Memorial Day – Seeing God at the Heart of Things

Preached on Memorial Day Sunday, May 27, 2018

Scripture readings: Psalm 46:1-11

Walking near Crab Creek, north of Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
April 2018

In the Psalm we read this morning, no clue remains as to who wrote the psalm, or when it was written, except that it was written after one of the many times that war came to the doorstep of Jerusalem and almost destroyed it. It was written by someone who had stood upon the wall of the city, because everyone in the city had become a soldier, and looked out at the thing that might destroy him, and everything in life that was familiar to him, and everyone he loved.

It was ugly. There was a heavy terrible smell in the air of fire, and old blood and gore, and fresh blood and gore, and death. The air was full of sound: hoarse shouting, orders barked, battle signals, cries of the wounded, the groaning and cracking of war machines (catapults and battering rams) the whizzing of arrows and the rattle they make around you when they don’t hit something soft.

There was a lot to watch, as well, if you wanted to show your face long enough to take it all in: the changing of troops, new trenches (within bow-shot now of the city) for the enemy archers, signs of tunnels dug to undermine your walls.

How many are out there? What are we up against?

There are too many for us. The enemy’s bigger than we are. It was a human hurricane, an ocean of armies, raging outside.

The defenders called their home Mount Zion, but they didn’t feel as if they lived on a mountain now. Zion had never really been a mountain. Now, the mountain felt more like a sand bank in a rising tide.

Then, we aren’t told how it happened, but the crisis passed. The enemy was gone. There were enemy dead to be buried or burned, and their own dead to be buried. There were the shattered weapons and the wreckage of war to be salvaged or disposed of.

There was exhaustion, and grief; and relief, and a wild crazy thrill of hope that swept through them as they watched broken spears and useless chariots consumed in bonfires. They had met the impossible, the terrible, and they had come through it.

How had they done this? The writer says that they had a secret weapon, a hidden defense within their walls. He says, “there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.” They had something on the inside that kept them going when things went wrong on the outside.

An ancient city and its nation, however high its walls, couldn’t protect itself or stick it out in a siege without a permanent, reliable supply of water. This was a problem for Jerusalem, because it had only one source: the tiny trickle called Siloam.

The spring Siloam was tunneled under the city to be safe from invaders. When a siege was long, and the cisterns were empty, everyone drank from the same small stream. It wasn’t a river at all. It never had been. It was just barely enough. But it was enough.

The city, and the nation it stood for, could rely on the stream of Siloam to refresh them when everything else depressed them. Siloam symbolized all the gifts and traditions that enabled them to hang on.

First, there are two things that go together. Siloam stood for what was good in Jerusalem. Siloam stood for what they had to be proud of. Siloam stood for everything that what we call patriotism focuses on.

The odd thing here is that what the psalm held onto as the great goodness of his people and his home had very little to do with the common ideas of greatness. Siloam represented what was small. The spring of Siloam was small, not a river at all, but it was what they had. Jerusalem, the great city, wasn’t more than a town, and Mount Zion was only a hill.

The good things in Jerusalem were the little things. The greatness and goodness of Jerusalem weren’t in its high walls, or in the palace that Solomon built, or the golden shields of the royal guards.

Long ago, Moses had told Israel what its greatness would be. He said, “What other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you.” (Deuteronomy 4:8)

The greatness of those laws didn’t consist of being an impressive system of do’s and don’ts. The greatness of those laws were fairness, compassion, honesty, generosity, and freedom, and protection for the vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, and the alien. (Exodus 22:21-23)

It was a greatness that they seldom appreciated. It was a greatness that they often broke. It was a greatness of the heart that came from God. And that was the secret of where true greatness lies: depending on God and imitating the heart of God who loves whatever is little and calls the little things his home.

When the nation finally lost that, the spring that refreshed them dried up: not literally or actually, but it dried up so that what they fought for was a fiction. The truly memorable sacrifices aren’t made for glory, and power, but to protect a way of life that is found in what this world sees as the little things: a sweet little stream of decency and compassion.

The writer of the Psalm had a love for little Jerusalem, and its ways, because they were God’s ways that loved the little things. It was a love of home, more than a love of gain and glory. This is what made God’s people strong. This is what made the words of the Psalm so beautiful. It’s the same thing that makes a family great. It’s the same thing that makes a church great. It’s love.

The second thing the stream stood for was unity. There was only one place to go for a drink, whether you were rich or poor, young or old. You knew that you were all the same. You were all in the same boat. You knew that you depended on the same things, and you worked for the same things.

I think that Memorial Day means most to people who simply love. They love the people who have loved home and the little things that are beautiful and that are made to be shared by people who will work hard and take care of others.

Memorial Day is about home. Memorial day lives in people who have not let themselves be divided into groups of “us and them”. It’s for those who have decided that we are all in this together.

But the most important meaning of the river whose stream make us glad is not a thing at all, but God Himself.

