Don’t Shoot Me … I’m Just the Messenger

Readings:
Isaiah 66:10-14
Galations 6:1-16
Luke 10:1-11,16-20

Lay Preacher: Jan Veseth-Rogers

Today’s text from Luke brings home a message often at the heart of Jesus’ teaching:

It’s Not About Me!

In a theme that has been and will be revisited by others preaching this summer, Jesus’ words are sometimes hard to take, to hear, to “wrap our heads and hearts around”. Today is no exception.

Jan points out that Jesus, as He so often does, chooses His words deliberately. As is also often the case, those whose eyes remain on the prize often choose words that are direct, concise, blunt. Here we are called to evangelize, from the Greek “to proclaim”.

A calling with which we are often not comfortable, one we have to wrap our heads around, but often are not successful in doing. Jan points out several characteristics of evangelizers:

They are chosen (but they need to answer their call).

They are “sent out in pairs” because God is aware that human beings, in their nature, seek relationship. Jesus also knew it would too often be too hard to “go it alone” as disciples in His cause. These people take the form of mentors, friends and soulmates with whom we travel on our spiritual journeys.

Evangelizers are sent out ahead of Jesus, an advanced press corps, of sorts.

Jesus warns those sent ahead to be prepared for rejection. The overriding message is that “at the very heart of it, we are only ever messengers”. And it’s about the message, not about us! We will, most assuredly, encounter rejection, but Jesus is reminding us that it is His message that is being rejected.

Don’t take it personally, he offers. Keep at it! I’m right behind you.

Jan drew a picture of traveling as a young girl and knowing she could “travel light” as her parents would “take care of her every need”. Perhaps, she also offers, Jesus is telling us to trust that God will also be our spiritual parent. And to travel light in that knowledge.

The words Jesus chooses do not invoke us to “quit our jobs and become itinerant preachers and missionaries. We are not called to “have all the answers”. We cannot. We only have to ever know “who sent us”. We need to constantly remind ourselves “It’s not about us, but He who sent us”.

Rick Warren opens his book A Purpose Driven Life with those simple remindful words:

It’s Not About You!

Hearing these words, a sermon by Pastor Mohn was brought to mind. She drew the farming analogy quite well and likened us to sowers of seeds. And that we should remind ourselves that ours is not to always overly worry about the ground rejecting those seeds. We are called to plant His seeds.

God does the harvesting.

It’s Not About Us ……

Reaching for the Language of the Sacred

Readings:
1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21
Galations 5:1,13-25
Luke 9:51-62

Lay Preacher: Pam Shellberg

Today’s text from Luke brings what appear to be harsh words from an “otherwise” loving Jesus, a warning that hits at the heart. But Pam Shellberg takes those seemingly harsh words in which that warning is delivered, and unwraps what is perhaps an underlying message that brings the supposed and allegedly harsh tone into a broader context.

Jesus speaks very explicit words in Luke’s Gospel. His disciples vow they will “follow wherever you (Jesus) go” to which He replies, “The foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Upon asking another to follow Him, Jesus has a man reply “First let me go and bury my father” to which Jesus replies ”Let the dead bury their own dead; but, as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” To another who asks to put his affairs in order first, He replies that “no one who puts a hand to the plow and los back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Harsh words, indeed.

Pam Shellberg delivered a thought-provoking interpretation of the lesson underlying the words, I believe. As a very wise pastor once told me:

“There is ambiguity in this message, now isn’t there. And, if there is, it might just be that we were meant to ponder and examine that ambiguity.” That we might learn a message it was meant to convey.

In my heart, Pam did this most effectively today. And from several different vantage points, as I heard her words.

First, let’s examine the voice of God as Father: “If you take of yourself first, your family, your affairs first, you are not fit for the kingdom of God.” Translation? To be fit, you must perform in a certain way, to a certain standard. God as Father figure often speaks harsh words in a demanding tone. The words are not “Jesus loves me!” This perhaps would be the voice of God as Mother, but this is not the voice we hear today.

