As someone who has followed American literature, and who has read the writings of authors throughout the history of our country, I have come across and saved certain quotes which I liked – never really sure when they might come in handy. One that came to mind on this topic of listening comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson as he relates an experience he shared with Nathaniel Hawthorne:

“Hawthorne and I set forth on a walk … Our walk had no incidents.  It needed none, for we were both in excellent spirits, had much conversation, for we were both old collectors who had never had the opportunity before to show each other our cabinets.”

        I loved the wonderful metaphorical way Emerson expressed himself.  He had something within his life that he wanted to “show” his friend, and his friend Hawthorne had something to “show” Emerson. Such opportunities provide us the means to listen in ways which give  value and importance to the other person; it says I think your “cabinet” is interesting.  Maybe – to follow through with the metaphor – what is in the other person’s cabinet is not something that you would collect yourself, but you miss the point of listening if you come at this social interplay from such a judgmental or evaluative point of view. Whenever we open the cabinet which contains those things which we hold dear and value, we truly want someone to pay attention, to listen to us.

        Our gospel text today from Mark has to do with how we listen to God’s word to us; how the Pharisees had allowed traditions to grow up like vines around the Word of God, effectively choking off its intent for the people of Israel.  It had gotten so bad that Jesus boldly addressed the problem by saying that the Pharisees had in effect voided the word of God by the traditions which they had passed down to the people. On the matter of “clean” or “unclean”, he pointed out that it is not what goes into a person that defiles him, rather it is what comes out of a person which has the capability of defiling him.   The people speak words of worship, but have they really “heard” the word of God; for in vain they worship, letting tradition usurp the Word of God.

        Several years ago, the poet John Alfred Holmes was asked to compose the Phi Beta Kappa poem for the Harvard University commencement.  What he wrote he entitled “The Eleventh Commandment.”  Here are the opening lines to that poem:

        When Moses came down from the mountain and the cloud,

        He came alone down the rocks, and there, he stood …

        He had been up there a long time hearing what he heard,

        He had carried up there all he had ever known.

        Now he must utter before and after God’s word

       What both knew.  And shining, Moses went down.

        He read from the tablet the last word: Listen!

        Those who were to be the new world heard the law,

        And Moses began again, with the first word: Listen!

        What the poet saw in the perfect law of God given to God’s people was something these very smart and perhaps very articulate students needed to hear: that this word from God embraces all other words, that the first and the last word of the law is simply this … Listen!

         Our passage from James deserves the same kind of attentive listening and in listening to act on what is heard:

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.  Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

And so we are invited through the Word of God to the ministry of listening.  Most of us would be amazed at how much more effective we would be in our witnessing if we talked less and listened more.  The most effective means of ministry, for example is responding to need – not dumping our load.

         One of the most valuable classes I had in seminary, and certainly commend a similar class to Josh as he pursues his seminary education, is the one on reflective listening.  Although I have never had the training, I am sure that our Stephen Ministers go through something similar. Reflective listening has to do with reflecting back at the speaker what you heard them saying.  For example, someone comes to see me and he talks about fighting bouts of depression.  And I say something to the effect that you appear to be carrying the world on your shoulders, and there is no one who seems to understand your pain or to help share the load. And he can say, “Yes, that’s it!” or “No-o-o, that is not what I was getting at …” So we keep up the interchange so that I am clear on what he or she is needing help with, rather than responding with a quick solution.

         Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor/theologian who died in a Nazi prison in the closing months of World War II, wrote in his book Life Together, words which are relevant for us today:

         It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His word but also lends us his ear … Many people are looking for an ear that will listen.   They do not find it among Christians because those Christians are talking where they should be listening.  But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either. …  This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end, there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed as pious words.  One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit never quite conscious of it.  Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself, and for his own follies.

         A spirituality of listening suggests that all kinds of spiritual surprises await those who embark on the journey of quickening their listening, slow to talk, and slow to take offense. Just when you are sure that you are not going to get anything out of a visit to the semi-lucid old gentleman in the nursing home, you find you are vicariously caring for yourself somewhere in your own future.  When you think you cannot spend another minute listening to your 13 year old daughter talk about how angry she is with her mother, your wife, you realize that you are listening to yourself at that age, but now with the understanding that bestows grace on both daughter and mother. A relational spirituality shows us that genuine healing takes place in an atmosphere of listening.

         God meets us in our listening.  We are not left abandoned or ignored.  Although we have suffered and have been crushed under the weight of many a heavy load, God is still the God who hears our cries, whose tears mingle with our own in an infinite graciousness beyond our finite understanding.  When someone trusts us enough to ask us to listen to his or her story, I would hope that you have the graciousness to say, “sure, I’d like that!” 

         A few weeks ago, I was with one of our members who shared with me that he taught Johnny Cash how to play the guitar when they were both stationed in Germany.  And it was no idle boast; that is a documented fact.  A few days ago, I learned that there is someone among us who has actually had a school in the Cy-Fair ISD named for her. Neither of these facts were in any of the media outlets, at least none to which I might have had access; no, I came to know these things just by quickening my listening.

 When someone opens to us their cabinet of a lifetime of collected thoughts, feelings, and ideas, it is the spirit of God who works within us to listen in ways which give value and importance to that person.  Ultimately, it gives us the opportunity to “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls.”       Amen.

        There is a story told about a couple well into their 80s who were celebrating their 60^th wedding anniversary.  Their church had thrown this lavish party for them, and had them sitting at a head table in the fellowship hall.  During a lull in the celebration, John, the husband, leaned over and patted his wife’s knee and said, “Mary, I’m proud of you.”

“What’s that?” his wife said rather loudly, because she was quite hard of hearing at this point in her life.

