There are no easy answers

Based on Mark 6:14-29

Let’s have story-time today. Once upon a time there was a man named Jephtha, who had a complicated relationship with his family. He was asked by the leaders of the Israelites to command their forces in battle against a neighboring kingdom, and so off he went to battle. He began to have some success, and this inspired him so much that he made a promise to God: “If you, God, will deliver my enemies into my hands, I will sacrifice to you whatever comes out of my door first as a burnt offering.”

You can just tell this is going to end badly, can’t you?

So Jephtha and the Israelite army defeated their enemies and returned home victorious. As Jephtha was headed for home, he watched the front door to see what might come out first: the family dog? A fatted calf? Something he didn’t care for too much? What he saw grieved him deeply: his beloved daughter ran out to greet him, and his spirit sank as he remembered what he had promised. But he kept his promise.

Herod must have felt the same way. This was not the Herod who ordered the Jewish children to be killed after the visit from the Magi, but his descendant, Herod Antipas. Herod Antipas had a certain fondness for the Jew he lived among and governed, and he had a special place in his heart for John the Baptist. He knew John to be righteous, and recognized him as a prophet. He liked to listen to him, even though Herod rarely understood John, and he even respected him, and made an effort to protect John. Until…again, it’s easy for us to anticipate the bad ending, isn’t it? Until Herod Antipas made a foolish promise to Herodias, offering to give her anything she wanted—even half his kingdom—if her dancing pleased him. While I question the values of everyone concerned, imagine Herod’s shock and grief when she asked for John’s head on a platter…but he kept his promise.

These stories from the Bible hardly sound to us like good news, and neither do the lives of the innocents in them: Jephtha’s daughter, who did not fight her father but accepted her fate, and John the Baptist. They were the wronged parties, the ones who are truly in the right in these stories, and yet the news for them was all wrong, and there were no easy answers to their questions of why they had to die.

As much as we might wish there were, there are no easy answers to many of our questions about God, either, questions like, “why can’t I sense God?” and “how can I be sure?” and “How could God let this happen?” and “Where is God when things get tough?” There aren’t even easy answers to questions we think should be easy, like, “does God exist?” and “was Jesus really the Son of God?” As much as we’d like all the answers to be easy, all our solutions to be perfect, and to completely understand who God is and how God works, it’s just not really that way.

And who knew that better than John? Remember all of John’s story? I sometimes call him the last of the old-time, Old Testament prophets, because of the way he lived. John was consecrated to God in the womb, the son of faithful parents who were past child-bearing age, who had never known the joys and challenges of a child—until one day God intervened, and brought new life to these old parents. His father, Zechariah, found the notion so foolish that he didn’t believe it would happen, and so God took away his voice until after the child was born and it was time to name him. When John’s mother, Elizabeth, was pregnant, her baby leapt up inside her when Elizabeth’s cousin Mary came to visit…pregnant herself with a child also conceived by divine intervention. We’ll talk more about him later, but I think you get the sense of how special a person John was.

John’s whole life was touched and guided by God. He became the prophet foretold in Isaiah, preparing the way for Jesus’ ministry, preaching repentance and baptizing people, including his cousin Jesus. And that, of course, is how he became known as John the Baptist or John the Baptizer. He lived in the wilderness like the prophets of old, wearing clothing made of scratchy camel’s hair and eating locusts and honey. He preached the coming of the Messiah, and acquired many faithful disciples of his own, some of whom went on to follow Jesus. And like his cousin Jesus, he attracted some less welcome attention from those who were challenged by what he had to say.

One of those was Herod Antipas, who started out our story-telling today. When he heard John speak, he was both intrigued by what he was hearing about God and threatened by the potential for political unrest if John stirred up the Jewish people or—even worse—if the Savior John preached about actually showed up. Something about John’s words must have grabbed Herod’s attention; maybe John’s preaching about the need for repentance and baptism resonated with something going on in Herod’s heart. We don’t know. We can’t know. All we have to go on are the words of Mark that Herod Antipas protected John, and that ultimately, he didn’t.

And there’s one of those hard questions for which there are no easy answers. We’ve come to accept that Jesus Christ had to die and be resurrected so that we might know eternal life after our own deaths, but John? He was righteous and honorable, a holy man. He did nothing wrong—at least not according to his faith; he was basically a political prisoner at the time of his death because the Roman authorities in the person of Herod Antipas feared his growing influence over the Jewish people. He certainly had not yet committed any crime worthy of death, and yet that’s exactly what he got as a reward for his faithfulness. Death.