Second, the Samaritans do not receive Jesus. To be received, it is necessary for Him to fulfill his destiny, to die in Jerusalem. But neither do the Samaritans reject Jesus. They reject where He is heading – toward Jerusalem, his destiny. What does this mean?
Pam gives an eloquent metaphor for us to consider. Jesus is focused on Jerusalem, his Eye on the Prize. He does not forget His destiny, His mission, His predominant reason for being on this Earth, His role, His gift, His calling. Jerusalem is the metaphor for our role for the kingdom, our place in the tapestry.

It is human nature, at times, to forget this or even deny it. There is a good book written called The Imposter Phenomenon, addressing a psychological phenomenon well known, particularly to artists and those pursuing creative-minded occupations. Those gifted to be writers often settle for being text editors, artists settle for being salespersons of great art. They are close to their calling, but all suffer a single common flaw in obtaining their rightful place in the tapestry. They get almost uncomfortably close to their calling but resist embracing it. It may very well be human nature that drives us this way.

As Pam points out, we believe we can find God “in a little town, along the way”. As humans, we want “to stay home and have God come to us”. Perhaps, as she also deftly points out, Jesus is warning us it doesn’t work that way. Mohammed doesn’t want to go to the mountain, he wants the mountain to come to him! Perhaps when Jesus tells us “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”, he is saying “you will not be able to follow me comfortably to your home; to follow me, someone who has no place to lay His head, means you must be prepared to be homeless yourself, as was I”.

Pam describes the very personal circumstances of burying her own father: designing the butterflies on his funeral bulletin, penning thoughtful letters to his oncology doctors and others whose presence in those last days and weeks of a life, bring meaning and comfort to the terminally ill. She wrote to offer an awareness to those people that they were, indeed, the bearers of God’s presence in a life near death.
In the days following her father’s passing, she stood close to, in the mystery of death.

To one so thoughtful, faithful, and aware of the importance of living presence in the face of death and resurrection; aware of the commandment to “honor thy parents”, Jesus’ words, Pam admitted, were ones she ‘struggled to wrap her head around”. This must have been a feeling all too common in that sanctuary. I have not buried my father, but I felt the ambiguity and the struggle to find meaning in those seemingly harsh words. Perhaps, that is only human nature.

Pam then found a way to wrap those words around … a heart.

Jesus, she reminded us, was not, is not without compassion for the dying, for the survivors of those closest to those in death. Perhaps, as she points out, Jesus is only saying that it is possible for these events to become all-consuming to our human nature. In so devoting our God-given energies for these, we may take our “eyes off the prize”, “off our individual roads to Jerusalem” – our destinies, our places in the grand tapestry. In a book I have quoted often in this blog, Jesus CEO, one chapter is entitles “He Guarded His Energy”. In it, Laurie Beth Jones reminds us that Jesus knew his eyes could be taken off his destiny and he zealously guarded against any attempts to derail his purpose, even to the point of reminding His mother Mary why He had to be preaching in the temple.

Jesus is not anti-family. He recounts the parable of the Prodigal Son, he attends weddings, he revives the dead son of a widowed mother. But in the game of family vs. discipleship, He has a stern warning, words as harsh as his compassion is sincere in those other encounters.

Family commitments can put us on slippery slopes with obligation. This is, perhaps, because these are our most profoundly intimate and our deepest relationships on this Earth. In such relationships, Pam most beautifully reminds us we “reach for the language of the Sacred”. In birth, there is creation; in becoming parents, we are aware for perhaps the first time what it feels like to know you would sacrifice your life for another human being; we celebrate covenants and promises of infinite love; and in death, we embrace the language of honor and hope for the reunion in the Resurrection.

Our deepest expressions are in our families and our homes.

As with other good things, even the best things … all things still are best in moderation or dangerous in overt excess. Perhaps, the more meaningful these relationships are to us, the harder for us, as humans, to recognize when they may come to cloud our vision of the road to Jerusalem and our destinies for God’s plan.

