Doers of the Word

“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” So writes James the Apostle, in his letter found in the New Testament. What he means by this is that for faith to be real, it must be translated into deeds. As a preacher once said, it must be “tangiblized.” Otherwise, faith is just another form of self-deception. Just as inaction reveals the inner attitude, so too does action. Faith is not just a matter of the head and the heart, it is a matter of the hands as well.

We are a congregation peopled with those who are not mere hearers of the word, but who are also doers of the word.  Many of you do in a very important way – by tithing, by pledging, by sharing of your financial resources, you fund this church’s ministries here and beyond, where we are doers of the word. Money is ministry in this way, and don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

            But we are also a congregation who are doers of the word in a very hands-on sense. Sometimes this is the case as you go about your daily lives, as you try to live for others as Jesus lived for us, living lives of compassion and caring and seeking justice and working for peace. And sometimes you do this sort of hands-on doing of the word together, working with others on a Habitat for Humanity build, or pitching in at the hospital or at A Baby Center in Hyannis. And sometimes you pick up and get on a plane and go to New Orleans for a week of rebuilding homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Just as Carol and Brad will share with you this morning….

            Carol and Brad told you about how they were doers of the word through their work for families seeking to rebuild their lives in New Orleans. We often tend to think of being doers of the word in just that sense, in the ways in which we reach out to help our neighbors. But I think there is another important way we can be doers of the word as well, and that has something to do with being intentional about working on our own stuff, about growing deeper in faith, about working towards bringing together our doing and our being.

            So for me, when we are off on a mission trip, part of my job, part of my being a doer of the word, is to help those on the trip figure this out as well. That is one of the reasons that we close each evening with an hour of shared reflection and worship. We talk about the events of the day, about the joys and the disappointments, about the highs and the frustrations, about the interactions we had with the locals, about what we had learned. We often find, at least early in the week, that we have more questions than answers, and then at times figure out that what we thought were the answers were simply doorways to more questions, and by the end of the week it turns out that we really had learned something new about ourselves. Let me share just two examples.

            Last year one of the work groups arrived on site only to find that they had hardly any of the tools they needed to get the work done. They ended up sitting around for about half the day, growing increasingly frustrated with the inability of the overseeing organization to get them the tools and materials. They shared that frustration in the evening meeting, each taking a turn going on about the lack of organization, bureaucratic red-tape, and so on. And then someone from another of the groups said, “Okay, now take that frustration you experienced for one-half a day, and think about how it must feel for folk who have been trying to get their homes rebuilt for over four years, and who keep running into delays from FEMA and insurance companies and shoddy contractors and on and on.” Whoa; big reality check; everyone felt just a little bit sheepish, just a little too entitled. Gave us all a lot to think about.

            A second example. This year, after our first day’s work, and one of the reflection circle had just finished gushing about how neat it was to meet one of the homeowners and spend some time talking with them. “Harrumph,” opined another member of our group, “I came down here to do work, and all this time chit-chatting just gets in the way of the work I am supposed to be doing. If I had my way, I would be like a fairy that just flits in, does the works, and gets out.” Not every one agreed, but I could tell a number of folk shared this sentiment. So at the close of the session, I said, “I wonder if we all might spend some time over the coming days thinking about just exactly what the work is that we are supposed to be doing down here.”

            Well, sure enough, when we gathered for our last time of reflection, everyone had thoughts on the work we were doing in New Orleans. They all agreed, of course, that we were there to help folk made homeless by a hurricane; but they also all got that we were there to work on ourselves as well.

We were there to learn more about the causes of what many thought was a natural disaster – but which was also a man-made tragedy, with components that included the man-made destruction of the protective delta marshes; the man-made construction of a canal which gave the floodwaters a straight-line path into Lake Ponchartrain; man-made faulty engineering of the levees; and a man-made federal blunder which caused tens of thousands of homeowners to cancel their flood insurance six months before Katrina, because they were told they no longer lived on a floodplain.

