Pentimento

A Word From Our Sponsor

There’s something refreshing about waxing on in stream of consciousness after a pastor delivers a touching sermon or one that hits the high note. But there’s always a part of me that feels like sharing the ideas that I blog is partially rooted in having to borrow unduly from the articulate preaching from which they are birthed.

I’ve struggled with a personal disclaimer for this, but in the spirit of what you are about to read, I, again, had to borrow the “words I wish I wrote” from a book by Robert Fulghum, a preacher, entitled, aptly, Words I Wish I Wrote:

As a child, I was taught the Christian view of life according to the Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco , Texas. By age 21, I had things figured out for myself. Or so I thought. Forty years later … I laugh. My reconsideration is well described in the words of playwright Lillian Hellman, in the introduction to her biographical reflection entitled Pentimento:

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter “repented,” changed his mind. Perhaps, it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.

To see and then see again … this quality of pentimento. There is a transparency to my accumulated writing. When I look deep beneath my declarations, I see the underlying thoughts of others. As hard as I have tried to speak my own voice, I realize now how much of what I have said is neither
original nor unique. Thought is forever being revived, recycled, and renewed.

At twenty one, I could discuss transportation theory with authority. At sixty, I know which bus to catch to go where, what the fare is, and how to get back home again. It is not my bus, but I know how to use it.

To choose one’s own way. But in so doing, I’ve found that others have always been this way before me. And they have spoken of the way in words I wish I had written – in language I could not improve upon. Not a discouraging realization at all, but the recognition of great companionship.

I absolutely am indebted to the great preaching heard at Mt Zion which provides ALL the pentimento underlying what anyone reads … reworded … in these pages.

Subliminal Sermon

Readings:
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10,22-22:5
John 14:23-29

This week Pastor Johnson describes the texts as a wonderfully strung set of pearls laid out for all to see. Sometimes, it seems only in retrospect that I can even begin to see the pearls or that one goes better with the other than all by itself. Then he proceeded to string them … Acts … Revelation … and John.

There is constant reference made to the light, the sun, the lamp that comes with the realization of God’s will. After basking in this light, no other message will again, ever do. Once the night that was before is quenched in this light, it “will be on their foreheads” and the night will be no more. The night is presumably some metaphor for all or each of us before we have such an encounter with God and The Word. When touched by the message of God, our hearts are opened, as was Lydia’s, to “listen eagerly and await what was said (in His name)”.

The metaphor was brought home in the face of a worshiper of God named Lydia in Acts. It was brought to us in the deftly painted description of a night visitor to a college dormitory named Henry Yoger. I will ask Pastor Johnson’s indulgence, as he asked ours, if I borrow some of his articulate descriptors.

It was the Spring of 1967. The setting: college … a breeding ground for the undisciplined, the unguided, those yet without vision and possibly those with a shallow, untested faith life. Certainly every college has a dollop of this. Pastor Johnson’s room is a varied collection of unfinished papers adorning a desk punctuated by an ashtray full of snubbed out Lucky Strikes. It’s 10 p.m. and there’s a knock on the door. Standing in that doorway, a man in a crisp black suit, a starched and bleached white clerical collar, rimless glasses and steel grey hair, combed back. The man was Pastor Henry Yoger. The vision was apparently one that prompted greeters of such a visage to move adeptly to cover the Lucky Strike war zone with the as-yet-unfinished treatises on Dante’s Inferno. But the point of the story was that Henry Yoger made a night time pilgrimage, of sorts, to seek out one of the souls on that campus and deliver a message. That message was, I believe, at its essence, to see if Gary Johnson would like to consider taking up study in the ministry of God. I do not recall his immediate reaction, if he shared it, but this is usually the scene in the movie where the young college student, holding a snubbed out Lucky Strike behind his left ear, looks incredulously at the visitor and wants to pinch himself to see if this is really happening. Is he imagining this? Is he Ray Kinsella hearing voices in the corn field? Well, here’s a modern day Lydia! A messenger from God interceded in a young man’s life, immersing him in a light from which he could never look back.

Such incidences, Pastor Johnson reminded us, are God Incidences, chance meetings between unlikely people that lead one or both to the realization that it’s not the things of this world that matter at all.

We BEST serve when we focus on the things NOT of this world!