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall.” (Psalm 46:4-5)

The poet on the wall thought, at times, of what it meant to fight for his little Jerusalem, that huddle of houses, the women who gossiped in line as they filled their jars from little Siloam, the families who were so great because of the way of life they had tried to follow. This thought strengthened him, as he drew his bow, or dodged the incoming arrows. If he thought about it, he realized that his life actually depended on the fact that someone was fighting for him.

This was the secret for hanging on. The good things that he loved: his land, his city, his people, all that was good was there because God was there.

Of course, God is everywhere, but these people tried to love goodness more than greatness. In some strange way, God is great because he doesn’t care about greatness: God cares about goodness in the little things and he stays faithful to that and makes his home there.

The universe seems to honor power or energy or creativity. But the unseen world values love. The universe will come to an end, but the unseen world will go on forever, because it is built on love.

The people on the wall of the city trusted this. They had the will to fight the impossible battle because they depended on this. There is a strength and morale that is boosted by knowing that you stand for something, and by having confidence in it.

But it’s even more important to know where this goodness comes from and to see our nation, our town, our church from God’s point of view. God’s point of view is not from the outside looking in. God is inside the things that are most worthy of love. God is inside whatever is most worthy to worry about, even though God tells us not to worry. God lives with those things and he is at work. We have to see this: “God is in the midst of it.”

When we look at nations, governments, cities, towns, churches, it might not be easy to see exactly what God is doing, but we have to see God at work, and we have to make a commitment to work where ever our Lord is at work.

In Jesus, God came into the midst of things, of home, and town, and church or synagogue, and nation, and everyone had to decide whether they would let him be there, in the midst of everything with his heart on display, standing for the little things and the little ones. Displaying his passion for the little things, he stood with them, and with the scorned and the rejected.

The little things, the little ones, the childlike, the vulnerable, the scorned, and the rejected stood with him. Those who spoke most about power and being smart rejected him and crucified him: and so, in Christ, God died for the sin of the world.

In our wars, in our nation, in our towns, in our families, in our church we stand in the midst of things with Jesus: or either with Jesus or against him. We have a nation which, at its best, has stood for the little things and stood up against those who stood for power, and gain, and glory. We’ve stood for the humble, and the little, and the free. We’ve stood for those who needed grace, as people who know that we need grace.

Part of the Lord’s grace to our nation is that even those who don’t know him by name have still stood with him for the little things. And, so, we have fought and lived, as one, for these little, humble things that make families, and homes, and nations good and worth fighting for, just as Jesus has fought and died for us.

Without knowing the Jesus who was to come, the writer of our Psalm and the people of Israel needed to see the presence of God at work in the heart of their nation.

We need to see where the Lord is at work in the world as it is, and not in the world as we want it to be. We need to see where he wants us to work with him in the little things and make our home with him there.

Things Invisible - Don't Go to Hell

Preached on Sunday, April 29, 2018

Scripture readings: Isaiah 57:14-21; Revelation 20:11-15; Matthew 25:31-46

Walking near the Columbia River, Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
March 2018

What is God like?

Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) So, what is God like?

Sometimes we read that God is like a hand.”

David said this to God, “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” (Psalm 63:8)

Hebrews says this about God, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)

What does it mean that God is like a hand?

Sometimes we read that God is like fire.

When the prophet Isaiah received his calling to become a prophet, he had a vision of God enthroned in glory surrounded by flaming angelic creatures called Seraphim.

The name seraph means burning one. They are all fire, and wings, and eyes.

Isaiah was in agony with the fear of his own sinfulness, so God sent a burning seraph to do something important with fire. “One of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth, and said, ‘See, thIs has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. “(Isaiah 6:6-7)

After the resurrection of Jesus and his departure to heaven, the disciples were waiting for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit, and this is how it happened: “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit….” (Acts 2:2-4)

So, the Holy Spirit of God and Jesus is like fire. The Holy Spirit enables us to follow, and serve, and be the witnesses of Jesus. The Holy Spirit enables us, as the followers of Jesus, to demonstrate the love shown by Jesus on the cross to take our sins away. So, this is like fire. Those who follow Jesus are filled with something like fire.

In Hebrews, again, the author wants us to be hopeful and excited in our faith, and so he says: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28) Security in the love of God and his kingdom is like fire.

So, what do we think that God is like, when we are told that God is like fire?

What do we think that God is like when Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) What do we think when the apostle John writes that: “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

We can see the connection between Jesus and love. Then we hear Jesus say: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41)

If God is like Jesus, what is God like? If God is like fire, and if God is like Jesus, and if punishment is like fire, then what is God like, and what is Jesus like?

I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. I believe that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Bible always says exactly what God wants it to say, exactly the way God wants it said. And the same Holy Spirit inspires the hearts and minds of those who read the Bible to receive exactly what God wants to tell them, so long as they are ready to hear whatever God wants to tell them, exactly the way God wants to tell them.

