Tuesday, December 27, 2011

God

"God"
Luke 1:46-55


When I used to teach Confirmation Class, there was one final assignment that I’d ask the class to do.  I would meet with the 8th graders from September to the following March.  We would cover all the basics of the faith:  Who is God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit?  What is the church?  What is a Christian?  What is the Bible?  They are huge questions.  Trying to get this kind of material across to 8th graders is like marching in where angels fear to tread.  My son, Ryan’s class, was a case in point.  It was one of the largest classes I’ve taught, and they were all clowns and goof-offs.  I don’t know if I got anything across to any of those kids.  It’s for that reason that many of my pastor friends think we should teach Confirmation class to students right after they graduate from college.  We might have better luck.

Anyway, the final assignment, after having spent months on all these heady theological topics, was for each eighth grader to write a statement of faith.  The kids worked on these statements for a couple of weeks.  After a special meal, with the parents in attendance, all would gather in the sanctuary.  Each confirmand, in turn would stand in the pulpit and read their Statement of Faith.  They would describe as 14 and 15 year olds what they’ve come to believe.  All of their years of Sunday School, all of the times they sat through worship, all the Youth Group meetings, all that “faith stuff” got distilled down into a statement of what they believed.

It’s probably one of the hardest tasks the class members had to do.  Each class struggled, wondered, fretted, sweat bullets.  Most felt inadequate to the task.  They asked, “Is this good enough?”  Or, “Is this what you want?”  All I said was, “It’s your statement.  Do you feel it’s good enough?  Is it what you want to say?”  It’s a much more difficult task than most realize.  When my son stood in the pulpit for his turn, he talked about what he didn’t believe rather than what he did. It was the most creative of his class, coming at his belief by talking about unbelief.

Maybe I should give each of you that assignment.  All of the adults in our congregation could be required to write out a statement of faith.  As an adult, what would you write?  What would you say in writing out what you believe?  How often do you really contemplate what it is, exactly, that you believe or don’t believe?  And how would you state it if you were forced to write it down to be read in front of the rest of the people in this congregation?

I think it would be a good Christmas tradition for all believers.  Sit down in a quiet place.  Take out your journal if you use one.  If you don’t, get one.  You can call it your Christmas Statement of Faith Journal.  Look back over this year of your life.  Based on the experiences of this past year, write a statement of what you believe.  How have the experiences of the year shaped your faith?  As you have come to worship or Sunday School, what has caught your attention?  How has your faith in God shined brighter in your life?  Or has it dimmed?  How have you noticed the hand of God in your life in this past year?  What is it that you believe?  Or what, about our Christian belief have you had a hard time believing?  Think about those kinds of questions and then write a statement of faith.

If you follow through on this suggestion, and you want to take the further risk of letting me read it over, I’d be happy to do that, and talk it over with you.  I won’t make you read it in front of the congregation.

Mary gave us her statement of faith to read.  She looked back over the recent events of her life and wrote a statement of what she believed specifically about God.  She realized the central character of her story is God.  We look at the story and sing about shepherds and wise men and angels and Joseph and Mary.  But in and through and around the whole story is God.

Mary wrote her statement of faith in the form of a song.  It’s a piece of compact poetry that is full of the images of what she has come to believe about God.  I think some of the meanings of the imagery is known only to her.  But I found a few points of her faith statement that were important for me that I’d like to lift out for our attention this Christmas morning.

First, the first word in each of the lines of Mary’s faith song is, “God:”
God is my Savior…
God cares for me…
God has blessed me…
God All-Powerful has done great things…
God always shows mercy…
God has used his powerful arm…
God drags strong rulers…
God gives the hungry good things…
God helps his servant…
God made this promise…

Even though each of our faith statements are our own, and come from our own hearts and experiences, they are not ultimately about us.  They are about God.  Who God is.  How we have come to understand God.  We can’t discover who we are until we first discover who God is.  Not the other way around.

The message of Christmas is that God revealed himself ultimately and fully in Jesus.  It is that revelation that we must grapple with most in our own statements of faith.  Only by understanding God in the revelation of himself in Jesus Christ will we then come to a clearer revelation of who we are in God’s eyes and purpose.

That’s what Mary concentrates on most in her song:  What God has done.  Not what she thinks God is like.  But what God has done.  God reveals his nature by what he does.  We can’t just sit around and think about what we think God might be like.  We must, as Mary does, concentrate on what God actually does.  God is constantly revealing himself in the world.  Only by keeping our eyes open do we see those acts of revelation and how God is behind what’s going on.  In all things, through all things, above all things, GOD.

Secondly, Mary believes that God is a God who is personally involved in the world and in her individual life.  Several times she used the personal pronoun as a direct object of God’s activity.  God is not only the Savior; God is MY Savior.

By claiming God as Savior, Mary is highlighting her belief that God is behind the saving, redeeming, forgiving acts in people’s lives and in world history.  God is the one who is involved in personal and historical salvation in all its forms.  Wherever there is some form of salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, God is somehow intimately involved in that act.

In our American culture we know how to go after guilt and shame.  We know how to prosecute and judge, even before any trial happens.  We know how to run people through the legal ringer.  We dot all the “j’s” and cross all the “t’s” in judgement.  We know how to pronounce the moral verdict and hand down the sentence.

But we don’t know what to do afterwards.  Once we’ve run someone through the gauntlet of humiliation and judgement, then what?  Where and how are the equal, and maybe more powerful forces of forgiveness and salvation and ultimately, reconciliation brought to bear?  There is no due process for forgiveness and salvation, except by God.

That’s the message of Christmas, and the faith statement of Mary:

With all my heart I praise the Lord,
and I am glad because of God my Savior.

Praise God, Mary is saying in her statement of faith, that in God, I can finally find a place of salvation, rescue and forgiveness.  Because it can’t be found anywhere else.  There is no where else in the world that Mary found a Savior, except in God.  Neither will we.  Life doesn’t revolve around the judgements of rulers.  Nor does life revolve even around the real and unavoidable consequences of our actions.  Life revolves around God the Savior, God the forgiver, God the one who sees imperfections and reconciles us not only to God, but to each other, and to ourselves.

That’s Mary’s message to us about Christmas.  Christmas is a time to celebrate God’s Good News of how God is bringing ultimate reconciliation, love, and embrace into the world through Jesus Christ.

There are so many other important statements Mary makes in her faith statement about God.  Things like God uses surprising people to accomplish God’s work.  All through the stories about God in the Bible, God seems to delight in choosing people we wouldn’t choose if we were in charge.  The author of the book about Samson that Men’s Bible Study just finished up this week made that point about Samson.  In the Epilogue of the book, the author wrote:
I stand in awe of a God who is gracious enough to tolerate a guy like Samson, let alone use him.  If I had been calling the shots, I probably would have blown Samson off somewhere around his twenty-fifth birthday.  I would have grown completely frustrated and found another person to work through.  Someone who would take the Nazarite vow seriously.  Someone who would follow orders.  But God stuck by Samson…

Mary has come to believe that God values people and things differently than the world does.  We think power and personality and celebrity and athleticism and authority is what’s important.  God turns all that on its ear.  Makes it disappear in a poof.  At the same time, God elevates what in God’s eyes is really important.  The humble are given authority.  The hungry are fed.