We were there to learn once again how much better it is to have wealth. We stayed in a church in the Uptown area of New Orleans, a fashionable district of beautiful, expensive homes – which was built on the high ground, and so was untouched by the flooding. While those who had relatively little lost everything, those with much were largely unaffected.

We were there to learn about gratitude – to learn once again how blessed we all are to have homes and not live in a FEMA trailer and not have to wonder if we might ever have a home again.

And we were there to reconnect in a new way with our faith. We were living out the parable of the Good Samaritan as we reached down to help those in need; we were talking with people who had lived through the agony of Good Friday and had been raised to new life; we were there to know again that faith, if it has no works, is dead. And that those who are doers of the word are, indeed, blessed in their doing.

Not a $20 Rolex

     It happened during a confirmation class trip to New York City several years ago. A group of our 9^th and 10^th Graders had made the trek to the Big Apple for an overnight program of education, worship and fun in the world’s largest Gothic cathedral, St. John the Divine. We had some free time the following day, and so traveled south through Manhattan to Battery Park, where we boarded the ferry for a quick trip out to the Statue of Liberty. It was an inspiring and educational event for us all, as we marveled at Lady Liberty from up close, then made a quick stop on the return trip at Ellis Island, the portal to America for many of our ancestors. But our education for the day was not yet over – as we disembarked from the ferry upon our return to Manhattan, we were met by dozens of street vendors hawking their wares, selling everything from postcards to miniature Statues of Liberty to bootleg DVDs to watches and even cameras. We had, I thought, successfully shepherded the group off the ferry and up the ramp, until a quick headcount revealed that we were one confirmand short. To our relief, he soon appeared – proudly showing off his brand-new, shiny, guaranteed authentic Rolex watch – a watch, he boasted, he had been able to get for just $20.

            You know the rest of the story. That watch ran perfectly – for two weeks.

            It was, of course, a counterfeit. A fraud. A piece of junk, a pale imitation of the Real McCoy.

            Our adventuresome and yet naïve young consumer knew what he wanted, the object of his desire was fixed in his mind. A Rolex Submariner. The perfect timepiece, the standard of excellence, a chronometer built to withstand water pressures of up to 100 feet, to keep time to within seconds each year, a symbol of the good life achieved. Or so the advertisements led him to believe.

            He knew what he wanted. He ended up getting much less.

            I often wonder if this is too often who we think we are. A $20 Rolex. Maybe shiny and spiffed up on the outside, but inside, a counterfeit, a fraud.

            Maybe we do this because of how we have been taught to underestimate our worth. Maybe you were abused by someone you trusted, someone who treated you as an object to be used to satisfy their desires, and so you came to similarly undervalue yourself and your worth. Maybe you were the one always picked last to be on sports teams, and you took this as a judgment not on your athletic abilities, but on who you, at core, really are. Maybe you absorbed the message our media continually bombards you with, that your value depends on how many luxury items you possess, how wrinkle free and unblemished your skin is, how youthful and sexy you are, how successful you have been in business, how healthy you are, how able you are to get things done, how independent you are.

                The great actress Dorothy Maguire was appearing on Broadway in Tennessee William’s play The Night of the Iguana. Just before curtain time on a Friday night, the theatre was disturbed by the shrill voice of a woman in the audience shouting, “Start the show! Start the show! I want to see Dorothy Maguire!” The woman was clearly emotionally disturbed, but after a moment of shocked silence, some in the theatre began to turn on her. “Listen, you old bag, get out!” someone heckled. “Throw her out! Start the show!” another jeered. The house manager came to try and reason with the woman, but she pulled away, shrieking, “All I want to see is Dorothy Maguire; then I’ll leave.”

            Suddenly, through the part in the curtains, Miss Maguire herself appeared. She crossed the stage and walked calmly over to the disturbed woman. She spoke quietly to her and then hugged her. The woman, who had recoiled whenever anyone else had touched her, drew close to Miss Maguire, got up from her seat, and together they walked toward the exit. Before they left the theater, Miss Maguire paused and turned to the audience. With grace and kindness she announced, “I’d like to introduce another fellow human being.”