I don’t believe there are any contradictions in the Bible. I do believe that it is perfectly possible to understand the Bible and to make sense of it. I don’t believe that anything about the history of the words of the Bible and how it may have been written and passed down to us take anything away from its divine authority.

Jesus, the Living Word, is truly human and truly God, and so he is able to give us everything we need as human children of God. In the same way, the Written Word of God, in the Bible, is truly human and truly divine, and, (because of this) it is able to give us exactly what we need.

There have been many people who have spoken and written about the geography of Hell, and the temperature of Hell. There seem to be many Christians who are perfectly happy to believe that there is a Hell and that some people are going there. There are Christians who have a very clear idea of exactly who is going to Hell, and they can hardly wait for that to happen.

I want to say something about the mentality of Hell and, at the same time, I also want to tell you: “Don’t go there!”

It’s clear that Hell has something to do with punishment. But I don’t know if we even understand punishment that well.

I don’t. But perhaps you understand it on the basis of your experience as a parent, or as a spouse, in family and marriage.

In my experience as a kid, I think kids talk with each other and make plenty of comparisons about how they are being raised. The 1950’s were the years of the final flowering of the spanking. My friends and I were amazed when one of us shared that when he did something wrong, his dad would get out a heavy leather belt, and pull down his kid’s pants and underwear, and whip him on his bare bottom.

We knew that some of our own parents had been raised like that. We were genuinely glad that this was a thing of the past.

Let me tell you about the punishment my dad gave me. My dad, when I did something that I knew I shouldn’t do, would get mad. But my dad wouldn’t scream, or yell, or raise his voice. He didn’t use bad words. My dad spanked me. He spanked me so that it stung, and I would cry.

But by the time I was about eight years old, I realized that although his spanking stung a little, it didn’t really hurt at all. I suddenly realized this right in the middle of getting a spanking.

I realized that it didn’t hurt. This almost made me laugh, right in the middle of that spanking. I tried not to laugh, but I think I snorted and gave myself away. That scared me for a second, because I wondered, in that second, if it would make him madder.

I remember, at that very moment, how my dad immediately stopped the spanking. He never spanked me again. After that, when I did something that I knew I shouldn’t do, my dad wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t raise his voice. He wouldn’t use bad words. My dad would simply look me in the eyes with anger and with a terrible, terrible disappointment.

His eyes, that were normally brown, would turn green for a minute. And I couldn’t stand that.

I mean, I wished that he would spank me. In those days I would have rather been spanked so that it hurt, at least a little. I would rather have had a spanking, than see that look in those eyes. I think my behavior improved a lot when the only punishment I got was that look in those eyes like an angry, sad, green fire.

With human beings, I don’t think that plain and simple punishment does any good. OK, punishment may stop bad behavior. But punishment will also open up a whole new world of trying to get away with things without getting caught.

With my dad, that look in those eyes left me helpless and I had no motivation to try to get away with things without getting caught. There were more things in that green fire than anger, there was disappointment, there was expectation, and there was love.

Punishment alone, plain and simple, never touches the heart, and never makes you better. Good parents know that punishment, plain and simple, is never their job.

Their job is to give their children everything in their heart. Their job is to bring children to life, and give their children more and more life, and give their children the capacity to receive more life from God, and from the love and faithfulness of others.

The parents’ job is to teach their children to use the lessons of the love they’ve received to become givers of life and love to others, in their own right. Parents want their children to be givers of life, especially to those who need it most: to give that life and love most of all to those who need spanking, because they may have children of their own.

The Lord says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” But this is not about punishment, plain and simple. God is not about punishment and reward.

God is about creating life. God is about giving to his created children the capacity to thrive in a life that is learned from God and gifted by God. God is about creating and raising children of his own.

In the Bible, fire has strong associations with the holiness of God. Fire often appears when holiness is broken and when punishment becomes the order of the day.

We think of holiness as a standard of perfection, and we think of perfection as never making mistakes, and never breaking rules or laws. Holiness is actually an ability to be devoted to a purpose, to have a goal in view and never letting go of it. Holiness means the capacity to focus on your goal and not deviate from it, ever.

God’s goal is not law keeping. God’s goal is life and love. God’s goal is thriving, and joy, and appreciation, and thankfulness, and praise. God’s goal is to say to every one of us, as creatures who have spread the beauty of goodness: “Well done good and faithful servant.”

Holiness is only one characteristic of God that we call an “attribute”. What we might call God’s moral attributes include holiness, justice, and love, and a number of other very fine qualities.

If we say that punishment is part of God’s attribute of holiness, we are right. But God is never just one thing at a time. God’s holiness never exists in the absence of God’s justice and love.

Imagine that you have, in spades, the attribute of intelligence. You would never want that attribute of intelligence to function without the attribute of wisdom, or else you would end up being too smart for your own good.