Just look at the Christmas story.  Shepherds who are completely despised as human beings had angels singing to them.  Those smelly outcast shepherds, children and adolescents mostly, were the first to see the Savior.  Wise men--foreigners--were shown to be the ones who understood who Jesus was, traveling great distance just to see him.  Mary saw how God was, and how God acted.  Thus she came to make a statement of faith based on what she saw happening, and the way God worked be uplifting those we’d pass by.



For Mary, God is a stunning and awesome God.  But as powerful as her statement of faith is, she still doesn’t know the half of it.  God has some surprise revelations for her yet.  Little does she comprehend who the child is whom she carried and now has given birth to.  That revelation, and a fuller understanding of God, is yet to come.  For now, sitting in a cattle stall, holding a baby, listening to shepherds jabber about angels singing--this is enough.


So, are you ready to write your statement of faith, this Christmas Day?

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Submission

"Submission"
Luke 1:38


It just so happened that a charismatic TV preacher, as a side job, ran a dog obedience school.  A lady brought her dog to him and told the preacher that her dog was totally wild and wanted the full obedience training.

After three weeks the lady called, and was told her dog was ready.  When she went to pick up her dog, the preacher demonstrated what the dog had learned.  First, he said, “Sit!” and the dog sat.
“Lay down,” he said, and the dog lay down.
“Roll over,” was the next command, and the dog obediently rolled over.
“That’s wonderful,” the woman exclaimed.

But then a sudden realization hit her and she asked, “But what if the dog just obeys your voice and not mine?”
“Give the dog a command,” the preacher said.
“Come,” the lady said, and the dog came to her side.  She started to walk away, and commanded, “Heel!”  The dog immediately knocked her over, placed its two front paws on her forehead and bent its head and prayed.

We’ve come to think of obedience as something that has to be force learned.  When you’re training a horse, you have to first “break” it; that is, force it to submit to your will and your command.

I remember one of the buzz phrases back in the 1980’s, pertaining to raising children was, “the strong-willed child.”  That term was used to describe a child who was stubborn or uncontrollable.  Books with titles like, Shaping the Will Without Breaking the Spirit were popular bestsellers in the parenting section of the book store.

Even on an international level, when Iran or North Korea start acting up, refusing to go along with inspections of their nuclear facilities, the United Nations forces them to submit through economic sanctions and embargoes.

Submission has become an action that only comes about when someone puts the heal of their boot heavily upon our lives.  We usually have to be forced to submit, involuntarily.  Take, for example, the various “occupy Wall Street” groups around the country, and in other nations.  Though one of our inherent rights as citizens is “peaceful assembly,” (and I’ll say more about that in a few minutes), these “occupy” groups are now being forced to submit to packing up and going home.  The disenfranchised 99%, speaking out against the franchised 1%, trying to get their voices heard, even though it’s not clear what they want, are being forced to submit to packing up the tents, and closing down their protest.

The worst example was in the middle of November at an “occupy” protest on the UC Davis campus.  The line of students at a peaceful demonstration, sitting on the ground, locking arms, were pepper sprayed by police because the students wouldn’t move.

That’s how submission usually happens.  People submit because they are out-manned or over-powered.  People are policed, legislated or pepper sprayed into waving the white flag, or throwing in the towel because they have been overcome by someone else’s superiority and they can’t take it any longer.

When I’m working with couples who are preparing to get married, we get to the point of planning the service.  We talk about the vows.  We talk about the sacredness of the vows and what it means to speak a vow to another.  But there is one phrase that used to be in the traditional vows that couples refuse to say:  “...to honor and obey…”  Obey has become an ugly word.

Obedience is a form of submission, of giving our will to another out of fear of consequences. It is almost essential to obedience that there be no specific rationale for the action demanded by the authority. “Do as I tell you” leaves no room for questions. We are not supposed to understand, only to carry out.

II
The Roman culture of New Testament times was similar to our modern western culture in that freedom was one of the greatest of all virtues.  We are the land of the free.  The Bill of Rights insures certain freedoms that each citizen has by virtue of living in this country:  freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom to assemble, and so on.  We work hard to make sure that none of those freedoms are trod upon.

The Roman culture during the time of the New Testament looked down their noses at slaves and servants.  There was clear contempt for slaves by those who were free.  Being free was such a value, anyone who was not free, like a slave, was deemed to be a class lower than human.  Likewise, we work hard to make sure we aren’t totally under someone else’s thumb.  We also don’t mind if we have at least a few people under our thumb, that we can order around so we can feel powerful and important.

We have to be careful, then, not to race over certain parts of the Christmas story because they make us twinge a bit.  Parts like when Mary submits to the plan of God to carry and give birth to the Savior.  Mary said to the angel messenger, “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

What she told the angel is that she will submit to God, as a slave would submit to her master.  J.B. Phillips, in his translation of the New Testament, catches the flavor of what Mary said:  “I belong to the Lord, body and soul.”

At another place in the Christmas story, Joseph refused to take Mary as his wife because she was carrying a child that wasn’t his.  He felt betrayed and humiliated.  The angel came to him in a dream and told him to forego his pride, submit to God’s plan, and take Mary as his bride.  He woke up and without hesitation obeys God’s word.  Two other times the angel visited Joseph with a plan from God, and Joseph submitted himself to that plan.

The wise men who searched for and eventually found the Christ child were told by God that they were not to return to Herod, but go home by a different route.  They were not to tell Herod if and where they found the Christ Child.  They obeyed, and went home a different way.

Obedience and submission are woven into the fabric of this birth story.  People were approached by God to submit to God’s plan.  Those people obeyed and followed God’s word.  God didn’t overpower the main characters of the story.  God didn’t force them to submit.  God didn’t back them into a corner so they had no other choice.

That’s what’s important to remember as we read these stories.  God allowed these people the right to say “no.”  Mary could have said no, refusing to have God’s child.  Joseph could have said no and allowed Mary to be stoned for adultery, or rejected her and marry someone else.  The wise men could have said no and gone and talked to Herod anyway.

But they didn’t.  It was more like they voluntarily and happily submitted to what God asked them to do.  Maybe it was the way God asked.  In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard has a chapter about submission.  In that chapter he wrote,
Submission, though, is a call for help to those recognized as able to give it because of their depth of experience and Christlikeness.

That was a new thought for me--that submission is a reply to a call for help from another.  Is it possible that God’s message to Mary and Joseph and the wise men was not in the form of a demand or a proclamation as much as it was a call for help from God?  Did Mary hear the angel’s message not in the tone of “this is a done deal and you will obey,” as much as in the tone of, “God needs you.  You are the only one who can help.  Please participate with God in God’s plan to save the world.”

Mary becomes a willing spirit, submitting herself not to a command that has no choice, but a plea, a request of urgency.  By asking her, God recognizes that she has the depth of character and Godliness that is able to willingly submit to God’s plea.

Mary becomes a witness to all of us “no-sayers: who refuse to see how God needs us.  Are we so into ourselves and our own little self-made worlds, that any request from God is immediately seen as an arm twisting demand?  We fail to recognize that when God makes some request of us, that God has already decided we have the depth of character and faith to do what God is asking of us.  It is an honor to be told by God that he needs us to take some action.  Do we twist that honor into seeing it as a demand for our unwilling obedience?