When we focus NOT on this world, but on visions and dreams, fields of dreams, that people who have not “been exposed to the light” can not see., where the City gates are open and there is no night. But there is the sweet smell of possibility.

When we recently heard the Lenten story of Jesus washing the disciples feet during the Last Supper, I couldn’t help but think that Jesus’ bigger gift to the disciples might not have been only washing their feet. It may very well have been the message behind it – I do this to remind you to serve others, to be self-forgetful and “pay it forward”. Someone does for you and you do for others. Take care of each other and I will take care of you. Jump and the net will appear.

God and His messengers come in the micro-moments of our lives …….

The moments in which a young student opens a college dorm room to a sight that he never forgets, that 40 years hence he describes with alarmingly accurate and descriptive detail, down to the letter. He can still smell the moment. These are the micro-moments, the slices of our existence, the Thin Places where our worlds are entered by the Almighty to serve us notice that his Kingdom is NOT of this world. And, if you are to serve Him, it will be by serving one another. God sends that lucrative and rich message through a paper thin door and often by way of a character we’re not likely to forget.

John Denver, in the movie Oh God, is visited by, well … God, played by George Burns. God appears in the form of an older man in a baseball cap. In a line only Burns could deliver as he did, he says “You were expecting someone younger. I know. It’s all those pictures with the robes and sandals. Frankly, I never got it …. I come to you in a form you can understand me.” He then proceeds to give John a message to give the rest of the world “Take care of one another. I gave you everything you need to do it.”

God sends those messengers for sure. But they do come in thin slices of existence, in micro-moments, in glimpses, lit only by starlight … to lead us from night into a day that will never end. So we have to be awake and paying attention. Micro-moments can be missed if we’re pre-occupied with the ways of this world. Micro-moments in which bread and wine become body and blood, where young Lucky Strike laden, impressionable college lads consider a life dedicated to The Word and The Way.

In the world of advertising, subliminal messages are thin slices of film or video spliced into a running ad or film … sometimes a tub of popcorn or a refreshingly cool soda. The human brain takes in the vision that the conscious mind does not appear to perceive. And the body reacts accordingly, becoming hungry or thirsty. The remarkable human physiology sees the message, regardless of its thinness in the visually perceptive plane. So it might be with the thin slices on which God interjects his promptings for us. If you miss the splice, you miss the message – so we must be willing to watch and consider visions, dreams, possibilities.

Pastor Johnson knew and knows to this day that Henry Yoger was a man who believed in possibilities. Much like Al Smith, Jackie Robinson, Mother Theresa, Susan B. Anthony and those who kept their eyes on the prize, they believed in the voice in the corn field that “sent me to find you”. They believed in possibility and renewal, that God could “make a new thing”, that hope, as Emily Dickinson reminded us all, is “the thing with feathers”.

Subliminal messages are still illegal in advertising, but they are part of Gods modus operandi. When we preach the Gospel, Pastor Johnson subtly references that it is most likely to be in a locker room, in an honest and sincere conversation about God, in simple words and in simple stories. I blogged about a sign in the halls of Cardinal Stritch University that I feel compelled to repeat here:

Preach the Gospel always; when necessary use words.

Henry Yoger’s very presence spoke volumes to a young college student. He had a vision that there was something to this young man that made a trip to visit him in the dark of the night a worthwhile or compelling enterprise, must-see Unreality Church. He had a vision, a notion of the possibility that made it necessary to ask that young man to pray about the vision he had for that young man to go into the ministry.

He believed in the power of the resurrection, the power of renewal, the power of possibility in lives. It’s NEVER too late for God to act. And there’s NEVER a wrong time for the asking to occur.

Please forgive me this one last indulgence of a visit to The Field of Dreams. Ray Kinsella and Terrance Mann travel to Chisolm, Minnesota to visit an old ball player Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. He played one inning in the major leagues, had one at bat and never got a hit. He had a dream of getting that one hit, looking down a major league pitcher, letting him think you knew something he didn’t, get a hit and sliding headfirst into fresh dirt. Doc Graham never has the baseball career, but becomes a doctor in a small town in Minnesota, making a world of difference to the entire community.

Ray asks him if he would come with him to a place where those dreams (of making the big leagues) do come true. Graham declines the offer. Ray implores him “It’d kill a man to come this close to their dreams and not touch them! They’d consider that a tragedy!”