John’s story does remind us of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, doesn’t it? A man innocent of the charges against him, guilty only of obedience to the call of God on his life. Jesus had not committed any crime worthy of death, and yet he too received that same sentence of death—not for his crime, but for politics: to keep the people happy, or at least quiet.

Both Pilate and Herod Antipas had the opportunity to do the right things—legally and morally—and yet they both gave in to fear. They feared what others might say or do; Herod that he would be considered an oathbreaker and one who could not be counted on, Pilate that the Jews would be stirred up against Rome (and him) if he did not do the politically expedient thing. In both cases, for John and Jesus, the consequence of obedience turns out to be death.

Why?

This is the question that worries me as I try to tell people about Jesus Christ and the church. How is this good news? We are called to obedience, and yet we have these examples that tell us that our obedience will lead to death. How can I tell people this is good news: God loves you—to death? How can we encourage people to come to a church where we preach this? Anyone who preaches or struggles to share the good news of Jesus Christ with someone else knows that there are surely no easy answers to these questions.

Yet the Bible and the story of the Church are full of answers. We have the examples of the disciples, who one after another followed Jesus to death. We have Paul who proclaimed that to live is Christ, to die is gain.  We have Peter, who followed Jesus to death on a cross. We have stories of martyrs and the Church forced underground…and lest you think I’m talking about dim and dark history, I’m talking too about places like Russia, where only recently the church has been allowed to worship openly, and China, where strict controls are placed on gatherings of people…especially anything that might be a religious gathering. And somehow, despite there being no easy answers to the questions we have about God and faith, somehow people still seem to find good news in the story of Jesus Christ, in his life and in his death.

You know, when I use that phrase, I generally don’t end there: with Jesus’ life and death. I almost always say, “Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection,” because the resurrection is where I find good news…even if I don’t find easy answers. John the Baptist and the disciples and countless Christians since their time have died for their faith…which would not seem like good news, except that we believe in the power of the resurrection. We believe that while obedience in this life may be unpleasant, uncomfortable, or even fatal for some, the power of the resurrection is also a part of our lives—one might even call it the good part!

What we are asked to do, like John, like Jesus, like the countless brothers and sisters in the faith who have gone before us and who will come after us, is to be obedient to God. Because one of those questions without easy answers is “what does God want me to do?,” our obedience includes learning about God through studying both the Bible and the stories of how God’s Holy Spirit has continued to work in the world and in the hearts of God’s people. It includes worshiping together and praying for one another, and learning from the examples of those we admire, those whom we believe help show us both what obedience to God looks like, and some of its rewards. And in obedience to God, we find strength and comfort and even passion: passion to help others, passion to share the good news we’ve found in our own lives, passion to do God’s work, even when it’s hard, even when it’s painful, even when it’s unpopular or goes against the common wisdom…and here’s where we come back to Herod.

Today’s story is essentially a flashback. Herod Antipas heard about some of the things Jesus is saying and doing, and like others, was trying to figure out who Jesus might be. Was he a prophet, like the prophets of old? Was he Elijah, come back to bring God’s people back to the fullness of the faith? But Herod knew what he had done to John the Baptist, whom he had admired, even as he ordered him to be killed, and Herod thought that Jesus might be John, come again. Perhaps he feared divine vengeance for John’s murder. Perhaps he felt a sense of shame for having allowed the girl to extract such a promise from him, and for following through when her request was so bold and so wrong. Perhaps he understood that John’s devotion to God, which Herod admired, had led to John’s undignified and unjust death. And perhaps he wondered what John’s God thought of him…and where obedience to God might lead him.

There weren’t any easy answers for Herod Antipas that day, as he listened to the words and deeds of Jesus, and wondered if there wasn’t some judgment in them for him. And what a shame, that he did not hear instead of judgment, grace and forgiveness, and an invitation to new life, because that is truly good news, even if these are not easy answers. The good news we have to offer is that while there are no easy answers to the hard questions of life, there is a safe place to ask them, a God in whom we can find wholeness and holiness, a church family to give us strength and to go with us on life’s journey. The good news we have to offer is that in Christ, we are new creations. In Christ, we have new life. In Christ, we are equal in God’s sight, and those things that we think make us less  or make us more do not mean as much as we think. If there are no easy answers, there are good answers to the difficult questions we face in life. Where is God when we struggle? With us in the Holy Spirit, and in the company of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Can we sense God? Sometimes, and we can share that experience with one another. Does God exist? How can such love not exist, that God chose to share our existence in the form of Jesus Christ, chose to live and die with us, so that we might be resurrected with him? It might not be an easy answer, but it is very good news.

