SermonStudio

In my beginning preaching classes, I have always taught students to deal with one biblical text carefully and thoroughly. Sometimes, though, students from lectionary churches are expecting to learn how to integrate all the Sunday texts into the sermon. "That's advanced preaching," I say.

Whether you're dealing with two, three, or all four texts from a lectionary selection, or choosing two or more passages on your own, preaching more than one biblical text -- what I call "preaching intertextually" -- is definitely advanced preaching. It would be folly for the preacher to address any text without thorough background study -- so at the least, an intertextual sermon on three texts would require three times the study that a single text would require. Fortunately for lectionary preachers who save their study notes, that time can be spread over the years; there will always be a chance to study the Gospel this year, and save the Epistle for three years from now.

Other than the extra time involved, an intertextual preacher will have to engage in a more difficult and sophisticated interpretive process to bring more than one text to congregation. Truly inter-textual preaching bears no resemblance to those sermons which skim across the surface of a concordance, drawing prooftexts haphazardly from across the Bible, but setting none of them in context.

Some may question all that work: why put texts together, when one will do nicely? There are two reasons: first, the sermon is always an intertextual endeavor, and second, the Bible itself is an intertextual book. First, the sermon always straddles at least two texts, though one of them is not the kind of text made up of words on a page -- it is the text of our lives. The sermon always confronts a gap between the biblical text and modern life, between the times of the Bible and the times of our lives. The problem with modern life is that it is much less contained than a short passage from scripture. We must interpret life; we must bring some order to it, give it a story or a theme or a reason. In that act of interpretation, we have given our lives the shape of a text, which then is expressed literally as a text in the words of our sermon. The basic movement of preaching is in that sense intertextual.

Second, just as modern life is multivalent -- that is, we can bring multiple understandings of it into our lives, and even into our sermons -- the Bible itself is composed of material of great diversity, being not "The Book" but "The Books," compiled over centuries by various authors and editors, with varying literary, historical, theological, anthropological, and sociological backgrounds. The diverse perspectives that can be found in the Bible remind us that God is not contained in any one situation or understanding, including our own. It also gives us hope that we can hear a word from God in our situation as readily as those who were part of the biblical stories. Preaching intertextually helps us discern the voice of God among diverse witnesses.

There are various ways of putting biblical texts together in a sermon, some of them very similar to how we might use material from modern life in our sermons. One can, for example, give two or more biblical texts equal weight in the sermon, both contributing their support to a single theme. By contrast, one could play off two texts as opposites (as we have already seen, the diversity of New Testament writings easily allows this); there is no reason to think that we will always agree with every biblical text, when they don't necessarily agree with each other. One could also use one text in support of another, perhaps to confirm a point, perhaps as an illustration or example. Too many preachers miss the chance to use an illustration that is sitting right under their noses, in the morning's lectionary!

There are also ways not to put texts together; one must beware of manipulating texts or making artificial use of them. Some lectionary preachers forget that the lectionary is itself artificial; somebody has chosen those texts to fit together. Usually only the Old Testament has been selected to fit with the Gospel reading; the Epistles are read serially, or "in course." In fact, churches have been moving toward reading the Old Testament in course as well, as a way of avoiding the overemphasis on typological interpretation that sometimes seems to be at work in lectionary selection. The Old Testament can be read in and for itself, without always having to have a New Testament analogy. At any rate, biblical interpretation for preaching must always take each individual text seriously; it is not a matter of reading the minds of the lectionary authors, in order to discern the supposed links between and among texts. Other pitfalls for the intertextual preacher include the temptation to turn the sermon into three or four sermonettes, covering one text after another, and thus violating the unity of the sermon; or stretching too far to connect diverse texts, and thus pulling them all out of shape.

Despite the pitfalls, and despite all the hard interpretive work, intertextual preaching is great fun. Here is a chance to join a conversation that has been going on for ages, includes some of the most influential thinkers of history, and involves the great issues of life and death. Humbly, the preacher joins the discussion, but with a smile. Enjoy!



A Hand From The Tomb

Easter Day -- Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Luke 24:1-10
April 12, 1998


This sermon was preached at Christ Church, Avon, Connecticut, to the 8:00 service, which is usually quiet, reserved, gray-haired, traditional, and lightly attended.

Over the years, I have evolved in my thinking about the 8:00 sermon. I used to try to condense the "big" sermon into a short sound bite, often sans stories, illustrations, and anything that seemed remotely extraneous -- the "no-frills sermon" (an example appeared in an earlier section). But too often I had the feeling that such sermons were not so much "no-frill" as "lite" -- some substance was missing. One day my wife said, "Why short-change people just because they come early?" I began to preach the same sermon I would use at the later service.

Easter Day in Avon introduced one variation on the 8:00 tradition: we actually had music at the early service -- the 8:00 crowd permitted singing, just this one time per year. Also different on this day was that the sermon was composed particularly for this audience (I was going to do a children's sermon at the later service). It is fairly straightforward, as befits the service, using the three readings in a stepping-stone sequence to show how Jesus' resurrection is the foundation for the Christian's new life.


Back before I realized I was a hopeless case, I used to read books about how to remember people's names.

I once worked for a priest who could meet you at the back door before the service and then say your name as he put the wafer in your hand, but I've always been the kind who could walk by his best friend on the street and wonder if I've met that guy.