        “I said, ‘I’m proud of you, Mary,’” John replied in his normal voice, not wanting to call attention to his wife’s hearing problem.

        “That’s O.K., John,” his wife shouted, “I’m tired of you, too!”

        Sometimes it is hard to listen to what is being said to us, what is being revealed to us, and not to misunderstand it, or at least get it right the first time.  You might remember the character that Gilda Radner played on Saturday Night Live called Rosanna

Rosannadana. She was a regular on the Weekend Update segment where she would come on the show upset over something that she had heard, generally something said metaphorically like “when pigs can fly” that she took literally. In the comedic back and forth between Rosanna and the Weekend Update reporter, it is explained to her why what she had heard just was not accurate. Rather than acknowledge that she was wrong in her assessment of what she had heard, her closing comment was … “never mind!”

        Listening is not the same thing as hearing; to hear something is to use one of your five senses; to listen is to bring the sense of hearing and the gift of perception into alignment, which allows us to understand other people and other things on a deeper level than merely hearing what somebody is saying.

        The text from the Gospel of John talks about the Beloved Disciple as one who was close to Jesus; even in those final hours, it was he who had his head on the breast of Christ, so close he could, I’m sure, hear the heartbeat of his Lord. It was John to whom Peter went to ask if he could find out who among them was to betray their Lord. It was John who must have heard the heart of Christ beat faster as he spoke to Judas and offered to share bread with him.  Being close to the heart of Christ allowed John to feel what his Lord felt; allowed John to listen with a little more clarity than those around him; allowed him to know that the only way to be secure in this increasingly threatening world of betrayal and deception was to stay close to the heart of God, incarnate in this Jesus the Christ.

         Earlier in their ministry, on the Mount of Transfiguration, John and Peter were there with Jesus when God appeared to them in a cloud.  It was Peter who said, “let us build booths to the sacred figures of Israel,” but it was John who was silent.  When God spoke out of the cloud, he said, “this is my son, my beloved, with whom and in whom I am well pleased: listen to him!”  And John, instead of speaking, … listened.

         John was not the perfect disciple – in point of fact, none of those whom Jesus called – and still calls – were or are perfect.  John had ego problems; always wanted to be first in line, if you will.  But John had an uncanny knack for always being where he needed to be; at the foot of the cross with Mary the mother of Jesus; running with Peter to the empty tomb on Sunday morning; and by the sea, where he was the first to recognize the risen Christ standing on the beach, calling them to breakfast. From someone whom, along with his brother James, Jesus had labeled “sons of thunder,” John was the one to set aside the thunder that he might embrace the peace of God which passes all understanding.

         When you and I listen to and for the heartbeat of God, we hear it, at least in part, through the perspective of this disciple John.  It is that kind of contemplative appreciation of Jesus’ engagement with the world and with other men and women is missing in the other gospels.  There is less judgment and more justice in John; there is more to do with love and less to do with law.  There is more to do with the totality of creation and less to do with the details of doctrine.  It is as if john actually listened to what Isaiah was prophesying when he proclaimed:

“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord.  Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.  Look to Abraham your father and Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and he became many.”

         Throughout scripture, there is a continual call – an imperative, if you will – to listen; to pay attention to what God is saying and doing in all aspects of his creation. And the one thing which precedes the fall of creation, there in the Garden of Eden, was a failure to listen. What precedes our fall into sinful behavior and attitudes is our own failure to listen.

         Listening is focused attention.  It means that we are paying heed to what we hear coming from the heart of God.  And if indeed we are listening to the heartbeat of God, what is it we are hearing? If indeed we are silent such that we can hear our own heartbeat and feel our own respiration, then it is that we can hear and claim that which God is offering us.  If indeed, we can pray in a manner such that we can imagine ourselves not in our beds or on our knees, but rather resting on the bosom of him we call Lord, then it is that we can know the spiritual peace like none other we have ever known.

         Last week, Josh shared some of his thoughts regarding spirituality and religion, commenting that the millennialist generation is more spiritual than previous generations. My own take on this is to come at it from the other direction.  Young people today are far less religious than when so many of us were their age.

        Robert Fuller, a religious studies professor at Bradley University in Illinois, has been tracking the trend away from organized religion since the mid ‘80s. His findings show that as many as 20% of American adults see themselves as spiritual but not religious. “They have no meaningful church affiliation, but they still consider themselves in some personal way religious,” says Fuller.

         To some extent, I see this to be a cop-out from the commitment asked of people who join our churches or synagogues.  But if we listen to this generation, and even to other generations who have come along since the 1960’s and 70’s, we will hear an honest searching for a spirituality which is not tied to bricks and mortar; that is not circumscribed by doctrine and dogmatics. I think that there are many of us – old and young – who yearn to be close enough to God to hear his heartbeat, but just do not know how to get there. So let me offer this direction:

         Think about the time when you were a child and your mom or dad held you close to their own chest such that you became aware of their heartbeat – how did that make you feel? 

         Think about the time you were pregnant with your first child, and the doctor let you listen to his or her heartbeat – how did that make you feel?

         Think about a time when you held your spouse or someone you loved very much close to your chest, and the steady pulse of your own heart was obvious to them – how did that make you feel?

         Cleland McAfee wrote a hymn that many of us are familiar called “Near to the Heart of God.” Let us sing the first verse of this comforting hymn:

There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God,   A place where sin cannot molest, near to the heart of God; O Jesus blest Redeemer, sent from the heart of God, Hold us who wait before thee, near to the heart of God.