When God fails to meet our expectations

preached at Ann Street UMC June 28, 2009

text: Mark 5:21-24, 35-43

What a story Mark brings us today: the faith of a loving father, the healing power of the son of God, and the miraculous restoration of a little girl. It would make a great hallmark movie, wouldn’t it? Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, one of the religious aristocracy, is forced to leave the synagogue and seek out an itinerant teacher named Jesus when his little girl falls desperately ill. On the way to Jairus’ house, Jesus stops along the way to investigate the healing of a sick woman, until some mourners from Jairus’ house arrive to say, “don’t bother; she’s already dead.” Jesus reassures the grieving father, “do not fear, only believe,” and when they arrive at Jairus’ home, Jesus calls the little girl to wake up, and she did. And Jesus told them all to keep it a secret.

We don’t know how long this story was kept a secret. Who could stop themselves from sharing news like this? And certainly we know that the gospel of Mark was written relatively soon after Jesus’ death. Matthew and Luke tell this story, too, which helps give it power…but it also creates an unrealistic expectation of who Jesus is and how God interacts with us. And sometimes, one might even say more often than not, God fails to meet those expectations.

It’s a shocking thing to say, I know. But I think the problem is less with God, and more with us. Maybe another story will help flesh this out. But first, a disclaimer: this is someone else’s story, and I’m telling it to you as I’ve come to understand it over the years. I’m sure there are factual errors, and that some of the details will be wrong. Bear with me: it may not be entirely accurate, but it is a true story of a child and a family struggling with what happens when God does not meet our expectations.

Nearly 42 years ago in Alabama, a woman named Mary gave birth to her fourth child, who would be her third son. This had been a risky pregnancy for her; she was almost forty herself, and five years before, her only daughter was still-born. Mary and her husband had learned about the cause, Rh incompatibility or Rh disease: her blood was not compatible with that of her daughter, and potentially any future children. The hospital said it was prepared to treat her son, and so when he was born, they gave him a transfusion to counteract the effect of the disease. All should have been well, but her little boy’s body rejected some of the new blood, and they told Mary and her husband that their baby would probably not live. They named his condition cerebral palsy.

Mary prayed, and asked her friends and her church to pray, and they asked others to pray, and their little boy survived. The doctors told her that her child would likely be severely physically and mentally handicapped, and tried to prepare her for what this might mean. And Mary and her friends and her church continued to pray, and the little boy continued to live. He grew, but he did not progress like other babies. He crawled, but did not walk, and cried in pain when they held him up by the hands to help him walk between them. He began to talk, and they saw no signs of the mental deficits the doctors anticipated, and so then the doctors told Mary and her husband their little boy would never walk.

When he was three, Mary’s child had the first of several surgeries on his legs. This was the first, but it would be far from the last. In this first surgery, his Achilles’ tendon was lengthened to allow him to put his heel down when he stood.  In the second, muscle was taken from one part of his leg and wrapped around his left foot, which was turned inward towards his body. They fitted him with braces to try to help his bones grow normally and to strengthen his legs to help him walk, but it wasn’t enough, and as he grew he continued to wear heavy braces on his left leg to help him walk. And Mary and her friends and her church kept praying, and thanked God for how far her little son had come.

When the little boy was in elementary school, his mother started going to a new church, one which believed in faith healings. They taught Mary that if she asked with a pure heart, and believed enough, and was free of sin, then when she asked in faith, Jesus would heal her son: would even lengthen his left leg, now shorter than the other, and make it perfect and normal. And this new church began to pray with her, and to hold healing services, and to lay hands on the little boy and pray for his healing. For years they prayed, as the little boy played Little League baseball and won the Sportsmanship award, as he began to develop into a great student and a good friend. And he learned to sing, and traveled with the Montgomery Boy’s Choir.

