Finger Paint in the Carpet

Pentecost Sunday

May 24, 2015

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24-35; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

            Messy.  I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that a house with two little kids is going to be messy.  Oh sure, things get picked up, the house gets cleaned, but how long until the toys are all over the floor again?  2.2 seconds.  Maybe less.  A house with kids is messy.  And what comes next?  A house with teenagers may be clean, but more often than not, the teenager’s room is messy.  How many people here like messes?  Who would rather be neat and organized?  And yet how many of our houses actually reflect our desire for tidiness and cleanliness? Messes seem to be a fact of life, although hopefully not a permanent state of being. 

A mess seems to be the state of things on the first Pentecost Day.  The disciples were all together in one place, in a house.  And suddenly this sound of a howling wind fills the house, so it gets really loud.  And each of them are filled with the Holy Spirit and they begin to speak in other languages all at the same time! The word that comes to mind to describe this mess of noise is cacophony, a harsh, meaningless mixture of sounds.  It’s bad enough when everyone talks at the same time in the same language!  Then, maybe you might be able to understand the person talking closest to you.  But twelve people speaking twelve different languages all talking at the same time?  It sounds like a recipe for an auditory disaster.  In fact, the noise was so harsh and so messy that a crowd gathered outside the house.  The crowd was surprised and bewildered and amazed, and really, didn’t know what to make of this noisy mess.  Some people searched for meaning in it; others thought it was meaningless, and the only possible explanation could be that the disciples were drunk. 

            Those who searched for meaning in it had the right response, because this cacophony wasn’t meaningless.  This was a mess with a purpose.  Jerusalem, in those days, was what we would call today a global community, with people from all over the world living there, and what’s interesting is that each one of them could pick out their native tongue from among all the languages being spoken in the mess.  They each heard the Gospel in their own language!  When you live in another country you don’t often hear your native language.  It becomes a big deal when you do hear it and you pay more attention than you might otherwise.  These people, who rarely heard their mother tongue in public places, heard the disciples proclaiming the great things that God has done, each in their own language.  In the middle of that mess of noise, the Gospel was shared. 

            This might be like a hearing aid, which is designed to make speech more intelligible and to minimize background noise.  Only in this case, it would be a hearing aid to help you hear your own language, and tune out the other noises.  Sometimes that’s what we have to do in a mess, figure out what the most important thing is, and focus on that first.  Then, from there, we can figure out how to deal with the rest of the mess. 

            Sometimes we find ourselves in messes of our own creation.  It may be as simple as how messy the kitchen looks when you’ve brought all the groceries in or the mess of clothes as you work on laundry.  It may be the mess that results from being creative, like cooking and baking and painting and gardening.  Other times, though, we find ourselves in messes not of our own choosing or our own creating.  We find ourselves in the mess of a disease and doctors and hospital mazes.  Or we inherit a mess and have to clean it up before we can do anything with anything.  Or out of love for someone, we take on their mess as our own, because they need help finding their way out of their mess.  What’s interesting about this cacophonic mess of Pentecost is that it is a mess God created.  While Jesus promises the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel passage we read, he never said just how the Spirit was going to show up.  It could have been quietly and discreetly or with a loud trumpet and procession, something nice and neat and orderly.  But no, the Holy Spirit shows up and creates a mess.  In creating the Church, because Pentecost is known as the Church’s birthday, the Holy Spirit makes a huge, confusing, disconcerting mess!  Sometimes we create the mess, sometimes God creates the mess, and sometimes the mess is a result of sin in the world and things not working how they should.  The good news is that, just like at Pentecost, God can work through the mess.  And that’s a good thing.  Sharing the good news in the middle of that mess is how God often works.  He doesn’t wait until everything’s nice and neat and orderly.  You’d never get anything done then!  It’s like a couple who wants to wait to have children until they have the right house, the right jobs, the right financial situation… those things are all good, but there never is going to be the right time.  In the process of getting your ducks in a row, you’re always going to keep finding more ducks out of place, making a mess out of your row. 

The good news is that God creates order from messes.  He’s done this ever since the beginning, when the earth was a “formless void,” and God brought form and shape and order to the chaos.[1]  Today, Pentecost Sunday, is known as the birthday of the Church because the good news of Jesus Christ was spread to people from other places.  In that loud, harsh, seemingly meaningless cacophony of everyone talking at the same time in different languages, the church was born.  God created the church out of that ragtag group of Jesus’ followers, through the messy chaos of the Holy Spirit coming on Pentecost.  You’d think God might have come up with a cleaner solution, but he didn’t.  He didn’t just work through the mess; he created the mess to make something beautiful come out of it.    