 In closing this sermon on listening to the heartbeat of God, I want us to pray with our eyes open.  I want you to imagine that instead of John there is someone else who needs to listen to the heartbeat of God – it may be a friend, a spouse, a son or daughter, a sister or brother, it may even be you who needs to feel the comfort, the safety, the closeness, the very immanance of the Father God incarnate in the Son to whom he has called us to “listen.”  Let us pray …

Just up the road from my home is a pasture, with two horses in it.  From a distance, each looks like any other horse.  But if one stops their car, or is walking close by, one will notice something quite amazing.  Looking closely into the eyes of one of the horses will reveal that he is blind.  His owner has chosen not have him put down, but has made a good home for him on his ranch.  This alone is amazing.

Listening, one will hear the sound of a bell.  Looking around for the source of the sound, one will see that it comes from the smaller horse in the pasture.  Attached to her bridle is a small bell. It lets the blind horse know where she is, so he can follow her up to the stables.  As one stands and watches these two friends, one sees how she is always checking on him, and that he will listen for her bell and then slowly walk to where she is, trusting that she will not lead him astray.

Like the owner of these two horses, God does not throw us away just because we are not perfect or because we have problems or challenges.  He watches over us and even brings others into our lives to help us when we are in need.  Sometimes we are the blind horse being guided by God and those whom he places in our lives.  At other times, we are the guide horse, helping others to see God and to trust that he will lead them to the places they need to be.

Heritage Presbyterian Church has its challenges, but I am certain that she is listening for the guidance needed to get to the place she needs to be. The Strategic Planning Task Group has met and is meeting to listen for God’s word and God’s will for our church. Let us continue to pray for guidance and discernment as this group prepares to report back to the session and to the congregation in the coming weeks.

Blessings,
Jerry

A few years ago one of the rages was hidden 3-D images. These are pictures that, on one level, are one thing, but at another level are something quite different. The instructions are generally to position the image at a certain distance and try to stare through the image. At first all you see is the surface presentation. But if you let your eyes focus more deeply, or more distantly, you may see a train or a boxing kangaroo or a globe not only appearing, but actually standing up off the page. Now some people stare at these pages for several minutes and see nothing but color and chaos. But others almost immediately see the head of Beethoven or a lamb. If someone says, "How do you know a lamb is there?" the answer is, "I see it." Your seeing is the evidence. They may not see it, but that won't change your mind.

Now this is what it is like for some to look at God's creation. Some see color and chaos. Others have a deeper view and suddenly God's fingerprints come into focus. What evidence can they offer? They see it. It is as undoubted as a lamb in a 3-D image. No one can talk you out of it. You may ask, "Should that be called faith?" Didn't Paul say (in 2 Corinthians 5:7), "We walk by faith and not by sight"? How can faith be "sight"? Paul meant that Christ is not present physically on earth to see with physical eyes, but is in heaven. He did not mean that there is no spiritual perception of God's reality. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Faith is the conviction - or better, the evidence - of things not seen." And then the writer illustrates this in verse 3 when he says that "we understand by faith" that God created the world. In other words, faith is not just a responding act of the soul; it is also a grasping or perceiving or understanding act. It is a spiritual act that sees the fingerprints of God.  The blessed assurance of faith can be illustrated by taking the converse of the old saying, “You have got to see it to believe it!”  the assurance of the Christian faith is caught up in the expression, “When you believe it, you will see it.” This does not mean that you believe them into being. That would be wishful thinking - the power of positive thinking. That is not authentic faith. Real faith is based on real Truth. It looks deeply at the world God has made - looks through it, so to speak - and by the grace of God (in which we believe) one sees the glory of God’s creation standing forth like a 3-D image, emerging out of the color and chaos, such that you can say, “I see it!” or better yet, “I get it!”

Frederick Buechner once wrote that:
 “faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process rather than a possession.  It is an on-again-off-again rather than once and for all. Faith is not being sure where you are going, but going anyway.  … doubt is not the opposite of faith, it is an element of faith. I have faith that my friend is my friend.  I cannot prove the friendship of my friend.  But there is something about the way I feel when he’s around, about the way he looks me in the eye, about the way we can talk to each other without pretense and be silent together without embarrassment, that makes me willing to put my life in his hands as I do each time I call him friend. … and so it is with the Goodness of God.”

One of the dangers of sitting in a church is that one can get the impression, the mistaken impression, that faith is like these bolted-down pews - substantial, immovable, fixed, settled.  It is what Marcus Borg, the author of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time", meant when he said that when he grew up in church, faith meant affirming a set of beliefs, grasping a set of ideas, or what some of us would call "taking Jesus into your heart".  But what happens when you have trouble with some of those beliefs and your own experience makes you question those ideas? Later in life, Borg says, he came to see that it wasn't about our taking Jesus anywhere.  It was about Jesus taking us and taking us to places we would never have thought of going!  It meant being willing to follow without being able to see how it would all turn out.

And faith is like that for people like you and me, too, it seems to me, when we get it right.  We all started out with such fervent hopes and dreams.  Faith seemed so sure and alive and wonderful.  But life has a way of exploding those temples we construct for ourselves into a million pieces.  For we find that keeping those marriage vows is not as easy as we were told.  And the church is not always a Christian place to be.  And the people you believed you could trust let you down.  And all that you had ever worked for and wanted to be can also blow up in your face.  The day your world fell apart and you thought you were going to die because the place you thought was home - wasn't.  And it seemed as if your faith was slipping away.