Pam confessed that at key times in her life when she sought answers, she would ask “What would my father do?” She told us how he served as her moral compass. Jesus is reminding us to also remember that “What would my father do?” does not always equate to “What would Jesus do?” … however much we reach for the language of the Sacred.

So here’s the question …

Jesus is not looking for His family or His home town; he has his sights fixed on his destiny that is on the far horizon; He sets his face toward Jerusalem.

Perhaps seemingly harsh words are less than subtle reminders that we, too, are called to keep our eyes on the horizon, on our further purpose, higher purpose, our calling, or destiny. We are all called to keep our eyes on a personal Jerusalem and a personal cross.

Pam reassured us that there is a dearth of clear answers – one thing she is all too aware of as she attempts to complete her dissertation. I can assure Pam that that is a realization faced by those who complete their dissertation in fields as far flung as the physical sciences, as well, and all of us struggling to answer any questions with lasting meaning. All searches for truth go through the rough fields of ambiguity. She concluded her sermon these wisely chosen words:

“There is an assured dearth of clear answers … surely (those answers) have to do with something of which I am presently unaware.”

Those words left me with a lump in my throat. We are without clear answers, but, in light of that, we are called to keep our eyes on the collective horizon. There, God is calling us and we may need all our energies to hear that calling.

The Silence That Speaks

Readings:
1 Kings 17:17-24
Galationas 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17

Lay Preacher: Jan Veseth-Rogers

Today’s text from Luke recounts the story of Jesus’ reviving a widow’s only son. Jan picks up on a very interesting notion in this text, one that, in so doing showcases the Jesus described therein. I believe Jan saw something in this text that took some “looking”.

What is of import in the telling of this story. Is it that the woman is a widow, that the dead man is her only son? Perhaps, as Jan points out, it is not a story only about a widow or only about a son. Perhaps these are devices to introduce us to a much bigger picture, characters used to showcase Jesus’ actions. Perhaps it is not the circumstances that are altogether crucial, but how Jesus reacts to them.

Case in point. Jan points out several very deliberate actions on the part of Jesus that might otherwise go unnoted. As he approaches the town of Nain, the dead man is being carried out, surrounded by a large crowd.

The widow is one of many in that crowd. The widow doesn’t speak … BUT Jesus knows which one is the mother!

How?

Even though she does not speak to him or identify herself, He knows who she is. He feels her pain; he knows the mourning of a woman, alone, the look of a woman mourning the death of her only son … a mourning his own mother will, in time, know only all too well. He speaks to her. Yet he does not have to have her pointed out. He recognizes the face of pain, of longing, of loss.

And though that loss, that longing, that pain have no voice, He “hears” it and feels it as if it were His own.

Jan very eloquently and quietly struck me in a particular way on the morning of June 10th. She struck me as, in some sense, an ideal messenger for this sermon. I felt very oddly and strongly that this sermon could be given most powerfully by … a mother. Her lips pursed, her face had well-defined structure as she delivered the key that unlocked a message hidden in this story.

Jesus is here for those with no voice, the ordinary, those with seemingly no hope. He hears into their hearts and knows their innermost need.

Jesus hears into the silence and the silence speaks … for those that have the ears to hear. Jesus does. He gives voice to the voiceless; He hears in the silence our needs, our longing, our empty void … and He comes to fill that void with hope.

Not all heartaches are not to be named in words – but some remain so … out of fear, sin, out of confusion. These all take our voice away at critical defining moments in our lives. But, in those moments, we are never alone. There are ears to hear through the confusion, the denial, the pain, the loss, the longing, into our heart of hearts.

Declarations of faith are NOT always demanding.

Sometimes they are quiet moments, unspoken moments, when our fallibility as humans leaves us without a voice. As a man, not a mother, I fear I would not have recognized this woman. But Jesus did. Jan could relate on a more intimate level. Through her eyes, I was able to see more clearly what Jesus might have been intending for us to hear … a woman with no voice … for whom our Lord felt compassion.

He hears into the silence … and the silence speaks.