But his leg didn’t get better. He worked hard, and his parents worked with him, to develop some flexibility and stability in that leg. He gradually grew out of needing a brace…but his leg was never what you’d call normal. He ran an 8 minute mile in high school after years of working at it, and he went off to college and worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. But his leg never got better…it began to get worse.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about my husband, Ben. He eventually left his mother’s church, not because of all the healing lines and all the unrealized hopes, but because when he moved to a new town, the Methodists were friendliest. He eventually went to seminary at Duke, where we met, and so the story goes. By the time we came to Ann Street to visit for the first time, Ben was temporarily in a wheelchair, recovering from surgery on his left leg, trying to compensate for some of the damage done over the years by his cerebral palsy. That’s how the SPRC first saw him. And we still pray for healing, although not so much for the complete healing and restoration of his body, because by now we know that the damage done by the cerebral palsy affects more than just his leg, but for the strength to do the work he’s called to, and for the doctors and therapies and medicines to be available when he needs them. But it’s rare that we talk to Mary that we aren’t reminded in some way that God didn’t meet her expectations when Ben didn’t get a complete, spectacular, undeniably divine healing of that leg.

But Jairus got his daughter back…what does that mean for people like Ben? Or like me? I had my own birth defect, leaving me with lots of arthritis. I’m so near-sighted that I started wearing contact lenses not to avoid my glasses, but in hopes that having that little piece of plastic on my eyeball would slow down the changes to the shape and function of my eyes. I’ve prayed for complete healing before, and I believed that God could do it, and Ben and I have both witnessed people’s health being restored in ways that were nothing short of miraculous. I’m inclined to think now that Jairus’ story is more valuable to us as a parable than it is as a historical account, that there is more depth to it than simply using faith as a kind of magic wand, that there is more to healing than fixing physical ailments, that miracles are more common—and more commonplace—than we think, and that there is more to grace than we can imagine.

When we look closely at the language used to for words like healing, wholeness, and salvation, we find that they are all connected together. The word salvation shares a root with “salve” or healing ointment, and to save is to heal. There is a connection with forgiveness as well; we remember some of the other healing stories of Jesus, where forgiveness of sins is connected to healing and to restoration of community: the stories of the healing of the man who was blind from birth, the crippled man by the pool of Siloam, and of the ten lepers make this To heal, then, is to make whole, and adds some real richness to this story of Jairus’ daughter, who is healed—resurrected—restored to Jairus by Jesus. Jesus was his last hope: Jairus was a leader of the synagogue, and thus had some authority and some pull in the community. He had access to doctors and priests and all the help available to someone in that time and place. But all his efforts to save his daughter were in vain. His status let him down. His connections let him down. His money, even, let him down, when he had done all that could be done, and still his daughter lay at the point of death. His last hope was to find that itinerant teacher, Jesus, that he had heard so much about, and see if there really was any truth to the rumors about what he could do. When his daughter was restored to him, he was restored to his places in the community.

We get an even more powerful image of healing as restoration in the story-within-a-story from this passage. The verses I didn’t read tell the story of a woman who had been bleeding—hemorrhaging—for twelve years. All this time she had been ill, and there had been no one that could cure her. Even worse, the blood made her ritually unclean, and so much of the time, she could not be around others in the community. Her family probably made the decision to risk her company from time to time, but no one else would. She wouldn’t be welcome in the temple or in the marketplace, or in others’ homes, because they would have to then purify themselves to remove the taint from associating with her. When she touched Jesus’ clothes, immediately her bleeding stopped and Jesus looked for her and spoke to her, reassuring her that her faith had made her well. Wellness was not only that her physical condition was cured, but also that she was restored to the comforts of family and home, to work and to worship, to go to the marketplace and to enjoy her friends again. And in the phrase, “your faith has made you well,” we should hear echoes: “ your sins are forgiven”…“your faith has made you whole”… “your faith has saved you”.

Restoration and healing, forgiveness and salvation and wholeness, then, mean more than a physical condition. For Jesus, to be healed or restored or forgiven or saved or made whole means that you have entered fellowship with a community that loves you and supports you. This is what is so important about moments like the one we share today with Evan W and his family, for baptism is more than a rite of passage; it is a sign of the healing and wholeness and salvation that comes from Christ. Evan is a part of us now. He is our brother, and we are his sisters and brothers. He has our love and our support, whatever he may go through.