Graham’s reply … simply “No son. If I’d only become a doctor for 5 minutes, now that’d been a tragedy.” And he winks.

He gets it! Just as Lydia gets it! It’s not about this world, about the big leagues, the big house and the promotion. Lydia and Moonlight are free from the shackles of worldly wealth, zip codes, status. Now they say “I am not a subject of the rulers of this age.”

They’ve both had a taste. And they’re not going back.

In a later scene, Ray and Terrance have at least one more micro-moment. They pick up a stray hitchhiker, a young man with all the world agleam in his eye. They ask him his name, He says “Archie … Archie Graham”. He comes to Iowa, plays the big league players, but crosses the first base line – that THIN LINE that separates the space between man and the possibilities. He becomes old Doc Graham. He saves Ray’s daughter from choking on a hot dog, then walks toward the corn field, never able to return to the worldly want he once had. Ray says he’s sorry and “Thank you”. Doc says “No son …… Thank You!”

Thank you for believing in the possibility and for asking me to also!

Henry Yoger, as an old man, died while planting flowers in his garden. Flowers … the perennial sign of hope and possibility, of renewal and new life.

I figure it’s a good money bet Pastor Johnson says thanks often enough for Henry Yoger and a trip he took, and a knock on his door. In one of those micro-moments, he paid it forward today by sharing his story. What a powerful glimpse.

Preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words.

But, if not words, pull an unkempt college student buried in Lucky Strikes out of his comfort zone, take someone into your home, pay something forward … for it is in those other-worldy moments, in those thin places and slices that we are in the midst of the light and the truth that sets us free.

Where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope ...

Readings:
April 22, 2007
Acts 9: 1-6, 17-20
Revelation 5: 11-14
John 21: 1-19

April 29, 2007
Acts 9: 36-43
Revelation 7: 9-17
John 10: 22-30

As Pastor Johnson reminded us this week, witnessing is often best done by example. We say what we believe in the Nicene Creed, but “what will bring someone to God is sitting and having a soda with them and telling them your story. So sit down, open a soda, here’s a story …

Two blogs for one. I couldn’t figure out why I was having a hard time blogging last week. Then, this Sunday morning, I felt I might have been told why. The two sermons and the entire early service intertwined in a “God’s threading the tapestry” sort of way. I will ask the pastors to forgive me if the scriptural texts do not bear this out, but, upon climbing the stairs once back in my home, the witness from the pulpits appeared to. The Prayer of St. Francis, which my mother cross-stitched and gave me in college, sits atop that staircase.

In the testimonial this week and in both sermons, last week and this, I heard the threaded messages. And, as I walked to my room, it caught my eye. And there they were, in burnt orange and green stitched yarn, staring at me:

Where there is doubt, faith …. it is in giving that we receive

Where there is despair, hope … it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Donna Zarek gave an emotional and moving testimonial about having faith to do what your heart tells you is right, but your mind tells you to be cautious of “just in case”. In what made the testimonial especially moving to me, the message was about a sheep who felt they might have been lost, but was then found; a message had been revisited and therein learned. It was true growth of the spiritual variety. Why it was absolutely moving was that it is a very hard thing to showcase one’s growth for everyone to see. But therein lay the root of my feeling fortunate to have experienced her witness firsthand. THIS Mt. Zion is a special place where disciples can walk up and witness to their doubts and witness to how the spirit helped them move beyond their doubts, their worries, their roadblocks to faith. In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julie Cameron fondly says that to unblock our connection with the spirit we must …

Jump … and the net will appear

Where there was doubt and worry and caution “just in case”, there became faith … that the net would appear. Somewhere, somehow. The testimonial we were privileged to hear this week took a withdrawal from the bank of “just in case” and made a deposit in the bank of “the net will appear”.

Then it was Pastor Kendra Mohn’s turn. And in an amazing segue, she continued the service in a way that struck me in two significant ways.

After Donna’s testimonial, she was so wise in knowing to say “After an experience such as this, I know not what words to add. Thank goodness, at times like these, God does the speaking”. In a hallway at Cardinal Stritch University lies a plaque that says

“Preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words.”

It is just as wise to know when not to use words and allow the proclamation to speak for itself in the action of, in this case, a heartfelt testimonial.

