On Sunday, May 31st, we sent Pastor Drew Harrison and his wife Hannah to Philadelphia with our love, prayers, and best wishes. FPC hosted a luncheon in his honor and a baby shower for he and his wife Hannah’s coming joy (Jane was born on Drew and Hannah’s first day in Philadelphia, and they give thanks to God for all the wonderful gifts of the congregation). Here is Drew’s sermon for the occasion. The text was 2 Corinthians 4:1-18.

Lighting the Way

            One of the things that we do each week is light these two candles. The candles represent Christ’s light for us. We light the candles at the beginning of worship to remind us that whenever we gather here Christ is with us. “Whenever two or more of you are in one accord, I will be with you,” he told us. Jesus is the light of the world, and so we have these two candles here to tell us that Jesus is here.

            When we put out the candles, we do something strange. We don’t just blow the candles out. We light the candlelighter, and we carry the light out to the door before we put it out. This too holds deep meaning for us. We carry the light out of the service because we carry Christ’s light with us as we go out into the world. It is a promise and a challenge. The promise is the one we receive from God in Isaiah 43, that though we pass through water and fire, “I will be with you.” Christ is with us on our journey. The challenge is not to put our light under a bushel. It is our responsibility to bring Christ’s light into the world.

            Each and every week, the lighting of the candle is a testament to the fact that Christ is with us. His presence is with us when we gather here, and we bring him with us wherever we go from here.

            Now in another church this process might be so easy and so simple that it goes completely unnoticed. But not in this church. For us, getting the candles lit each Sunday is a struggle. Perhaps you remember some of the times we’ve had problems getting the candles lit. Sometimes it takes two, three, or four of us to get the flame burning. Sometimes it takes us so long that Loy Nell has to play the prelude three times before we’re done. Other times we forget, and somebody runs back and lights them during the first hymn. I remember one time when one of the boys was having an awful time getting his candle lit, and someone, maybe Jeff or Randal had gone up to help. Well, they finally got it lit; only the candle got knocked over on the downswing. And whoever it was caught it right there in their hand before it could fall all the way down. Had that gone a different way, we could have really been on fire for Christ.

            Now some folks might say that we need to do something to fix these problems. Pass the duty on to more responsible people, host acolyte training, or switch to those Olympic torch things that just cut on if you get anywhere close. And I see their point. Mistakes in worship can be distracting, and pull us out of a worshipful state of mind. But for me at least, lighting the candles has become one of the most meaningful parts of worship. Because if we’re really talking about bearing Christ’s light into the world, our experience at First Presbyterian Church is much more accurate than any smooth, well-choreographed ritual. Lighting the candles here is a lot more like sharing the light of Christ than we realize.

            Bringing Christ’s light with us is not easy. It’s not easy to light a candle up over your head with a flame on the end of a three-foot pole. It is not easy to be a light to the people in our lives. When someone comes to us with another sob story asking for money for another cause, it isn’t easy to listen and care, and much less to make a sacrifice in your life for someone halfway across the world. And when your child comes home with a bloody lip, it isn’t easy to teach them how to turn the other cheek. And when you wake up two hours early to care for your grandfather or mother or husband who is slowly losing his battle with time, and they don’t have anything but criticism for you, it’s not easy to smile and say, “I love you.” It’s not easy to put others before ourselves and make friends of our enemies or live servant lives. But we do it anyway.

            Bearing Christ’s light into the world takes all of us. Nearly every person in this church has had a hand in helping light the candles in some way or another. Whether it’s lighting them ourselves, teaching someone to light them, making sure we have lighters and candles, or simply saying it’s okay when someone else messes up, all of us have had to work together to make those lights happen. And in the same way, we do not bring Christ’s light into the world alone. The work of shining our light in the world is an act of the whole church, and when we’re doing it right we’re working together to proclaim the good news of God’s love, and grace, and mercy.

            And it’s messy. No matter what kind of no-drip pure beeswax candles we buy, something always drips all over the paraments. And no matter what sort of perfect doctrine or perfect life you would like to have, bearing Christ’s light is going to get messy and maybe even a little dangerous. Whether it’s reaching out to people and having your own bedrock beliefs challenged, or simply finding that nothing ever goes according to plan, life in Christ is not black and white but rendered in chaotic but beautiful color. And you can’t do ministry without getting a little bit of it on you.