I used to read memory books, which didn't help much.

I did find one good piece of advice, though.

Always pay attention when they introduce themselves.

Most of the time, we don't remember the name because we didn't hear it in the first place.

If you want to remember, you have to be there.

This is common sense, but it may lead us to an entirely new picture of Jesus and his disciples.

Remember, the two men in dazzling clothes say to the women at the tomb, according to the Gospel of Luke.

"Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again."

Now you can't remember what you never heard in the first place.

The command to remember requires that there's something to remember.

And this is probably going to scotch all our old pictures of the disciples.

What do you usually think of when I say "disciples"? Twelve guys in bathrobes and sandals.

But if we remember Luke's story well enough, we remember that after Jesus sent out twelve, he sent out 72.

And some of those 72 must have been female.

Luke in fact tells us that a great many women followed Jesus; some of them were rich women, because they provided for him out of their own bank accounts.

The picture is not of a male-only handful, but a large mixed crowd, including an entire entourage of sisters and cousins and aunts who were themselves faithful disciples.

They were there to hear what he had to say.

They remembered his words.

And they were the first to pass along the news that what he said was true.

The men caught on eventually.

Peter in his sermon in the Book of Acts says that God raised Jesus on the third day, and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to the ones chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

"He commanded us to preach," Peter says, "and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and dead."

And preach they did.

Here we are.

They passed it along over the years, across the centuries, until it reached us --

Not simply as arcane, wondrous, and perhaps debatable claims about something that happened long ago --

No. What they passed along was the secret of getting up out of bed in the morning, and living life seven days a week.

For Peter and the women and all the rest, resurrection was not just a claim about Jesus, it was a claim on their lives.

It set the basic pattern for life.

Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Colossians, using the image of dunking, baptism by immersion.

You died with Christ, he says, when your head went under the water.

When you came up into the light again sputtering, that's resurrection.

"If you have been raised with Christ," then, "seek the things that are above."

"Set you minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

You see, it's not just that Christ was raised long ago and far away.

And it's not even that he is still alive, and still with us today.

But it's also that when he died, we died. When he was raised, we were raised.

"Seek the things above," Paul says, "where Christ is."

We can live new lives because of what he has done for us.

Death and resurrection are not the exception, but the rule, the daily rule.

For every day when we get out of bed in the morning, God offers us the chance to live the new life with Jesus.

I could give you a million examples of what it means to live the resurrected life, but the one that strikes me this morning is about how one community is living a new life today.

The Open Door Church in Minor, Alabama, held a sunrise service in their parking lot this morning at 6:00 a.m.

Choirs sang a cappella, the preacher preached in open air.

Perhaps this would not be so remarkable, except that next to that parking lot, where there was a church building a few days ago, there stands only one hallway.

A tornado blew in Wednesday and took the church with it.

Sixty-eight people huddled in that hallway Wednesday, hiding from the wind.

Children sang "Jesus loves me, this I know" over the noise like a rushing train bearing down on them.

Sixty-eight people walked away from that choir practice alive.

They came out to see their cars blown off the parking lot.

Was it a tragedy? Yes. Was it a disaster? You bet. But so was the cross.

On that same lot this morning, they celebrated their resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus.

We've never understood the resurrection of Jesus until we've seen that it is our resurrection.

There are no raging winds, there is no high water, there is nothing that we can go through that he has not already been through, and come out on the other side.

He has been to hell and back, through the wind and the waters, but at the last, God has taken his hand and lifted him up.

Jesus steps out of the tomb and offers us his hand.

He wants to take his friends with him.

Untiring, that hand reaches out to us.



Up, Up, But Not Away

Ascension Day -- Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:49-52
May 25, 1995


This sermon was preached at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, at a joint Ascension Day service with the local Lutheran Church. The Episcopal Church, U.S.A. and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had for several years been exploring a mutual recognition of ministry, and this yearly joint service was one manifestation of that effort on a local level.

Preaching to strangers is always difficult, since you don't have any way of knowing your audience. Preaching to an ecumenical group is that much more perilous. Frankly, I take quite a chance with my opening -- anyone who chooses not to listen to the end might conclude that, "Those Episcopalians are pretty skeptical." I thought the message worth the risk in this case.

Scripturally, this sermon builds on Luke's two versions of the Ascension. Rather than highlighting the differences (which perhaps would have been far too overwhelming for this crowd), I put both stories into a broader context, that of Luke's larger story.

One local and topical reference may be too obscure now, though it was publicized quite heavily in the Philadelphia area: a man named John Bennett, who ran an outfit called the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, was accused of pocketing donations and stiffing a number of religious colleges and other institutions who had invested their money with him. It was quite the scandal at the time.


There is a story in the play Mass Appeal that I don't think made it into the Jack Lemmon movie version.

Young Deacon Dolson tells of going to an Ascension Day service.

They tied a crucifix to a Roman candle, lit the fuse, and sent the crucified, crowned Christ up, up, and away.

The choir sang, "Leaving On A Jet Plane."

Which just highlights the ludicrousness of what we are doing here tonight.

Episcopalians and Lutherans together, celebrating the feast of the Ascension.

It is silly, inane, at worst.

At best, wishful thinking, unrealistic hope.

Marx said that religion is the opiate of the people, and the ancient Christian celebration of Ascension Day may be exactly the kind of thing he had in mind.