Secondly, and just as thoughtfully, she asked all the children at the service if they would like to come to the altar to witness the miracle of the Baptism of Clare Grant Kasdorf. The children do not know from worry, they’ve yet to learn doubt. And we were invited to witness the miracle through their eyes. The children’s book The Polar Express reminds us that adults can lose their ability to “see magic” and “to believe”. They can, at some point, no longer hear the first bell of Christmas. Children still can. Not only did the children witness, as Pastor Johnson reminded us, that something happened at the altar that transcended ritual, but we were welcomed by these two wise pastors to talk to our children in the way home … as a way of cementing their experience, but, perhaps just as much, to have our own children witness to us .. the sound of the bell, the magic, the belief.

Wow, I’m psyched just to be a disciple-in-training at a camp such as this.

And then, with awareness still tingling, I watched Pastor Johnson rise slowly but steadily into the pulpit with the aid of his crutch. He may feel uncomfortable for my saying this, but then that man tied it all together like some master craftsman. Why all the threads seemed to fit together to “tell a story”. And it went something like this:

There was a faithful minister named Dorcas. She quietly made the tunics, she knitted the prayer shawls, she tended to the altar linens, she collected the bulletins and cleaned the church pews. Quietly. Much like those who tended to the roads that needed fixing this Lent, the humble and quiet work, small things done with great love, as Mother Theresa is want to remind us. Dorcas is the one most often not noticed, who doesn’t get credit and doesn’t seek credit.

But in her quiet doing is a powerful message. PRAXIS – action as opposed to theory; it matters more what we do than what we say. For in that doing, faith lives!

Pastor Johnson knowingly gets excited when he gets to the part where he reminds us that it’s not a coincidence that kids crowd around a Baptismal font and they “get it”, Peter “gets” Dorcas and why she does what she does, in faith disciples “get” the 6 quarters a day. You don’t have to say it, you just have to show it, to live it. A static status quo is death; faith is alive and is evidenced in growth! The growth that occurs in a faith that is lived breaks all the rules! The Gospel breaks the laws of physics, chemistry, science, reality.

Forget Reality TV, give me Unreality Church!

As Pastor Mohn commiserated “We are, all of us, a continual mix of tragedy and joy, challenges and rejuvenation, despair and hope”. One day, the utter despair at Virginia Tech, the next day a Baptism and a vigil, a splash of water on our faces and candles lit by the thousands to awaken and rekindle hope. To shed the despair, a daily death and resurrection”.

As Pastor Johnson eerily resounded “We have found life in what was once the stench of death. The unreality Church breaks all the rules. It believes we can see the magic in Baptism, can see 6 quarters a day, can turn topsy into turvy. You won’t see it on TV or on the news and that’s … just …. fine. Sheep are practically blind, they smell and they get lost a lot. It’s OK that we’re sheep. And it’s OK if we’re all different kinds of sheep. Sure, we have despair but we are the people of hope”. All spoken by a man who used a crutch to get himself into the pulpit … who didn’t have to be there, but was. It matters what we do more than what we say. And because he did, what he said made all the difference.

Where there is doubt, faith …. it is in giving that we receive

Where there is despair, hope … it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

You don’t have to say it; you just have to live it.

Now that’s a story I can sit down to a soda with and pass on one more time.


Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Eyes on the Prize, Thomas

Readings:
Acts 5:27-32
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20-19-31

This week I’m “on the road” and the blog follows. You get two sermons for the price of one … your Mt Zion weekly and one I heard at Dr. Martin Luther Church … given very movingly by Pastor Erik Gronberg.

If you love baseball, grew up in New York or think it’s a great and needed message to task each other OUT of the doldrums of the unimaginative, this was a sermon that rang out. I was fortunate to be a bit of all three.

I was summarily trapped by this very wise preacher, trapped into the complacency that is easily adopted when one hears a beginning so parlayed in sermons on Thomas, The Doubter. That opening was that “we can all relate to Thomas, can’t we? We connect with Thomas, don’t we? I get it.”

We too often want proof. I get it.

He struggles with true belief without the “show me”. I get it.

