Between a God and a Hard Place

"Between a God and a Hard Place"
Genesis 22:1-14


I have not talked to anyone since that day.  Except I did talk for a long while with my son, Isaac, right after we sacrificed the ram together.  It was only then that I could pour out my feelings to him concerning the path that God had put me on.  We talked until we were tired of talking about it.  When we were through (and I have always found this quite startling when I think about it) we never, ever again talked to each other about the events of that day.  It was like a vivid dream both of us had, had.  Upon the edge of waking we discussed our dream with energy and total recollection.  But as full wakefulness chases away the memory of dreams, lost forever, so it was that my conversations with Isaac never brought to life our time together again in the land of Moriah.

I wish I had someone else I could talk to.  There’s more to the story than anyone knows.  I’ve been made out to be such a hero.  Such a pillar of the faith.  If I were honest, that pillar is made of salt.  And its feet are made of clay.  Please, hear me out.

The scriptures have only told the story from the side of my actions, as if I were some drugged zombie.  Or a robot who responded only to push-button control.  Nowhere did my tangled web of conflicting love and loyalties make it into the written record.  I kept silent.  Now, even the silence must be silenced.  Now is the time to speak.  The record must be complete.


I suppose there is something to be said for knowing the heart and voice of God.  That night, when God called to me, I could tell by the tone that it was something significant.  I was unprepared, though, for God’s demand.  There entered my first level of confusion and bewilderment:  was it a demand, or was it a request?  Was it open-ended, or was there no way out of this slap-in-the-face horror of what God had asked me to do?  One of the questions that kept coming back to me, as I lay staring into the night, was, “What would God do if I said, ‘No’?  No, I will not sacrifice my son, Isaac!”

Wouldn’t God be able to understand?  Wouldn’t God have some compassion for my position?  Certainly God would realize what has already happened to my life because of such demands.  I’ve been cut off from my entire past.  I have left my family in following God’s Voice.  My family wrote me off as a dead man.  I have not seen or heard from my father or mother since that day I walked away from them.  I left the land of my childhood, the land of my father’s childhood, and of his father’s childhood in order to follow the Voice.  Surely God knew that I no longer had a past.

And before the birth of my son, Isaac, I had no future.  Without a son, I was doomed to die a forgotten man with a forgotten name.  How long had I talked to God of a son?  How many times I had hounded God, at times in disrespectful ways.  “I have no past, God,” I would rant.  “At least give me peace about my future; give me a son!”  Maybe God got tired of listening to me.  Or maybe it was in God’s plan all along.  With the birth of Isaac, my future was secure.  And not only that; God promised that nothing would get in the way of that promise of security.

Now God is asking me to separate, nay jeopardize, nay destroy my entire promised future.  “You promised!” I shouted at God like a child who had been lied to by his parents.  “Are the good things you give us only the prelude to some cruel, cosmic joke?”  The total lack of fairness and justness of God’s demand was beyond the scope of my faith and understanding.

Certainly God had said, “No,” to me several times.  Did I not have the same right of refusal from my side of the relationship?  What would be my consequences if I told God, “No”?  What if I told God that this was to much--this was beyond the limits of what I could take?  What if I just begged God to take this cup of vinegar away from my lips?  That I had swallowed enough?  What if I told God, “You’ve sent enough my way;  I have been tested enough.  If you don’t know if I’m going to be faithful by now and stand up to the stress of your demands, then forget it!  Find someone else; but I doubt if you can.”  What would happen if I said that to God?

I think what kept me from saying that to God (even though I thought it) was the tone of that Voice.  I discerned a feeling of gravity in that Voice.  That there was something happening, from God’s side of it, that was very important.  But hidden from me.  This was not going to be like the time when I bargained God down at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Then, God was willing to bend.  Not now.


Another question that kept coming back to me, not only that night, but during the entire journey to Moriah was, “Why was God testing me in this way?”  Certainly God knew what was in my heart.  I was an open book to God.  There were no dark corners in which I tried to cram things from Gods sight.  Certainly God knew I was an obedient man.

Would you not agree with me that this test was a bit too much--even cruel?  Would you blame me if I found it an attractive idea to look for an easier, less demanding alternative to God?  It wouldn’t even have to be another god.  Maybe just no god.  Wouldn’t that be the most harmless?  Wouldn’t that be the path of least resistance?  Would any of you blame me if I did such a thing?

You probably would.  I can tell by the looks on your faces.  You would probably be right to do so.  To reprimand me just as you would with anyone amongst you who was falling away from God’s leading.  If I were to be truthful, deep down, I could not live with myself knowing I had gone against the wishes of God.  Especially in something that seems to be so important to God.  I could not live knowing I had been so rebellious or indifferent.

But on the other hand, I am finding it very hard to live with that same God who demands the death of my only son!  How can I, by saying “Yes” to God, say at the same time, “No” to my son?  How can I pledge myself to God’s leading, whatever that means, and yet have to bind my son, and put him in the place of one of a thousand other sheep I could sacrifice at this very moment?  How can I look into the very heart of God, and at the same time be forced by that Heart to look into the very eyes of my only son as I raise the knife to strike him dead?

If I only knew for what reason I have been asked to do this deed.  Maybe, in some remote way, I might find peace in that reason.  Why was God asking, even forcing my hand into this dreadful situation?  What could be worth the price of my son, in God’s eyes, to make this request?