A belief in an ascended Messiah could be seen as roughly the same as a modern-day UFO cult, the belief that there are friendly, benevolent aliens out there who take care of us, and the fortunate few who have had Close Encounters of the Third Kind are here to tell us the truth.

It is the spiritual equivalent of a lottery ticket, or yet another entry into the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, in the faint hope that this time Ed McMahon will announce our names on television.


The difference being that we can compute the odds on the lottery or the sweepstakes.

But of course, the skeptic will say, it's all ludicrous.

How is the Ascension different from any of the rest?

Incarnation, miracles, healings, exorcism, water-to-wine and bread for the world, resurrection.

The Ascension, the skeptic will say, is part and parcel of the whole package, none of it more likely than the rest.

Just tales from the Flat-Earth Society, from a time when people thought the earth was a disk floating on a vast sea, and the sun, moon, and stars were fixed in an arch overhead.

As the Russian cosmonaut said, there's no sign of God in outer space. Nor of an ascending Jesus.

We Lutherans and Episcopalians here tonight have to admit that we have not a grain of scientific proof in our test tubes, not an iota of evidence, no indication whatsoever that our beliefs are any more probable than, say, the so-called science of the scientific creationists who fight to keep the teaching of evolution out of their children's schools.


But unlike scientific creationists, we celebrate with fingers crossed behind our backs, not willing to sacrifice our sober exteriors, nor to lobby for new textbooks, nor to push our beliefs through the courts.


Just a friendly potluck dinner, thank you very much, and a nice quiet service, that's all.

And maybe that's our problem -- the fingers crossed behind the back.

The skeptic would call us all hypocrites.

The skeptic sees us sitting smugly, listening to drivel that makes no difference to anything we really do.

Meanwhile the church dips into our pockets. Not the opiate of the people, but the snake oil.

For the skeptic, John Bennett and the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy sum it up for a gullible, naive, greedy, and hypocritical people willing to believe any huckster with an expensive suit and a good haircut.

Or maybe it is the skeptic who is spouting drivel.

Maybe, just maybe, the down-to-earth, sane, sober, realistic, common sense skeptic is wrong.

Maybe we Christians know something the skeptics have overlooked.

Luke wrote two versions of the Ascension story.

We read both versions tonight. The first is the ending of the Gospel of Luke; the second is the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles.

Both versions are part of Luke's larger story -- a story about a prophet who in fulfillment of scripture came to visit the people, who was received with joy by some but rejected by others, who although he was handed over to torture and death was vindicated by God, and who carries on through his disciples as they spread his message to the ends of the earth.

Like the prophets before him -- Moses, Elijah -- he was taken by God, and his Spirit given to his followers.


Wait in Jerusalem, he told them, for the promise of the Father. "You will be clothed with power from on high." "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

We Episcopalians and Lutherans in Quakertown follow in the steps of those first disciples.


Like them, we believe in the Holy Spirit.


Like them, we proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God.


And like them, we see the Kingdom of God in the life and death of the prophet, and in the community he called together to remember his body and blood.

We have Jesus with us in the person of the Holy Spirit, which gives us power to live the life God has called us to live.


And we have the promise: an end, a goal, a point to it all. "This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go."

The answer to the skeptics is that their common-sense down-to-earth wisdom is really just fear and despair in disguise.

Because if there is nothing but dirt and water and sky on this globe which circles a giant flaming ball of hydrogen, then there is ultimately no point in getting up in the morning, except the feeble ideologies that we humans wield like clumsy broadswords to wound one another.

But if this globe has been visited by the One who made us, and if that One is somehow still present among us, then it is the skeptics who are the bitter fools.

Because the One who has ascended to heaven sees us all, and sees us truly.

Let me put it in a parable.

I know a woman who was lost.

She was scheduled for a meeting somewhere out in the countryside, somewhere she had never been; she was late. She had directions, but they just didn't seem to make sense.

She turned at the crossroads, then left at the next road, then left again. But the sign she was looking for never appeared. It was empty landscape -- nothing there but a deserted gas station and vacant greenery, no place to stop, no one to ask for directions.

When she passed that big gnarly oak tree for the third time, she knew she had been going in circles.

It was getting dark, it was vacant country, she was late, she was lost.

That was when it happened.

The phone rang.

She had forgotten all about the cellular phone.

It was a wrong number, but that didn't make any difference.

Because now she knew that help had been there all along.

She just needed the reminder.

It may sometimes seem like the journey of the third planet from the sun is a pointless, repetitive cycle, and the spinning of the earth, a dizzying exercise in futility, our very lives going around in circles.

But we are not lost.

The one who ascended into heaven sees us, is with us now, and will come again.

Only sometimes we do need the reminder.



Bulldozer Bible

Easter 6, Year C -- Acts 14:8-18; John 14:23-29
May 17, 1998


This is an instance of a sermon that focuses on a single text, in this case from the Book of Acts, but uses another biblical text in an auxiliary fashion. The Gospel of John is introduced at the end of the sermon as an answer to the theological problem posed by the story in Acts. The Gospel is thus crucial to the movement of the sermon from sin and idolatry (as illustrated so clearly in Acts) to the good news and the power to have faith (as promised in John). While the actual use of John is brief and suggestive (I preferred to have people go home and think about it rather than spell it out at too great a length), it is essential to the message as a whole. Without it, the sermon is little more than a fuss; with it, there is a promise from God for help.