But by the grace of God, your life didn't end; and, looking back, it seemed like a new chapter began.  God was turning your disaster into a new beginning.  Jesus was asking you to get into the boat with him and sail off to the other side of the lake.  It is times like those when faith stops being something firm and unshakable and becomes an adult kind of relationship.  It was the way faith happened for people like Abraham and Sarah.  Just when they thought they were "as good as dead", God pointed them to the stars in the heavens and showed them a journey that would take them farther than they could ever have imagined.  It is where our wandering will take us too when we have the confidence to make the journey.  Indeed, it is the only thing that matters in the end - not how much we believed, but that we believed and followed him however little we understood about him.

I wonder why it is that most Christians over the past two thousand years seem to have overlooked this restless, questioning side of faith. Abraham's not the only example. Think of Jacob, wrestling with God, insisting, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me". Think of Moses, refusing to cut any private deals with God that would leave his people behind (Ex 32:10-14). Think of the Canaanite woman out of the sermon and scripture from last week, praised for her faith, who by arguing convinces Jesus that he has to be as kind to her as to any of his own people.  What all these people have in common is a refusal to let anybody or anything put them in their place. They lived instead by "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

That's faith. It's an assurance, a conviction, so stubborn that you won't ever settle for anything less than your God-given dignity as a creature in God's image. It's an assurance that there's more to your life than you can imagine. You're not just a victim of circumstance. Whatever your surroundings have made of you, you're more than that. Much more. You're part of God's creation. Your origins lie not just with your biology, your family, or your nation, but with God. Your final destiny lies with God, no matter what happens to you now. And right now, no matter how daunting or pointless things may seem, you are embraced in God's arms and filled with God's love.

Now how do you know that? Oddly enough, you know it precisely because there is something that won't let you give up, won't let you settle for anything less. I think the translation of Hebrews we heard today is a little weak. The words for assurance and conviction are not just words for feelings. For "assurance," try substituting "reality," or "presence"; for "conviction," try substituting "proof," or "demonstration."' Faith is the reality, the presence of things hoped for, the proof, the demonstration of things not seen. The stubborn conviction that won't let you settle is itself the sign that you don't have to settle for what life has dealt you so far. It's a kind of sacrament: faith is a sign of the presence of God, a sign that God is really at work in your life, despite all appearances.

That's not easy to live with. It takes lots of patience, a willingness to listen, a respect for people who look stubborn to you, and a readiness to see how stubborn you sometimes look. So maybe it helps to remind yourself that it's that very stubbornness, that refusal to settle, that proves God's presence in this place - the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Let's not settle for anything less than the blessed assurances of our faith.

AMEN

    Ann Peterson

    Mark Rumscheidt

    Ron Stenzel

    John Redfield

    David Coles, Chair

    Dr. Jerry Hurst, Ex Officio

This task group will begin their work soon and they will keep the congregation and the Presbytery informed as the strategy for the future ministry of Heritage Presbyterian Church comes into focus. The SPTG asks for your prayers and your patience as this process moves forward.

     “What is it about ‘NO’ that you do not understand?”  I was sitting in a barbershop waiting to get my half-a-haircut (as my son would say) when I saw that phrase by the barbershop door.  I am sure that slogan has been around for a long time, but this was the first time I had seen or even heard it, and I found it to be rather clever and amusing.

      We have a hard time with the word “no!”,  don’t we?    I know that I do, but I am a lot better than I used to be when I first went into the ministry.  I tended to do  everything at that small-town  church I served because I did not want to ask  someone to do something and have them tell me “no.” Well, in a volunteer organization like a church, one does not get very far  - or last very long – if he or she is afraid of someone saying “no.” I got over that problem by learning that the no was not a rejection of me, but rather the rejection of an opportunity. The more I laid those opportunities out there for the people to respond to, the more I found that the yeses would come.  Now I am not so concerned about with what it is about “no” that people do not understand as it is about “yes” that they do understand. In my ministry, I have come to expect the unexpected response, both from church members and from him who is Lord of the church.

      Jesus’ response to the Gentile woman in our gospel text today is a surprise, it is, as it were, unexpected.  She comes asking for mercy for her daughter and she is met with a “no.”  It is not a response we who know the gospels, who know the Christ, would expect.  But Christ’s goodness and kindliness, even in the face of Christ’s own word would seem to contradict such faith.  Rather than run from this “no” – as I probably would have – she seizes upon his response itself as something worth saving, clings to it, and forms her petitions in relation to it.  In so doing, she breaks through to that divine goodness which she trusted was there all along. And so we move from one unexpected response to another, and I think Jesus both respected and showed his appreciation for her response.

       William Barclay has written, "Here was a sunny faith that would not take no for an answer, here was a woman with the tragedy of an ill daughter at home, and there was still light enough in her heart to reply with a smile. Her faith was tested and her faith was real, and her prayer was answered. Symbolically she stands for the Gentile world which so eagerly seized on the bread of heaven which the Jews rejected and threw away." i

     The woman admitted her status, but she refused to believe she was thereby excluded from any benefits. The woman's response revealed to Jesus not only her wit but also her faith and humility. Hearing God’s “no” and finding the “yes” within it opens possibilities and a hope for transformed living which are not available under the “nice” God of our religious culture who never says no to anything.  Like spoiled children, we want God to say yes to our every petition, and like Children, we often do not understand why the response has to be “no.”  What we would say is “no big deal …” God would say “yes, it is a big deal.” What we can so easily rationalize, God takes seriously.  Therefore, it is a loving God who pronounces a “no” of judgment against our sins, and who calls us to live a life which embraces this “no” whereby we die to self and live for Christ, precisely so that we can experience God’s “Yes!” in the new life of grace which opens up to us by the power of the Spirit.

     You may have heard, or even used the expression “when God closes a door, he generally opens up a window of opportunity.”