I prayed out these questions a thousand times and a thousand more questions a thousand more times that night--until I could contain myself no longer.  I jumped to my feet screaming into the silent stars, “Why, God?  Why have you backed me into the crack of a rock and begun to squeeze that crack closed?”

No answer this time.  In fact there was nothing.  Squeezed and abandoned.  Not forgotten by God.  Just left alone by God.  Intentionally.  I was left to make this no-win decision on my own.

Just before daybreak I had made up my mind.  I hope that you don’t think less of me for choosing to follow through on God’s orders.  I have tried to show you, even though it is not in your scriptural record, the agonizing I went through to make this decision.  I know how easy it is to love a son who is here and now, immediate and close and touchable.  And how, on the other side, God seems so remote and untouchable.  Nevertheless, God’s demand was clear.  Which made my decision all the tougher.  I could have written it all off as a figment of my imagination.  Some desert hallucination.  But it wasn’t.  The Voice was unmistakably God’s.  And the following silence was unmistakably God’s.

My decision to follow the Voice of God and sacrifice my only son was made ultimately on an old desert saying:  The cure for the bite of the snake is in the very same venom.  That is, sometimes the cure we need, the healing we seek, being restored to wholeness lies within the very thing that caused the pain in the first place.  My only hope, as small a thread as it was, was to hope that God, who brought me such pain, would be the healer of that pain.  That in some way God would provide a way for Isaac to live, or for me to live after Isaac’s death.

Albeit, in my mind it was a very thin thread on which to balance the life of my son, as well as my own faith in God.  And, I must confess, that thread was weakened even more by the fact that I had given up.  I knew there was no turning back on this one.  I had hoped that by my decision I could save the two I valued most in life, which were now in deadly conflict:  my God and my only son.  But I signed my sons death warrant when I said, “Yes,” to God.


I suppose I was much like your scripture record portrayed me on that journey to Moriah.  I said nothing.  I became a zombie.  I stared down at the trail ahead of me.  One foot in front of the other.  I felt the times when Isaac would be starring at me, wondering what had happened to his father--what kind of madness had overtaken me.

When we finally arrived at the spot where we were to offer our sacrifice, Isaac and I went on ahead, leaving the servants behind.  When we were nearly finished piling the sticks for the preparation of making the burnt offering, and when Isaac wasn’t looking, I hit him on the head with a rock and knocked him out.  I know I wouldn’t have been able to go through with him looking up at me with those little boy eyes turned suddenly terrified, looking with horror at his own father whom he had come to love and trust.

As I lay his limp body on the dry, stiff sticks, I made another pledge.  This time not to God, but to myself.  If God wanted a sacrifice, then that’s what God would get.  After plunging the knife into Isaac, my only son, I decided I would set the wood on fire, and then plunge the dagger into my own heart.  I would fall upon my son so that we would die and burn together.

I bent low and kissed my only son, Isaac.  I prayed for his forgiveness.  His soft skinned body lay motionless upon the wood.  I unsheathed my knife and held the point over his heart.  I began to bear down on the carved wood handle, but the knife wouldn’t move.  Every muscle in my body had become paralyzed into motionlessness.  And then came the Voice.

“Abraham!  Abraham!  Do nothing more to harm your only son.”  Then silence.  Then, again, the Voice:  “There have been consequences for both of us in this testing.  Here is part of it.  I needed to prove to you that I was faithful to my promise.”
“Do you mean,” I muttered out of my dizziness, “that I wasn’t the one being tested?  I mean, my faithfulness to you?”
“No,” replied the Voice.  “I already knew you were faithful.  But, could you trust ME to be trustworthy and hold to the promise I have made to you?  That is another matter.  I needed to show you, my son Abraham, that I can be trusted, even in the midst of the worst, even craziest of situations.  My promises are not pebbles, but instead the strongest of bedrock upon which you may stand.  Do you understand, Abraham?”
I said that I did, and slowly Isaac and I were coming awake:  me from my dread, and Isaac from my blow to his head.
“But there is more,” God went on.  “Remember I said there were consequences for both of us?”  And here God’s Voice turned very tender, almost sad.  “You are close to my heart, Abraham.  Because you are so close, I wanted to see through your eyes, and feel through your heart a shadow of what I must feel some day.  But even you have know known the pain I must feel.  I must watch the sacrifice be completed.  Your son was spared.  Mine must die.  The pain I have encountered through you does not make me anxious for that day.”  And here the Voice trailed off into a whisper, as God said, “But I will again provide, just as I have provided for you and Isaac, a way for life to overcome death.”

“What does this mean, God?  It is a riddle too hard for me to understand.”  And once more the overpowering presence of God was replaced with the mysterious silence of God.

"Adam and Men"

Adam and Men
Genesis 2:18-25; 3:1-12


One little boy, when asked to tell about Father’s Day, said, “Well, it’s just like Mother’s Day, only you don’t have to spend as much on the present.”

Someone once defined fathers as the ones who give daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough, so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than anyone’s.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Fathers are a biological necessity, but a social accident.”  That seems to be the same sentiment of main stream media, through sitcoms and commercials on TV.  Men seem to be the last subculture in America whom it is permissible to bash, and no one reprimands you for being politically incorrect.  Men are depicted as stumbling, bumbling doofs, who don’t know how to wear the right clothes, can’t remember anniversaries, etc. etc.  Women never do anything wrong.  If they do, it’s usually the man in their life who screwed up.  Men are displayed constantly as dummies who are at the mercy of all knowing females, whose main job it seems to be keeping their men from being too much of an embarrassment.