            Dorothy Maguire testified to the truth about this woman, a truth that no emotional illness or abuse from others could take away – she was not a $20 Rolex. She was a fellow human being, a child of God, a citizen with the saints, a member of the household of God.

Just like each and every one of us.

“A New Dimension in the World of Sound”

Our reading today comes from Psalm 98:

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth;

       break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

     Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,

       with the lyre and the sound of melody.

#1 (breaking in) I just love the lyre, and doesn’t everyone? When I think of worship, I think of the lyre. It is simply – classic. Classic and true, faithful worship. This is what I say: Give me that old time religion!

Ahem, If I may continue….

     With trumpets and the sound of the horn

       make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD.

               #2 (breaking in) Now that is what I call music! Trumpets, horns, let’s come into the Bronze Age, and it is about time!  Really, who listens to the lyre anymore anyway?  Can you name one person who drives around in their chariot these days with lyre music on their radio?  What we need is contemporary music to appeal to the younger generations! 

#1   Oh, pleeze! Next thing you know you will be demanding that we get rid of the old hymnal and get a new one! As if Psalms 1 to 63 don’t say it all!

#2   Now that you mention it, we do need to sing some of the more up to date psalms, particularly those written after good old King David finally put down his lyre for the last time!  I think if we had a little bit more of the Songs of Songs and its love ballads we’d get a lot more teens in here!

#1 Lyre!

#2 Trumpets!

Enough!  I say let all creation get a turn in making our music!

⁷    Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

       the world and those who live in it.

⁸    Let the floods clap their hands;

       let the hills sing together for joy

⁹    at the presence of the LORD, for he is coming

       to judge the earth.

     He will judge the world with righteousness,

            and the peoples with equity.

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            In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we read that there is nothing new under the sun, and never is this more true than when it comes to disagreements about whether and what kinds of music we should have in our worship services. 

            We just had some fun with Psalm 98, imagining as we read it that the worshippers in the temple in Jerusalem were having their own arguments about what instruments were proper for the worship of God, about what songs were appropriate for religious services. We don’t know whether there were such arguments way back then, but given that those sort of disagreements have periodically characterized the Christian community over the past two millenia, it seems likely that they had similar discussions.

Did you, know for instance, that congregational singing did not exist until Martin Luther introduced it in the 16^th century? Prior to that, singing was reserved to choirs of those in the religious order, monks and nuns. And you will recall that when the founders came over here from England, the singing in worship was unaccompanied by instruments, and what was sung was limited to the psalms. The cantor would “line” a phrase from one of the psalms – sing it out – and then the congregation would sing it back in the same fashion; and then onto the next phrase, and the next, and so on.

            And than along came Isaac Watts, often called the “Father of English Hymnody.” Watts led the way in the inclusion of “original songs of Christian experience”, that is, poetry based not on the psalms or other paraphrased texts from the Bible, but on emotional subjectivity – on  the believer’s experience of their faith. Such as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, published first in 1707. It caused an uproar.  The same reaction has periodically attended the release of new hymnals, such as revised versions of The Pilgrim Hymnal, which we have in our pews, and the wave of inclusive language hymnals that came into being in the 1990s. Not to mention the controversy around doing away with hymnals altogether, as many of the larger churches have done, with canned music and the words scrolled out on large projection screens.

As to instruments in worship, the pump organ was not introduced into American churches until the late 19^th century; the piano first being included as late as 1910; and of course the guitar coming on the scene in the 1960’s.