     This passage reminds us that when God opens a “window,” he leads into mission, sometimes in ways even Jesus had not anticipated. Jesus encountered this woman and explored the mission to the Gentiles in a place He did not expect, the city of Tyre. He encountered the deaf mute in the Decapolis, an area where previously they pleaded with Him to leave. God often leads us into mission in ways we had not planned.

      The former pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of San Antonio, Texas once told a group of pastors over at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary that they never really intended to get involved with the homeless. Sure they were a downtown church, but working with the homeless was the job of agencies and other people with whom they partnered. They wrote checks, they provided funding, but they never intended to get involved personally. That was until a homeless man died on the steps of their church one Wednesday night.

      The next morning, the men's bible study arrived to gather as they did every Thursday morning, and as they entered the church building, they had to walk over and around the dead homeless man, thinking he was asleep. It was only later that day they discovered, to their shock, that the man was actually dead, and it hit them all in a profound way.

      An elder in the church was one of the men in this bible study, and he raised the question about what the church should do for the homeless of the city. That question led to the purchase of 100 cots to be placed in the gym where the homeless could sleep. Then along with 10 other downtown churches, they built a shelter for the homeless. They got involved personally in staffing it. The mission of that church to the city has grown to the point where they are personally engaged in deep and diverse ways with the homeless of San Antonio.

      I believe that God does say “no” to behavior which is not in keeping with the righteousness of his Son; I believe that God does say “no” to lifestyles which do not reflect glory upon his creative purposes; I believe that God does say “no” to attitudes which embrace cheap grace to the exclusion of sanctified living.  The woman who came to Jesus from outside his race, from outside his religion, knew there was a price to pay for what she sought.  By asking just for the crumbs from the table,” she was expressing her willingness to eat whatever Jesus would provide in order to bring transformation for her and daughter.  As a prayer from the Ionian community off the coast of Scotland so beautifully expresses it:  “… may we who come roughhewn to thy workbench, O master Carpenter, be here fashioned to a truer beauty by thy hand.”  By her faith, a no became a yes, by her faith, a sinful life became whole; by her faith, a sick child became well. Out of your own faith, do not take a perceived “no” to be God’s only response to your needs; look for the window of opportunity, the “yes” that God provides that enables a sinsick life to become whole.
Amen

A few years ago, Pam and I linked up with my friend Rick Young, was then the pastor at the Conroe Presbyterian Church, to a group from our respective churches to the Middle East, Jordan and Israel to be specific. Neither of us had been to Israel, and I was particularly interested in seeing and experiencing Jerusalem.  In fact one of the highlights of the trip was being able to join other Christians and Jews at the Wailing Wall. As you may remember, the Wailing Wall was part of the original temple that was standing when Jesus came to bring God’s word to his people.  It is a fascinating place, and as you get close to the wall, you can find prayers that had been rolled up and placed within the crevices of the stone and masonry. And you are definitely aware of the vocal nature of many of the prayers, and the distinct wailing sounds that are uttered.  To that end, I am reminded of a story told of a journalist who was assigned to the Jerusalem bureau of his newspaper.  Upon arriving in the Holy City, he gets an apartment overlooking the plaza which leads up to the Wailing Wall.  After several weeks, he realizes that whenever he looks down from his apartment at the wall, he sees the same Jewish man praying vigorously.  The journalist sensing a possible storyline, goes down to the wall and introduces himself:

          “You come here every day to this wall.  What are you praying for?”

          The old man replies: “What am I praying for?  In the morning I pray for world peace, then I pray for the brotherhood of man.  I go home, have a cup of tea and some bread, and I come back to the wall and pray for the eradication of illness and disease; then I pray for healing and hope for my people.”

The journalist is taken by the sincerity of the old man – and his persistence:  “You mean you have been coming to the wall every day to pray for these things?

          The old man nods.

          “How long have you been coming to the wall to pray?”

          The old man becomes reflective and then replies:  “How long? Maybe twenty, twenty-five years.

The amazed journalist finally asks: “How does it feel to come and pray every day for over twenty years for these things?”

          “How does it feel?  … It feels like I’m talking to a wall! …

but someday; someday – who knows …”

          In teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus taught them to pray with boldness, “ask, and it shall be given to you … for everyone who asks of the Lord so shall he/she receive.”  In the letter to the Hebrews are these words:  “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”  Do you see that the boldness must be placed in Christ? That boldness must be with eyes looking towards Christ who knows who we are and that we are not able, on our own, to do what we must do.  So we come looking for mercy, asking for God’s healing in body, mind, emotion and spirit.  We cannot come with arrogance, nor can we come with any sense of entitlement.  But we can come with a persistence which asks only that our needs be met

          So, in line with this persistence, Jesus offers a short parable when the disciples asked him about prayer.  He said “pray this way” – like some poor man who kept pestering his neighbor at midnight, persisting in his requests until the man got out of bed and gave him the bread he needed.

          It has always seemed strange to me that this parable falls hard upon Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer.  But instead of using the parable as a simile for prayer, it is instead a contrast.  Jesus is offering to the disciples a question which is seeking an emphatic negative answer.  Can you imagine going to a friend with a need, no matter the time, and having that need refused?  Which one of you, having a friend in need would refuse that friend, no matter the time or circumstances?  That is the question which this parable raises in the disciples’ minds, and one in which they would respond with a resounding “NO!”

          Seek … and you shall find; ask … and it shall be given to you; knock … and it shall be opened to you.  These words offer to us the assurance that ours is a God who gives, opens, and allows us to find.  But the danger here comes when we take these words to be a “blank check” on which we can write anything our hearts desire.  Jesus assured his followers that God answers prayer, but he did not guarantee that they would receive whatever they requested.  The assurances that follow from the Lord’s Prayer assume that those who ask, seek, and knock are asking from their own need, are seeking the keys to the kingdom, and are knocking at the door of the neighbor at night.  We may be unclear or even confused as to what are the needful things in our lives, but Jesus, through his own persistence, calls each of us to a higher pursuit:  Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you … for it is your Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Our praying should be consistent with our seeking.  Then when we pray as Jesus taught us, the assurance that answers is hardly needed.