I’m not sure how things got this way, in the media.  I think it’s sad, and I know I don’t like it.  And I don’t think it’s true, for the most part.

We men certainly have our challenges, though.  The whole women’s liberation movement has thrown us into an ongoing identity crisis of our own.  I don’t think we understand, anymore, what it means to be a man.  There’s a certain lack of clarity about what manhood, or manliness even means anymore.

So I want to talk about some of the challenges of being a man in our culture.  I want to bounce my ideas off of the story of the first man, Adam.  I want to identify three challenges we face as men, and get both men and women thinking about them together.

(Read Genesis 2:18-25)

I think the first challenge of men is dealing with our, apparent, inherent predisposition towards aloneness.  Notice God looks at the first man, and God doesn’t say, “It’s not good for man to be lonely.”  God says it’s not good that man is alone.  Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing.

Another important point to recognize in this story is that it is God who sees there’s a problem.  God identifies the problem, not Adam.  Adam doesn’t say, “Darn, I’m alone.”  And that might be the problem.  I’ve always leaned towards the interpretation that Adam was lonely.  But maybe the problem is that Adam is enjoying being alone too much.  Adam gets up each morning and says, “Alright!  Another day to myself.  I’m going to go do a little fishing.  Then try some hunting.  Then come home tonight and eat a whole pizza myself.  Then take charge of the remote control and watch all the shows I want to watch.  It’s going to be another great day, with no one else telling me what to do.”  And God saw a problem with that:  It’s not good for the man to be alone.

But that’s not all.  There is another whole level to this alone problem that God sees.  There’s a difference in how Bible translations deal with this statement of God.  Some have what I just said.  It’s not good to BE alone.  But the other translations have, “It’s not good for the man to LIVE alone.”  Is it live or be?  What’s the difference?  What’s the difference between LIVING or BEING?

Living, it seems to me, has to do with how you are.  Being has to do with who you are.  To be has to do with existing--your basic existence; who you are.  To have “being” is to have existence.  Therefore, when God spied on Adam, what God recognized was that it’s not good that the man’s being, his existence, should be defined as aloneness.

Indeed, if man is going to figure out his being, he may not be able to do that alone.  He needs another who also has being, to play his being off of in order to discover his true self.

Being has to do with your nature.  Living has to do with your nurture.  Some men, by nurture--not by nature--are who they are because of the kinds of families we grew up in, or by the kinds of experiences we’ve had in friendships, or by the kinds of relationships we’ve had with women.  All of that may have played a part in nurturing us to be alone, to feel alone, or to be loners.  Our nurturing, and if it was wounding nurturing, has caused men to feel alone.

BUT, that’s not our nature.  That isn’t how God wants us to BE.  That’s not who God created us to be, as men.  BEING has to do with how God made us--the basic ingredients around which God formed us.  One of the ways we were made to BE was evidently not to BE alone.  Our BEING, that is the discovering of all the basic ingredients God poured into us, making us, won’t be discerned or discovered alone.  We need another.  We need relationship to discover who to BE.

So, the first challenge to see in the Adam story for all men is the challenge of BEING.  The challenge of being alone, or being in relationship.  The challenge of thinking we can discover our being by ourselves, vs. discovering who we are in relationship with another.

(Read Genesis 3:1-6)

In this part of the story, it looks like there are only two characters:  the woman, Eve, and the serpent.  But we find out later in the story that isn’t exactly true.  There is another silent person there.

If you’re a questioning type of reader of this story, something may not seem right to you.  While the woman is sparring verbally with the serpent, where is the man? you might think to ask.  It’s not until Eve picks some of the forbidden fruit, we find out the man has been standing right there all along.  Adam has been doing nothing.  Saying nothing.  Why doesn’t Adam engage the serpent also, alongside Eve?  We aren’t given the answer to that question in the story.

There is the saying, “Two heads are better than one.”  So why didn’t Adam put his head in the conversational battle between Eve and the serpent?

Let’s go back to the first challenge I identified.  If Adam continues to struggle with the preference to be alone as a man, and yet may desire companionship, that doesn’t necessarily means he knows how to do that.  Certainly building a sense of intimacy and companionship with another, especially a woman, means creating a team.  That we are on the same team.  The man may need companionship in dealing with his aloneness--according to God--but it doesn’t mean Adam knows how to do that through team building.

So, the challenge I’m identifying here is building companionship through teamwork.  If how we as men come at life is more out of a rugged individuality, doing it ourselves, being our own boss, coming into our own, carrying our own weight, then the challenge will be to become a team with the woman whom God puts in the way of our desire to be alone.

In the book we used for Men’s Bible Study, Wild At Heart, one of the needs identified for we men is an adventure to live.  We men need a challenge, and to see if we have the right stuff to meet those challenges.  One of the internal questions we ask ourselves constantly is, “Do I have what it takes?”