For many, this love and support is ultimately more important than physical healing. Here is the faith community where we pray that our friends and loved ones will be blessed with healing, and where we acknowledge that sometimes that healing comes from the efforts of doctors and surgeries and therapies and medication—and I’m convinced we should acknowledge that as miraculous! And we must acknowledge as well that sometimes we don’t see the healing we expect. Sometimes God does not meet our expectations, just as he did not meet Mary’s expectations for Ben.  She wanted a son, who, like his brothers, was athletic, a football player, a young man who might enroll at West Point or enlist in the Army like his father. She expected God to restore Ben’s body so that he could do these things. Instead, God gave him something more—and Ben counts each day as a gift from God.

There is a difference between what we expect of God and what God expects of us. We sometimes expect magic: dramatic healing, direct interventions in our lives. We share email stories about little children found yards away from a devastating car crash who say Jesus helped them out of the car. We say it’s miraculous when a hurricane passes us by, forgetting that it isn’t a miracle for those who aren’t so fortunate. And we sometimes feel that by the sheer force of our own will we can make God do what we want: free a loved one from addiction, make us wealthy, order the world after our own intentions. After all, doesn’t the Bible say that if we are persistent in prayer, that God will give us whatever we ask?

But there’s a loophole there, that we will align our prayers with God’s expectations: that we will hold fast to our faith, that we will persist in prayer, that we will try to line up what we want with what God wants, that we will trust that God is with us. Part of that expectation is that we live the best we can with what we’ve got, and to share and show our faith as we do it. And that’s where Mary’s expectations kind of fall down. She’s looked for Ben’s whole life for the miracle, the one that would show God’s power, and never seen the everyday miracles that make his life special: he was never expected to live, and yet here he is. He was expected to be profoundly mentally and physically impaired, and yet he’s earned two Master’s degrees. He was never expected to walk, but he cut the grass at our house this weekend.

And in turn, Ben’s done his best to meet God’s expectations. The grace of God and some really great doctors (also sent by God, we’re convinced) has given him the ability to live and love and work. While he never played high school football or made it into the Army, he has become a pastor, and a good one, if I say so myself. And I do. And Ben’s done his part to learn from his life: he’s learned how to care for himself and others, and he’s particularly good at talking to people who are hurting and whose lives are falling apart. He’s able to tell them what he’s learned from his life: God’s grace enables us day by day to be the people we are called to be; we learn from our struggles how to relate to others, and that Ben is who he is now because of what he’s been through.

We’ve learned over the years we’ve been married that it doesn’t pay to dictate to God how things must be. Instead, we’ve learned to pray sometimes to change who we are, not to change who God is—to help us meet God’s expectations, rather than try to force God to meet ours. That’s the lesson I want us to learn today from the healing of Jairus’ daughter. Jairus did not go to Jesus to order God to heal his daughter. He’d prayed in the synagogue, he’d sent for the physicians and healers, he’d done everything there was to do. Jairus went to Jesus because he was at the end of his rope, and thought that Jesus was his only hope for a miracle, his only chance to save his little girl. Jesus’ response was simple: “Do not fear, only believe.”

We could translate that as “do not fear, only trust,” and that is the crux of the matter. That is God’s expectation of us: do not fear, only trust. And God is always worthy of our trust. Whether Jairus’ daughter had been restored to life or to eternal life, Jairus was asked to trust. When our lives seem to find us far from health and happiness, we are asked to trust. And we know that when we trust God, we will find forgiveness, and restoration, and healing, and wholeness, and salvation. Thanks be to God.

On the Shoulders of the Past

For Aldersgate Sunday, Ascension Sunday, and Memorial Day–all in one.

Text: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

There’s a lot going on today…a lot of weight for this Sunday to bear. For all Christians, today is Ascension Day and marks the risen Christ’s return to heaven, leaving the Church in the hands of his disciples. As United Methodists, we recognize today as also being Aldersgate Sunday, marking a pivotal event in the life of John Wesley. And then there’s our country’s observance tomorrow of Memorial Day, remembering those who have given their lives in battle to assure our country’s freedom. Each of these events is worthy of its own Sunday and its own sermon, but instead, I’ll try to draw them together.