          William Willimon, when he was chaplain at Duke University, provides an interesting teaching perspective when he says that in the process of obeying Jesus’ command to pray as he taught us to pray, our lives are bent toward God in a way that is not of our natural inclination, and we become, as we pray, more Christ-like.  In effect, Willimon is saying that this is a profiling prayer – it helps identify who we are.  If you are asked, “Who is a Christian?  The best answer to give is, “A Christian is none other than someone who has learned to pray persistently and consistently the Lord’s Prayer.”

          What Jesus did was to establish a pattern for prayer, and the pattern goes pretty much like this:  it begins with the praise of God and recognition of who he is - an appeal for his ways to be known here on earth follows - then comes a petition for our common daily needs such as food - next is a request for the grace of his forgiveness even as we are involved in the same matter with our fellow human beings, - finally, there’s a prayer for help in resisting temptation, in resisting evil (it’s better to understand it this way rather than as a petition to keep us from difficult times.)

          Such a well known prayer, and which likely is the best known and most memorized part of scripture, can have many applications. For example, a minister parked his car in a no-parking zone in a large city because he was short of time and couldn't find a space with a meter. Then he put a note under the windshield wiper that read: "I have circled the block 10 times. If I don't park here, I'll miss my appointment. Forgive us our trespasses."

          When he returned, he found a citation from a police officer along with this note. "I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket, I'll lose my job. Lead us not into temptation."

          Unlike our Catholic and Episcopal sisters and brothers, we do not have a prayer book out of which we offer our worship to God.  The only constant in the Reformed church is the Lord’s Prayer.  The hymns change, the liturgy changes, the people up in the chancel change, but every week you can count on the Lord’s Prayer as part of our offering to God. Like the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem, maybe our saying this prayer has become rote; we are saying it while our minds are off somewhere else.  But there are times, as many of you can attest when our persistence in praying this prayer becomes a true instrument of grace and of tender, healing mercies.

          All you and I do in the Lord’s Prayer is to testify to God how he persists in his compassion toward us through the saving grace of the Christ who taught us that prayer.  You are not saved because you know the Lord’s Prayer, any more than you are saved because you have read the Bible from cover to cover.  But being persistent in praying this prayer orients your life to the assurance of salvation.  Therefore, salvation comes through having your life bent toward God when all you thought you were doing was being persistent in your prayer life.  The Lord’s Prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives towards God in a way that God has opened to us so that … his will is done, and his kingdom comes … on earth as it already has in heaven.
AMEN

          When I was growing up in a little village about 12 miles northeast of Charlotte, N.C., our church always held a homecoming event on the last Sunday in July. There would be tables and folding chairs set out under the huge oak trees behind the church. Folks brought covered dishes for a formidable dinner on the grounds following Sunday worship, and there would be “sweetea” (sweet tea) and watermelon to drink and eat before Rev. Kerr prayed over the banquet.  In the 13 years we lived there, I never remember it raining on Homecoming Day. Back in the ‘70s, shortly after I had graduated from seminary, I went “home” to preach on Homecoming Sunday at the invitation of the pastor who had encouraged me to go to a Presbyterian college, and later pushed me towards seminary. I took the invitation to be an honor; an opportunity to return to the people I had left behind in order to go forth and fulfill my destiny; to follow the path which God had placed before me. And I began to have some ridiculous visions, like a headline which might appear in the local weekly newspaper:  HOMETOWN BOY RETURNS TO HIS ROOTS; HUNDREDS OVERFLOW LOCAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH!

          But it was not to be.  I was not the pastor in the pulpit; I was the afternoon paperboy who sometimes threw newspapers into Mrs. Quillen’s flowerbeds.  I was the kid who hit a patch of black ice one winter while delivering those papers and bicycle, papers and boy were scattered along a six-house stretch of old Lawyer’s Road!  I was Dick Hurst’s son.  “I remember old Richard,” they would exclaim there in the narthex before worship, “now there was somebody who could sing; we sure could use your daddy back in the church choir.”

          A rather deflating experience, don’t you think?  I was not held up in people’s minds for what I had become, but rather remembered for what I used to be. Not a whole lot different than going back to a college or high school reunion.  But I was different; I had been shaped by so many of the people in that church and community, but it was unfair – I thought – to only remember what I used to be. That is what happened in our text from Mark today.   He had not been gone from Nazareth all that long when he returns a different man, a man of God’s own choosing, baptized by John and confirmed by the Holy Spirit.

          Jesus comes nigh unto Nazareth, to bring the good news from the Father.  Yet when he speaks, the response he gets is:  “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”

          When Jesus returned to his hometown, his family, and his home synagogue, he was not a popular figure; he had changed – or so the perception was of this carpenter’s son by those with whom he had worshipped, and with whom he had studied in the synagogue year after year.  Jesus’ teaching in his home synagogue astonished those who came to know him as he was growing up.  Where did this son of Mary and the carpenter get all this knowledge?  Where did he get the power he used?  The people of Nazareth could not help but wonder just who this Jesus thought he was. They could not see what he had become; they could only grasp the knowledge of what he was when he lived among them.

          “The problem with hometown knowledge,” writes Ted Wardlaw, president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, “is that, however unwittingly, it can often conspire to package you prematurely, thus putting you in this box or that box and reducing you to someone who is less than who you are.  Hometown knowledge is not always modest; it seeks to control.  It can often tread across the boundaries of your essential mystery – that which is known only to God – all the while trumpeting, ‘You and I go way back – I know you like a book!”