But, because of this deficiency or difficulty of being unable to team up, we end up living the adventure, or taking on the challenge alone.  Which reinforces the tendency God doesn’t want--being alone.  The book also made the point that the women we love want an adventure as well.  A challenge to meet and overcome.  That they would give anything if we’d team up and take them along, make life and adventure an “us” thing, rather than a “me” thing.  The Eve’s in our lives don’t care that we want or need an adventure.  They just want to be on the same team.  The question then becomes, not:  “Do I have what it takes?” but, “Do WE have what it takes?”  In dealing with the serpents in the world, the challenge is, will we let woman take them on, on her own?  Or will we team up, and go after them together?

There’s another side of this part of the Adam story.  I would call it manning up vs. hanging back.  Again, in the book Wild at Heart, author John Eldredge says one of the biggest flaws we men might have is hesitating when we should act.  Adam hesitated, standing there at Eve’s side when she engaged the enemy.  It might have been one of the silent--yet loud-and-clear--ways, by his hesitation, of telling Eve, “We aren’t a team.”  He not only hesitates;  he hangs back.  Until it’s time to eat.

We’ve heard of the “mother bear” effect.  Of the woman, the mother, coming to the quick, unhesitating defense of those she loves, against an enemy.  Why haven’t we ever heard of the “father bear” effect?  Of men, launching themselves, unhesitatingly into the face of danger?  Alongside, as a team, with the mother bear?  At the point Eve needed a teammate against evil, Adam hesitated.  That hesitation cost both of them.

So the second challenge for men, that we learn from the Adam story, is the challenge of building companionship through creating a sense of team alongside those we love.  And not hesitating, especially when evil is knocking on the door.

(Read Genesis 3:7-12)

Adam has blown it.  Not just HOW he is, but WHO he is--his being--has been compromised.  Now what does he do?  How does he, how do we men, handle that?

Adam covers up.  He gets a fig leaf, maybe two, and covers up.  Adam is ashamed, so he covers his shame rather than courageously exposing it to God, to the world, to the truth.

Men, from that time on, are faced with the challenge of being a poser vs. being an exposer.  Instead of exposing ourselves to the truth, we pose behind a lame disguise.  A fig leaf, if you will.  We bluff our way through life.  Throwing ourselves into occupational fervor becomes a fig leaf.  Big car, big cigar--status symbols compensate for our failures.  Posing.  We’re faking it.  John Eldredge wrote that part of our posing involves the way “We pick the battles we’re sure to win, and only the adventures we’re sure we can handle.”

In a term I just recently heard, we put on our big boy underwear--our fig leaves--and then cower behind the bushes.  “I was afraid...” Adam says to God, “...so I hid.”  Posing is hiding behind something we think is going to shield us from exposing the full truth of our failures to the ones we love, and the rest of the world.

After we try posing and covering up, when we find out that isn’t going to work, we deny and blame.  It’s the woman’s fault, Adam tells God.  Refusing to take any responsibility for his failure at being a man, Adam blames the woman.  In a bank-shot sort of way, Adam blames God since God made the woman.  “...the woman you gave to me...” Adam whines.

Imagine how Eve hears that statement from her man.  What Eve is hearing is, “We’re not a team.  There’s no companionship between us.  I’m being thrown under the bus so he can be a poser.  The man just needs me as a foil for his failed manhood.”

That’s what being a poser is.  Covering up.  Denying and blaming.

I wonder how God would have handled the whole situation if Adam was an exposer rather than a poser.  What would have happened if the man went nakedly up to God, with Eve at his side, and said, “Look at us.  We messed up.  I failed Eve and you.  We got into this as a team, and we’ll face the consequences together.”

Expose yourself to the naked truth about your BEING before God.  Expose yourself to the truth of your BEING.  To expose yourself to who you are, not how you are.  If you, like Adam, think it’s a HOW problem, you will continue to fail.  That’s Representative Anthony Wiener’s problem.  He thinks he has a HOW problem as a man.  He thinks if he can change the HOW it will at the same time change the WHO.  That’s what he’s got; a WHO problem.  Same with Arnold Schwarzenegger; same with John Edwards.  And all men like them.

So the third challenge of being a man is the challenge of being an exposer vs. being a poser.  That the remedy for the messes we get ourselves into lies in fixing the who, not the how.  And that’s a God thing.  That’s a work that God does in us.

Some of you women who are listening in on this may be saying, “Yes!” thinking about your men.  But don’t let that stop you from thinking about your own aloneness, deficiencies in being able to create a team, hesitating, as well as posing, denying and blaming.

As I said earlier, this is not who God made us to be.  It’s time, isn’t it, to live in the power of God’s Spirit, to be the kinds of people God created us to be.  Not only HOW we are; but more importantly, WHO we are.

"Person To Person"

"Person To Person"
Acts 2:1-18


Today opens the doorway to the church season of Pentecost.  It’s a long season, as church seasons go.  Pentecost will take us all the way up to the last Sunday in November.

The church season of Pentecost is sometimes called, “ordinary time.”  It’s called “ordinary” because there are no special days toward which it points.  Advent is a four week season that points to and prepares us for Christmas.  Then comes Lent, which points to and prepares us for Easter Day.  But in Pentecost, we start with the event of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and like a summer heat-depleted river, slows down considerably after that.

This description of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie.  It’s mysterious; it’s surreal; it borders on the bizarre.  First there is the noisy wind from heaven that blows through the house where the disciples are gathered.  There was no wind outside.  Just inside.  Then there is a fire that descends and splits into many little fires that come to rest on each disciple’s head.  No hair gets burned.  The little fires that are flying all over the room are in the shape of little tongues.  Then everyone starts talking at once, but in different languages.