So pity the poor church Music Director these days.  Our pews are filled with folk who came of age during the heyday of traditional organ music, folk who sing out lustily when accompanied by the rich and varied tones of a magnificent pipe organ, folk for whom worship is just not really worship unless it concludes with a toccata by Bach or a fugue by Buxtehude. And our pews are filled with folk, often the younger generations, who may never have heard a pipe organ before, who have never listened to a classical music station or attended a symphony, and who find the sound alien and strange – but folk who love and appreciate the sound of a piano or guitar.  And beyond the folk we have in here, we have all the folk out there who we hope will want to join us, many of whom don’t know anything at all about music for worship, or congregational singing.

The poor church Music Director these days knows that no one style of music is inherently good or evil, faithful or not appropriate for the worship of God. She knows that what is important is that it edify and be fitting for our cultural context. So, in the face of these conflicting musical backgrounds, tastes, and preferences, what does she do?

What she does is what our Music Director, Donna Murphy, does. What the search committee who asked Donna to come here asked her to do. Which is try her best to keep us all happy, realizing that it is likely that folk who like just one style or another are bound at times to be less than perfectly satisfied.

So at times the choir will be upstairs in the balcony, singing their hearts out to the accompaniment of our magnificent Mander pipe organ, and at other times they will be down here on the floor of the Meeting House, singing a spiritual or jazzy number that was made to be accompanied by the piano.

And on one Sunday we will have that magnificent classical postlude, and on another, a simpler, more meditative piece on the studio grand.

And often we will have both on the same day, and Donna will do her best to move quietly from one instrument to the other, since so far we have been unable to figure out how to install a transporter beam in here. 

Our Music Director works hard to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, to paraphrase Psalm 98, and to help us all make a joyful noise as well. And so it is up to us, with all our differing musical tastes and preferences and backgrounds, to do our part.

It is up to us to figure out if we cannot find a way to worship God together not only when the musical offerings are just what we love, but also when they are just not what we would have chosen had we had our own personal preference.  

When we say to ourselves, “I think I will stay home this Sunday because the music is not to my liking”, it is up to us to remember that we come here not to a concert hall, but to God’s sanctuary; not to be entertained, but to worship together; not because it is about me and what I want, but about God and God’s desire that we together raise our voices in praise.

When one shouts “Lyre” and the other responds “Trumpet!”; when one proclaims “the Red Hymnal!” and the other responds “No, the Green!”; when one says “tomato” and the other says “to-mah-to”; let us remember these words from the hymn we are about to sing together:

 “Let every instrument be tuned for praise! Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise! And may God give us faith to sing always, ‘Alleluia!’”.

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Spinning My Wheels

            Lately I have been spending a good deal of time spinning my wheels.

            Literally. Perhaps it is because I have been sensing the approach of middle age (pause here for a chuckle at my expense), or because I have been taking more seriously the groans emitted from the bathroom scale of late, or because I have finally been convinced that it is a good thing to do, but, whatever the reason, I have started up a new exercise regime. And with the weather being so brutal out of doors, and thus keeping me off my bike, I have taken to the indoor world of “spinning.”

            “Spinning” has nothing to do with Sleeping Beauty and spindles – spinning is step aerobics on wheels, it is a bunch of folk chained to stationary bikes in an overheated room for an hour, pedaling away while a perky trainer with thighs like Lance Armstrong and a voice of a Marine yells out instructions like “Pedal harder!” and “60 seconds in the standing position”, and, “Move it, you maggots!” (well, maybe not that one).  We don’t get anywhere, being on a stationary bike….

            I sometimes think that’s why God gave us Easter. In a recent comic in the Globe, there is a picture of an angel standing on a cloud looking down at earth, with the caption being, “The world and the way it would be if the master of the universe was my mother”. And then there is a voice coming from the cloud saying, “Don’t make me come down there!”

            Well, that is actually what did happen. Because we were so busy spinning our wheels, trying like the dickens to get to God but for all our efforts getting only in our way, God did come down there. And while that made a lot us mad enough to run God out of town and hang God on a tree, God was not done, and God was not going to let human sin and death stand in the way.