This sermon was preached at Christ Church, Avon, Connecticut.


Long ago and far away, in a place called Lystra, there was a man sitting.

He was sitting because he could do no other -- he could not stand or walk or run -- he could not use his feet at all.

Crippled from birth, his legs were useless withered stumps.

But he had ears. He could listen. He listened to a man named Paul.

And he caught the attention of Paul, who saw something more than disability.

Paul saw "faith to be healed."

So Paul yelled at him: "Get up," he cried.

And the man sprang up and began for the first time to walk.

I don't know what it is about human nature, but we can only be happy for this man for a few minutes --

Just a few moments, before someone asks the question:

What about the rest?

What about all the other lame people in Lystra?

There were probably more sick people in that town than all the people that Paul fixed in the pages of the Bible.

It doesn't seem fair.

Why don't they all get fixed?

The usual answer makes faith the scapegoat.

It requires faith to be healed, they say. You've got to have enough faith.

I remember being at a prayer meeting in college, where a woman "claimed her healing" from diabetes.


"Insulin is horrible stuff," she said, "it abuses your body." She wasn't going to take it anymore.


She had faith to be healed.


I went home more than a little skeptical. I expected to come back in a couple of weeks to find her dead.


My next-door neighbor was one of the ringleaders of this prayer group. He told me a few days later that the whole scene had been a mistake.


The woman's parents had not wanted her to go off insulin. She had broken a commandment; she had been disobedient.


Her faith had not healed her, because of a little chink in the spiritual armor.


But I walked away thinking, What's wrong with this picture?


What kind of God is this that plays such games?


The problem seemed not so much a lack of faith, but a poverty of imagination.


Rather than an abundant giver of good things, in the end we can imagine only an accountant, a divine bean counter, a petulant stickler for the rules, rules which at best are slippery.

The crucial piece we've missed is how slippery the story was in the first place.

We think it's straightforward, but it's not; it's full of double meaning.

The words we translate, "he had faith to be healed," could just as easily mean "he had faith to be saved."

Paul didn't make any distinction between being healed and being saved.

And so the story about a crippled man being healed is just as much a story about a cracked soul made whole, a fractured life saved.

The crowds in Lystra certainly saw what was at stake here.

Barnabas they called Zeus; Paul became Hermes the messenger of Zeus, because he talked so much.

The priest of Zeus came from his temple outside the city, bringing oxen decked in garlands, determined to offer sacrifices to these two gods come down in human form.

The misplaced religious outpouring is almost comical -- it was standard in Greek and Roman entertainment to laugh at dumb rustics who take mere mortals from the big city to be gods -- it's like in Star Trek, where the primitive people mistake technology for magic. It's always good for a laugh.

It would be funny, were it not so serious, and so typical of human nature.

The Lystrans mistake creation for Creator. They offer their worship at the wrong altar.

It is the human tendency to squeeze God's grace to manageable, bite-sized chunks.

We take the ineffable and reduce it to human proportions.

I don't think we should laugh too hard at the Lystrans.

I don't think we should laugh, so much as ask ourselves:

Where will we offer our sacrifices?

What altar will take our oxen and garlands?

The altar of politics?

Money?

Love?

Religion itself?

Let's not kid ourselves. There is no created thing that we cannot turn into an idol.

But no created thing can satisfy; no creation can fill the hole in our hearts. The hole is God-shaped, one-size only.

For Paul and Barnabas, idolatry was another opportunity to proclaim the good news.

They tore their garments, the traditional sign of blasphemy.

But they were not angry; they were almost amused that anyone would try to worship such "worthless things" as themselves.

God is gracious, they tell the people of Lystra, God has given you a chance to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them.

God is gracious, yes, but God now requires a choice.


There's a scene in the Robert Duvall movie, The Apostle: The little country church is having a picnic, when up roars Billy Bob Thornton and his buddies on a bulldozer, determined to put an end to the integrated congregation.


The Apostle Robert Duvall and his congregation stand between the bulldozer and the little church building.


Get out of the way, says Billy Bob, I'm going to bulldoze you. This ain't our kind of religion.


No, you're not, says the Apostle, and he stands firm.


Then he stoops and carefully lays his Bible down on the grass before the giant ram.


Talk about an icon, it's one of those big floppy preacher Bibles, leather bound -- they don't call it the Bible Belt for nothing -- belt leather.


One by one, Billy Bob's friends jump off the bulldozer. There are certain things you do not bulldoze in that part of the country.


Eventually Billy Bob himself jumps down and tries to move the Bible, but the Apostle holds on to him and says, I know you didn't come here to bulldoze this church. I know you came for something else. He holds on, he won't let go, he knows.


And finally Billy Bob breaks down and admits, that Yes, he came for God.

Idols are strong, even when they become occasions to preach the gospel.

Paul and Barnabas were just barely able to restrain the Lystrans from making their sacrifice.

But we shouldn't be too hard on these people -- they're just human.

And besides, they knew salvation by faith when they saw it.

Will we?

Here Jesus himself leaves us with some assurance.

In the Gospel of John, he tells his disciples that "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will remind you of all that I have said to you."

In the constant tug of war between idols and the true God, we are not alone. There is help.

The Spirit will teach you everything, he says.