If you were having breakfast at the 54 Cafe with the guys and told them this story as if it had just happened to you, I think everyone would get up and move a few stools away.

There was a Steven Spielberg type of character who lived back in the sixteenth century named Lorenzo D’Medici.  They called him “Lorenzo the Magnificent” because he was a celebrator of the first magnitude.  He would stage huge pageants and public spectacles at religious festival times.  All the people in the City of Florence where he lived would become involved in the celebration.

On one occasion, he decided to stage the pageant of Pentecost in one of the city’s great churches.  He liked realism in his drama.  So he arranged for a system of wires and pulleys to come down from the ceiling so that, at a given time, real fire would come swooshing down.  As the great play unfolded, on the day of Pentecost, the fire came swinging down right on cue.  But it brushed against some flimsy stage hangings, igniting them on fire.  The church burned to the ground.

We celebrate the giving birth part today.  The push outward.  The strong, driving force that births the Christians out into the world.  There’s a transformation of the faithful that moves them from a bunch of disorganized believers who become a living, breathing church.  At Pentecost, it is the believers, once hidden and submerged, who now emerge to tell about the great things our God has done.

Think of what kinds of people were gathered in that house on Pentecost.  Those whom Jesus had chosen were everyday people.  Hardworking laborers and professional people.  Fishermen and tax collectors.  Men and women.  They, at this time of Pentecost, 40 days after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, were a lost bunch.  Without vision.  Without courage.  Feeling powerless.  With the coming of the God’s Spirit, they became invigorated.  They found a new firmness in their spiritual backbone.  God had inflamed them with tenacity, and an outreach that was transformed from timidity to boldness.

The  Power of Pentecost, for me, as I read this story, has to do with the good news that the gospel message was intended to be carried from person-to-person.  The gospel was never intended to be mass marketed like used cars or new windows and siding for you home.  No glossy ads for the gospel in women’s magazines.  No Christianity section in Walmart.  No pop up ad for Jesus on your PC while surfing the internet.  No Facebook page for Jesus (although, I should check that; I’m sure someone’s probably posted one there.  I wonder how many “friends” Jesus would have on a Facebook page.)

Instead, through the quick knowledge of other languages, the God’s Spirit equipped these ordinary people with the ability to share and portray the Good News person-to-person.  The ability God’s Spirit gave the believers was to speak in other languages.  The everyday language of the people, spoken person-to-person was going to be the way God wanted the good news to go out.

Language.  I’m going to make some fairly obvious statements.  We talk in language.  We think in language.  The power of imagery is carried through language.  The power of imagination is in the ability and use of language.

I want you to close your eyes.  Get your imagination ready.  Take a deep breath.  Now, imagine a hot day.  It doesn’t take much to imagine that, since we’ve just lived through some very hot days.  Feel the intensity of heat on your face.  Feel your face, and the back of your neck turning red from the heat.  Your skin begins to sweat.  The heat makes it hard to breathe.

Now, imagine a child sneaks up behind you.  They have an ice cube.  The child begins dripping the icy water off the ice cube down your back.  Then that child drops the whole ice cube down your shirt.  The child presses that solid, frozen piece of ice against the skin of your back and rubs it all around.

Now, open your eyes.  Did anyone feel the heat on their face as I described it.  And did your back arch a little as I described the ice water dripping down your back, or feel that cold cube on your hot back?  Did it make you cringe a little?

The power and impact of that guided imagery certainly had to do with your imagination.  Your imagination almost made those sensations real.  But mostly it had to do with words.  With language.  The words I spoke, in the way I spoke them, evoked the image and sensations you were feeling.  The language was the power behind what your were feeling and imagining.

What would happen if I said the same thing this way:
A young human male, holding a cube of super refrigerated hydrogen and oxygen molecules, began dripping some of those molecules onto the anterior side of your body, striking the over-heated epidermis and allowing the liquid molecules to run down latitudinally upon the surface of that epidermis.

Would that have created the same effect as my first description?  I basically said the same thing.  I just used different verbiage, different language, different words, in each instance.  The key is not only what I said, but how I said it.  The language I used.

Or, what if I had done the same guided imagery, but spoke to you in Norwegian?  How many of you know Norwegian?  Thus, my speaking, my language would have had no impact.

In order to have some kind of impact with language, you need to know at least three different things.  First, you need to know your own language.  You need to know how to speak.  How to form the correct sounds into words; and then form those words into sentences so that you can communicate sensibly with another human being.  Secondly, you need to know the language of the person you are talking to.  I’m not sure how well Adam and Brooke did over in Europe the last couple of weeks, but I’m sure there were some awkward moments when the language of a speaker and the language of a listener were different, and communication was difficult.  And thirdly, if the language of the speaker and the language of the listener is different, you need to know how to translate the one into the other.

When I was on a mission trip in Guatemala, we went into the northern mountain area of that country.  The native people there still cooked over open fires.  They spoke a language called Coxtial.  These people are descendants from the Mayans, and the language they spoke was an ancient Mayan dialect.  I knew some Spanish, and a few of the people on our team spoke Spanish fluently, but it didn’t help.  We still needed a translator who, after we translated our English into Spanish, she had to then translate the Spanish into Coxtial.  In order to communicate, we needed someone with knowledge of three different languages.