            I came here to First Presbyterian Church knowing exactly what was wrong with the world. I had a head full of seminary ideas and was just waiting to unleash them and watch the revolution happen. I thought people were just selfish, hard-headed, and indifferent. I thought if I preached well enough, that ought to turn things around. But as I’ve come to speak with you, and as I’ve come to know you and love you and treasure you, I realize that nothing could be further from the truth. I have come to know a people who constantly challenge themselves to do better, who are passionate about sharing the light of Christ and the warmth of community, and who generously give of their lives until they have nothing left.

            What I didn’t understand was the size of the burden that each of us is carrying around each day. Whether it’s caring for an aging relative, or worrying about a sick daughter, being a mother to someone who doesn’t have one, fighting depression, or carrying around deep, deep wells of grief, it isn’t a disappointment that we haven’t saved the world yet. It’s a miracle that the world hasn’t fallen further apart. It’s amazing that we get out of bed at all. And it is a testament to the Holy Spirit who sustains us and sanctifies us that we can get up on Sunday morning, after being beat up all week, and say, “God is good.”

            When Paul writes his letters, he always begins the letter with a greeting. To the saints of such and such a place. And I’ve always understood that to mean that saints were just like us. Sort of like People magazine’s “Stars! They’re just like us!” You know, saints walk the dog, they go to the grocery store, they have bad hair days. The idea I got from it was that saints were ordinary people. But now I understand those words a different way. Because having seen what it takes to live life in this broken, messy, difficult world, I know now that it takes nothing less than the extraordinary. So to all those who are holding the church together while falling apart themselves, who keep lighting those candles even as darkness threatens to overcome them, you are saints, in the holiest, and most divine sense of the word: you are extraordinary, and your presence here is a light to us all.

            That’s why I love the way we light the candles here. Because here we are, a small group of people, who don’t always have that much light in our lives to spare. But we do not lose heart. And though bearing that light is no longer easy or simple, if it ever was, each and every week we find a way to get the candles lit. Whether it’s asking someone who shouldn’t have to or teaching someone who isn’t ready yet or simply being exhausted, but doing it anyway. If you’re the type to believe in miracles, this is most definitely one. If you’re not, then it is simply the extraordinary work of ordinary people, a light in a darkened room, treasure in clay jars.

            We light them so that in the darkness we might not lose our way, and we carry them with us that others might find their paths by Christ’s light. And though we are afflicted in every way, we refuse to give up, carrying this light with us so that Jesus might be visible through us, that the world of death may be refuted by a Word of life, and so that we do not lose heart.

Sermon from May 3rd, 2015. The text for this week’s sermon was Mark 9:30-37.

What Were You Arguing About on the Way?

The first sentence in the book of Mark declares that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. But it isn’t until about halfway through the book that Jesus explains to us what that means. In Chapter 8, verse 34, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it…” he continues, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and with the holy angels.” From this point on, Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem and the cross, and he will not swerve to the right or to the left.

The disciples are on this journey with Jesus, making their way towards Jerusalem, but they don’t fully understand where they are going. As they are passing through Galilee on the way to Capernaum, they get into a heated discussion about which one of them is the greatest. And when they arrive in Capernaum, Jesus asks them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” And the disciples have nothing to say.

The disciples have nothing to say because they know they’ve been caught talking about what they’re really thinking. Jesus has been showing and telling them for years now, that the Way that he is proclaiming involves making yourself low. He is explaining that he is on his way to be betrayed, handed over, and executed as a terrorist. And the disciples are jockeying for position. What were they arguing about on the way? They were competing with each other and ignoring where they were going.

There’s an old Adam Sandler movie called Billy Madison. I don’t know if any of y’all have ever seen it, and it’s pretty juvenile so don’t count this as a ringing endorsement or anything. The idea is that a worthless playboy has to go through K-12 education and graduate in 4 weeks in order to prove that he should inherit his father’s company. So he has to retake all the grades. And while he is in first grade they go on a field trip to a farm, and when it’s time to come back, Billy notices that one of the other students is missing. Billy finds him hiding behind the barn because he’s had an accident, and he doesn’t want the other kids to see. And Billy sees this kid and the embarrassment that he’s about to experiment, and he runs over to the water pump and splashes a ton of water on his pants. And when they get back on the bus, Billy walks in first, with water all down his leg, and the kids look at him and say “Did you just pee your pants?” and Billy says, “Yes. And you know what it’s cool.”