          As I said, oftentimes, knowledge has to do with gaining control. The more I know about you, the more you know about me, the more such knowledge controls how we relate to each other.  Faith, on the other hand, has to do with losing control.  Jesus in this text demonstrated the limits of what even his hometown could understand about him based on knowledge alone.  They could embrace him and his way, his truth, his life, not by what they could claim to know about him, but only by what they were willing to give up in order to follow him.

          I want to tell you a story about a character I came to know in a book written by Jan Karon entitled At Home In Mitford. The character’s name is Homeless Hobbes, and he lives alongside a creek in the smokey mountains of western North Carolina.  About himself, he says, “…the bottom line is, I was drunk for thirty years.  Thirty years! It astounds me to this very day … I lost three wives, nine jobs, four houses, two kids and one foot.  The only thing I didn’t lose was m’ self-respect, and that’s cuz I didn’t have any! …You might say that I did everything I could to earn the name Homeless and live up to it.  And now that things are diff’rent and I’ve been sober for nine years, I don’t try to dodge m’ name.  It reminds me of what I was.  Homeless!”

          The man has little regard for religion, acknowledging that he was raised in the church, and baptized as a boy.  Yet there was always something lacking in him, and he regarded church people as those trying to get him into a pew.  As he said to a visitor once, “made me feel kinda like a frog you’re trying to gig.”

          Later, following a series of events which involved this man finding something of considerable value and returning it, we find Homeless sitting in the home of Father Tim, the primary character in this book and in the Mitford series of books which Karon wrote:

          “Something I lost has been found, too.”
          “And what’s that?” asked the rector.
“My faith.  It looks like it’s back.  An’ t’ tell th’ truth, it’s a whole lot stronger than it was when it left.”
          “I’m glad to hear it.  You don’t know how glad.”
          “Well, I took down th’ New Testament you brought me, an
I said, I believe I’ll just crack this open f’r a minute – I knew I didn’t want to get no religion out of it, nossir.”
So I baited a hook and I put it on my fishin’ line and went ‘n sat on the creek bank …
So I was settin’ there and commenced t’ read and first thing you know, I was dead into it.  I’d catch me a crappie, take it off th’ hook, bait it up again, and go back t’ readin’. I done that all day, and by the time I’d fried up a mess of fish and eat a good dinner, it come to me plain as day that m’ faith was back. God Almighty had put his hand on me again after all these years …
          Homeless grinned happily.  “it’s a good feelin,’ Father, kinda like I’ve found a home.”

Coming home to one’s faith is what the gospel is all about. I am serious in that assessment of our scriptures. If you set aside dogma and doctrine, and look at the totality of the canon, it is an epic story of God calling his people to come home to the faithful covenant he established in and through Abraham and Moses and David … and Jesus.  It is not about finding religion or determining the value of this church or that synagogue; this dogma or than doctrine.  It is as Paul says, of “His grace being sufficient” for us; a grace which is perfected in our weakness.  Paul gave up much in order to be the apostle he became.  The disciples as they were called and commissioned gave up much in order to follow Jesus faithfully.  In fact, they became “homeless” – taking nothing with them – no food, no money, no bag – for they were to let their faith serve them through their ministry.

How about you? Are you so stuck on what you “know” about the church, about religion, about Jesus, that you cannot let go of that knowledge and let Jesus use you in his ministry?

Paul knew a lot about Jesus when he was persecuting the church, but when he was converted, he said, “I am determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”  How about you? Are you willing to come home to a faith which proclaims Jesus crucified for your sake and for the sake of others?

Jesus was amazed at the unbelief of his hometown.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could equally be amazed at your willingness to believe that he is the person he says he is, your willingness to accept the power to heal and to forgive if you but let go of some of the knowledge you have of him and replace it with what you believe about him.  Knowledge is good … faith is better.  You are saved not by what you know of Jesus from this town of Nazareth; you are saved by your belief in who he is for you, and in you, and through you. As you read the gospel, as you attend to all that Jesus says and does, I trust that what you will find is not so much knowledge about Jesus as it is that you will find it to be a call to come home to that grace which saves you through faith.

Amen

When I was working with the Drama Department at St. Andrews Presbyterian College, and I was cast in an ensemble role, the director of the play would generally ask several of us to be understudies for another part in the play.  In the production of that play, I would have a certain role to play as per the casting, but there was always the possibility of having to step into another role due to illness or accident.  In this way, I knew the story not just from the role in which I had been cast, but also from the perspective of the other role as well.  It is that different perspective I want to offer to you today.

 It is important to remember not just the parable, but the prologue to the parable. Remember the question that the lawyer asked was, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” In looking at the way the “answer” unfolds, it would appear that Jesus is saying that we can make our way into eternal life by doing good things for other people, just as the good Samaritan did.  Yet, we who come out of the Reformed theological traditions would argue against such an answer, since it is not good deeds that brings eternal life; such life only comes as a gift of grace.