You’ll remember from last week’s message we looked at the first chapter of Acts where Jesus told his disciples, “You will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  You would think that the disciples would have stopped Jesus, if for just a moment, and wonder about how they were going to do that.  The disciples must have assumed that going to “the ends of the the earth” would bring them into contact with people who don’t speak Hebrew or Aramaic.  How were they going to accomplish that task, being at a disadvantage, because they don’t speak the language?

Now I want to expand this beyond just different languages like French, German, Spanish, English, or Coxtial.  Let’s pretend we in the church are like a foreign country to those who are unchurched or barely in the church.  Don’t we have our own language, our own vocabulary, that we just expect every visitor to understand when they walk in the door?  We throw out words like grace, salvation, gospel, good news, baptism, communion/Eucharist, savior, prayer, lord, Pentecost, eschatology, repentance, righteousness, worship, sin, blood, God, trinity, judgment, etc. etc.  We just expect that everyone who comes in here has some kind of instantaneous, magical understanding of all that religious verbiage and language.  But we in the church speak a foreign language compared to our Monday morning world.

In her great book, A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris wrote:
When I began attending church...I felt bombarded by the vocabulary of the Christian church.  Words...seemed dauntingly abstract to me, even vaguely threatening.  They carried an enormous weight of emotional baggage from my childhood... For reasons I did not comprehend, church seemed a place I needed to be.  But in order to inhabit it, to claim it as mine, I had to rebuild my religious vocabulary.  The words had to become real to me...

We do have our own language in this place don’t we.  We have to understand our language.  That’s the first rule.  But we also have to understand the language of everyone who comes in here.  That’s the second rule.  And if our languages don’t measure up, we need to find a way to make what we’re saying is understandable to those who don’t use our language.

Look at how Jesus used these three rules.  How did he speak to people?  Did he speak like a priest in the temple?  No.  Did he speak like the rabbi’s?  Kind of.  How did he speak to people?  He told stories.  Parables.  In language and with imagery that spoke to the people.  He didn’t make them first learn the language of Jewish religiosity.  He spoke in a language that they knew and could understand.  Story language.

Probably the hardest thing I do every week in worship is the Children’s Story.  Most of the kids are pre-schoolers.  Pre-schoolers speak a different language.  How do I translate religious language into everyday language and then again into pre-school language?  How do I tell a parable-like story so that it conveys a Godly truth that they might be able to understand?  It’s the thing I agonize over the most, every week.

Many of us know our religious language fairly well.  But the problem is, we want to cling to it so badly we don’t find ways to “translate” it into other “languages” or situations.  We are so stuck on trying to keep our religious verbiage that we don’t learn how others speak, putting what we’ve got into their words so they’ll understand it.  I read the religious column in the newspaper and I ache for the church.  Why can’t we learn to speak a different language?  Why do we think everyone understands?  Why do we think everyone else has to learn our language first before they can be one of us?

Each person, each group of people, each organization, each “culture” of people, no matter how large or how small, have their own language.  Each has not only its own vocabulary, but also its own way or style of communicating that vocabulary.  Hospitals, schools, computer business, construction workers, legal offices, politicians.

A couple of summers, when off from college, I worked as a laborer on a construction crew in Seattle.  One time, one of the carpenters said to me, “Hand me that international screwdriver over there.”  I had no idea what he was talking about.  I looked all through his tools.  Finally, in exasperation, he yelled at me, “The hammer, you idiot!  Don’t they teach you anything, college boy?”  I knew some things.  I just didn’t know the language of the construction worker.  I learned really fast.

Some people just don’t have any impact with their language because they either don’t know their own language; or, they don’t know any other way to say things; or, if they do, they aren’t willing to make the translation.

Think of the different “cultures,’ the different language contexts in which you live every day.  How would you communicate “the great things God has done” in those contexts, and in those languages?

This is the wonder of Pentecost.  That God’s Spirit came upon the believers and gave them the knowledge of a different language so they could speak about God to other people.  They were given a new language not so they could impress their friends.  Not so they could order food at a foreign restaurant.  Not so they could get a job at the United Nations.  It was to tell others, in a way that could be understood, about our amazing God.

We can have such an impact.  We need to know our own language--which is the message we have to speak.  We need to know the language of those who listen to us.  We need to have the patience and sensitivity to listen to how others communicate, to learn those ways.  And thirdly, we need the special assistance from God’s Spirit to give us the remarkable ability to translate the Christian message in a way that makes sense to others.  That’s our mission.

"From Here To There"

There’s a semi funny movie that came out a number of years ago titled, “Oscar.”  It stars Sylvester Stalone as a crime boss named Snaps Provalone.  At the start of the movie, Snaps’ father is dying.  As he dies he makes Snaps promise he will leave the life of the mafia and become a legitimate business man.  It’s going to be a huge stretch for Snaps.  He’s never done anything legitimately his whole life.

At one point in the movie Snaps finds out a housekeeper stole some money from him.  His friend tells Snaps, “If I had an employee do that, I would have terminated her permanently.”

Snaps replies, “I can’t do that anymore; the best I could do is fire her.”

When I was in Bakersfield, a friend of mine was a therapist.  She was Jewish.  But she hadn’t always been so.  She was, at one time, in fact a member at the Presbyterian church where I served.  Her father was Jewish.  When he was dying, and gathered all his adult children around his bedside, he said, “I hope at least one of you will return to the Jewish religion.”  And then he died.