He made himself a fool, so that his friend wouldn’t look foolish. He made himself low, so that his friend wouldn’t have to experience humiliation. In a nutshell, this is what Jesus did. He knew the law and the Torah and he was a good and righteous Jew but he ate with tax collectors and sinners, the outcasts and the dirty people and the marginalized of their society. He could have been great, but he made himself low. He made himself low, to reject the artificial hierarchies of who is great and who is not, and who is worth loving and who isn’t.

But making yourself low is hard work. As Christianity turned from an outlaw religion into state religion, being Christian no longer required the sacrifice of aligning yourself with the marginalized. Christians became parts of the structure of power, and you could be powerful and a Christian. For most of American history, being a Christian was a prerequisite to power. In colonial times, Christians set themselves above others, and guarded the keys to the kingdom zealously. Christians were good, respectable folk, and anyone else was a no-good wastrel. And Christians had to go through long and intense interviews in order to prove their faith to the church.

And even now we struggle with this issue. When we talk about Christianity we often equate Christianity with righteousness, which leads us to assume that as Christians we are more righteous than everyone else. When we talk about avoiding temptation, we talk about surrounding ourselves with people of faith, which often means avoiding exactly those people whom Jesus sought out.

I struggle this when I hear people say negative things about Christianity. I want to defend the church, and so I find myself arguing against those people rather than listening to them. Trying to protect our reputation is what leads to people covering up the Church’s mistakes instead of trying to resolve them.

And even within Christianity, I find it easy think of myself as better than other Christians, because I believe the right things and they don’t, or I adopt certain behaviors that others don’t, or I support the right causes, and they don’t. I get in facebook arguments with people, which is never a good look. It’s easy to feel superior because I agree with myself, and surround myself with people who agree with me. And so I live in my smug little world and congratulate myself for being right and argue that my way is better then everyone else’s way, mostly to people who already agree with me.

But this isn’t what Jesus demanded of us. He didn’t walk around talking about how he was better than the temple priests; he touched lepers instead. He didn’t scorn tax collectors because they took advantage of the people; he loved them and shared with them so that they wouldn’t take advantage of the people. He didn’t stand in the Temple all day arguing to score points against the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians. He put a kid in his lap and said, “Be more like him.” He looked at his disciples arguing over who was the best, and said “What were you arguing about on the way?”

What is fascinating about this particular question is that phrase, “The Way.” Before Christians were known as Christians, back when they were just groups of people meeting in homes to eat bread and drink wine and recount stories of their Lord, they referred to themselves as followers “The Way.” The earliest self-designation of Christians we have is this phrase, “The Way.” In Acts, Saul gets permission to go to Damascus to persecute followers of The Way before his conversion. In the earliest known catechism, called the Didache, or the Teachings of the Twelve Apostles, the first sentence describes two ways, the way of death and the way of life.

In other words, “The Way” isn’t just the road to Jerusalem, it is the whole endeavor of trying to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. The Way is the path that Jesus followed, a path of resistance to domination by not trying to climb up the ladder but making himself low. Jesus said if we don’t fight each other but fight for each other, then we might have a chance to overcome the forces of human sinfulness and corrupted power and dwell in the Kingdom of God. It isn’t about becoming great, it is about making greatness irrelevant.

And my great fear is that the time of reckoning will come. And I shall see my Lord face to face, and my Lord will say, “What were you arguing about on the way?” And I will have nothing to say for myself.

Here is Drew’s sermon for the Sunday of April 19th, 2015. The text for this week was Romans 12:1-8.

A Living Sacrament

There were a lot of special people in the church where I grew up. There was/were:

• Bill Garner*, who kept a roll’s worth of quarters in his pockets and would give 50 cents to anyone who wanted to buy a coke from the coke machine. I learned from him to always have something to give, even if it isn’t a lot.

• Freya Allen, who spearheaded our church’s involvement in one of Memphis’s homeless ministries. I learned from her how to be fired up about mission, and people who were down on their luck weren’t really any different from me.

• Henri Barden – Henri and his wife Susanna raised a generation of youth in my church, but I was too young to have them. But I remember at a church party watching him listen and learn from someone about how our tax structure affects the poor, and I learned too things: you never stop learning or trying to be better, and being a Christian involves thinking about how the system affects the weak and vulnerable, and fighting to change it when necessary.

• And George and Milla Evans: When my grandparents couldn’t come to school with me on grandparents day because they lived far away, George and Milla would come to school and be my grandparents. They taught me that love went beyond family, and that adding more people into your family didn’t mean there was any less love.