We heard about God creating in our psalm this morning, too, which proclaims God’s wisdom and provision to his creation.  It talks about how all of God’s creatures look to him to give them their food in due season.  It’s all organized, on a schedule, with seasons that cycle one after the other.  You know, God actually likes routine.  We tend to look for God in the extraordinary, in the special events, at the times of greatest joy or greatest sorrow, but God’s there in the everyday, too.  The everyday, boring, routine, mundane parts of life are also where we can find God.  I mentioned a couple weeks ago that the prayer that I read on Mother’s Day about the wide spectrum of motherhood was written by a woman named Amy Young.  Amy Young keeps a blog called “The Messy Middle.”  She describes it as the place “where the pains, joys, boredoms, frustrations, interests, relationships, and God reside. It’s not as easy or clean or simple or safe as life on the perimeter, but there’s no place I’d rather be.”[2]  And she says, “The messy middle exists everywhere! The Messy Middle is not so much about a location, as an attitude. Am I going to take a risk, live life, and when I fail, fail towards God? Do I see God not only in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary too?”  It’s usually the things that are different, that aren’t routine, that catch our attention, but the ordinary, routine stuff is important, too.  It’s why sports coaches have the players do drills, to make sure they know the basic, usual, predictable moves on the field.  You have to make sure you get those down and can do them well.  The ordinary is important, too. 

            One of the most ordinary parts of life is water.  And yet water can be used to clean up all kinds of messes.  We wash just about everything in water to get rid of the mess and make it clean.  Clothes, dishes, even ourselves become clean in something as common as water.  We use water to restore order and get rid of the mess.  In the Church, we do this through baptism.  God washes away the mess of our sin through the waters of baptism.  It’s another way of creating order from a mess.  It’s the gift of new birth, bringing forth something new from something old.  In the Great Thanksgiving for the Easter Season in the Book of Worship we declare that “Once we were no people, but now we are God’s people, declaring his wonderful deeds in Christ, who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.”[3] 

Life is messy, and I’m sure each of you have your own messes that you’re dealing with, whether it was one of your own choosing or your own creating, or not.  Life is messy, including church life, but God knows how to work through it, how to send the Holy Spirit in, and create something beautiful from the mess.  He may make things messier first, like he did with that mess of a noise at Pentecost.  But God is a God who brings order to chaos, who calms the seas, who drives out demons, who doesn’t care if the toys aren’t all picked up, and doesn’t care if we have our ducks in a row first before we come to him or not.  Look at that very first miracle Jesus did at the wedding in Cana.[4]  His mom tells him the wine has run out and he says, “it’s not my problem; my time has not yet come.”  His mom tells the servants, “do whatever he tells you,” and all of a sudden, it somehow became Jesus’ time as he then gives the servants instructions.  Don’t let the mess in your life be meaningless.  It may be harsh, it may be senseless, it may hurt your ears and your other senses, but don’t let it be meaningless.  Give it to God, let him work through it, and it’ll become like broken glass that reflects more light than a solid pane of glass.  And then trust Jesus, when he says how beautiful you have become, because of your mess. 

---

[1] Genesis 1:2

[2] http://www.messymiddle.com/about/

[3] United Methodist Book of Worship, p. 66

[4] John 2:1-11

The Circle Is Wide

6^th Sunday of Easter

May 10, 2015

Mother’s Day

Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

            On a recent episode of “NCIS: Los Angeles” one of the main characters, Detective Deeks signs up for the Big Brother/Big Sister mentoring program.[1]  He’s very excited about all that he has in common with the Little Brother assigned to him… until the end of the episode when there’s a last minute change due to a scheduling conflict and a different Little Brother is assigned to him, one with whom he has very little in common.  Detective Deeks’ supervisor responds that it is similar to actual parenting, “You can have all the expectations you want when you have children, but you can never predict who you’re going to end up with.”  The same can be said for God’s children as well.  You can have all the expectations you want of God’s children, what we’ll look like, how we’ll behave, what our interests will be, but there’s no telling just what each child of God will be like. 