It’s no good to go around being less than you are. You want to be ready to be everything that you are all the time.

And if you have the attribute of being right all the time, or at least being right more often that other people, do you realize how much harm you can do, and how hard you will make life for others and for yourself. Never let your attribute of being right elbow your attribute of love out of the way. Some people do that. But, you never want to be less than all that you are.

Back to parenthood, and marriage too: you never want to reduce yourself in what you have to give. You never give enough unless you are ready to give everything.

So, when your child goes wrong, becoming The Avenger won’t do any lasting good unless your child can see your hopes, and dreams, and love in your eyes. Even if your husband or wife messes up, never get mad unless your partner can see your hopes, and dreams, and love in your eyes and in your voice.

Justice is an attribute that goes beyond rewarding and punishing. Justice creates a system where goodness is enjoyed, and flourishes, and where badness fails, and breaks the heart of even the guilty.

And love,” Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8) And God is love.

And God is a consuming fire. And Hell is an eternal fire. In the Bible, fire is, first and foremost, an image and expression of God. Fire is the expression of who God is and what God is like.

I always loved fire. When I was a kid I loved to build fires. It became my family job. We had a fireplace, and I built the fires. When we camped, I built the fire. When we barbequed, I built the fire. When there was trash to burn I loved to build the fire.

I grew up with incinerators in the back yard and burn piles on the farms. Fires were never about punishment. Except that it feels like you’re being punished, when you’re the one who has to build and manage that fire in the summertime, in the Sacramento Valley, when the temperature is 100 degrees. Fire is light, and warmth, and food, and heating water for washing. It’s for cleaning up the yard or the field. If fire were punishment, it would only be the saddest use of a beautiful thing.

Even Jesus says, in his parable of the sheep and the goats, that the fire of Hell wasn’t made for us. It was made for the Devil and his angels; not for human beings. (Matthew 25:41) It was made for cleaning up the creation of God.

God hates us trying to turn him into something less than everything he is. That’s why the Ten Commandments forbid us from making any image of God. No image can show all that God is. So, when the first and foremost expression of who God is, and what God is like, makes God look like Hell, we can trust that this can never be true.

Something else is true. All of the attributes of God are always present. Everything that is true of God is always at work, all the time. Where we see the fire of punishment in the Bible, there is much more at work than punishment. There is holiness that holds to the devotion of its purpose to make us the thriving children of God. There is justice, that creates a system where what is good grows stronger, and more and more joyful and thankful. There is love, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never, never ends.

There was a time, many years ago, when I was betrayed. People who knew more than I did told me later that they should have warned me. It damaged me for a long time. But, soon after that betrayal closed in on me, I preached a sermon about absolute forgiveness. At the end of that service, I was told by one of the ambushers, that my sermon about absolute forgiveness was the most negative messages they had ever heard. That same morning, I went to shake the hand of another one of them and, as I reached out my hand, their face got dark and grim and they pulled their hands behind them and backed away from me. I was not being what they wanted me to be at the time.

Forgiveness and grace can be an enormous punishment and pain for those who refuse it. Love can become darkness and fire for those who want to make themselves less, in their attributes, than God created them to be, when they don’t want to combine the fires of holiness, justice, and love.

In the story of the sheep and the goats, neither the sheep nor the goats were aware of doing anything for Jesus. They had only seen the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger (which means alien, like the Samaritan who was an outsider and an enemy of God’s people), the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. These were among the types of people that the God who looks like Jesus tells us to care for. He cares.

The sheep were people who went where Jesus would go in order to love those whom Jesus would love with all the attributes of God. The sheep were the people who shared the attributes of Jesus. They would refuse to be anything less. In a real sense, they had no idea what they were doing, but they did it anyway.

The goats never went near the people with whom Jesus identified. They were content and they led perfectly happy lives being less than what God created them to be. They were never anywhere near where Jesus would be, and so they never really did anything for Jesus.

The sheep must have often found themselves in places where they were very uncomfortable, and yet they were on the road to heaven. The goats led their comfortable lives and never even started up that road. The life of the goats turned out to be all about themselves. Their souls shrank as their holiness, justice and love shrank. In the end, they were held forever in the arms of what they had refused to be. The unwanted fire of love will never end.

If a child is pouting or having a tantrum, the thing they hate most is to see you moving in toward them to love them, smile into their faces, and tickle them. This is the way to make them really howl. Love can be Hell. If you love someone who wants to be less than they were created to be, or love someone who is happy to be less than they were created to be, and if you try to love them into being something more: know that you will make them miserable.

But don’t stop. You want to be careful about this. Never let anything or anyone make you consent to be less than you were created to be. Never dream of being any less than Jesus. To choose to be les is the mentality of hell. Don’t go there!