I was getting comfortable in my pew. “Yes, I said to myself, I can relate, sinner and doubter that I am”. Those sins … of disbelief, of the human need for verification and authentication are ones made so easily and comfortably from a Sunday morning pew. But, as my rump struggled for an even more comfortable position, I was thwarted. The very next sentence edged me ever more vertical, eroding my comfort level in a way not too different than that a student caught sleeping in class – enough to notice, anyway. It was a quote from the venerable Peter Gomes, holder of the Plummer Professor Chair of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister of The Memorial Church, Harvard University.

Gomes was included in the summer 1999 premiere issue of Talk magazine as part of its feature article, "The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up."

I have heard this man preach on three other occasions and it is sagely advice that when he speaks – or is even quoted, - that one is best prepared by sitting up and getting ready for a lesson, often one that will catapult you beyond your comfort zone. Pastor Gronberg continued with quoting Gomes:

“I don’t like Thomas! He’s the patron saint of the unimaginative!”

Ouch!!! And I had just comfortably lulled myself into my “I can relate to Thomas Jacuzzi of the sinful”. I was led by a very talented preacher, and only 20 minutes later would I understand a little better why and why it was so good for me and everyone in that Church. Pastor Gronberg continued to weave the meaning in the message.

Thomas is a follower but not a believer!

He was a good disciple in many ways, but he would forever be tagged for his doubt, with it somehow overshadowing all else. He was the Bill Buckner of the disciples, a player with otherwise Hall of Fame statistics who will only be remembered for a dribbler between the legs delivered by Mookie Wilson on a cold October evening in 1986 in Flushing NY. Not far at all from that very first base, in 1947 stood another man, Jackie Robinson, who did something for which he, too, would be remembered. He broke the color barrier in major league baseball. Today, April 15, 2007, he is being remembered and honored for that in every ballpark in America – for what was really a Christ-like and non-Thomas outlook on life.

As Pastor Gronberg points out, it’s often our good fortune to see a vision, get a glimpse of what’s possible – a taste, a whiff of true possibility. But then on Monday morning, it is just as likely we will crawl back into the “same old, same old”, “been there, done that” frame of mind. It reminded me that Pastor Johnson has often suggested that Jesus would have had little patience with a “been there, done that” attitude. Pastor Gronberg quoted another great spirit, Winston Churchill who admonished us all to

“Never, never give up!”

HE, and Jackie Robinson, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Theresa, ALL

KEPT THEIR EYES ON THE PRIZE!!

And often, in spite of being derided. Pastor Gronberg touchingly portrayed part of the legacy of Alfred Emmanuel Smith, an orphan, who said he learned about people, what they needed in their lives, by working at the fish market … among the people. From that fish market, he grew to become a four-time governor of the State of New York and construction company chair for the building of the Empire State Building. He was ousted from office as governor in 1920, but ran again in 1922, being elected then for 3 successive terms. He helped raise the Empire State Building over the Manhattan skyline, only to be derided after the stock market crash of 1929.

He continually found himself in circumstances where his price for keeping his eyes on a venerable prize were mockery BUT he always got back up on his feet and continued on – no time to be unimaginative for this man. Remember Pastor Riggle’s sermon on a cold February morning not too long ago:

“The problem’s not in falling down to the ground. The only problem is staying on the ground.”

Like Mother Theresa and Jackie Robinson, they realized that getting back up, tracking the prize, NOT “coming back down to Monday morning” took the hard work of continued awareness.

Keeping your eye on the prize is hard work!

They knew the primordial rule of the pool lifeguard – NEVER take your eye off the victim. It is hard work to concentrate on a vision and make it your goal, to NOT lose sight of it, for even a short time. To catch a vision and keep it! They also knew that keeping that vision forefront enough to not lose sight of it involved substantial risk, sometimes at the expense of looking foolish, sometimes even to the extent of life itself. These disciples who worked hard at “non-Thomas-like behavior” knew that looking foolish was often part of the price for keeping their eyes on the prize.

Charles Schultz shortly before his death gave an interview in which he said

“If I had it to do over, I’d worry less about looking foolish.”

Good advice. I’m guessing he’s met with Mother Theresa, and Susan and Jackie and Al in the great beyond – where all their risk was for The Prize and their reward is great.

Pastor Gronberg reminds us of this most important life lesson:

The imagination allows us to believe – despite the risk. We have to be willing to risk, to look foolish, to lose, to fail because God will find a way … to reap harvest from that good work. One of Albert Einstein’s most quoted quotes reminds us

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Great spirits have often encountered opposition from mediocre
minds.”