This difference between expectations and reality is part of the conundrum faced by Peter and the early Church in our reading from Acts this morning.  They expected the Church, their fellow believers, to be exclusively Jewish, like them.  But this whole chapter of Acts 10 is about the early Church coming to realize that God loves everyone and doesn’t show partiality to one group over another.  Instead, God treats everyone on the same basis.[2]  The chapter begins with a man named Cornelius, who is a religious man who worships God and gives generously to the poor, but is not a Jew.  God tells Cornelius to send for Peter and so he sends a couple of his servants to go get Peter.   While they’re on their way, Peter is praying and has a vision of being told to kill and eat animals that are ritually unclean in the Jewish tradition, such as wild birds and reptiles.  Peter says, “Certainly not!  I’ve never eaten anything unclean.”[3]  And God says, “Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean.”[4]  This happens three times and at the end of the vision is when Cornelius’ servants arrive and invite Peter to Cornelius’ house.  Peter goes, and when he gets there, he tells Cornelius, “You know very well that a Jew is not allowed by his religion to visit or associate with Gentiles. But God has shown me that I must not consider any person ritually unclean or defiled. And so when you sent for me, I came without any objection. I ask you, then, why did you send for me?”[5]  Cornelius explains that God told him to and in response, Peter says, “I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another. Rather, in every nation, whoever worships him and does what is right is acceptable to him.  This is the message of peace he sent to the Israelites by proclaiming the good news through Jesus Christ: He is Lord of all!”[6] And Peter explains the good news about Jesus and it’s while he was speaking that the Holy Spirit shows up and falls on everyone present, as we read this morning.  What Peter learns here is that Jesus didn’t come just to save the Jewish people, the ethnic and religious group he was part of, he came to save everyone.  The circle is wide of those who belong to God’s family and the early Church had to change its ways to keep up with what God was doing.  Their expectations was that Christianity was a sect of Judaism but they learned that God had come to offer salvation to the whole world, people of every race and tribe.  God’s family is bigger than they realized. 

Then, we have that statement from 1 John about God’s family: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God. Everyone who loves the parent loves the child of the parent.”[7]  I was actually told something similar to this a couple weeks ago by a church member.  She said “We love you, Heather, and I think that’s why folks love your children so much.”  Apparently, so I’ve heard, there are some among us who aren’t kid-people, but I have no idea who you are because everyone has embraced my children.  The gist is that you welcome my children, and their noises, because you welcome me, and for that I am very appreciative and grateful.  I realize that I am not your first female pastor and I am not your youngest pastor, but I am the first one with young children.  So, considering that we’re all one family, I do want to ask you uncles and aunts to please help watch out for my children.  If it’s not something you’d have let your children do, then don’t let mine do it, either.  I’ve noticed that Marylanders seem a little less inclined to interfere with another person’s family.  However, please, if you see one of my children doing something they shouldn’t, or more likely, going somewhere they shouldn’t, please, you have my permission to stop them.  They are your children, too, in the sense that we all belong to one church family.  We are all part of God’s family.  And that, on the small scale, is what the 1 John passage is talking about.  If we love God, then we love all God’s children, too. 

            This is just another way of stating the commandment that Jesus gives in our Gospel reading: “Love each other just as I have loved you.”[8]  And what does that mean?  To love each other, even when people hurt us, rather than love us back.  To obey God, even at the cost of our life.  To produce fruit that will last, which we can only do if we remain in Christ and keep his commandment.  Loving each other is going to look different for each person.  It depends on the need.  I am the oldest of three sisters and my mom once explained that she loves us all equally, but not all the same, because we’re not the same person.  You’ve met my youngest sister, and you can see how different she and I are.  Our middle sister is equally different from both of us.  She’s a violinist and one way our mom shows love to her is by going to her concerts.  But it would be ludicrous for her to go to a concert because she loves me.  It’s like loving a baby by taking care of her by changing her diaper, but you wouldn’t change a diaper on a ten year old.  The needs are different and how we show love to one person isn’t going to be how we show love to another person. 