This week I read an excerpt of a book that hasn’t been published yet.  The book is titled Reweaving the Human Fabric, by Miki Kashtan.  In this excerpt she tells about how she has always struggled with authority figures, and been rebellious to their demands, refusing to obey.  Then a light came on for her and she saw that it isn’t about obeying or rebelling.  It is about her own inner character.  She wrote:
Internally I was more preoccupied with not giving in than with knowing what I wanted and going for it.  I chose my actions reactively, not truly from within.  I didn’t see what is now so clear to me: that true choice, true freedom, emerges from inner clarity.

That, I think, is what’s behind Mary’s ready submission to God.  She wasn’t playing a game with God and resisting just for the sake of resisting.  Mary had an inner clarity, and inner sense of character that helped her realize what she wanted.  Having that inner clarity is what is so freeing.

Here’s another way to say this.  Jonathan Edwards was a great revival preacher in the early 1700’s.  He believed that submission is an exercise of the will in the direction of the affections of the soul.  (Let me say that again--listen closely.)  What I get out of that is that each of us have certain affections deep in our soul.  They could be affections for any one or any thing.  When we will ourselves to submit, we do so in the direction of those deep affections.  We willingly do what we deeply love.

So, if our affections are for God and the things of God, we will have no problem willing ourselves to submit to God and the pleas of God.  But if we have little or no affections of the soul for God, it will be hard for us to bend our will to submit in God’s direction.

Inner clarity, deep affections of the soul, no matter what you call it, that is what is at the basis for the times of our greatest and most willing obedience and submission.  Mary must have already had deep affections for God and the ways of God.  Because of her long held inner clarity, it was easy for her to submit to God and say, “Let it be to me as you have said.”

III
This inner clarity resulting in true submission does a couple of things.  First, it shows how much we value another person.  It demonstrates to others to whom we submit how important they are to us.  How important their dreams or plans are to us.  We don’t submit to people who don’t mean anything to us.  Mary’s submission to God and God’s plan was a demonstration of how much God meant to her.

Secondly, true submission, arising out of the deep affection of the soul, becomes an alignment of the inner person with outer actions.  It is possible to obey a master, or a boss, or a parent, or a spouse, without living in a spirit of submission.  We can do what others ask of us and at the same time harbor rebellion and resentment in our hearts.  We can be obedient to God, but grudgingly, as if we are being put upon.

We would rather let our submission be like paint which only covers the surface, without penetrating or sinking in.  But true submission is like stain, which penetrates deeply into the grain and fibre of the wood.  The inside matches the outside.

Frances de Sales, Bishop of Geneva back in the early 1600’s wrote this in describing the devout person:
They are people with angelic hearts.  They are full of vigor and spiritual agility.  They have wings to soar aloft in holy prayer and they also have feet to walk among people in a holy and loving way of life.  Their faces are beautiful and joyous because they accept all things meekly and mildly.  Their thoughts, affections, and deeds have no purpose or motive but that of pleasing God.  Such are devout persons.


IV
This Advent season, spend some time in prayer, using this quote from de Sales as a mirror.  Let it penetrate the fibre of who you are, and who you want to become.  How do you see yourself in comparison to its reflection.  Look at the descriptive words:  words like “vigor,” “spiritual agility,” “affections.”  How do they reflect, or not reflect with your life.  Let these words be like God’s plea to you, a plea to your deep affections, to your sense of inner clarity, that this is who God wants you to be for him, starting this Christmas.  God’s not demanding it.  It’s a plea.  Will you submit?

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Cornelia Wing Memorial Service Message

Cornelia Wing Memorial Service Message



When mom was a little girl, church was front and center to everything her family was about.  Church was not a like a pond into which her family dabbled its toes from time to time.  It was a full body immersion. There was intentionality.  There was resolve.  And if you knew Grandpa Matson, her father, you also knew there was fun.

My mother's family, as she grew up, were members of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Seattle.  The Pastor was the Rev. Dr. Mark Matthews  Tall.  Stately.  Fearsome.  He was known to wear a top hat and tails into the pulpit every Sunday morning.  Taking up the offering was a particularly solemn occasion in the worship service.  One time mom's brother Emerson got away from his parents before the service started, stood up on the front step of the front of the sanctuary and said, in Rev. Dr. Mark Matthews tones, "Bring me your pennies."

One of the hallmark ministries that set First Presbyterian Church in Seattle apart was it's mission to the winnos and skid row derelicts on First Avenue and the water front.  In fact, the term Skid Row, was first coined in Seattle.  Built on several hills, everything slid down to the waterfront.  The closer you got to the water front, back in those days, the more ruined your life.  You skid down.  Any wholesomeness your life had skid down, the lower down the hill you went.

There were several missions and soup kitchens on First Avenue.  One of those was run by First Presbyterian Church.  Mom's growing up family had a large part to do with the program in that soup kitchen.  While the winnos and booze hounds slurped up their free soup and home made bread, music would be playing.  Old hymns banged out on an similarly old, out of tune upright grand.  The piano player was my mother's mother, Elizabeth.

After her father lead everyone in a number of hymns, with him ending up mostly singing solo's on each song, he would give a devotional.  Only he called them "chalk talks."  He had a large black board he would creak across the floor.  He would start in on his chalk talk, drawing a line here or there on the board.  A few souls would look up from their steamy soup.  My mom's dad, Nils Matson, would begin weaving a story in his characteristic Swedish accent.  My grandfather was an inventor, and many of his greatest inventions were the stories he told.

I never saw my grandfather do one of his chalk talks, but my mom told me about them.  With each line or curve or circle that he'd add to the blackboard, more and more of the derelicts would put down their spoons, beginning to wonder what the picture was going to become.  By the time he was done, my grandfather had everyone's attention.  His bright red Swedish cheeks were only matched by the sparkle in his eye, as he masterfully reeled in his audience.  By the time he was done, the lost souls were a little more found, a little more hopeful, and a little more fed.

Sitting down in front were three little children.  Singing along with their mother as she played that old piano with chipped ivory keys.  Watching as their father drew pictures on the large slate blackboard.  Those three children were Emerson, Dorcas, and my mom.  Sisters and brother growing up watching their parents be the church on Skid Row.  Week in and week out they were doing ministry together.  Although they may have never called it that.  To them it was just how they were as family.  Growing up in the working class neighborhood of the Roosevelt district of Seattle, my mom, the middle child of the three, had a life that revolved around a hard working mother, and an impish and child-like father whose love of fun often over-ruled the semi-sternness of her mother, and the church.  Always the church.

In her later teenaged years there was a boy who was told about my mom.  They were set up to meet through a mutual friend.  It was a blind date.  And it happened at church.  At the same First Presbyterian Church in Seattle.  My mother decided if this boy was going to meet her and show any kind of inkling toward her, it was going to be in church.  And so they met, in church.  During a worship service.  Dr, Mark Matthews still pompously presiding in the pulpit.  Soon they were dating.  And then married Douglas Wing, my father.