           

            Hence, Easter, hence, resurrection, hence a chance to get off the stationary bike and saddle up a tandem where we are all in backseats and Jesus is in the driver’s seat and together there is no mountain we cannot climb, no task we cannot take on, no “thing” to fear.

            Onward, or, as they say in the Tour de France, “Allez!”

Piping Plovers and Us -- Mutually Assured Existence

A walk on the beach in these waning days of not-yet-summer brings one face to face with roped off dunes and "Area Closed" signs, both seeking to preserve the nesting grounds of endangered species, including the piping plover. (Not "ploh-ver", but "pluhv-er", at least here on Cape Cod).

These restrictions can be an inconvenience, even an annoyance -- folk who enjoy driving out over the beaches find that their access is at times even completely cut off because of the nests that are built right up against the road beds.

But we know, when we are at our best at least, that caring for creation is part of our divine mandate, part of our call to be partners with God in God's on-going stewardship of all creation.

And we also know that our care for others species must be intimately connected with the survival of our own, that a disregard for other species must bleed over into care for homo sapiens. If M.A.D., mutually assured destruction, was the lunacy of the Cold War era, then surely one of the paths to a better world, and our own survival, is Mutually Assured Existence.

Even if that means not walking over the dunes.

“Sharing in the Power of Jesus Christ”

“Sharing in the Power of Jesus Christ”

May 15, 2011 4^th Sunday of Easter Stewardship Sunday

Reed Baer West Parish of Barnstable

Introduction to Scripture

            Our reading for today comes from the book of the Bible called The Acts of the Apostles, a book which recounts the earliest days of what came to be known as the church.

            The context for today’s reading is much the same as our context, here a few weeks after our glorious celebration of Easter, a day on which this meeting house was filled to capacity with smiling faces, with folk happy to be back home in our spiritual sanctuary.

            In Acts chapter 2, just before the events of today’s reading, the infant church had been gathered together for fellowship, teaching, the breaking of bread together, and prayer. All things are held in common, so that no one lacks for anything. It is a cozy scene, and one suspects that a Roman-era counterpart of Currier and Ives could have done a lot with it. But then Peter and John leave those cozy confines, and nothing is ever the same again….

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            Friends, I am afraid that I am going to be in hot water this morning with some folk here in the congregation, and I am hoping that the rest of you will have my back if things come to a head. You see, today is the one day in the year which the Stewardship Committee designates as Stewardship Sunday, a sort of kick-off to the annual campaign to ask you to make a pledge of financial support to the church for the coming fiscal year, a year which begins July 1. And what they are looking for (with apologies in advance to Jesus, who had a very different sermon by a similar name)  is “The Sermon on the Amount.”

            But you know, I am a preacher of very limited talent and ability, and it seems to me that it would be well nigh impossible for me to make a convincing stewardship sermon out of a passage which contains these words – words not from just anybody, but words from the apostle Peter, “the rock” on which Jesus said he would build his church, no less – and words not to just anybody, but words to a poor crippled fellow who is just asking for a few spare coins to buy him his next meal – these words being: “I have no silver or gold….”

            It is at times like these that I wish that I had some of the skills of the great preachers. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, tells of when he went to hear the famous evangelist George Whitefield preach in Philadelphia, who was soliciting funds for an orphanage in Georgia. Franklin, a man of no small intellect and courage, was determined to resist. He writes,

“I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that and determined to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”

In any event, reconciled to the sad truth that I do not have the homiletic skills of a George Whitefield, and therefore choosing to be freed from worries about pleasing the Stewardship Committee or trying to soften your hearts and lighten your pocketbooks, I can now turn to take a look at what we might learn from the account of Peter and John and the unnamed beggar at the Beautiful Gate.

            John and Peter have just come from the gathering of the early church, and, good Jews that they are, are headed to the temple for more prayer there. But for them – and, Luke, the author of Acts, is telling us, for us as well – being church is not a detour from the misery of the world, not an escape that allows us to cut ourselves off from the needy outside our doors. And so they immediately run into a man who had been lame from birth, who each day is carried by his friends to one of the temple’s entrances, the Beautiful Gate, there to ask for alms from those entering the temple.