On the day of the Ascension, Jesus promised the disciples again (he’d done it several times already) that the Holy Spirit would help them to be his witnesses to all the world. Once he had said that, he rose up into heaven. We know from the story of the upper room after the crucifixion that the disciples did not do well when left to their own devices. Again the disciples wondered how they could do the work Jesus had set them, of teaching others about the Kingdom of God. This is what it might have sounded like if they had called an administrative board meeting:

“The meeting will come to order. The first item of business is the reading of the minutes of our last meeting which was held after the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
“The meeting was called to order at 9:00 AM by Simon Peter. One hundred and twenty persons were present. The invocation was offered by Brother Bartholomew. The minutes of the previous meeting were approved as printed. James, the son of Zebedee – serving as Treasurer pro tem until a replacement is found for Judas Iscariot – then presented the financial reports. Offerings received since our last meeting were less than projected and James encouraged the membership to keep up their pledges, reminding us all that the cost of running the church is high. James also urged the various Committees to only spend what they absolutely need.

“Mary Magdalene reported on plans for Vacation Bible School, stating that this year’s curriculum presents the gospel message in song and dance through representatives of the major food groups. Not only is the program biblical, but it is healthy, too. Nominations were then opened for the apostolic position vacated by Mr. Iscariot. There being no volunteers, Simon Peter reminded the gathering that this is their church and everyone needs to pitch in to make it work. He said it is unfair that the same few people always shoulder most of the work.

“Brother Philip then nominated Joseph for the position of apostle. Brother Thomas lifted up the name of Matthias. Nominations were then closed, prayers were prayed, and lots were cast. Matthias was elected to the position. An installation service will be scheduled for the Fall when everyone gets back from Summer vacation. There being no other business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:20 AM.
“Now, do I hear a motion to approve the minutes of the Ascension meeting? Is there a second? All in favor, say, “Aye!” Let those opposed say, “Nay!” The minutes are approved.”

Do you suppose that this is how the disciples met and managed the important business of naming a new member of the Twelve? My favorite part, I have to admit, is that the decision was accomplished not by a discussion of the relative merits of Joseph Barsabbas and Matthias. Their gifts for ministry were not evaluated by the staff/parish relations committee. There wasn’t even a vote; instead the election was made by the casting of lots. This was their way of inviting God to intercede, to make the decision for them, rather than trusting in their own wisdom. And in so doing, they were hoping that a path would be made plain to them, so that they could carry on the work of spreading the gospel to the world.

In 1743, John Wesley, the founding father of United Methodism, went to a prayer meeting, where he hoped to find some guidance, some sense of security in his calling as a minister. He was looking for a sense of assurance that God loved him and was with him, and one night, listening to Luther’s commentary on Romans, John Wesley had an experience that he later described in this way:

“About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.”

John Wesley was not a young man when he had this experience in that meeting on Aldersgate Street: he had been ordained a priest, served as a missionary in the colony of Georgia, from which he came home a failure. He was earnestly trying to do what he believed God wants all Christians to do: Love God first, and love your neighbor…but something was not there for John Wesley. He had done all he could in his own power: he prayed, he preached to others and himself the kind of faith and assurance he longed for, he reached out to the poor and carefully monitored his own life for any sin that might keep him from God, but finally, he gave up. He opened his heart and looked for God to do the moving within him…and that something powerful happened to John Wesley that changed him forever: changed him so that he fathered a denomination, changed thousands upon thousands of lives, and made a place in worship and in the kingdom of God for many who felt they were not worthy to enter the church or of the love of God.

Our faith, here in this congregation at Ann Street United Methodist Church, owes a great debt to those lot-casting disciples and that insecure priest. Our worship, our teaching, our mission efforts, all that we do is supported on the shoulders of the past. We have the Bible because people of God wrote down the great events and stories of the faith, preserved letters, and brought them together into one book. We have churches because people of God kept alive a sense of community and the importance of worshiping together.

And we have this church, in this place, because something like 250 years ago, a group of people from the Church of England began to worship and to work together as Methodists. When their priests were recalled to England as a result of the growing unrest that became the American Revolution, Methodists continued to worship here. In the 1780s, John Wesley became so concerned that the Methodists in the new United States had no priests to perform baptisms and celebrate the Lord’s Supper that he ordained bishops to come here and to train and ordain elders to minister to the people of God.