 So let’s look more closely at how Jesus’ parable was an answer to the lawyer’s question.  The man in the ditch is often seen as a prop for the story; we know so little about him other than he was beaten, stripped, robbed, and left for dead.  The other people are given identities: robbers, the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan, the innkeeper. And in the grand scheme of parables, there must be a God/Christ figure, right?  And the presumption is that this figure is the Samaritan – sounds reasonable enough. Okay?  But I would say that we have been looking at this parable all wrong.  I would offer you a different perspective; I would offer you the view from the ditch!  You see, I believe that the man who was left dying by the side of the road – in the ditch – is the Christ figure, not the Samaritan.  And if so, then this parable is not about the importance of helping people; it is not about making our way into heaven by going out and lending aid when others have passed by.  Such endeavors are important aspects of the Christian life, but that is not what provides an answer to the question which was raised about inheriting eternal life.  Rather, this story, this parable is about how we treat the one left in the ditch.  In other words, this is a parable about how you and I treat our neighbor; how we value or under value him or her; how we value the crucified Christ in our midst. It is the story of how mercy is received by someone, if truth be told, we would prefer not to have to deal. This image of the Christ-figure before us is not without precedent; in his prophecies, Isaiah writes about the servant of God who had no form or majesty that we should look upon him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with sorrows; and as one from whom others hid their faces.  And lest we forget Jesus own self-description: “…as you have done it unto one of the least of these … you have done it unto me.”   

And so the man lies there – beat-up, broken and bloody – but he is not blind; he   

watches as others come into his view. The priest and the Levite see the man and then pass by on the other side of the road.        As much as our Sunday School teachers may have led us to believe, we must not make them out to be “bad guys.”  They were the kind of people you would have over for a 4^th of July cookout; they are model citizens, keep their yards clean and mowed; they are faithful in their church attendance; good Rotarians. They were not bad people, just people with their own agendas – just like you and me; with their own set of plans for where they wanted to go in their lives – just like you and me.  And those plans did not include becoming sidetracked by some foolish, half-dead traveler.

 And then into view comes the Samaritan. He doesn’t know any more than the priest or the Levite what kind of fellow this is who has been assaulted, but he goes to him and gives him everything he has: with wine and oil, he bathed the wounds and bound them up; he put the man on his horse and took him to a place that he himself was not going.  Once there he gives the innkeeper two days wages to care for the man, and if more is needed when he returned, he would provide additional funds - whatever it takes.  When our perspective is from the ditch and not from the road, this parable is about mercy received – or not received - rather than doing or not doing good deeds.

 With this perspective, let me guide your thoughts to the plumb line we find in the Old Testament lesson.  The plumb line is indicative of the covenant relation between God and his people, whether that is the covenant of the law to which God alludes in the prophecies of Amos, or the new covenant established in and through the blood of Jesus Christ.

 The plumb line, in the parable, is the needs of the man beaten and robbed.  How does one measure up to that plumb line which drops down into our midst; that invades our space and time and agendas?  The priest and the Levite pass the man by, and there are a thousand and one reasons for not stopping – from being afraid to just being late to being inconvenienced.  My parents taught me, as I am sure yours taught you, don’t pick up hitchhikers – “stranger danger” they called it, and their wisdom is not lost on us today.  So, for whatever reason, they did not respond to the need of the broken and battered man.  How did their actions measure up to the plumb line he represented?  From the view from the ditch, not so very well I would presume.  One thing you need to know about plumb lines – they do what the eye cannot do. They determine what is straight and true and what is not: from laying bricks to form a wall; to installing wallpaper; to taking the measure of a man or a woman. So, now that we have brought the plumb line into play, how do you and I measure up?

From the road, we don’t look too bad; righteous enough to check things out, and able to rationalize that there is probably not much we can do.  But the view from the ditch is different.  There in the ditch between us and the Christ-figure, is the plumb line God has set in our midst, and against the plumb line, some just do not measure up. When the battered and bruised Christ catches your eye as we travel that road of faith, do you avert our eyes and keep on walking?  Do you do a little stutter step in his direction, and then head on down the “Ivegototherthingstodo” road.  Or do you recognize the Christ for who and what he represents, the Church to which we have each been called and to whom we confess our faith.  Here is where the plumb line is hung, and it is to the imperative, “do this!” that we must measure up. Even when the context is non-Christian, like here with two boys embracing one another – one Israeli, the other Palestinian – we are instructed in how we must answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

The Mission Committee, Dr. Edwards, myself, and the Session have decided to place such a “plumb line” before you in the form of a Missional Challenge. For too long and for too many of us, we have been ill-prepared to minister to those in need around us; many of us are confused as to how to go about, engage, and promote a ministry to the “christs” in our midst.  We have decided to offer you as a family unit $100 to use as you see fit to engage in a missional, evangelistic endeavor.  Other than that instructional goal, there are no strings attached.  What we want in return is your story; what was your experience? How did you arrive at a decision on how to put this challenge to work?  What were the results?  Ultimately, we want to put your experience in responding to this challenge into a devotional booklet that will be part of our evangelization efforts in our community.  I believe – we believe – that many people who might be interested in being a part of Heritage Presbyterian Church will want to know how we do mission.  Is it just a committee – like in so many churches – who makes decisions and writes checks out of their mission budget?  Or is it part of a grassroots movement of families who take seriously the view from the ditch; who have a passion for ministering in a hands-on manner; who can be pro-active in moving forward with creative mission endeavors?

 The view from the ditch implies that we are called to see ourselves through the eyes of those who are hurt, bruised, bleeding; those in need of whatever we have within us to give; the view from the ditch is how Christ sees us, and through his eyes reflects not just the grace of his love, but also the veracity of the plumb line that assesses our answer to “who is our neighbor?”
Amen

MISSIONS ACTIVITY includes 
Thee Heritage Christian Preschool
Stephen Ministry
Nothing Wasted
Home of Hope Texas (adopted by our Youth Group)
Presbyterian Children's Home
CAM (Cypress Assistance Ministries)

FACILITY/CAMPUS SUPPORT includes
Korean 1st Presbyterian Church of Houston
Three AA groups
Al Anon
Girlscouts

Please watch for more information in the future.