But my mother was never able to fully pull my father into the orbit of the church as she was used to.  Whereas my father only played at church, and later shunned it, my mother was immersed in it, and eventually became discouraged.  She had grown up with the best Sunday School teachers.  Men and women who were called home from the mission field as the second world war was getting ramped up.  Sitting at the knees of these great Bible teachers, with their wild mission field stories, instilled a deep and learned quality to my mom's faith.  She more than once expressed exasperation at the low quality of Sunday School teaching we were getting when she'd take us to church.

I was a reluctant attender of Sunday School.  I remember waking up early on Sunday mornings and praying to God that my mom would sleep in so we wouldn't have to go to Sunday School.  I'm not sure how God sorted out those prayers spoken by an impetuous little boy.  I guess God showed me by calling me into the ministry, and finding myself in charge of the educational programs in the congregations I'd serve.


As much as I despised coming to Sunday School and memorizing Bible verses, just as equally or more, I loved going to worship with my mom.  There was something about sitting next to my mother in that large, long A-frame sanctuary at First Presbyterian Church in Bellevue that filled me with awe.  It all started when I was a boy and I was sent to St. Thomas Episcopal Day School.  Dave and I went.  Dave was transferred over to Medina Elementary after one year, but I was kept at St. Thomas up through the 3rd grade.  I've never been sure why I was kept there by my parents.  Marching to chapel every day in my crisp white shirt and salt and pepper pants.  Banging down the prayer kneelers as loud as we could when Father Val Spinosa said, "Let us pray."  The round stained glass window in the back of the sanctuary beaming red and blue lights all over us.

That's what I carried forward with me as I sat in church with my mom, in junior high.  Rev. Frank Burgess looking down at us from that tall pulpit through those rose colored glasses of his.  I could never tell exactly where he was looking.  I always felt like he was looking straight at me and my mom.  It was sitting in church with my mom one Sunday, that I heard the still small voice saying, "Steve, this is what I want you to do."  I remember looking at my mom wondering if it was her who spoke.  I remember looking all around to see whose voice that might have been and finally decided it was God.  I remember telling mom on the way home, "I think I heard God telling me he wants me to be a minister."  She looked over at me, her 7th grade son, and simply said, "Oh, that's nice."  I think she really wanted someone to carry on the legacy of church that she had grown up with--but not take it so far as to become a minister.

My mom had a falling out with church at First Pres, as we called it.  I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden we stopped going.  I just happened to meet a girl in the youth group, so I kept going.  But mom ran into one of those hard spots that most of us run into with church.  Hard nosed people who don't understand grace.  Judgmental and unkind.  Treating church as more of an extension of the country club than what she had grown up with at her father and mother's knees.

I am so thankful to God that she found this church, Rose Hill.  Here she was able to refigure out her way, and gain a new enthusiasm for church.  Here she didn't sit back anymore, but got involved with several ministry oriented committees, then became a Deacon and an Elder.  As a Deacon she began to reclaim her roots of reaching out to hurting people.  She helped start something called the Tea Cup Ministry, extending caring, companionship and hospitality to those who were newly widowed.  It was a ministry that eventually served her when our father died in 1995.  And I think, if I remember right, the Tea Cup Ministry was taken up by other churches in the area, once they heard about the work my mom and her friends on the Deacons had got going.  It is the tea cup ministry that will serve us as we fellowship together after worship.

It was also here that I got to continue one of the things I loved to do best as a boy and youth, and that's attend church with my mom.  When ever I was in town, we'd sit right back here.  She'd proudly introduce me to all her friends sitting around her, and she always had to add, "He's a Presbyterian minister."  No chance of just coming and hiding out in church with mom.

But for me church has been that special bond between my mom and me.  I felt like I got caught up in her legacy, started so many years ago on Skid Row.  She helped me catch a love for Scripture, one that she nurtured through years of Bible Study Fellowship.  Her priority of service oriented ministry has been a laser light of direction for me.  Her  unwillingness to give up on the church, even when the church was being lead and populated by hurtful idiots, has been a rock for me when I have felt like giving up on the ministry.

And I think that's why I'm telling you all this.  My mom's life has had a common thread.  And that thread has been her relationship with Jesus Christ and his church.  She never gave up.  She never gave up on it even when my father was pressuring her not to go, or involve us kids in church.  She never gave up on it when she was hurt by it.  She sat here in the pew, and she loved it, and fought for what was best and right in it.  She made it her life.

I would be remiss if I didn't say this to you all, and I think she would reach down out of heaven and shake me if I didn't ask you to think about this.  To think about her and what her life meant.  I know some of you have had a hard time figuring the ins and outs of your faith.  Including some of her own children and grandchildren.  I know you're sitting there thinking, "Oh, boy, here it comes."  I can't tell you the number of conversations I had with her about how she wished you would all find your way in the church.  That somehow her life mattered because you would make what mattered to her most deeply, matter to you as well.  Our mother's greatest legacy, as great as we are, is not her children or grandchildren.  Even above us, is her faith, her love for the Savior, and how she expressed that faith and love in her work in the church.  That, above all things, is what she wanted passed on to us.

I'm not going to take advantage of your emotions, too much, here at mom's memorial service, and guilt you into the life of the church as she lived it.  I only ask, in her name, that you would consider it.  If you have strayed, if you've been hurt, even if it just doesn't make sense any more, would you, for mom, just think about the place of the church in your life, and your relationship with the Lord.  As I look back over her life, I believe it is her greatest legacy.  Is there some way you can get caught up in that legacy in some new way.

Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so,
Little ones to him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me,
The Bible tells me so.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Pregnancy

"Pregnancy"
Luke 1:30-31, 36-37


In order to determine if he was running to the best of his ability, marathon racer and cardiologist, Dr. George Sheehan went to the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  There, physiologists gave him a maximum human performance test.  Part of it consisted of running a mile on a treadmill at an eight minute pace.  Then he had to run a mile on the treadmill at a seven minute pace.  And finally a mile at 6 minutes, 40 seconds, with the treadmill at a steeper grade.

All the time, the physiologists kept urging Sheehan to try harder and do more.  When it was all done, Sheehan took out the mouthpiece, gasping, “O God!  O God!”  The physiologists poured over their figures, excited about his performance.  “He went over the hill,” one of them said.  Sheehan had reached his maximum peak performance and gone past it.

The pain eventually began to recede.  As he sprawled out on a chair, feeling content, he kept trying to think of an experience that similarly taxed the human body to its maximum.  Then it came to him.  He turned to the other doctors and asked, “How soon can I see my baby?”

That may be the closest a guy can get to understanding, or getting a taste of what pregnancy and child birth are like.  I confess, I don’t know what it feels like to give birth.  Equally, I don’t know what it feels like to be pregnant.  There have been movies about guys being pregnant.  But they are all comedies.  They are never dramas, like when the movie is about a woman being pregnant.  With a guy, pregnancy is funny.  With a woman, it’s drama.

Guys don’t have a clue as to what goes on in pregnancy.  And I think, if I may be so bold to speak for most guys here, we are happy with that.  We are happy that we don’t know.  It’s OK with us.  Do you agree, guys?  I mean, we get in on the good part of pregnancy, and then we get to sit back and watch.  There’s nothing else a guy can do.  You can’t get morning sickness for your pregnant wife.  She has to do that herself.  You can’t transfer the baby into the guy for a while to relieve your pregnant wife from carrying the child the whole nine months.