In other words, we have something to look forward to.



The Harmony Of The Spirit

Pentecost Day -- Acts 2:1-11;
1 Corinthians 12:4-13; John 20:19-23
May 18, 1997


Sometimes a modern conundrum can set up a focus for hearing several scriptures speak at once. In this case, the problem is set off by the two contrasting stories (once again, I break my rule against first-person stories!). Each scripture is allowed in turn to address the issue; I neither emphasize nor ignore the different perspectives of each scriptural passage, but try to allow them to speak for themselves. The final illustration provides the basis of the exhortation, and, I trust, a metaphor for how the different voices can speak together.

This sermon was preached at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Katonah, New York.


It was a last minute call.

There was desperation in the Senior Warden's voice.

"Our priest is sick, we need someone on Sunday morning."

I didn't really want to go, but it was an emergency, so I went.

When I got there, I thought I had walked into the wrong church.

In place of choir pews, there was a drum set -- not even real drums, but those electronic pads.

There was no organ, but a keyboard with a microphone, like at a nightclub.

And next to the altar was the overhead projector for putting the words of the songs on the wall.

And then it hit me: I had heard that there was a charismatic Episcopal church in this town, and I had just walked into it.

For those of you who have never been, charismatic churches put a high value on the spontaneous working of the Spirit, and their worship tends to be less formal, with movement and dancing and pop music.

I felt like the guy who showed up at the Grateful Dead concert wearing a tuxedo; he thought he was going to the Three Tenors.

My out-of-the-prayer-book contributions seemed just a little stiff in the midst of the hand-raising and praise-chanting and Yes-Lord-ing.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against the occasional folk mass, or even a rock mass. There are many ways to worship God.

But I personally don't want the Grateful Dead in church every week.

And after the service when they came up and told me about going to Conference ABC or Program XYZ, I just had to smile politely and not say what I really thought of ABC or XYZ.

It was somewhat a matter of taste, somewhat of theology; I just didn't feel quite comfortable there.

Now here's another picture entirely.

My wife and I went to a conference last week with James Forbes. He's the pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, and an inspirational speaker for preachers.

We had gotten up too early Thursday morning, and driven too far to Long Island, having too many things hanging over our heads back at the office, not to mention Sunday sermons -- well, there we were sitting with fifty other pastors who were in the same boat.

And we waited for the lecture to begin.

But it didn't begin, or rather Forbes didn't begin with a lecture, but with a song.

He stood us up and made us sing, a song I didn't know but a lot of them seemed to know, fifty preachers of all stripes, all denominations, male, female, black, white, Asian, people from the islands of the Caribbean, all singing together, "Glorify your name, Glorify your name, Glorify your name in all the earth."

And somehow with that song it was no longer a burden to be there.

It was refreshing.

Dr. Forbes' topic for the day: The Holy Spirit.

These two contrasting images show the problem.

When Christians talk about the Holy Spirit, we tend to speak out of both sides of the mouth.

There is both threat and promise with the Spirit.

On the one hand, it is deeply unsettling to talk too much about it, to get too close to the Spirit.


The threat is that the Spirit may change our lives.


Are we going to have to give up our nice, comfortable, beautiful worship and end up at a church with a drum set, singing mindless chants over and over?


Or worse, if we pay attention to the Spirit, will God demand some really great sacrifice?

On the other hand, the promise is also that the Spirit will change our lives.


And it will be the change we really need and really want.


Life in the Spirit may refresh us.

In the story of Pentecost in Acts, there is both threat and promise.

The threat is obvious.

Here are these disciples, with all this weird stuff -- the tongues of fire on their heads, the speaking in languages they didn't know:

"Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in languages."

It's very odd stuff.

And worst of all, this preaching in public --

As some of you know, I was part of a very conservative campus group in college.


One of our members, named Wayne, decided one day that God was calling him to preach in front of the campus union.


Our leaders wanted us to stand up behind Wayne in support, just as the eleven apostles stood behind Peter as he gave that first Pentecost sermon.


But as my roommate put it, "Not on your life."


There was no way.


How much more so today for us stiff, traditional Anglicans.

And yet the promise is also palpable.


Think about the power here -- these were the wimps who left Jesus to be brutalized.


They ran away, and denied even knowing him.


And yet here they are, a few weeks later, boldly speaking the good news of God.

And the promise is the growth of something even bigger.


The Book of Acts makes it clear that there weren't just twelve apostles there that day, but over 120 disciples.


A whole community was empowered; there were no laggards.


They all spoke to this crowd of Jews from every land, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and all the rest.


We later learn that over 3,000 people joined them that day.


Now I'm not saying that we could be so lucky -- that we could even get half as many, or even ten percent.


But what if we drew in just one percent of the crowd that Peter and the others drew that day?


Who wouldn't want to see this place full, to look around and see Parthians and Medes and people from the ends of the earth?

The Gospel of John, too, offers threat and promise when it talks about the Spirit.

It is oh so weird, with Jesus huffing and puffing in their faces.


"He breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' "


As if the answer really were blowing in the wind.


And then in effect he hands them the keys: they can say who's in and who's out, who's forgiven and who's not.


"If you forgive the sins of any," he says, "they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."


I ask you, who wants to be responsible for anyone else's forgiveness?

And yet forgiveness is also the promise.


As in Acts, the audience is more than just twelve apostles.