Our faith, even when it is new to us, is nothing new. Most of us can name one or even many people who are instrumental in shaping our faith. For many of us, it was our parents or grandparents who taught us about God. We can name Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teachers who shared stories with us that helped understand a little about what it means to be a Christian. Other of us have spiritual friends we could name. I might name my friend Tonya, who is in South Africa this week teaching VBS and leading womens’ conferences to people who are learning about the grace and love of God. There are pastors who have helped form our spiritual lives: in my life, the Revs. Dick Faris, Leonard Hazelwood, David Ford, and Glenn Everett helped me become a Christian and a pastor. Some of us can even name authors whose books have changed us: CS Lewis and Lee Strobel, Max Lucado and Karen Kingsley, Eugene Peterson and Leonard Sweet and Maxie Dunnam. In the past few weeks, I’ve been learning some of the names of Ann Street’s spiritual giants, names like Mrs. Lottie Saunders and Rev. Stanley Potter and Thelma Ward.

Very few people ever come to faith, ever grow in spiritual maturity, in a vacuum. We are created for community, to be together and to tell stories. The need to be a part of a group is part of what drove the disciples to replace Judas as one of the twelve…although if you listened carefully, you will have heard that already there were more than twelve making the decisions and doing the work. The Bible gives us several different numbers of people who were called “disciples”: twelve, seventy, one hundred twenty, four hundred, and so on until eventually that number grows and becomes millions and includes me and you.

Having a faith and a church and a spiritual life that is built on the shoulders of the past gives us a great gift: we have the stories of our past to lean on, and we have the promise of the presence of God. John Wesley, when he questioned his own faith, went back to some of his spiritual friends for prayer and guidance. He read scripture, and he read the early writings of the church, and he leaned on God through prayer. The disciples—however many they were—relied on their experience of Jesus, on one another’s counsel, and trusted God to move them in unexpected ways.

The world is changing all around us, and we are often asked to do things we’ve never done before. Some of you never worked with computers before your retirement, but have learned to use them to keep in touch with children and grandchildren through email and video calls, and we use them now to keep in touch with one another through the church’s website, phone tree, and even the production of our newsletter and bulletins. I suspect the thought of producing over 300 bulletins for a Sunday service would have taken up most of Virginia Moore’s time when she was the church secretary: now it’s a matter of hours, and sometimes takes longer to fold than it does to put together.

One of our members has the new Kindle e-book reader: she can download whole books almost instantly, so she never lacks for something to read. No library visits, and no late fees. One day, I’ll have to get myself one of those. There have been so many changes: innovations in travel and communications—the other side of the world is no longer as far away as it once was—changes in how we teach, how we learn, how fast our children grow up, the medicine and technologies that help us grow old. The rate of changes seems to get faster with each passing year, and the vast majority of them are not inherently good or bad, although we do want to be careful how we use them.

Our first hymn today was “Forward Through the Ages,” which I chose mostly because I was thinking about Memorial Day and those who have died to ensure our lives and freedom. But the hymn really speaks to God’s promise to God’s people, that we have a long history of faithful people before us who have taught us to count on God to continue to be with us, and to move in new and unexpected ways. “Bound by God’s far purpose in one living whole, move we on together to the shining goal. Forward through the Ages, in unbroken line, move the faithful spirits at the call divine.”

New opportunities and challenges are before us. We have two congregational listening/dreaming/visioning sessions coming up in the next week, and we ask you to come and take part in them. Like the disciples, like John Wesley, like so many of those whose faith has shaped our own, the church is gathering together to take counsel, to see if we have a common sense of what the future might hold for us and how God might be calling us to respond. Please be in prayer for these meetings, and be in prayer ahead of them, that together we might sense God moving, and be open to God moving in unexpected ways, and that we might do this without fear, but with a sense that God has done great and unexpected things before, and will do them again.

Our faith and our future now stand on the shoulders of the past. It is not a dead past, but a living history that speaks to us of God’s abiding faithfulness, of a love that never ends.  This history names us as heirs to the disciples, now too many to count, who stood firm on who they knew God to be, and left room in their work and their prayers for God to do what new things. As Christians, we have the great commission, to spread the gospel to all the world. As United Methodists, we have this mission: to make disciples of Christ for the transformation of the world. As members here at Ann Street United Methodist Church, we have a firm foundation of faith that lets us ask the question: what is God calling us to do here, and how? And thanks be to God, for giving us this foundation and leading us where we should go.

Coming attractions

I needed somewhere to keep sermons!