In the beginning of the Book of Revelation, when John first sees Jesus, among the many details he notices is something about those eyes. The eyes of Jesus look like fire. For those who know Jesus, a different form of fire tells us who God is. This world, and the best institutions and laws, and all the people in it, punished Jesus for being all that he is. The punishing fire took the form of a cross, and nails, and a crown of thorns, and the wounds of a whip, and a spear in his heart.

There was much more hanging on the hell of that cross than punishment. The fire of God burned there. The fire of holiness, and justice, and love burned there and took the punishment and the curse of our sins. As our hearts give way to that flame, we die and rise with Jesus. The light in Jesus’ eyes becomes his power and fire in us to break our hearts for change and a new life. Let’s live in that fire forever.

Memorial Weekend - Know Your Story and Remember It

Preached on Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, May 28, 2017

Scripture reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Once there was a group of tourists visiting the historical sites from the Revolutionary War. One day their guide took them to an old church where George Washington had worshiped.

Memorial Day Celebration
Live Oak CA
2014

Their guide pointed out the very pew that had belonged to Washington, and he went on to describe the church services of those days: how, sometimes, they lasted two hours or more. Hearing this inspired one member of the tour group to comment, “So, George Washington slept here too!”

Our scripture reading this morning describes part of an annual celebration in which the people of Israel gave recognition to God’s blessings upon their land. They gave thanks for what God had given them.

It was a little like Thanksgiving, a little bit like Independence Day, but it was also a little bit like Memorial Day, too. It taught them to remember how they had got where they were, and why they had what they had.

They were taught to remember that they were part of a much bigger story than themselves. They were taught to celebrate what God had done through their friends, and parents, and grandparents, and so on, for many, many generations.

The people celebrating in the old Tabernacle Tent, and in the Temple had worked, and maybe even slaved and fought, to get, or to keep, what they had. But many, many others (more than anyone could count) had done the same, each in their generation.

Our scripture reading is about a Thanksgiving that memorialized this. The most important thing memorialized was the plan, and the work, and the power, and the faithfulness of God. The Lord had spoken to at least some of the members of all those past generations. God encouraged them. God made great promises to them, and kept those promises.

There was a time when their ancestors were only wandering Arameans. (That means belonging to a generic sort of people in the area of what is now Syria and Iraq. It, sort of, means being nothing special.)

Anyway, when they were nothing special nomads in the desert, or slaves in Egypt, it didn’t always look like God was there at work. In spite of that, the Lord did have a plan, and the plan was going forward, even when they couldn’t see it. Those worshippers who brought their offerings to the altar came there to remember, and to tell the story of how God made, and kept, his promises to their nation, and their tribes, and their families.

They came there to confess, for the record, that they were witnesses to God’s plan. They were witnesses to the story of God’s faithfulness, and they confessed that they were part of that plan themselves.

A memorial is a reminder.

Memorial Day started in the South, as a way of remembering and honoring those who had died for the confederate side of the Civil War. There, it was surely a sad day: a day for remembering those who sacrificed themselves for lost causes. There’s more to remember than we think.

I’ve served in some places where it’s common for most people to go to the local cemetery, on Memorial Day, to decorate the graves of all their family members who are buried there. This happens in old, small towns. I’ve seen parents leading their kids among the gravestones, telling them how they were related to each person buried there, and telling them stories about how those people came to that place, and where they had built their first homestead shack, and what had happened to them afterwards. There’s more to remember than we think.

God’s people are called to look forward in faith and hope. Today’s scripture reading instructs God’s people to remember. There, it was the people of Israel remembering their life with God, or God’s role in the story of their life.

In their case, they weren’t only God’s people, as we are. They were also God’s nation with a history, and they were to remember that God wanted them to be a certain kind of nation. God’s people, in any nation, are taught to remember that God wants them to be a certain kind of nation.

Israel was also a family with a tradition, and they were to remember that God wanted to lead them and nurture them, as a family, so that they could be the kind of family God wants all families to be. God wants us to remember this, too.

God wants us to be good rememberers, and to make a habit of being able to understand and retell how all the things which God has done have come down to us. God wants us to search the history of our nation, and to search our family stories, to find out where the Lord has been at work. God wants us to remember people whose lives and sacrifices have benefitted us; or taught and influenced us.

Sometimes it seems that we hardly know anything about what God has given us through others.

The sense of things in our society not working, or falling apart, has happened because too many people have forgotten how to look around them, and at themselves, and think seriously about what the Lord has given them. We have forgotten what the Lord wants to do through us in our families, and our nation. We have forgotten that this is all a gift.

It’s hard for us to remember that our nation, our people, our family, and our friends are a gift if we don’t also realize that God himself is a gift. The One who created everything to be a gift has made a gift of himself to us. 

As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we have many Memorial Days to keep clearly in our mind what God has done for us, himself, so that we can learn to love the gifts that people remember on Memorial Day.