Jesus is talking to the whole community here.


The forgiveness he's talking about is not in the hands of just the apostles or the clergy or the leaders, but everyone.


Jesus offers them the opportunity to become a community defined by forgiveness --


People who know they are forgiven by God, and live out that forgiveness.

Of course, I don't know what we would do without the pettiness, without the gossip, the backbiting, the little foibles of human nature that would be transformed by the Spirit of God.


What would the church do without the personality conflicts and the sniping?


One of my friends likes to say that the church is a place where if you put your foot down, somebody fifty feet away claims you stepped on it.


I always say that the reason church fights are so fierce is that there's so little at stake.


The promise of the Holy Spirit is to lift us above the petty bickering, to live like people who are forgiven.


Jesus literally blew those first disciples into a community of forgiveness.


And we are called to follow -- or shall I say, float -- where that wind blows.

There is one more vision of life in the Spirit to consider.

Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians used the metaphor of the body.

The promise again is obvious.


"In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body."


And with one body, there is one accord, a unity of action, and that's attractive.


One of my friends went to a church in Atlanta, a conservative Presbyterian church. The place was packed, and the pastor was being coy.


"Don't you tell the church board, but at our meeting Thursday night, I'm going to ask them to raise $500,000, half a million, and we're going to add an educational wing to this church, and we're going to start a day school."


"Now don't you tell them, but that's what I'm going to do." And the congregation was nodding and smiling.


My friend said that theologically, the church held no appeal for him, but he otherwise could understand the attraction of this group moving with vision in one accord.

But the threat is also clear.


There can be a stifling uniformity in that kind of unity.


There's something called the "church growth movement," that says the churches grow when the congregation is homogeneous -- everyone alike, with the same interests, the same concerns, the same backgrounds and culture and politics and social and economic status.


It almost seems like an ecclesiastical rationale for separate but equal.


It's disturbing, especially considering that even today the old saying is true: the most segregated hour in America is 10:00 Sunday morning.

It does raise the question, though, of how a diverse group can be a unity.


Is Paul just being optimistic when he compares the church to a body with many members?


I look at it this way:


When I was in college and majoring in music, I was required to sing in the University Chorus.


One semester we started to rehearse a certain piece, and we went off separately for sectional rehearsals: soprano, alto, tenor, bass.


I sang with the basses, and we were just flabbergasted and drained, we didn't know how we could sing this -- it had jumps and leaps and strange moves; it was very difficult to sing.


When we joined with the tenors, it seemed even worse, with these strange juxtapositions of notes, dissonances.


The joke started going around that the composer was deaf when he wrote it.


It wasn't until we were added to altos and sopranos, and later flutes, clarinets, horns, strings, timpani -- only then did it start to make sense, to turn into music, and when we sang we felt not drained but revived.


The piece was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.


And Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote it, and as the story goes, he had his back to the audience at the first performance, and they had to take him by the arm and turn him around to see the crowd on their feet cheering, and tears streamed down his cheeks.


Much like the tears that must flow on the face of God when the church, working diverse gifts, together sings in the harmony of the Spirit.

There remains only the question.

How do we do it?

How to speak the good news in the power of the Spirit?

How do we live as a community of forgiveness?

How do we create one body by the working of many gifts?

My answer is one word:

Rehearse.



A Long, Cold Drink

Pentecost Sunday -- Acts 2:1-11;
1 Corinthians 12:4-13; John 20:19-23
May 31, 1998


Here is another take on the Pentecost scriptures, again incorporating the entire lectionary (apart from the Psalm). Here the stories of scripture are set in contrast to a modern-life story (culled from public radio). Again, the goal is to allow the different stories to speak for themselves, yet as one work of God.

This sermon was preached at Christ Church, Avon, Connecticut. As is perhaps obvious from the text, the country was still reeling from a spree of graphic gun violence inflicted on our schools, not to mention escalating violence in the Middle East, and open nuclear weapons testing in India and Pakistan. The world had once again become a dangerous place.


Kaoka Chambers was on a mission.

Seven years ago, she was sent from Chicago to Omaha to kill.

She was a member of a gang, the Vicelords, and there was a girl in Omaha who was running off at the mouth, and the orders were to "beat her down until she don't get up."

I heard Kaoka talking on the radio the other day, and she described herself in those days as someone who "didn't have no feelin's. I didn't care what happens," she said, "it just happens."

Then she drove by Grace Apostolic Church, a converted theater in the heart of Omaha's gang territory. Something made her stop and go in the church.

In Kaoka Chambers' own words, "Something grabbed me by the shoulders, and I fell, and I'm like dang, it's something you can't explain" -- and the next thing she knew, she was getting baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Some people, I suppose, are put off by that kind of religion.

But I think the proof is in the pudding, or to mix the cliche, you shall know them by their fruits.

Kaoka Chambers now works full-time as a school bus driver, the first job she's had besides slinging dope and breaking legs.

But her real job is head of youth outreach at Grace Apostolic Church; you don't have to quit the gang to join the church, you can wear your gang colors to church. Kaoka Chambers brings these kids into the church because she speaks their language: "I kick it straight with them," she says, "I don't come with no alleluias -- that's church stuff, that's gonna come. You got to catch a fish to clean a fish, and once you clean a fish, it takes a process, the fish'll be clean."