We can walk funny, like our pregnant wives, but then we get hit.  So, like I said, there isn’t a whole lot we can do that will ever help us guys understand what it feels like, and what you women have to go through when you’re pregnant.  And, as I said before, we are happy with that.  You women just go ahead and get together with your little coffee and chat groups.  Compare notes and birth stories.  And we will, well, we will continue being guys.

Even in childbirth--maybe especially childbirth--we guys feel mostly helpless.  We’re supposed to be good coaches, run to the store for your pickles and ice cream;  tell you when to breathe, and be generally encouraging and all that.  But when you’re in marathon runner level pain, pushing out our children, we feel mostly helpless and stupid.

Do you remember that Bill Cosby routine, when he tells about the birth of their first child.  He set the whole scene by telling about their expectations for how it would go.  That the birth of their child would be natural and enjoyable.  But then how quickly all that went out the window once the contractions started.  When he told his wife to breathe during one of her contractions Cosby described how she grabbed his lower lip and pulled it up over his head.

That’s when we guys realize that, as helpful as we think we are being, as helpful as we are supposed to be during our wives pregnancy and childbirth, the reality is, we’re pretty worthless to the whole process.  Except for the beginning.

So, with all the courage and stupidity I can muster, I’m going to stand up here and talk about pregnancy.  Even though I’ve already disqualified myself, and I have no idea what you women are thinking of me for even attempting what I’m about to attempt.  But I’m going to take the chance, because I’ve stood by during the pregnancy of my two kids and witnessed them both being born.  And I have extensive experience talking with pregnant women in the churches I’ve served.  So I’m hoping I come off sounding like I’m at least semi-knowledgable.  (You guys are all sitting there smugly smiling thinking to yourselves, “This ought to be good.  We’re going to just let Wing step on this land mine.”)

The reason I’m taking this risk, I hope, is clear.  You can’t get into the Christmas story very far before you are dealing with pregnancy.  Even before Mary’s pregnancy, we are told about Elizabeth.  She’s a woman whose age has taken her well beyond child-bearing.  She’s never had any children of her own.  She’s the wife of a priest named Zechariah.  An angel visited her and told her she will have a baby.  A baby who will eventually become John, the forerunner of the coming of the Savior.  Then the same angel visited Mary.  Mary was an unmarried girl.  She hasn’t had any children not because she’s too old, but because she’s so young.   The angel told her she will have a baby, and that he will be the Savior of the world.

So right off we are dealing with two pregnant ladies.  The early parts of the Christmas story have to do with 15 months of two overlapping pregnancies.  It just seemed to me, that if we are going to understand the Christmas story, we have to be able to understand something of what it means to be pregnant.

We have to put ourselves back in Mary’s time.  And for you older women, you might be able to relate to this better.  There were no drug stores back then you could run to and get a home pregnancy kit to find out if you really are pregnant.  Unless you get morning sickness, there are no signs for the first month or two.  Mary wouldn’t have known, for sure, if what the angel told her, really happened to her.

I remember the first few months of doing those early pregnancy tests.  All negative.  Months of tests turned into years.  Then medical procedures.  Then fertility drugs.  Still nothing.  After each procedure, the promise and possibility of being excited.  But nothing.  Just another negative; looking at each other; looking at the floor.  Finally giving up.  There was a certain release in giving up.  A relaxing.  Embracing childlessness.

Then, BAM!  Pregnancy happened.  First Ryan, then Kristin.  I remember the elation.  The surprise.  The disbelief.  The jumping up and down.  The excitement.  The anticipation.

But those first couple of months, for Mary, would have been filled with all kinds of apprehension and emotional anticipation.  When you get a message from God that you will be pregnant, you don’t have to worry about home pregnancy tests or infertility techniques.  It’s going to happen.

During this time Mary apparently didn’t tell Joseph what had happened with the angel’s visit.  The gospel tells us that while she and Joseph were betrothed, that she was “found to be with child.”  Once she starts looking pregnant, once everyone discovered her pregnancy, that’s also when Joseph found out.  For most women, part of the excitement that is generated is when you start to “show.”  But for Mary, that’s when the secret is out.  That’s when she can’t hide anymore.  There was no jumping up and down from the thrill of being pregnant.  She and Joseph probably didn’t hug each other in sheer love of each other at the news.

Mary took the angel’s message with so much grace and acceptance.  Without too much questioning, she said, “Yes.”  At some point there must have come the sudden fear of, “Oh my gosh; what have I done?”  Is it a question most women ask themselves, either privately or out loud?  Do the questions start taking over the initial elation?  Questions like, How is this going to change everything?”  Does early excitement begin to be mixed and mingled with those “reality check” kinds of questions?

Until then, Mary’s life went on normally.  “This is pretty easy,” she might have thought to herself.  But then when her pregnancy was clear to everyone, and the fact that she and Joseph had not married yet, and that Joseph wasn’t the father of her baby, the reality checks of pregnancy came hard and fast.  When did Mary sit down and say to herself, “Oh my gosh; what have I done?”  Questions that hadn’t even entered her mind up until that point.  When did she finally realize, as most women must, that being pregnant as she was, was going to absolutely and irreversibly change her life?

See, I may be wrong here, but I’m not sure guys think about those kinds of questions with their wife’s pregnancy.  We don’t start thinking about such things until well after the birth, when our children cry, and we don’t know what’s wrong, and we don’t know how to fix it.  I think guys think their lives will remain pretty much unchanged.  We’ll be good fathers and all that.  But for the most part, we don’t assume children are going to change or affect our life direction, vocation, and goals.  When that reality hits, we are totally unprepared for how to deal with it.  Women, because they think about these kinds of realities the whole pregnancy, have at least a nine month jump on us.


Women get a much more real glimpse of all this because something happens around the fifth month of pregnancy.  Many women talk about losing track of their bodies.  It feels like their body doesn’t become theirs anymore to control and do with what she wants.  The child, growing inside of her, controls what and how much she eats, how well she sleeps, how she walks, how she is able to function or not function in her daily life, and how close she has to be to a bathroom at any given time.  Even just sitting in what used to be a comfortable chair isn’t comfortable any more.  Let alone riding on a donkey for several days.

Everything in a pregnant woman’s body seems to change and there’s nothing she can do about it.  In pregnancy, a woman finds out she has been taken over by something much larger than herself.  She has given up all sense of control to do anything about it.  That’s why women may be more ready to understand the life changes that come with pregnancy--because so much has changed already for them.  We goofy men go off to work each day, kiss our pregnant wives, and tell them how much they are glowing.  We are clueless.

I think about Mary.  She’s having to deal with her ever enlarging body, and the fact she was losing control of her body.  But more than that, she was also dealing with the reality of losing control of her life.  Not only had pregnancy taken over her body, but God’s plan had taken over her life.  She simply bowed before it at the angel’s visit.  How happy was she with it all once it all started unfolding?