            Beloved, our community is in need, as we well know.  Over the next couple weeks you will hear more about two ways that the United Methodist Church is addressing those needs.  The mission project at Annual Conference this year is a book drive. There is a need for books for the children in our communities so that they have books to read this summer when they are out of school.  There is also a need for health and hygiene items for our brothers and sisters directly affected by the unrest.  We will collect these items and distribute them at a couple of the United Methodist Churches downtown.  These are physical, tangible ways to show love to our community and I hope you’ll participate in them.  The children’s books I will take to Annual Conference in a couple weeks, which is why there are only two Sundays to collect them.  If you’re interested in taking the health and hygiene items with me to Sandtown-Winchester, please let me know. 

            We love everyone in God’s family, because we love God.  However, we show love to different people in different ways, that’s something my momma taught me, and in honor of Mother’s Day and the wide range of mothers that are out there, I’d like to close with a litany on the spectrum of motherhood, by a lady named Amy Young:[9]

Litany on the Spectrum of Motherhood:

    To those who gave birth this year to their first child—we celebrate with you.

    To those who lost a child this year – we mourn with you.

    To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains – we appreciate you.

    To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears, and disappointment – we walk with you. Forgive us when we say foolish things. We don’t mean to make this harder than it is.

    To those who are foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms – we need you.

    To those who have warm and close relationships with your children – we celebrate with you.

    To those who have disappointment, heart ache, and distance with your children – we sit with you.

    To those who lost their mothers this year – we grieve with you.

    To those who experienced abuse at the hands of your own mother – we mourn with you that your childhood was not as it should have been.

    To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood – we are better for having you in our midst.

    To those who are single and long to be married and mothering your own children – we mourn that life is not turning out the way you long for it to be.

    To those who step-parent – we walk with you on these complex paths.

    To those who envisioned lavishing love on grandchildren – yet that dream is not yet or will not be, we grieve with you.

    To those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year – we grieve and rejoice with you.

    To those who placed children in the guardianship of others – we commend you for your selflessness and remember how you hold that child in your heart.

    And to those who are pregnant with new life, both expected and surprising – we anticipate with you.

    This Mother’s Day, we walk with you. Mothering is not for the faint of heart and we have real warriors in our midst. We remember you and what you have taught us and we give thanks to God for you.  Amen.

---

[1] NCIS:LA, “Field of Fire,” Aired 4/27/15

[2] Acts 10:34

[3] Acts 10:14

[4] Acts 10:15

[5] Acts 10:28-29

[6] Acts 10:34-36

[7] 1 John 5:1

[8] John 15:12

[9] (adapted from

http://www.messymiddle.com/2012/05/10/an-open-letter-to-pastors-a-non-mom-speaks-about-mothers-day/

One Big, Happy Family, Whether We Like It or Not

5^th Sunday of Easter

May 3, 2015

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21

            Among the online articles I read this week was one about community by the Christian author Philip Yancey.  You may recognize that name as the author of the best-selling books “The Jesus I Never Knew” and “What’s So Amazing about Grace?” He is also a former editor for Christianity Today magazine.  He now also keeps a blog and this past Thursday’s entry was titled, “Small is Large.”[1]  It was about his recent visit to a megachurch and how, while there are currently 1,300 congregations in the U.S. which qualify as megachurches and average more than 2000 in their weekly attendance, most Americans still are part of churches with less than 200 members.  Most Americans are part of churches that are our size, or perhaps a little larger.  And whereas it’s easy to find the advantages that megachurches have, Philip Yancey wrote about some of the benefits of attending a smaller church.  One advantage is that it’s easier to find a parking spot!  Another is that it causes us to be in community with people who are not like us. Philip Yancey quotes another Christian author, G.K. Chesterton, who wrote, “The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world…. The reason is obvious.  In a large community we can choose our companions.  In a small community our companions are chosen for us.”  When there are lots of people to choose who to hang out with, we often choose people who are a lot like us, whether the same age, or the same gender, or the same marital status, or same love of fishing, or what-have-you, and that can quite easily cause the group to turn into a clique.  Only people like us allowed.  But in a smaller group of people, we have to hang out with everyone and it is much harder work to form a community, to be in a community, with people who are different from us.  Philip Yancey cites Ephesians 3, which talks about God’s secret plan through the church, which is made up of people from different backgrounds, which you can see just by looking around at us.  “By forming a community out of diverse members, we have the opportunity to capture the attention of the world and even the supernatural world beyond.”[2]  How do we form a community when everyone’s so different from each other?  With lots of love, patience, and grace. 