Surrounded by a Great Cloud of Witnesses

This summer, several laypersons in our own congregation have been and will be privileged to preach on the Gospel at Mt. Zion Lutheran Church. The texts for these weeks have some common threads that I hope this blog will comment on and maybe even, on good days, tie together. Thoughts, interpretations, words and fruits of the spirit, stories, metaphors will be offered by Jan Veseth-Rogers, Pam Shellberg, Keith Pignolet, Robyn McGuire, Dana O’Brien, and myself.

The texts seem to repeatedly address seemingly harsh words spoken by Jesus, our fallibility and the costs of human nature, and a repeated theme that “It’s Not About Us”, but something much, much bigger.

We will hear more than once that voice of Shoeless Joe Jackson say to Ray Kinsella “Are you asking what’s in it for you, Ray?” … and then warn him “You better stay here, Ray”.

Why?

Stay tuned … we, as a congregation, are a cloud of witnesses with our own individual stories and journeys. We can learn this summer that to the extent that we are willing to share them, we will become stronger, more mindful and closer to God collectively than we ever could alone.

God Beyond, God Among and God Within

Readings:
June 3, 2007
Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31
Romans 5: 1-5
John 16: 12-15

Pastor Mohn spoke to us of that nebulous concept of three beings in one: the Trinity. I don’t know about you, but this is something I struggled with from early in my faith development. And my struggling was based in my wanting a plausible explanation for all this, one I could bring to terms with my understanding. None has really been forthcoming, except in fits and starts. One of the fits occurred when it was pointed out in a Bible study that the concept of the Trinity is not discussed in any great detail in the Bible. Perhaps it is inferred from the many stories there. One of my starts was received recently when I read an NPR “This I Believe” essay quoted elsewhere in this blog entitled “Humbled by Mystery” offered by Richard Rohr:

Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity. "Hints and guesses," as T.S. Eliot would say. The more I am alone with the Alone, the more I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God. Paradoxes don't scare me anymore. When I was young, I couldn't tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 63, it's all quite different. Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always," someone or something proves me wrong.

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience.

As I get older, I also seem not to need the completely plausible explanation any longer, at least as much as I insisted I used to. I am more comfortable being simultaneously in awe and content in not having explanations for what I have encountered and am more sure is true, but indefinable, in words and other ways. Perhaps Pastor Mohn had the best advice of all. Albeit, it was reassuring to me. That advice: don’t spend a huge amount of time on it – the explanation, that is. Perhaps an explanation, per se, is not what we should seek, but, rather, a notion, a way to experience and encounter our God.

Yes, perhaps a faithful journey to a notion of The Trinity is to admit it is a human mnemonic. If, in some broader sense we are not capable of fully understanding God, the Trinity is a way human beings can come to encounter God, a way to come closer to experiencing something we are not capable of fully, as humans.

Recently on the men’s ministry retreat, I heard Ralph McCarthy make an excellent analogy. He said God gave him his family, in one sense, as a way for him to understand and be closer to whom God was, that the roles of family members helped him to see what God was meant to be in his life. I have come recently to see many pertinent analogies of God to a parent figure. It has helped my notions of forgiveness, mercy, and hope become more than concepts and has helped me move further in a struggle to make these natural parts of a life in progress. Can a parent wear many hats? Is a single parent ever all mother, all father, all things to all who need and depend upon them? Of course not. And God is immensely more multi-dimensional than we can have words for.

God defies categorization, defies definition, in some sense; defies placeholders, compartmentalization, framing, boundaries, and the humble means of expression by virtue of our limited experiences. Perhaps that is why Pastor Mohn said that to say “more” than what she did would venture into “heresy”. Perhaps I have played the role of heretic here (and said too much), but it does help a human soul to struggle with the concept of a notion of God. And in this struggling to come to know something of the element of what the deity is, Pastor Mohn offers us the notion that we can all encounter God in these three unique and different ways:


God is three persons in one, three hats in one, three things that while different, all define either elements of what God is, what God means to us or how God can be sensed and internalized by us.

