

All this, all of these things are pure gift—from the Holy Spirit. So listen up! Amen.