Jesus was known for being willing to look foolish, He surrounded himself with former tax collectors, fishermen, prostitutes, improper women, sinners – all to do the work of The Father - that most honorable Prize onto which he ALWAYS had his eyes fixed solidly. Jesus, Charles and the Peanuts gang, Jackie, Susan, Mother Theresa, Al Smith all kept their eyes on the prize not only for them, but as a legacy for all who would follow. They trudged on in spite of opposition, derision, and mockery.

It’s hard work, but it takes imagination. Who’d know that this legacy would be left by an orphan who hung out at the fish market. I bet Jesus knew.

When the Twin Towers fell, Pastor Gronberg finally reminded us, the tallest building left standing when the cloud and the smoke cleared was the Empire State Building. The legacy of the man willing to look foolish enough to make it happen, whom 7th graders still read about in history class for keeping his eyes on the promise and not behaving like Thomas.

In yesterday’s New York Times, there was an advertisement taken by the Jackie Robinson Foundation. It simply read:

“He was a soldier, a writer, an activist, a politician, a voice, a leader, a father, a husband, and a friend.

Being a Hall of Fame second baseman was the easy part.”

Keeping his eyes on the prize was the hard part. In the op-ed column of the same paper appeared a moving story of Jackie Robinson who recalled, in the end:

“Whenever I hear my wife read fairy tales to my little boy, I’ll listen …… I know now that dreams DO come true.”


And they may have only ever come true for this reason … because he was willing to use his imagination, willing to believe, willing to get back up, willing to do the hard work, and keep his eyes on the prize!

There's No Jesus???

Easter Sunday





Readings:
Acts 10:34-43
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1- 12




This may have been one of the BEST Easter sermons I have ever heard preached ……





Pastor Mohn starts with two images: first her husband, Erik, reminding her of the possibly slippery slope that is preaching on the Luke Easter story in which “There is no Jesus”; second, a good friend of Pastor Mohn’s is going to run a marathon, but not Grandma’s marathon because at the 20 mile mark, you actually see the finish line with all it’s release and fanfare with yet 6 miles to go, needless to say the hardest 6 wherein many marathoners have claimed to enter almost a trance-like state of either pain-denial and/or utter depletion of resources. To see the finish line before the end of the pain of the race, that image will be forever lasting.

So, first, there is no Jesus? In the Luke story, no. Perhaps, as Pastor Mohn, delicately points out …

If we’re looking for Jesus, perhaps we have to look in a different place …

Then there’s that finish line, oh sooo long before the end. You can see the finish line, the taste, the smell of it, but not the touch, not yet. It’s still a 10K away …. A long haul after having already completed more than 30K and suffering system shutdown on some fronts. The road less traveled is one on which you go so far, and yet there is still so far to go. It’s a bait and switch, topsy-turvy. The road less traveled means you have a calling form God to serve your neighbor – to treat everyone you meet as a child of God.

Today ….. today, you get a glimpse of the finish line. A flash. A moment.

I imagine a movie character in a flashback. Soundbites cut short. A taste. A glance. A vision all too short.

But, in the end, when the picture stops spinning and comes into focus again, you’re back off the mountaintop and it’s Monday morning, again. You still have our problems, our conflicts, our confusion … and the joy we experience may not last through Easter dinner. It’s the anti-climax that accompanies any epiphany. We don’t get to hold onto it as we experienced it “in the moment”.

Doesn’t it feel as if we’ve come so far along that road less traveled only to say “Where’s Jesus?” Easter can be anti-climactic that way. What comes next but the road to Emmaus. Even the disciples did not see Jesus right beside them, until He breaks bread with them. And then, like that, poof ….. He’s gone!

But is he?

There’s a great line in the movie The Usual Suspects where Kevin Spacey, playing the infamous Kasier Soze, says “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist …. Then, like that … Poof! … he’s gone.” Maybe the greatest trick Jesus ever pulled was convincing the world He DID exist! And leaving lasting signs in the ways of the Holy Spirit, The Advocate who is to remind us of Him in everything around us. The advocate’s eyes, Jesus’ invisibility glasses we heard about early in Lent. When the disciples look up, they see it IS Jesus, and that He’s been with them all along.