            He asks for very little – just a few coins so that he might have his daily bread.

            But Peter and John do not even have that small amount to give him. All their funds are back in that little house church, being held for use in common by all the church members, so that none should be in need.

            But they have something else to give him – the power of the name of Jesus, the power of God, a power which can heal, a power which can save.

            Jesus had that power. When told that John the Baptist had asked if he was the one John had been waiting for, Jesus tells the messenger, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” (Luke 7:22) 

            That power has been passed on to the church, to those who share Jesus’ name – the name we all received at our baptism, the name we claim as Christians. This power to heal and to save has been passed onto Peter and John and to us, to offer to a world groaning in need. 

            Now friends, we know that healing takes many forms and comes in many guises. Sometimes healing can take physical form. At least as often, it takes other forms as well. Look at our beggar at the Beautiful Gate. He is healed physically, yes, but did you notice that an equally powerful healing comes earlier? Here he sits, day after day, as people come and go to the temple. He thinks he knows who he is: he is a sinner, he is estranged from the God who created him -- according to the popular thinking of the day, he suffered either because of something he did, or because of something his parents did, and this was his punishment. He knows in his heart that he is socially inferior to those who go into the temple, and therefore he has no right to look them in the eyes. And he knows that no one wants to look at him, because he is an inferior, because he has no right, in their eyes, to make demands on them. So there he sits in the dust, eyes downcast, speaking towards the ground as folk walk by.

            He asks for alms, and something new and unexpected happens. Peter and John don’t look away – Luke tells us they “looked intently at him.”  In other words, he not only enters their field of vision, they see him, they really see him, they see who he really is. And what they see is not a social inferior, not someone who has no right to look them in the eye, not someone who has been cursed by God and therefore is to be shunned. They see a child of God, they see one for whom Jesus died, they see a brother in need.

And so they say to him, “Look at us.” And while the text does not tell us in so many words, you can picture the scene, you can see the slow dawning of recognition in the beggar’s eyes, the new and enlivening insight that he is not cursed by God but loved, that he is not alone in this world but is an honored member of a family that will not just throw a few coins his way if he grovels appropriately, but will share their blessings so that no one will have to beg ever again.

And so when the beggar rises to new life – as he finds that his feet and ankles are strengthened – the physical healing simply parallels the healing of the soul that has already taken place. And now that he is healed, what else is there to do but go into the temple not alone, but with his new brothers, leaping and praising God?

Peter and John are gifted with the power to heal in the name of Jesus, but it is only really power if it is used, if it is given, if it is shared.

It is just as true for us as well. I think many of us know this from our own experience. Life has a way of running us down; all the obligations and responsibilities of daily living can take their toll on us; holding down our jobs, caring for our families, dealing with the various illnesses and disabilities that are part and parcel of our fragile human existence, for far too many, the burden of dealing with prejudice and discrimination. Not for nothing are Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks and Red Bull and all the other purveyors of caffeinated drinks doing so well!

And yet, there is a power available to each and every one of us that is just waiting to be tapped into. It is as if we have these huge battery packs strapped to us, just waiting for the wires to be attached. It is not our power, but the power of God, the power of the Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit. A power which can heal, a power which can save. But a power which is only unleashed when we give it away, when we let it flow through us to a world in need.

You know this power. It is what you grandparents experience when you go to take care of your grandchildren – somehow the usual aches and tiredness just melts away when you have that little one in your lap as you read a book together, or as you get down on the carpet with them to re-arrange the dollhouse or play with the train set. It is what those New Orleans mission trip folk experienced every time they met a homeowner they were helping out – somehow they found that they had more energy for the sanding, the mudding, the laying of the new floor, whereas before they were ready to call it a day. I believe this was a power known by the Freedom Riders, those folk from the north who put their lives at risk during the Civil Rights era by going south and riding the buses in defiance of segregation, and who steadfastly clung to non-violent resistance even as they were clubbed and beaten. And I believe this is a power you have known, right here in this church, as you have responded to the call to share of your financial resources for the ministry of this church here and in the wider community.