I’m kind of like that.  I get these grand ideas or make some big plan.  I assume that everything will just go grandly.  I work it all out in my head and assume that it will work the same way in reality.  Then real life takes over my grand plans.  They start spinning out of my control.  All my assumptions about smooth sailing go overboard when the first wave hits.  Especially when the plans have to do with the Lord and the work of his church.  I have the clear assumption that all has to go well since it has to do with God.  Why then do I all of a sudden find myself backpedaling, compromising, or just plain doing damage control?

Mary must have sat down and cried at several points as she lost more and more control over her situation.  I think that’s why she finally ran off to aunt Elizabeth’s house.  Elizabeth would understand.  Elderly Elizabeth finally got what she prayed for in her pregnancy, and quickly found herself in a similar out of control situation.  Mary probably wasn’t looking for any answers to her problems from Elizabeth.  She didn’t want Elizabeth to solve anything for her, or explain the odd ways of God.  She just wanted to be with someone who understood what it was like to have your body taken over by pregnancy, and your life taken over by God’s plans.  Now, Mary’s sledding down a hill, with all kinds of obstacles in the way, and it was God who gave her the primary shove.  And Elizabeth is on the back.


Then there comes the time in the last weeks of the pregnancy when women say, “Let’s get this over with!  Let’s just have this child!”  After nine months of planning, preparing, and “nesting,” there is a resoluteness that sets in to get it over with.  The nine months have run their course.  The waiting has turned into impatience.  The discomfort is at its greatest.  The time of birth, too, is out of a woman’s control, unless it will be a C-section.

I think of Mary, plodding along toward Bethlehem, sitting uncomfortably pregnant upon the donkey.  They finally arrived after what must have been an unbearably longer journey for Mary than for Joseph.

Then Luke tersely states, “While they were there, the time came for her to give birth.”  How much is hidden in that verse.  How much had come before and during the pregnancy for Mary to finally get to that verse in the story.  Nine months of an emotionally difficult pregnancy went into that statement.  We don’t even know, physically, how the pregnancy went for her.  Simply that the time finally came to give birth.  Finally.  Did she look at Joseph and say, or at least think, “Finally we get this thing over with”?

But then what?  Then comes life.  After pregnancy comes life.  When Mary, when any woman is pregnant, the child within her is self-contained in the womb.  But once the birth happens, once the pregnancy is over, that life is out.  Then there’s a whole new set of issues to face.  But that’s another sermon.

At this point in the story, Mary is still early in the pregnancy, and the majority of the nine months lay ahead of her.  The surprise is beginning to fade.  The reality is beginning to set in.  Harder days lay ahead.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Surprise!

"Surprise"
Luke 1:26-29


Who knows what each day will bring.
A heart attack.
A lottery win.
An accident.
A burst pipe.
A new job possibility.
A visit from an angel.
None of us knows.
We go about our business.
We expect it to be just another,
normal day.
Wake up.
Take a shower.
Eat breakfast.
Read the obituaries in the newspaper,
make sure you aren’t there;
then read the comics,
(make sure you aren’t there)
then go back and read the trivial stuff
on the front page.
Brush your teeth.
Go to work
or school.
Function adequately.
Come home.
Do chores
desk work
or homework.
Relax.
Eat supper.
Hear everyone’s news
if there are others in your home.
Watch KU basketball.
Go to bed,
or fall asleep while watching TV.
Wake up the next morning
to more of the same
do it all over again.
Predictable routine.
We don’t mind routine.
In fact, we count on it.
We like the way our lives play out by a certain, daily rhythm,
until
until something happens
that makes our routine skip a beat.
Once in a while,
our self-fashioned world
gets thrown out of orbit.
Something shifts.
Our poles get reversed.
Time gets wrinkled.
A little--or large--monkey wrench get’s thrown in the works.
Something happens that
 as Jerry Lee Lewis used to sing
     makes us feel like
“There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”
A car accident.
One of the kids or grandkids gets sick.
Scary sick.
A bomb gets launched in our direction.
A sudden change in the weather.
A flat tire
while you’re going 70.
Finding out you’re pregnant.
Something, like that couple up in Kansas City
he worked the night shift
she was at home with their one year old daughter
but she had bought a box of wine
and drank the whole thing herself
as well as downing antidepressants
and he came home in the morning
to find the one year old girl gone
and no one knows where she is
or what happened to her.
No one wakes up
at the top of their expected, routine day
and says:
“Something life-changing is going to happen to me today.”
It’s OK to have something different in the day.
But not that different.
Nothing that will change your day to night.
Nothing that will make your river flow upstream.
Nothing that will make your sun rise in the west
and set in the east.
Nothing that will ask more of you
than your current level of functioning would allow.
Nothing that will make you find out
what you’re really made of.
Nobody wants something like that
suddenly thrown into their day.

In Nazareth there is a huge cathedral.
HUGE!
It was built during the time of the Crusades.
It’s called the Church of the Annunciation.
Outside, there is a courtyard,
probably as big as the entire property of this church.
It’s a tile mosaic.
Hundreds of millions,
of tiny tiles
laid by the crusaders.
Inside, a beautiful,
wide open sanctuary.
There are two levels.
The lower level is like a grotto.
Large enough to seat maybe a hundred people.
The rest must stand,
up above
looking down.
Down in the grotto,
inside that HUGE and ornate cathedral,
is what’s left of Mary’s home
or what is assumed to be Mary’s home.
It is one of the holy places for Christians.
A magnificent cathedral
both inside and out.
For what?
To commemorate what?
The day the angel
surprised a teenaged girl named Mary.
It shouldn’t be named the Church of the Annunciation.
It should be named the Church of the Big Surprise!
The surprise that forever changed the life of Mary.
The surprise that not only put a wrinkle in her day,
it was a wrinkle
that would never be ironed out.
Imagine,
Mary’s mother comes in that day and says,
“Are you all right, dear; you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“No,” Mary replies.  “It was more like an angel.”
“Yeah, right,” her mother laughs.  “You and that fanciful head of yours.”
Imagine the surprise Mary’s mother gets,
when she finds out Mary was telling the truth.
Interesting,
we don’t read anywhere in the Bible,
about Mary’s mother
and how she dealt with her daughter’s surprise.

That’s the trouble with surprises like that.
They don’t just affect the one who got surprised.
The ripples go farther out than that.
Every surprise,
on Mary’s level of surprise,
always affects many others.
For Mary
her surprise affected the whole world.
Her surprise broke the time barrier.
It has spread its ripples through two thousand years.
What happened to a middle eastern girl
has caused an impact across every cultural boundary.
Mary’s surprise not only changed Mary.
It changed the world.

But it wasn’t just a visit that was the surprise.
If it was just a visit by an angel,
that would be one thing.
But it wasn’t just a visit.
It was a visit with a declaration.
It was a declaration about a mission.
It was a mission that was the surprise.
It was a surprise that changed the world.
The mission was to carry and give birth to a baby boy.
A baby who would grow up
to be the Savior of the world.