My friend, in honor of her father’s request, began re-exploring the Jewish religion, and later honored her dying father’s request, and became Jewish.  It was a tough journey for her.  One with hard decisions along the way, that affected not only her, but her relationship with her husband and children, who kept coming to the Presbyterian church.  It took her a while to figure out how to get from here to there with her father’s final request.

Jesus is standing on the Mount of Olives with his disciples.  It’s a beautiful view looking over to the city of Jerusalem which sits on the opposite mount.  It’s the last time Jesus will be together with the disciples.  It’s their last conversation.  Jesus is about to ascend to heaven.  The disciples don’t know that.  In that last conversation, Jesus will make a final request that will leave the disciples scratching their heads, wondering how they will be able to honor it; how they will get from here to there.

Luke doesn’t give us much detail about the conversation.  At first Luke simply writes that Jesus talked with his disciples about the kingdom of God (1:3).  Then one of the disciples asks Jesus if the “kingdom” was going to be given back to Israel at that time.

Jesus’ response should have been paid attention to by Harold Camping and all the people who listen to his radio broadcasts in our day:  “The times and occasions are set by my Father’s own authority, and it is not for you to know when they will be.”  That’s pretty straightforward.  Hello, Harold, and all the people who got sucked in by him:  do you read the Bible?”

Anyway.  Jesus gives the disciples a different answer than they expected to their question.  Basically, Jesus says, we’re not talking about Israel here.  We’re talking about you disciples.  We’re not talking about what will happen with Israel in the future, but what you need to do right now.  I need you to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Then Jesus says, “Bye, bye.”  He was taken up to heaven.  Gone.  Here’s what you need to do.  See ‘ya.  Gone.  No discussion.  No clarification.  No explanation.  No details of how they’re supposed to get that last request accomplished.  Just a bunch of disciples standing around looking at each other, wondering if everyone else just heard what Jesus said, knowing full well they did.

If Jesus was going to restore the kingdom (whatever that meant in the disciples minds) to Israel, then being the inside 12 with Jesus meant they were set up for some fairly influential positions of leadership.  If Jesus was going to restore the kingdom to Israel, then the disciples would be the new go-to guys.

But that’s not quite how it turned out.  The disciples vision about who Jesus is and what Jesus’ message is about is very provincial.  Their question only concentrated on a small part of God’s world:  Israel.  Jesus’ parting request has to do with the ever widening, concentric circles of influence of the gospel.  Like a rock thrown in a pond, and how the ripples keep enlarging and extending to all the boundaries of the pond.  That’s the vision Jesus has for what the disciples are to be about.

It would be like if Jesus appeared quickly in the sanctuary here, and said, “I want you to take the gospel to all of Pratt, then Pratt County, then Kansas, and to the ends of the earth.”  And then disappears as quickly as he appeared.  We would all be sitting around wondering, “OK; How do we get from here to there?”

That’s what the disciples were standing there, on the Mount of Olives, pondering, as Jesus disappears.  Jerusalem, OK.  Judea, Cool; we could probably pull that off.  Samaria, Huh?  Ends of the earth, Double Huh?  Jesus’ final request actually becomes the outline for the book of Acts.  That’s exactly what happens in the outreach of the gospel.  It starts in Jerusalem, and by the end of the book, Paul has taken the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Let’s take a look at Jesus’ last request, and see what it’s going to mean for the disciples, as well as ourselves.

First, Jesus says, “...you will be witnesses for me...”  You may think that’s all well and good.  A witness.  You can do that.  Just like at a trial.  But the word in Greek for our English word witness is “martys.”  It where we get our word, martyr.  Jesus is saying, “You will be martys/martyrs for me.  Bye. Bye.”

There are two different dimensions to this word.  First, and basically, a martys is a person who has seen.  Martys people are people who have first hand knowledge of the facts, or whatever it is that is at issue.  They don’t speak out of here-say.  They aren’t just giving their ideas about something.  They aren’t talking out of ignorance.

One church had been given a large bequest when a member died.  At the meeting of the church board, they were trying to decide what to do with the money.  The church organist said it would be nice to have a chandelier in the sanctuary.

Another elder huffily retorted, “That sounds like a stupid idea to me.  We certainly don’t need no chan-dee-o-leer in the church.  Who knows if we have anyone in the congregation that could even play a chan-dee-o-leer.  It’s clear to everyone who comes in that sanctuary that what we really need is more lighting.”  If we are bearing witness out of ignorance, then we quickly disqualify ourselves as well as what we are witnessing about.

John Naisbitt, in his wildly popular book, Megatrends, wrote:  “We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.”  And that was back in 1988.  How much more so is that true in 2011?  But that’s what being a witness is--someone who can speak knowledge in truth.  A martys is someone who just doesn’t memorize what others believe and repeat it like parrots.  A martys is someone who knows how to give an answer with authenticity, because they know.

There is an old story about Dr. Werner Von Braun while he was on the lecture circuit.  He traveled by a chauffeur driven limousine.  One day, while on the road, Von Braun’s chauffeur said, “Dr. Von Braun, I have heard you deliver that lecture so many times that I’ll be I could deliver it myself.”