            We have been reading from 1 John since Easter and it is an epistle, or letter, that is all about love.  This week’s passage tells us that “We love because God first loved us.  If we say we love God, and hate a brother or sister, we are liars, because we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love our brothers and sisters, whom we have seen.  The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love their brother and sister also.”[3]  Love is how we stay in community with each other in spite of our differences.  No one in close relationships always get along with each other.  There are going to be disagreements and differences of opinion simply because God made us different.  The key is that even when there is conflict, we still stay in relationship with each other because we love each other and we love God.  John’s letter also says, “This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.”[4]  When differences escalate to the point of conflict, it’s because sin has gotten involved somehow, whether in the form of pride or greed or arrogance or envy or anger or something else.  And John’s letter reminds us that God loves us so much that he sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.  This is love.  God loved us first, love comes from God, and we are to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength.  And we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, regardless of how much like us that neighbor is. 

            Patience, one of the other fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5, is also key in forming and staying in community with people who are difference from us.  Look, for example, at the patience Philip shows toward the Ethiopian man in our Acts passage this morning.  Now, here are two people who are very different: Philip is one of the original twelve disciples, originally from the town of Bethsaida, and hand-picked and called by Jesus to “follow me.”  In contrast, this man in the carriage is from Ethiopia, not just a different country, but a different continent, he works for the government, and he’d never heard of Jesus.  One last difference between them is that Philip probably had a wife and children whereas the Ethiopian man was a eunuch, which is to say, he’s sterile, so that he wasn’t a threat to the Ethiopian queen.  So, the Holy Spirit tells Philip to approach this man, who appears to have practically nothing at all in common with him.  Philip listens to God and goes over to the carriage and hears the man reading and discovers that they might have something else in common.  So Philip asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?”  And the man says, “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?”[5]  And Philip takes the time to not just explain the passage from Isaiah to him but also to share with him the Good News about Jesus!  And then Philip continues to travel with him some more!  I said patience is necessary for community, but perhaps a more accurate word might be time!  Philip spends a lot of time with the Ethiopian man, staying with him until the Holy Spirit takes him away, but not before the man is baptized and officially joins the community of faith.  Because of Philip’s willingness to spend time with and have lots of patience with someone who was very different from him, Philip was able to share the Gospel and baptize a new convert to Christianity.  Philip was able to grow his community. 

            You see, our community of faith, both here locally and on the grand scale has lots of different people in it.  People we’re not always going to get along with, people we’re not always going to like.  And yet, just because they rub us the wrong way does not make them any less a child of God, does not make them any less beloved, does not make them any less deserving of our love, because we are called to love each other unconditionally.  That’s what grace is, unconditional love.  That’s how God loves us, and that’s how we are to love our brothers and sisters.  Our passage from 1 John says, “There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment. The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love.”  It turns out all those times the Bible tells us “do not be afraid” and all the times we’re told to “love God and love one another” are basically telling us the same thing.  To love God is to not be afraid.  To love each other is to not be afraid of each other.  Our Psalm this morning says that “all the families of the nations shall worship before the Lord,”[6] much like the vision in Revelation 7 where people from every race, tribe, nation, and language all worship together.[7]  In the small church, where we can’t group by people who have the same hobbies we do, we actually live closer into this vision of different kinds of people all worshiping together.  We have learned how to get along, because we have to.  There is no other service to go to instead or different small group to go to instead.  We have, more or less, figured out how to love each other unconditionally and to not be afraid of each other.  We have figured out how to show each other grace, because we have to. 

            Philip Yancey likens a small church to a family reunion, where you encounter all kinds of people you might not normally associate with, if given the choice, and a wide range of people, with views all over the political spectrum, lives all over geographic spectrum, and different paths chosen.  Yet they all have in common similar DNA, which makes them all part of the same family.  We are also like that.  We have a wide range of backgrounds and careers and life choices all right here, represented among us.  And we’re all part of the same family, God’s family.  So, no, we’re not all always going to get along.  But we do form a community where we can model love and patience and grace, unconditional love, and when the world sees that happen, well, it’ll blow them away.  And what a witness that will be!

---

[1] http://philipyancey.com/small-is-large

[2] Ibid.

[3] 1 John 4:19-21, emphasis mine

[4] 1 John 4:10

[5] Acts 8:29-31

[6] Psalm 22:27b

[7] Revelation 7:9-10