The surprise is,
you never walk away from a visit with God,
or one of the angels
and stay the same.
The surprise is
your life shifts.
Something is demanded of you.
Everything will be different
from that day forward.
As Jacob found out
after wrestling with God
after being touched by God,
that his hip would never be same.
  You never walk away from an encounter with God
without a limp.
Your personal mission
the one you fashioned for yourself
the one you thought was your own
the one you even thought was given you by God
the one your daily routine is designed around
that mission
could be gone.
In one single moment.
A new mission will take its place.
God’s mission.
The mission that is authentically
and really
from God.
And maybe,
that’s why we’re secretly afraid of God.
We’re afraid if we get too close to God
we will have to change.
Our mission will have to change.
Our reason for being will have to go.
We don’t want any surprises
on God’s scale of things.
We don’t want to change.
We like our lives.
We don’t want to see any burning bushes
like Moses saw.
We’d rather tend our sheep
out in the middle of nowhere
than lead a people
on a crazy journey
across a desert peninsula
to God-knows-where.
We don’t want to hear the surprise voice of God
asking us to take our family
and leave for another land,
not knowing where, exactly that is,
like Abraham.
We’d rather stay settled.
Deeply rooted in place.
We want to live out our lives
with our own people
in the way we choose
in the place we choose.
We don’t want to hear the voice
of some crusty old, curmudgeon prophet
sent by God
making a surprise visit to our family
and find out the surprise is
that God wants you to be King
as young David found out.
We’d rather play our flute
to the sheep
kill a wolf every now and then
but let that be the limit of our activity
or courage.
We’d rather not take on leadership
that asks more of us than we want
or feel we’re ready
to give.
We just want to do this much
and no more.
We don’t want to be knocked off our horse
by a bright light
and a strange voice
asking us why we’re fighting
what we know is the right thing to do
like Paul was.
We don’t want to find out
that everything we’ve been doing
up to that point in our lives
has been wrong.
We’d rather fight the demons
of our own creating
call the people we don’t like
or don’t agree with
the devil
and chase them down
so we can ram our religious ways
down their throats.
We’d rather stroke the institutions
rather than live by faith
led by a free God
who wants to give us a new name
and a new mission.

Maybe you think what’s being asked of you
is way too much,
beyond your capabilities.
At least,
beyond your willingness.
But that doesn’t matter to God,
and God’s surprising choices.
God doesn’t wait for your approval.
God simply comes
and thrusts you into a position
which you would not normally choose on your own.
We, really,
deep down,
don’t want God making those kinds of choices for us.

Mary is no different.
She is “thoroughly shaken”
by the angels visit
and God’s surprise mission.
She was “wondering what was behind” words like that.
She wondered,
as we all would
what impact those surprising words would mean for her life.
How would they change her?
How would they shape her life
from that day forward?
Because the surprise
was not just that one time visit.
As Jacob and Moses and Abraham and David and Paul and Mary found out,
there is no job description.
That’s part of God’s surprise.
The job description
for what God was asking Jacob, Moses, Abraham, David, and Mary to do
was written out as each day went by
after that initial visit.
None of them knew,
exactly,
what God was asking of them.
or,
how that surprising mission from God
would affect each day.
They didn’t know
until they got up each day.
All routines are out the window.
In place of routines
there is God.

A fellow Presbyterian Pastor I knew,
up in Nebraska,
Wally Easter was his name
was as short as I am tall.
He was a wonderful, witty man.
When he was on the nominating committee of presbytery,
looking for people to fill committee positions,
he would call a person
and say to them:
“Just say, ‘yes’ and I’ll tell you what you agreed to later.”

That’s why we don’t want to get too close
to God.
That’s why we don’t want to see any
angels.
Even though our culture is angel ga-ga these days;
benign little figurines,
chubby cherubs,
with tiny wings
that would barely be enough
to flutter around
infantile in their appearance
unable to
protect you from mayhem.
That’s not an angel.
When you read the Bible,
you find out the angels are the ones who are fearsome
fall on your face fearful
who often bring danger
and a dangerous
life changing message.
Angels are the ones
whose surprise visits
come with an open-ended job description,
with a sword in the hand
on which we are to pledge our lives
and
on which we are asked to simply say,
“YES”
and then,
forever after,
when you are questioning God, saying
“What exactly did I sign up for?” or
more blatantly:
“I did not sign up for this!”
God will reply,
“Ah, ah, ah; you said, ‘Yes.’”
And we think to ourselves,
“I will never say ‘yes’ to God again.”

Now,
with a sigh of relief,
we realize not all of us are needed by God
to be a Mary,
or a Moses
or a David
or a Paul.
Those were people God chose
to carry out a special mission.
Not special people.
Ordinary people.
People like you and I.
It was the surprise,
It was the mission,
given by God
that was extraordinary
not the person.

And yet,
guess what?
Surprise!
God has visited each of us.
That’s why you are here today.
Because,
somewhere,
somehow,
God got through to you.
God touched your life.
Deep down
something shifted.
God said, “I need you.
     I want you to be a disciple of my Son, Jesus.”
God said, “Don’t think about it;
Just say ‘Yes.’
You’ll find out later what it means
to say that ‘yes.’”
Did you think God was going to just let you go on
with your mediocre life?
Did you think God would not come back at you
with some demands?
Did you think you understood the job description
when you first said, “Yes?”
Did you think your life would not change that much,
when you said “yes” to discipleship?
Did you think you would never be confronted,
or have to face anything of any difficulty?
Did you think you wouldn’t have to make any tough choices?
Surprise!

Monday, November 21, 2011

The Password

"The Password"
Psalm 100


When I was a kid, my brothers and I and an odd collection of neighborhood kids liked to make forts.  We weren't into making tree forts.  That was OK by me.  I'm afraid of heights, oddly enough.  I think it's part of God's odd sense of humor to make a tall person afraid of heights.  Instead of tree forts, we made tunnel forts.  We'd dig like a pack of prairie dogs until we had hollowed out an underground den.

We thought our dug out caves were really cool.  My father, seeing the backyard dug up and a pile of dirt on the grass, didn't share our opinion.  We'd have to fill it all in and go dig up one of the other kid's backyard; which would create the same reaction with that kid's father.

It was our club and only boys could be members.  We made up passwords that only the guys in the club knew.  But every once in a while the girls would find out the password.  There was a leak in our secret club, and then we'd have to change the password.  There was no way we were letting a girl in our cave.  That is, unless we beat her over the head with a stick and dragged her in by her hair, just like the cavemen supposedly used to do.

That memory came flooding back as I read through Psalm 100 in different translations.  Instead of the verse that reads:
Be thankful...as you enter His temple
Eugene Peterson, in The Message has:
Enter with the password: "Thank you."

"Thank you," is one of the most important passwords in our relationship with God.  It opens up the way into God's heart.  It is the only proper response for all that God brings our way in life.  It's the password anyone can use.  Thankfully God doesn't discriminate like we did in our childhood clubs.

But yet, saying that particular password is hard for a lot of people.  There is something within them that keeps the vocal chords from uttering the word that gains a person entrance to worship and into the presence of God.  It has astounded me how many letters used to come to Dear Abby about an experience of thanklessness.  Someone gave something to someone else--a favor or a gift--and no "thank you" was given in return.  Some of the events of thanklessness had happened years before the letter was written to Dear Abby.  Evidently, not being able to say the password, "thank you," creates long held grudges.