All the celebrations of the church are memorial days. Christmas is a memorial to the Lord coming down from heaven and becoming one of us, to be a humble Savior and a Servant King. Palm Sunday is a memorial of the Lord coming to his own people, in which we remember that some of his welcomers turned against him. Good Friday is the memorial of the Lord offering himself as a sacrifice to take away our sins, and the sins of the whole world. Easter is the memorial of the victory over sin and death, that the Lord shares with us, so that evil and death can have no lasting power over us. Pentecost is the memorial of the Lord sharing with us his Holy Spirit, so that we can be supernatural people with supernatural resources.

The remembering means that what God wants from us is more than memory verses. God wants us to remember how great he is (as great as we need him to be), to know what he has done for us, and for everyone, and to repeat it so that others can learn.

Since this is Memorial Weekend I want us to be like the people in small, old towns, or in families with long memories, who remember how God has shaped us through all those who have given of themselves, whether in the life of our families, or family members serving our nation in war.

Let me tell you a little bit about my Grandpa Evans. He was very good with his hands. He could work on heavy machinery. He had experience as an industrial photographer, and he could work on cameras. During the depression, he got a job adjusting navigational instruments for a shipping company in New York Harbor, and he accomplished something that none of his predecessors had done before. He got completely caught up on all of the company’s boats and ships at the same time. When this happened, it being the Depression, the company realized that it wouldn’t need his services, for a while, and so they laid him off. He had to find another job, and he never went back to them.

He was forty-one when we entered World War II and he enlisted in the Navy. He was a reconnaissance photographer in the belly of a navy bomber in a battle over the Aleutians and his plane got shot down.

Since the Navy hadn’t thought that it was important to train him in the use a parachute, he was smart enough to know about pulling the cord, but not how to hit the ground. He landed on an island in the middle of a battle and broke both his legs and had a very harrowing escape.

I think my Grandpa Evans represents a family tradition of conscientiousness, neglect, hardship, bad luck, good luck, and survival.

The Israelites would repeat the story, “My Father was a wandering Aramean, and we were slaves in Egypt.” It became a story of their remote past, and yet the tradition, and their need for that tradition, went on and on.

Their heritage often repeated itself. It told them what God was able to do for them when they felt like they were wandering aimlessly and didn’t know where they would end up. That’s what heritage is for. That’s what remembering and what memorial days are for.

In the seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses warned Israel never to fool themselves about their story and how they were able to succeed. “Don’t think it was because you were larger, or stronger, or better than other nations, because you weren’t. You succeeded because God loved you and helped you when you needed him.”

The Lord wants us to remember the things that make us humble and human as a nation, and as a family.

As a kind of memorial, I want to read part of a copy of a letter that my family has kept from a long departed relative, writing to my great-great grandfather from the front at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1862, during the Civil War. “My beloved brother, although I have written to you last, I cannot wait for another from you, as we were paid off a few days ago. I think you may need the money, and even if you do not it is not safe for me to keep it for we expect to have a big fight and when we move from here there is no telling how soon I shall have the opportunity of sending a letter to you again. I think we shall be paid off again in a short time, say two weeks – for another two-month’s pay is due to us tomorrow night. I send this draught of eighteen dollars which is the biggest lot I have sent before. I think I shall have my debts all paid by the time I get out of this, I guess.”

This brother of my great-great grandfather died not long after sending his pay. He wasn’t even born in this country. They were both born and raised in a poor working-class family in England and they came to America to improve their lives. This soldier enlisted to pay his debts. He was surely a hero.

One of my heroes, from that time, is Abraham Lincoln, who was really placed by God in the right place at the right time. Lincoln thought and prayed about forgiveness and compassion, and the horrible idea of using war as a cure, even for such an evil as slavery. I realize that my relative, fighting the rebels down in Virginia, probably gave those things hardly a thought. He was just trying to get along as best he could.

And yet, both Lincoln and my old relative had a lot in common. They were both familiar with poverty. They were both in serious trouble. And they both needed the Lord’s help.

If we were better at remembering who we really are, and how we got here (especially the stories of those who have gone before us and given us our heritage) we would realize that we have the same thing in common with them.

They have something to say to us. They say, “You’re just like us. You need help.” Then, the Lord tells us, “I will help you, that’s what my strength is for.”

“Remember the original Wandering Aramean,” says the Lord. “Look at Abraham. I gave him a goal, a promised land. He didn’t know where it was or how to get there, and I got him there. You don’t know where to find your promised land, but I can lead you to the real thing. Look at the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. For generations, they were slaves. They forgot how to think for themselves. They forgot how to live without fear and suspicion. But I taught them how to have courage. I taught them how to be free people. I taught them how to live by faith. I can make their story your story. I can teach you to maintain courage and faith. I can teach you how to be free.” Thus says the Lord.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

William Barclay once wrote about some missionaries who travelled through the villages of India with a slide show of the gospel story. With a projector hooked up to a generator, they showed the pictures of the life of Jesus on the white-washed wall of some house on a village square, with all the people sitting on the ground. One night, they reached the scene of Jesus dying on the cross. A man in the crowd jumped up and shouted, “Jesus, come down from the cross. I should be there, not you.”