These weren’t the only special people in my congregation, and probably if you ask me a week from now I would share with you a whole new batch of people. It just so happens that I was thinking about these people this week because I got into a conversation about communion.

I went out for beer with some friends the other day, and somehow we got to talking about Communion and transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the Catholic understanding of communion, that sometime during the Eucharistic prayer, the bread and wine turn into the actual physical body and blood of Jesus.

And my friend, he’s a good old boy, Presbyterian, explains that Presbyterians don’t believe in transubstantiation. He said, “We believe that communion is a symbol of Jesus body and blood, but not the real thing.” Now that’s not the kind of thing you say around a Presbyterian minister, because Presbyterian ministers can be kind of particular about that kind of thing. We’re particular about that kind of thing because ordination exams are particular about that kind of thing, which is largely because many of the denominational divides turn on little points of dogma like this one. I could the words coming, a long speech about the technical differences between the different denominations and their various understandings of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. I had to take a big swallow of beer to keep that down. And it didn’t work. A few minutes later, I did clarify just a minor distinction.

Presbyterians do not believe that the bread and wine are just symbols. We don’t believe that when Jesus said “This is my body” he meant “This represents my body.” We do believe that Jesus is actual factual present in the bread, we simply believe that it is a metaphysical reality rather than a physical reality. Jesus’ body and blood are spiritually present in the bread and the wine. Think of what happened in our Gospel story, for example. The doors to the Upper Room were locked, and Jesus came into the room. As Jesus passed through the doors, in some sense he was present in the door. But the door didn’t suddenly acquire the physical properties of Jesus.

Presbyterians believe that the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and Communion are signs. And that’s the biblical meaning of sign. As in, “The Lord himself with give you a sign. Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). As in, “And this shall be a sign for you, you shall find the child wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.” A sign is evidence that what you hear is true.

The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament. And a sacrament is a sign of an alternate reality, the reality of Christ’s love for us, the reality of Christ’s death on the cross. In the way that a seal on an old letter would tell you who it was from, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is a seal on the promises of forgiveness and resurrection, so that we know who they came from. If we trust in Him, then we can trust in them.

The point of Baptism and Communion is that they point to a deeper reality, they are physical tangible means of experiencing the realities behind them. Jesus gave these signs to his disciples so that they would trust in his promises. They were passed down to us so that we would know these promises. And we pass them down to our children so that they will know his promises too.

Which brings me back to those special people at Balmoral Presbyterian Church. I know the promises of God because of those special people. They passed them on to me. And here’s the thing. Those people weren’t symbols of the love of God. They were signs. If George and Milla Evans could love me like their child even though I wasn’t, then God could love me like God’s child too. If Bill Garner could be generous with everyone that he meets, then maybe I could too. If Freya Allen could change people’s lives just by putting up some beds for them in the Sunday School rooms, then I could change the world too.

The people that I grew up with were living sacraments. They were living, breathing signs that God’s promise is real. I suspect that any one of us who really thinks about it could find a few living sacraments in their own lives, people whose lives were signs and seals of God’s promises to us.

This is, of course, who we are called to be. We are called to use our lives to point at another reality, the reality of Christ’s love for us all. And we do it in the simplest ways possible. We watch out for someone’s kids. Offer a helping hand to someone in need. Invite strangers into our homes and our lives and our church.

It is as easy ordinary as bread and juice. But for all those who come after us, it will be a sign of the infinite love and redeeming grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. However we want to articulate or explain it, you can be sure that Jesus himself will be present in it.

*I changed names, because I’d hate for someone to be embarrassed or upset by what I said about them.

Sermon for Palm Sunday comes from two passages, Psalm 118 and Luke 19:28-40. We begin our Holy Week Services on Monday at our church at 12:00 noon. There will be a short worship service followed by lunch.

Thank you and Help Me

            Anne Lamott says that all the prayers in the world can be boiled down to two forms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” and “Help me, Help me, help me” In Psalm 118, and in the Palm Sunday procession, we have them both.

            Every year, the king of Judah would ride, from the direction of the Jordan River valley, into the city of Jerusalem, on an ass. The king would stop at various points along the way and recount his near death at the hands of enemies and how God had defeated them for him.[1] When he arrived at the entrance to the Temple, he would say “Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.” Thank you, thank you, thank you. And the chief priests and the royal court would respond “This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.” Together in the Temple they would all cry out to the Lord for help. “Hosanna!” they would say, “Save us!” Help me, help me, help me.