That’s why I want to focus our attention on Psalm 100.  It has always been one of my favorites from childhood.  I have always liked the Psalm because it has an uplifting and celebrative tone.  Right at the start the Psalm says to make a joyful noise to the Lord.  In The Message it has, “On your feet now--applaud God!”  That always captured my attention as a kid because we weren’t allowed to make much noise, let alone shout.

When all the cousins got together at my grandparent’s house for Christmas, we had a lot of fun tormenting my grandparent’s chihuahua.  It was constantly yipping.  Remember those Taco Bell commercials where the chihuahua would say cool things like, “Gooey cheese,” or, “Drop the chiluppa.”  Not my grandparent’s dog.  It would just bark, all the time.

So we’d use the dog kind of like a hockey puck, sliding it back and forth to each other on the wood floor.  We would laugh and scream as it tried to get a grip with it’s claws.  That is until our grandfather would come down the hall and yell, “Can’t you kids be quiet; you’re hurting grandpa’s ears.”  We’d shut up for about a minute and then be back at it again, sliding their dog across the floor.

As a kid, you’re always being told to shut up and be quiet.  But here in Psalm 100, I saw permission being given to shout and make noise before God.  That’s why I grew up believing that God was not an adult.  God was a kid who liked noise--lots of it.  Later, as I thought about that, I also realized that being thankful before God should be a noisy, fun, and emotional outlet.  Being thankful to God is not a tight-lipped, “thank you,” but a big THANK YOU that is shouted and sung.  It is a thank you that is expressed in outbursts of emotional praise to God.

Luigi Tarisio was found dead one morning in his home.  His home was almost empty of any human comforts.  Astonishingly, though, Tarisio had a collection of 246 violins.  He had collected them all his life.  They were mostly crammed into a little attic.  He had written that he hardly every played them, but was, “keeping them safe.”  One of the greatest violins in his collection was a Stradivarius.  It had remained silent for 147 years.  Instruments that had been designed to sing and make beautiful music had been purposely, yet tragically, silent.

How many thank you’s have been kept in your storage, unspoken, unshouted, unnoised, unsung?  That which makes for a thankful heart, according to the 100th Psalm is a willingness to make noise.  It is a willingness, even a joy, to be vocal in your expressions of thankfulness.  It is a willingness to get emotional.

I read recently that doctors who deal with cancer patients have identified what they call, “the cancer personality.”  A majority of people who get cancer have a personality that is passive and emotionless.  The doctor’s theory is that a lifetime of pent-up emotions causes the release of a variety of hormones that weaken the body’s immune system.  Instead of seeking out tiny cancers and killing them, their bodies let them get away and grow and spread.

This Psalm 100 shows us the healthy way of expressing our emotions through thankfulness.  Say the password in a loud, singing, praising "thank you!"  So, go ahead.  Show God your thankfulness.  Don't let anyone tell you you're hurting God's ears.


Another great part about Psalm 100 that fits here with what I just said is we are told to make this joyful noise with other thankful people.  The worship that Jesus and the people of Jesus' time were used to was a noisy, group activity.  People would parade into the temple.  The parade would start outside the city of Jerusalem.  It would gain in numbers and in noise the closer it got to the temple.  Notice the many different forms of the plural pronoun occurring in Psalm 100:  us, we, everyone, and the plural form of you.

Joy, thanksgiving, and gladness are always a group activity.  Saying the password is not a me thing; it is a we thing.  Mark Twain once said, "...to get the full value of joy, we must have somebody to share it with."  People say, "I can worship just as well by myself.  I don't have to come to church."  But think of all the multiplied gladness that one individual is missing.  Think how small that one "thank you" is, and how much larger it becomes when it is joined with all the other voices of worshippers who are singing and shouting their "thank you" to God.

In his book, The Secret of Staying in Love, John Powel wrote:
Very few of us ever even approach the realization of our full potential.  I accept the estimate that the average person accomplishes 10% of his promise, sees only 10% of the beauty around him, hears only 10% of the music and poetry of the universe, smells only a tenth of the world's fragrance, and tastes only a tenth of the deliciousness of being alive.  He is only open to 10% of his emotions, tenderness, wonder, and awe.  His mind embraces only a small part of the thoughts, reflections, and understanding of which he is capable.

After reading that, I thought to myself, if that is so, left to ourselves we are missing a lot.  But if we join ourselves to the company of thankful people, our 10% is joined to another's 10% and so on.  Our experiences of the world grow by the number of people we are with.  There's a lot of truth behind the saying, "The more, the merrier."  Our expressions of thankfulness, added to others expressions of thanksgiving, become a huge exclamation of this very special password.  So join the parade!  Express yourselves in the "we" of gladness.


And lastly, Psalm 100 tells us that what makes for a thankful person is never forgetting that God is good.  That's the way the Psalm ends:  The Lord is good!  There may be times in our lives when we question the goodness of God.  When bad or hurtful things happen to us, we wonder what good could come of it.

Or, from a different angle, we wonder how God could put up with the waywardness of the people of the world.  Once in a fit of temper, Martin Luther shouted, “If I were God and the world had treated me as it has treated Him, I would have kicked the wretched thing to pieces long ago.”  Psalm 100 answers Martin Luther’s perturbance with the simple point that the reason God doesn’t do that is because, “God is good, all-generous in love.”

Remember that in Hebrew poetry, ideas are rhymed, rather than words.  In one line, a statement will be made; and then in the second line, the first line will be restated in a different way.  The second line may fill out the first, or contrast the first.  So in this last verse of the Psalm, the psalmist writes, “God is good.”  Then in the second line the idea is restated:  “His love and loyalty will last forever.”  Love and loyalty, the psalmist is saying, demonstrates God’s goodness.

Bible commentator, C.H. Dodd once wrote, “All God’s activity is loving activity.  If God creates, God creates in love; if God rules, God rules in love; if God judges, God judges in love.”  So, if something bad or painful happens in your life, know that God is moving quickly with love, and in love, to make something good happen out of those experiences.

And when you think of any experiences of disloyalty you have lived through, it is certainly comforting to know that God’s goodness is expressed in undivided loyalty.  In the days of sailing ships there were few precautions.  If a vessel lost its sails, masts, or riggings in battle or a storm, it was hopelessly disabled.  The most welcome sight a ship in distress could receive was that of another ship bearing three flags with the letter symbols, B, N, and C.  These three flags flown together were the international sea code for “I will not abandon you.”  God’s goodness, says Psalm 100, is demonstrated by the fact that we will never be abandoned.  God will never leave us to face life alone.  Even though we may experience extreme disloyalty, God will never forsake us.

When you realize that about God, and experience it, you can’t help but say to God, “Thank you.  Thank you God, for not leaving me alone, for hanging in there with me, for walking beside me, and even carrying me when I couldn’t go on by myself.”  The thankful heart is the one that always remembers God is good:  loving and loyal in all His dealings with us.



We do have much to say “Thank you,” for.  It is the password among all passwords.  But as I have tried to make clear, it isn’t as much the things that you are thankful for.  It’s the attitude with which you bring to life.  It’s a condition of the heart that gets emotional with thanks to God.  It’s a mutual spirit, shared with other thankful souls that heightens our own individual thanksgivings.  It’s an assurance of mind that God is good and all things work for God’s good for those who love him.  Make this password a word that dwells in and unlocks your heart.