We’d all like to do more, but we know the limits of our own power. It was like when we were considering doing the capital campaign some years ago, and a long-time member of the church, upon hearing that the consultants had opined that we could raise $300,000, stood up and said that he knew this congregation and its record of low giving, and that in his opinion we could not raise even $100,000. Lots of folk nodded in agreement, but less wise heads prevailed, and we went ahead with the campaign, even though we knew we did not have the power to make it work.

It turned out that our power was indeed lacking – but the power of the Holy Spirit stepped in to help us out. We didn’t raise $300,000 – we raised over $700,000. And that wise elder who said we couldn’t raise even $100, 000 – his gift alone topped that.

Thanks be to God, we have at our fingertips more power than we could ever have imagined. And it is a power that can heal, that can save. A power which can touch people, help people, heal people, and yes, even save people. A power that can bring a smile to a grandchild’s face, a power that can put a disaster victim back in her own home, a power that can help eliminate racial prejudice in our time, a power that can build and maintain a community of moral formation and teaching and love on a hill here in West Barnstable.

You know the limits of your own power. That is why, when our Stewardship Committee asks you to “Step up in Faith” in the coming weeks, when they ask you to prayerfully consider doing even more than you have been doing to support our ministries here, you might want to think back upon the account of John and Peter and the beggar at the Beautiful Gate. Think back, remember the power of the Holy Spirit which has been given to you, and use that power to step up in faith. If you do, like those who witnessed the formerly lame beggar dancing into the temple with John and Peter, you too will be filled with wonder and amazement.

And let the people say, Amen.

“H-E-Double Hockey Sticks – A Burning Question ”

“Something bad happened at school today,” the first grader told his parents at the dinner table one evening.  Bracing themselves, eyebrows raised at each other in apprehension, together the parents hesitantly asked, “What?” “Well,” the youngster replied, “one of the kids said the “h” word.” “The “h” word?”, the father asked. “You know,” the son answered, somewhat sheepishly looking down at his plate, “H – e – double hockey sticks.”

            I guess we can laugh, because we all long for the days long gone by when the only four-letter word that our kids used was “h – e – double hockey sticks”.  But I have to admit, “hell” is not a word that gets used much in church these days, and certainly not in this one, at least with any frequency. But hell is all the rage these days, as evidenced by last week’s issue of Time magazine, with its cover story “What if There’s No Hell?”

            Now, the short answer to that question is, if there is no hell, then denial is only a river in Egypt, and we all live in some sort of fantasy world that has no connection to this earth and its suffering peoples. For anyone has to be unbelievably isolated from reality to be oblivious to the fact that for many people hell is not something to be awaited for in the next  life, it is daily existence in this one -- for the refugee facing starvation, torture and death in a world where there is no peace, no safety; for the addict who has lost everything, job, money, family, self-respect, in pursuit of an addiction to crystal meth; for the spouse watching cancer ravage her loved one, robbing them of the future they had hoped for.

            No, anyone who thinks there is no hell has never heard of the three young boys who were bragging about their fathers. The first boasted that his dad owned a farm. The second bragged that his father owned a factory. The third, a pastor’s son, replied, “That’s nothing. My dad owns hell.” “No way,” another boy scoffed. “How can a man own hell?” “Easy’”, replied the pastor’s son. “My mom told my grand mom that the Deacons gave it to him last night.”

            Now the real question, of course, is not whether there can be hell on earth, but on whether there is a hell in the sense that most of us think about it, a destination after death that is the opposite of what we call heaven, a place of eternal darkness, fire and torment. A popular evangelical preacher, Rob Bell, recently sparked a big uproar with the publication of his book “Love Wins – A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.”  Because in that book, he questions the classic evangelical teaching about hell, which is that it is the destination of all who fail to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior is hell, a place of eternal punishment. And don’t think that this is just an academic question – just recently a Methodist pastor in North Carolina was dismissed from his church because he openly voiced his question about whether Jesus condemns to hell for eternity all who have not heard of him and accepted him.