As for Kaoka herself, "I'm free," she says. "I get to crying when I think about that. God knew I was the person to do the work. All I was looking for was love."

Some people will say it's strange, this story of Kaoka Chambers grabbed by the Spirit and dragged out of the Vicelords into the baptismal trough.

But is it any stranger than the story the Book of Acts tells?

One-hundred-twenty disciples crammed in an upper room -- the day of Pentecost, that great pilgrimage feast, when all the Jews gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the wheat harvest, and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Suddenly the sound of a twister from heaven, the roar filling the whole house.

One-hundred-twenty tongues of fire resting on their heads.

And they begin to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gives them ability.

Devout Jews from every nation hear them speaking about God's deeds of power in their own native tongues. Partians, Medes, Elamites, the whole long mouthful.

The universal mission has begun. "You shall be my witnesses," Jesus has told them, "when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." And here they are, witnessing.

So what do you think? Do you buy it?

Or how about the story that John tells?

It's a slightly different version of the coming of the Spirit, but it's no less strange.

Here the disciples are, Easter Day, Resurrection Day, locked in a room out of fear.

Jesus appears among them despite the locks, bringing his peace. "Peace be with you," he says not once but twice.

Then he does something really odd. He breathes on them.

Puff, with commentary: "Receive the Holy Spirit."

It's a new creation by the breath of God.

The purpose: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

"If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

In other words, the disciples are to do what Jesus has been doing all along.

And Jesus has given them his breath, his Spirit, so that he will be with them all along.

I don't know if you buy that one either.

It's all very strange, this business about wind and fire and tongues and the breath of Jesus, forgiving sins.

But it has dawned on me that maybe it's supposed to be strange.

It's supposed to seem odd -- I think that is what Paul was trying to tell the Corinthians.

"There are varieties of gifts," Paul says, "but the same Spirit. Varieties of services, but the same Lord. Varieties of activities, but one God."

And then he lists his list of gifts, and they are strange: word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation.

If I asked you to make a list of the gifts of God, I doubt that this is the list you would come up with. Most people would say things like, talent and ability, skills, friendliness and hospitality, virtue or wealth or education, our families.

Our list would not be the same as Paul's. Outside of certain circles, most people would find Paul's list odd.

But the difference is the point.

One Spirit. Many gifts. God's choice.

The world wants to kill the difference.

The mission is: beat the difference down until she don't get up.

This is why India and Pakistan are setting off bombs. This is why Israel and Arabs argue over slivers of land, the way teenage gangs fight over turf.

You back down, you're dead. You can't survive difference in this world.

We moan and cry about schoolkids with guns, but they're just doing what they see their parents do -- it's all over television, movies, books, the courts. We've told them that violence is a solution, we've put guns in their hands, and then we're surprised when they pull the trigger themselves.

The world kills difference.

God says, Difference is gift. My gift.

Paul tells the Corinthians, "All these gifts are activated by one and the same Spirit, as the Spirit chooses."

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ."

Even the metaphor that Paul uses for the Spirit is different. John and Acts picture the Spirit as breath or wind. Paul talks about the Spirit as water.

Even then, he can't decide if the Spirit is a dip in the river, or a long, cold drink. "For in the one Spirit," he says, "we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit."

Dunking or drinking, what's the difference?

Whatever it is, we need the water.

It's a desert out there.

The pastor of Grace Apostolic Church in Omaha, where Kaoka Chambers was grabbed by the Spirit -- her pastor is a man named Bishop William T. Barlow.

William Barlow has this to say:

"I am a blessed man," he says, "but it is important to me not to bathe in my blessing. I have to get out and dry off, and go help someone else. I have to introduce them to the tub. You can jump in," says William Barlow. "You can jump in, too. There's enough water for all of us."



Cats And Sheep

Easter 4, Year A -- Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a, 51-60;
1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
April 25, 1999


This is a sermon that focuses on the Gospel of John, using the other lectionary texts in an illustrative and supportive role. Here the biblical texts from Acts and 1 Peter play much the same role as the contemporary stories about the comic book and the cat. Scripture has great potential as illustrative material -- it is readily at hand, easy to adapt, and will go a long way toward reducing the oft-lamented "biblical illiteracy" of our congregations -- illiteracy which too often can be laid at the feet of preachers who make use of scripture only tangentially.

This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Avon, Connecticut.


My friend was disturbed by something she had read.

It was a comic book. Not a comic comic book, not Archie and Jughead or Peanuts.

She had gotten it at the local Christian bookstore, where yes, believe it or not, you can buy Christian comic books.

But as I said, there was nothing comic here.

It was the vilest piece of slander I had ever seen, all about how a particular brand of Christians -- and I'm not even going to dignify the slander by saying which brand -- was actually a tool of Satan, determined to destroy "real" Christianity by a system of secret agents and sabotage. It ended with an invitation to join the secret battle.

I would have laughed if it weren't so sad.

I told my friend not to buy any more comic books.

But she was still upset. She thought everything you could get at the Christian bookstore would be "safe."

"Why would they say such things," she said, "if they weren't true?"

"My sheep hear my voice," said Jesus.

But it's obviously not automatic.

The thief and the bandit and the stranger have been known to do awfully good impressions.

And disputes between different brands of Christians are nothing new.

We read about the first one in the Book of Acts.