God can be experienced and encountered as beyond, among and within.

God Beyond is our notion of God the Father, the Creator, external to us and larger than we have the ability to imagine, unfathomable. We, as humans, are intrigued with size. We love to extol large and small, ad nauseum, and ALWAYS in reference to ourselves as the debatable reference point. And we can experience this God in size scale enigma, from the enormity of the universe, the power an awe of nature on Planet Earth, dust from here to light years distant to the probability and chance that govern the state of sub-atomic particles in your fingernails. Albert Einstein said “God does not play dice”, but perhaps God does. God Beyond has never been tied to our humble, feeble, and all-too-human ability to grasp what we can. Stephen Hawking once said the “universe is not only more complex than we are able to say, it is more complex than we are able to even imagine”. Substitute God for Universe herein.

God Among us is God the Son, in the person of Jesus Christ come to Earth to live among us. Here God is “one of us”, human. God is connected to us. God is a teacher, a friend, a confidant. One of Christ’s best examples was how we can “be God for and to one another”. We have both that ability and that awesome responsibility.

God Within is the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, Counselor. The analogies re many here: wind, breath, the bird on your shoulder, the “still, small voice within”, a swirl, energy, a notion, a flashlight of light or inspiration, a glimpse, a moment of comfort, a moment of recognition of significance. We encounter God Within whenever we find ourselves feeling the hairs on the back of our neck stand up and bristle, whenever we encounter seemingly unexplainable circumstances we find ourselves in serendipitously, when we hear the music from The Twilight Zone, a mountain top experience, a brush with an angel.

I sometimes lose what little Biblical background God has allowed me to muster and fall, as I often do, into story. A story told by the Reverend Robert Fulghum about one grandfather and his granddaughter on an outing to the zoo has always stuck with me. It is a story, once again, of family and the relationship between the generations. We may not be meant to fully understand the gravity of our relationship to one another, but we are meant to attempt to come to terms with it. If we can not possess it, we are perhaps meant to struggle with obtaining some notion of it. We ARE meant to encounter it, for sure. While we will never comes to terms with what God fully is with in this life on Earth, we are made ever richer for the trial to understand, to be curious and to make attempts at encountering our Creator, Our Mother, Our Father, beyond, among and within ourselves.

Perhaps as we seek these encounters, we will become wiser and more patient, as the grandfather in this story admits he has. To know that possessing the knowledge is not the plan, but pursuing and reaching are. That care, quiet, caution and perseverance will serve us well in those encounters with the mysterious. Even, as the Advocate implores us to believe, at the zoo ….

Grandfather and grandchild go to the zoo. For all my “Oh, Sarah, look at the whatevers,” Sarah was most impressed with the pigeons. What she liked about the pigeons was she could almost touch them, but not quite. No matter how cautiously, carefully, quietly, she approached, the pigeons always managed to move just one small step further out of reach. The space between her and the pigeons moved in concert with her. She could come so near and yet never completely close the distance. She spent most of the time at the zoo trying to bridge this moving space between her and the pigeons.They would be made even more real if she could just get her hands on one.

‘What would you do with one if you caught it, Sarah?’

She didn’t know. Possessing was not in the plan. Reaching was what was important. Not catching, but pursuing, mattered. Riding home in a thunderstorm, Sarah fell asleep. I sat and looked for a long time at her face.Now that I am older, wiser, and have the time and patience I did not have as a father, I will approach her as she approaches the pigeons, with care, caution, quiet and perseverance. She is not “mine” and never will be. Sarah only belongs to herself. There will always be a moving space between us – an untraversable distance to be treated with respect.

Sarah doesn’t know what she would do if she actually caught a pigeon. And I don’t know what I would do if I ever caught Sarah.

Perhaps the Trinity remains a mystery, but one we become the fuller and richer for having encountered, with care, quiet, perseverance; not in an attempt to capture God, but in a humble, yet faithful respect for the untraversable distance that is that moving space between us and our encounters with the Almighty.

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.