            But the questions go deeper than just “Is there a hell after death?” If there is, then what does this say about God? And how does this square with the God we know in Jesus Christ?

            In his book, Bell asks a lot of great questions. Like, “God is loving and kind and full of grace and mercy – unless there is not confession and repentance and salvation in this lifetime, at which point God punishes forever.” (p.64) Like, “Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love?” (p. 109) Like, when Jesus says he “did not come to judge the world, but to save it” (p. 160), did he mean, he came to save not the whole world but only some, or only some who heard of him, or only some who heard of him and responded appropriately to him, or only some who heard of him and responded appropriately to him and were baptized, or only some who heard of him and responded appropriately to him and were baptized and said the right prayers and did the right things? Like, was Jesus all about heaven and hell and a destination that only comes after this life is over and gone, or was he more about this life and this world and what he called the “kingdom of God”, a kingdom which he proclaimed as already breaking in all around?

            Maybe this Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, is a good day to ponder these questions. And perhaps do so with the assistance of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. (Luke 16:19-31)

            It is a parable, using vivid imagery and a gripping story to make a point that would resonate with his listeners. It is about all the kinds of hells we make for each other. During his life, the rich man had the opportunity each and every day to bring a bit of heaven to earth. Lazarus, a poor man, starving and without access to a food pantry or food stamps, physically afflicted and without access to health care, lies at the gate of the rich man, and yet he does nothing to help his neighbor. They meet again in Hades – the Greek word for a place after death – but this time it is the rich man who is suffering. And yet he has not changed – still he wants Lazarus to serve him, asking father Abraham to compel Lazarus to tip his finger in the water and so cool the rich man’s tongue. Still clinging to the old hierarchy, still thinking he is better than his fellow man, he has learned nothing.

            You may have heard of the fabulously wealthy fellow who, on his death bed, turned to the priest and implored him saying, “Father, I know they say you cannot take it with you, but please, let me take just one suitcase with me to heaven when I go.” Wishing to ease the man’s anxiety, the priest consents. When he gets to heaven, the man is toting a huge suitcase, packed with gold bars. Upon entering the heavenly gates, an angel opens the suitcase and exclaims, “Hey everyone, look, he brought us some more paving stones!”

            Part of the humor of the story comes from the fact that the formerly rich man still does not get it; he must have been incredibly disappointed that his earthly riches did not translate to the next life, and that they would not be available to him so that he might use them to get the “more” that he seemed to crave, and without which he would feel unsatisfied. So for him, like the rich man in the parable, heaven would not be heaven unless and until he learned a change of heart.

            For the rich man with Lazarus, heaven is not heaven because rejecting Lazarus, rejecting his fellow man, rejecting one for whom Jesus came and lived and suffered and died and rose again, the rich man rejects God. He turns his back on the one who offers to lead him to a new life, the life that is really life, a life where all live with and for one another.

            And the point, Jesus is saying, is not about life in the pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. It is about life now, and about the Lazarus that even now lies just outside our gates, and about the opportunity we have now to reach out to give him a hand up, to clean his festering sores, to feed his starving belly, to house his frail frame. It is about not only praying “on earth as it is heaven”, but working now as if heaven were breaking out right here on earth. It is about understanding that if this is how we live now, then surely this also is how we will live then.

            But our hearts are hard, the habits ingrained, the selfish desires so powerful, the short-term gratification from getting our needs met now so strong, how in heaven can we change, can we turn from the darkness we delight in to the light of the One who asks so much but promises so much as well?

Perhaps it is simply just too much for us.

So thank God we have in our corner one who can roll stones away from tombs, raise the dead to new life, and even bring heaven to earth. Amen.

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