A story that began with “There was this guy, and he taught us so much and then he died and we thought it was all over …. And then …..”

The road less traveled has taken us to an empty tomb that foretells a taste of that finish line, but there is more road ahead, indeed. That road brings us today to the empty tomb for to carry that message “back to life as we know it” – that life with its sorrows and its problems.

So, is there a difference?

YES! You’ve gotten a rare & fleeting glimpse of the finish line ahead to come. On that final 10K, you don’t know where you’ll encounter Jesus. Will you recognize Him? In the homeless person on the street, in the waitress at the diner, in the person kneeling next to you at Communion, in a person you’ve just met who dies suddenly and without warning. Were you to “see Jesus” IN that moment? He is there … all along, as the poem Footprints reminds us – those times “you saw but a single pair of footprints were when I carried you.”

He’s there … around nearly every corner.

Pastor Mohn beautifully offered the awe-inspiring message of Easter morning is that …

EVERY day you have another day of hope, another day the slate starts out CLEAN, another day things don’t HAVE TO be the same.

EVERY person you encounter may be another chance for you to
witness that good news of that Resurrection

EVERY moment, there’s another chance for servanthood

EVERY step is another step closer to that finish line.

Alleluia! … for EVERY one of those chances ……

EVERY day, EVERY person, EVERY moment, EVERY step along that road less traveled that, on Monday, continues on to that greatest of finish lines.

It's About The Cross

Good Friday

Readings:
Exodus 12:1-4 [5-10] 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

It’s not just about the manger where the baby lay
It’s not all about the angels who sang for him that day
It’s not just about the shepherd or a bright and shining star
It’s not just about the wise men who traveled from afar

Now the beginning of the story is wonderful and great
But it’s the ending that can save you and that’s why we celebrate

It’s About the Cross
It’s about my sin
It’s about how Jesus came to be born once
So that we could be born again

It’s about God’s love nailed to a tree
It’s about every drop of blood that flowed from him when it shouda been me.

It’s about the stone that was rolled away
So that you and I could have real life someday
It’s about the Cross

The Go Fish Guys

If You Get Nothing ....

Maundy Thursday

Readings:
Exodus 12:1-4 [5-10] 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

The Last Supper …. What’s it all about?

It’s an extraordinary gathering of friends: bread, wine, prayer, and song.

But words get changed.

It’s not about The Lamb … it’s now I AM The Lamb. It’s about the blood of The Lamb that is about to be slayed. It’s about the Cross.

It’s not the manna that kept the body nourished in the dessert. It’s about the Body of Jesus, offered for our spiritual nourishment.

The confluence of events leading up to the Last Supper is almost impossible to imagine. What does Jesus mean? All is barely believable.

And the MOST unbelievable? He lowers Himself to wash the feet of his fellow disciples, the cleanse the lowest part of their bodies, in a gesture symbolic of lowering Himself to serve his fellow man. He is The Lamb, the Son of God and HE, even, lowers Himself to be the lowest in the room, the lowest of lows, to serve a fellow neighbor, disciple, friend, person in need. He says,

“IF YOU GET NOTHING ELSE, GET THIS: Serve one another, as I have served you.”

IF I taught you nothing, it’s this: the secret is topsy-turvy – lower yourself to serve, that you may “see Me again” – in the face of those you serve.

Rick Warren reminds us in his book The Purpose Driven Life:

Servants: “You can tell what they are by what they do.”

“REAL servants maintain a low profile. Servants do not call attention to themselves. Instead they “put on the apron of humility” !!! Real servants only ever “live for an audience of One”.

“Servanthood is a matter of HEART. Serving is never perfect; we get better at it the more we do it. If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.”

“Opportunities for service are not always “at our convenience”. Great opportunities to serve never last long. They pass quickly, never to return again (!) Great opportunities often disguise themselves in “small tasks” (!)

“Whenever you lower yourself, humble yourself – whenever you walk with the poor, find goodness in the tax collector, wash the sores of the lepers, whenever you share a meal with who knows who, you will see Me again!”

What an extraordinary night! Pastor Johnson reminds us that THIS road less traveled, the one of service, is one of intense spiritual intimacy …… Keep your eyes pealed and be prepared to lower yourself.

If you get nothing else He told you, get this ……