That man had received a new memory. He had been given a new story, and a new heritage. The story of Jesus on the cross became part of him and his own story. That new memory would change his life.

The Lord is a Savior: a helping, rescuing, life-changing God. Knowing this God (whom we meet in Jesus) and trusting him in your life, and trusting his ability to work in your family, and nation, and world (whatever the needs may be): that is what is really glorious.

It’s a different kind of glory than we would have chosen for ourselves, or our family, or our nation. It’s the glory of needing help and finding it. It is by the Lord taking over our stories, in our need, that we have something worth remembering.

A Holy Home

Preached on Mothers' Day, Sunday May 8, 2016 with Holy Communion

Scripture readings: Proverbs 31:10-31; John 19:25-27

A mother and her young son walked into an ice cream parlor. The boys made his order, then the clerk turned to the mother, “And you, ma’am, what would you like today?” And she said, “Nothing today, thank you, I’m on a diet.”

The son groaned when he heard this. “Aw mom, you’re not going to help me eat mine again, are you?” (Reader’s Dig., July ’94, p. 120)

The last chapter of Proverbs asks the question, “A wife of noble character who can find?” It goes on to describe a woman who can do the work of ten men, and who makes her family rich, and gets her husband on the city council that met at the city gate.

In our translation she has what is called a noble character. The King James translation says she has virtue, which means she has a powerful goodness. It means courage.

This word is a warrior word. The Lord used the word to describe Gideon, one of the judges of Israel, when the Lord first gave Gideon his calling. “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor.” (Judges 6:12) There the translation is “valor”. That’s this wife and mother.

So here is an example of an amazing woman. The most amazing thing about her is that no one seems to be afraid of her, unless her husband was afraid to admit it.

The lines here begin to describe a wife, but they end up describing a mother, and her husband, and her children, and the whole atmosphere of their home. Proverbs is about wisdom, and this is a home where wisdom lives.

I wonder: what would it be like to grow up in a home like this? What would children learn in this home?

Children in the home where wisdom lives will learn that when God’s love lives in a person’s heart, that love is whole-hearted. That kind of love isn’t on duty sometimes, and off duty other times. Verse twelve says this: “She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.”

It tells us that a wife, or a husband, should want to be helpful, and never hurtful. This is important because, sometimes, we like to be a little bit hurtful. Maybe we want to go beyond teasing to a lower level. A husband or wife might be good in every way except that they reserve to themselves the right to an occasional meanness.

Sarcasm is a good example of this. Evans Family men are proud of their talent for sarcasm, but my cousin Don, who is a better Christian that I am, has really devoted himself to detoxifying himself of the Evans gift of sarcasm. He knows it’s dangerous, and I am trying, with difficulty, to learn from his example.

Children learn about whole-hearted love from their parents, and how their parents relate to others. If the children are to grow up to be wives and husbands who really care about their spouses and their children, who are really capable of giving whole-hearted respect to others, giving a love that is on duty all the time, they need to see this in their mothers and fathers.

Proverbs has a lot to say about the wisdom of loving work. That is; it is a wise thing to learn to love work. Here is a woman who does that.

In my first church, there were a few families who were always doing something: not just doing their own things but doing those things together as well. In one of these families there was a boy named Glen. Glen liked school. He got good grades and went out for sports. He was a good athlete even though he had asthma, and he went on to be a high school coach in the Midwest. He was in band. He was a good scout, and got his God and Country Award. He came to worship, and Sunday school, and he was in two youth groups: the one I led, and another one too.

Once I overheard one of his friends talking to Glen, asking him why his parents made him do all those things. Glen was surprised, and he said, “I like doing those things!” Glen had learned from his parents to love work. He had learned from his parents’ example, and his parents were always there supporting him.

Maybe I should add that I tried to make my youth group fun. We played together as well and learned together. For Glen, a lot of his work was play for him.

I think that the work I like best is the work I think is fun, and I can make some of my work into play. I also have trouble playing unless I work hard at it.

What’s great about the mother in Proverbs is not that she was always working. She wasn’t always working, because she also had time to sit and think about the future and laugh about it. (Proverbs 31:25) She had time to notice when other people were hurting and when they were in need, and she took time to help them. (Proverbs 31:20)

She wasn’t always working because she had time to look around her and to see opportunities. The children in her family would grow up learning to see what they could do, instead of brooding over what they couldn’t do, and why they couldn’t do it.