            The whole thing was a special royal ceremony, meant to reaffirm that this was God’s chosen King and God’s chosen Kingdom. Psalm 118 was the liturgy for this procession. The story of the king’s near defeat and then God’s vindication. The stone that the builders rejected had become the cornerstone. The ceremony was celebration of thanksgiving for that God has rescued them from calamity and a plea that God would rescue them again. Thank you. Help me.

            At the beginning of one particular Passover during the reign of Herod, a similar procession occurred. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass from the nearby town of Bethany. Only the chief priests and the royal court were not waiting to invite him in. The first Palm Sunday procession was probably a small procession, and not well recognized.

            There is no one to recognize him because he does not come from traditional centers of power. Bethlehem and Nazareth weren’t exactly hubs of cultural activity. When the disciple Nathanael first hears of Jesus he says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

            There is no one to recognize him because the Gospel that he proclaims challenges the ones in power. Both the “might-makes-right” philosophy of the Romans and the elaborate self-justifications of the wealthy landowning classes are challenged by his teachings. Blessed are the meek. Turn the other cheek. Ye without sin cast the first stone. The last shall be first. His ideas are threatening to their careers and their bank accounts. They will not be there to join in the procession, because they have rejected his teachings. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

            Because the powerful refuse to recognize him, the disciples assume their role and welcome the king. They lay down their cloaks for him, and they wave the royal palms and shout hosanna to their God. The disciples aren’t very impressive people. They aren’t important: fishermen, low-wage laborers, and tax collectors. They aren’t very righteous: they violate the Sabbath, they touch lepers, they’re hardly ever clean. They aren’t very bright: they rarely understand what Jesus is saying.

            There isn’t much special about them, except that when Jesus called, they went. And when the wealthy officials and royal courts don’t show up to welcome Jesus, they do. These crazy fools, silly enough to believe that a kingdom of mercy and righteousness could be real, these are the ones who proclaim his royal entrance. These are the ones who bid him enter the gates of righteousness. These are the ones who say, in spite of the way the world has treated them, “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The stones that were rejected had become the chief cornerstone.

            Some of the Pharisees who see this procession are angry. They are outraged that the disciples would enact the royal ceremony for Jesus, and welcome him into the city like God’s chosen king. They order Jesus to tell them to stop. But Jesus replies. “I tell you if these were silent, the stones would shout.” If no one had come, God would have drawn praise out from the rock.

            The Gospel that Jesus proclaims is a challenge to the powers and the principalities of this world, then and now. The powerful demand justice, and then write the laws to ensure they will never face it. Jesus says even the standard of justice is too harsh. Jesus proclaims mercy, and asks us to offer no punishment unless we are free of blame. The powers that be divide the world into categories and assign value based on them: cool or uncool, rich or poor, respectable or dishonorable, smart or dumb. You can only be blessed if you look right, act right, or come from the right family. But Jesus invited everyone to the table. The powers that be declare that everything is for sale, and if you have nothing to sell you are worthless. But Jesus proclaims that you are bought and paid for, at the highest price imaginable, more valuable than his own life.

            We face the same choice the disciples had. What do you do when the world refuses to recognize the kingdom? When power and greed and violence reign, and there is no room for mercy, forgiveness, and love. It may seem that there is nothing that we can do. And perhaps it seemed that way for the disciples. But as silly, crazy, and foolish as it may have seemed, they got up and they followed him anyway. And when the time came for them to come to Jerusalem, they proclaimed the reign of Jesus as their ancestors had proclaimed the Messiah long ago.

            They reminded themselves of God’s greatness, of all the things God has done for God’s people. They said thank you, to a God who is good. And they asked for God’s salvation again. They shouted Hosanna. They called for help, to a God who is our present help in times of need.

            And we can do the same thing. We may not be important or powerful, but we have God who is. And our God has brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. We can proclaim the kingdom of God, even when our voices seem small and unheard. We can offer our gifts, even when our gifts seem worthless and vain. We can share our cloaks, even when our cloaks are tattered and worn. We can say thank you to a God who has gotten us this far. And we can ask for help, that God would carry us a little bit farther. Because we too are a little bit foolish. And a little bit crazy. And we too believe that the King has come to this world.

[1] Sanders, James. “The Conversion of Paul” Impact no 9 Fall 1982, p. 75.