Some of the Greek-speaking Christians in Jerusalem complained against the Hebrew- or Aramaic-speaking ones because the Greek widows were getting short shrift at the daily soup kitchen.


You will recall that one of the prime commandments of the Old Testament was to care for the widow, who in most ancient societies would be left destitute when her husband died.


Imagine what it would have been like -- all those women scrapping for whatever food there was, barely able to speak to one another --


Sarah fighting in gibberish with Phoebe over the size of their bagels; Esther pantomiming the division of a sandwich with Zoe.


Hebrew women elbowing their way to the front, while the Greek women at the end of the line go hungry.


Talk about ethnic strife.

The solution suggested by the Twelve was the obvious one, though it seems to be the last resort these days.


It required no troops, no missiles, no pipe bombs, propane tanks, or automatic pistols.


Force was not an option.


Instead, they held an election.


Stephen, Phillip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus were chosen to wait on tables.


You'll notice that they're all Greek names.


But the qualifications for appointment were not ethnic or linguistic --


"Friends," said the apostles, "select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom."


In other words, they were looking for people who in the middle of a thorny and possibly explosive situation could exercise some discernment.


The qualification for running the first Christian soup kitchen was to be one of the sheep best able to hear the shepherd's voice.

Or to shift the image, it's a matter of knowing your own front door.

Jesus was not above mixing his metaphors, and when he saw the puzzled looks on their faces, he shifted gears, and started talking about doors.

"I am the door to the sheepfold," he said, "I am the gate for the sheep."

"Whoever enters by me will be saved."

Think of it as an elaborate game of "Let's Make a Deal."


Monty Hall is offering you Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three.


Behind two Doors are thieves, bandits, and strangers.


Behind one of those Doors is eternal life.


Which Door do you choose, as the crazy costumed crowd screams your name?

What keeps this from being a guessing game is that we can know what kind of Door we're looking for.

Not all the Doors look the same on close examination.

We can usually spot the Door that is Jesus by its familiar texture and pattern.

I've always found it interesting that when Stephen and Phillip and the rest are elected to wait on tables, they immediately go out and start preaching the word.


There is little that separates the eloquence of giving from the eloquence of speech -- what you do with what you have says as much or more about you as whatever it is that comes out of your mouth.


Your wallet is as much an evangelist as your words.

We did not get to hear most of Stephen's speech today -- it's a whole chapter long.


The thing that really got them mad was the way he recounted the whole history of Israel as if it were really about Jesus:


How Jesus was a prophet like Moses, sent by God once to the people, rejected, but now sent back in the guise of his disciples, to offer one last chance for repentance.

Stephen's audience, of course, responded in what is still today the most popular solution.


You don't like what you hear, pick up a rock. Plan an assault.


Rocks, knives, guns, bombs, attack helicopters, cruise missiles, what's the difference?


If you don't want to hear the voice of the shepherd, there are plenty of thieves, bandits, and strangers out there who will sell you a quicker solution.

What's remarkable is how much like Jesus Stephen is in the end.

"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," he says.

"Do not hold this against them" --

Words echoing Jesus on the cross.

Plus the promise of a future, when he sees the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

Stephen follows the pattern of Jesus to the end.

It's a theme repeated again and again through the Book of Acts, throughout the New Testament.

We read today from the First Letter of Peter advice for Christian slaves mistreated by pagan masters.


If you suffer for being a Christian, for doing what is right, endure it.


"For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps."


"When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten."


In short, he did everything the opposite of the way the turn-of-the-millennium world seems to have chosen.


Yet what Jesus did allowed us to choose another way:


"He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that free from sins, we might live for righteousness."


"For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls."

Now that we've come full circle with our metaphors, let me mix in a new one.

Let's not be like sheep. Let's be cats.

Sheep have the reputation of being the dumbest animals alive.

They also are rumored to be quite dependent.

It seems to me that if we are going to discern the pattern of Jesus in a hostile environment, we don't need to be stupid or naive. We don't need to be conformists in a society that is going astray.

Cats on the other hand are known to be smart and independent.

Believe me, I've got a lot of experience with cats.

No cat is going to come just because you call.

If a cat comes running at the sound of your voice, it's because the cat knows from long experience that what you've got is worth running for.

My wife will tell you about her mother's cat John, who liked to climb up inside the fender of their old Studebaker and sleep all night.

One morning her father drove off to work at the repair shop earlier than usual.

Her mother poked her head out the front door a little later, calling John to his fried egg and saucer of milk breakfast. (I just tell the story; I don't vouch for the details.)

When no John appeared, a search party was organized. The neighborhood was scoured block by block.

Meanwhile, down at the shop, a farmer came in to pick up his machinery. "There's an old yeller cat out in the parking lot," he said. "Look like a good mouser. Mind if I take him home?"

It wasn't until Father came home to a frantic wife and children that he realized what had happened.

It was almost dark when they pulled up at the farmer's house.

But as soon as Mother let out with his name, they could see the ball of yellow bouncing toward them out of the barn an acre away.

Here was a cat who knew that he had missed his fried egg.

"They hear my voice," said Jesus, "and they follow me."

What he doesn't say is how much practice they have put into it, through years of worship, study, and service, trying to discern the pattern he set for them.

What he doesn't say is how long they have been listening, their feet ready to spring, their ears perked up, waiting, trusting, hoping, for his call.