In her care for others, remember how the saying goes. “She opens her arms to the poor and she extends her hands to the needy.” (31:20)

There is something physical about true caring. You can use your hand to put something in another person’s hand. But this woman opened her arms. She probably held out her hand to hold someone by the hand. You open your arms to make others welcome, even embarrassingly welcome. Children learn to be comfortable making other people welcome from their parents.

My parents weren’t really huggers and so opening my arms doesn’t come easy to me. My mom’s mother (my Baci, babcia, my Polish grandma) was a great hugger (at least for her grandchildren). She normally embarrassed me by doing this. But I was always just as thankful for her hugs as I was embarrassed by them.

The mother in Proverbs loved giving just as much as she loved working, and building, or earning. She knew how to make giving into loving.

The Scottish author, George MacDonald, wrote about his parents’ thriftiness, but he was especially proud of the way his mother was just as concerned to teach her children how to give and how to save. The children of the mother in Proverbs would learn to love to give. They would love to bring others in, and make them welcome. They would love to open their arms to others.

There was a mother who gave her daughter two dollars on Sunday morning, one for the offering, and the other for ice cream after church. While the girl was walking to Sunday school, a big gust of wind caught hold of one of the dollars and blew it away. She tried to chase it down, but she couldn’t catch it, and so she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, there goes the church’s dollar.” She wasn’t opening her arms.

In Proverbs it says, “When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.” ( 31:21) None of the commentaries understand this. At least they think that the Hebrew word “scarlet” is there because a copyist misspelled a similar word that means “double”: that her family’s clothes were double thickness in the winter.

I don’t care what the commentaries say here. I think those people had enough sense to know that scarlet would keep people from going missing in the snow (what little they had). And it wasn’t that long ago when people thought that red flannel would keep you warm in the winter and white flannel would be cool in the summer. So winter underwear was red; maybe not in the Bible times, but in our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ time.

The children in the home of the Proverbs mother would grow up knowing the importance of looking out for the well-being of others. In a loving home, everyone cares about the safety and the whereabouts of each other. They grow up knowing that they are their brother’s, and their sister’s, and their neighbor’s keepers.

Then it says, “Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.” (31:23) There would be an open area inside the city gates, sometimes with benches built into the walls, where the most respected citizens acted as the town council and made plans for the community.

If there was a disagreement in the town, or a case, or a crime, that needed to have a trial, people would go to the gate, and get the advice, or the decision, or go to court and judgement under the direction of the elders at the gate. The good wife in Proverbs made her husband look so good that he got asked to join that council.

Their children would grow up in a home where they were taught to make others look good. We read that the husband was extravagant in his praise of his wife, and that was his loving way of making her look good, even to herself, if she ever doubted it.

We see that their children learned the lesson. They were praise givers too. “Her children arise and call her blessed.” (31:28)

In verse twenty-six we are told that “faithful instruction is on her tongue.” The King James translation says, “in her tongue is the law of kindness.” Are our tongues ruled by the law of kindness? Older teachers in the school notice a decline in kindness among many young people. Kindness is learned at home. At the center of every home, God wants someone there who can teach us to be kind and faithful.

Kindness and faithfulness are an essential part of life as God wants life to be, in our home family, in our church family, and even in our national family. Kindness and faithfulness should be our law.

Here was a wife of noble character, a mother of courageous character: and what about the father? Let’s have everyone be noble. Why should anyone be let off the hook? Why should anyone miss out on the good stuff? Otherwise children will grow up thinking that nobility is optional: that nobility is for some people, but not for them.

God wants us all to grow up to be noble: to be able to live with a courageous goodness; to have integrity and goodness that don’t pop like a bubble when things get hot; a goodness that is aggressive, that changes the world around us. This nobility, which God wants us to have, is mostly learned in a family, but the church is called to be God’s family, and so the church is a family where we learn to be noble.

The truth is that we learn this from Jesus who labored to do the impossible for us. Jesus is our savior, but he is also our brother. In a sense Jesus is our mother too, since his cross and his resurrection give birth to the new life that comes from him. The pains of the cross were the pains of Jesus giving birth to us.

The mother in the last chapter of Proverbs, who does the work of ten, is sort of an impossible standard, but she also points us to a holy ambition, she is a mother who makes us want to do noble things.

Jesus gives us a holy ambition to do noble things, like an older brother, or a loving mother or father.

Jesus also gives us his grace, his faithful, powerful love, to help us do it. On the cross, he shows us this nobility, this thinking of others, and it gives us a holy ambition to do likewise. Jesus, on the cross, gives us a radical, unconditional love.

The author David Hansen writes, “…the soul can be awakened and made stronger through the miracle of love, and the spirit can be harnessed and disciplined through the miracle of confrontation.”

The Lord’s Supper is a meal in God’s family where we are confronted by the noble love of God. The love and the discipline of the cross become real; something is offered here to us to make us stronger. Here is something to make us noble: more noble as parents, and more noble as children in the family of God, and in the work of Jesus.