Von Braun replied, “Very well, I’ll give you that opportunity tonight.  The people at the University where I am going to lecture have never seen me.  So before we get there, I’ll put on your cap and uniform and you will introduce me as your chauffeur and yourself as me.  Then you will give the lecture.”

For a while everything went according to plan.  The chauffeur delivered the lecture flawlessly.  But as the lecture concluded, a professor in the audience rose, and asked a complex question involving a certain mathematical equation and formula.  The quick thinking chauffeur replied, “Sir, the solution to that problem is so simple, I’m really surprised you have asked me to give it to you.  Indeed, to prove to you just how simple it is, I am going to ask my chauffeur to step forward and answer your question.”

You can get by mimicking others, or parroting what looks like being a person of faith would look like.  You can talk the talk.  But at some point you have to speak of what you really know.  You have to speak to the true reality of your experience and your relationship with Christ.  That’s part of what it takes to be a witness as Jesus wants us to be.  That’s what it takes to get from here to there.

It isn’t about being a theologian.  It isn’t about even knowing the Bible from front to back.  It isn’t about memorizing and reciting Bible verses.  It isn’t about standing up here and giving nice little speeches we call sermons.  It’s about being willing to be a witness about your own personal experience with Jesus Christ, and how Christ has made a difference in your life.  That’s what being a witness is all about.

Jesus goes on to say the disciples will be witnesses for him in Jerusalem and Judea.  In other words, you have to start somewhere, sometime.  It may be difficult, but the point is to get started.  Like the children’s letter to God:  “Dear God, I’m taking violin lessons, but you shouldn’t listen yet, because I still squeak a lot.  (signed) Russell.”  You may squeak a lot, as you figure out where and how to start being the kind of witness to your Christian experience that Christ wants.  Regardless, identify your starting point, and begin.  What does that song “New York, New York” say, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”  That’s how you identify your Jerusalem.  If you can make it here (wherever that is for you), you can branch out and make it anywhere.  Start here, move out to there.

For Jesus, moving out to “there” meant first a stop at Samaria.  Samaria was a rival religious center to the south and east of Judea.  They had similar, but not identical religious beliefs to the Jews.  Basically, there was a ton of mistrust between the two regions and peoples.  The tension was caused by tribal and religious differences.  Pretty much like it is today.  Not much has changed.

So having Jesus tell the disciples that they needed to take their witness into hostile territory was going to pull the disciples up short.  It would be like asking Gordon Soffer to go witness to the liberal democrats.  It would be a tough sell.  It definitely would not be fun, (even though it would be fun to watch).

Jesus’ point is fairly clear.  We don’t get to be witnesses about out relationship with Christ only to people we like, and who we know will respond.  We don’t witness only to people we know will listen.  Being a witness is not going to be some great and fun adventure, all the time.  It will put us face-to-face with people we’d rather not have anything to do with.  But if our witness to the reality of our personal relationship with Christ is going to mean anything, then we need to be ready for tough audiences.

Finally, Jesus says to take your witness to the ends of the earth.  Most people hear that and think, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to have to go into the Amazon River jungle and witness to headhunters!”  Like the cartoon that showed two cannibals talking.  The cannibals are holding spears with skulls attached to them.  One of them is holding a sharp knife.  The one with the knife is saying to the other as they look at the missionary, “He really said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body?’”  Not very many want to take that kind of risk in terms of being a witness.

I want you to think of this differently.  Not many people can go to the ends of the earth.  But what if your ripple effects can?  What if what you start--the ripples you cause--can have a far reaching effect?

Think of your kids.  How many of you now have adult children?  Where are they now, geographically? (Let people say where.)  OK.  Would you agree that you have had an influence on those kids?  Would you agree that you still have an influence on your kids?  Would you also agree that your now grown children are coming into contact with others?  That they are having an influence on their peers?  Might you agree that your children were your Jerusalem--your starting point?  It’s not just a moral influence, but a spiritual influence for Christ, sharing your experience with them.  They in turn move out from you, beyond you, and have spread that influence wherever they go.

How many of your grown children have children?  Do you see where I’m going with this?  And I haven’t even gotten started on the people you have had a witness-for-your-relationship-with-Christ in your vocation--with employees, clients, students, patients.  Starting with you, starting with your Jerusalem, and moving out in diverse and countless directions.  The ripple effects of your single witness, having started here, may have literally traveled to the ends of the earth.

In 1855, a Sunday School teacher named Kimball talked about his faith to a 19 year old shoe clerk.  That shoe clerk became a Christian.  He started out as a Sunday School teacher and later became a world known evangelist.  His name:  Dwight L. Moody.  In one of Moody’s crusades, there was a man by the name of Frederick Meyer.  He gave his life to Christ and became an evangelist.  In one of Meyer’s preaching stops he led a discouraged soul named Wilbur Chapman to Christ.  Chapman became a preacher.  As his ministry grew, he needed an assistant, so he hired a former baseball player named Billy Sunday.  Billy Sunday became an evangelist, and in 1924, led a religious revival through prayer meetings.  At one of those meetings, Mordecai Ham responded.  Later, when Ham became a preacher, during one of his worship services a 16 year old farm boy named Billy Graham gave his life to Christ, and felt called to become an evangelist.  Ripple effects.  Moving out from here to there.  And it all started with a Sunday School teacher named Kimball.

“But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The empowering Holy Spirit comes next week, as we celebrate Pentecost.  Be ready.