A Scandalous Faith

A sermon by David Roquemore

Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

September 27, 2009

Esther 7: 1-6,9-10; 9:20-22

Mark 9: 38-50

Today we read Esther – I think this is the only time in the three-year lectionary that we read any of it. It is a good story, and I want to briefly mention what it is about. During the time that Israel is in Exile in Babylon, about 500 years before Jesus, a Jewish woman, Esther, becomes one of the king’s many wives. It is unlikely that the king really knew her; he probably had dozens or hundreds of wives. At this time, the man Haman is plotting to have the Jews destroyed. Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, learns about this plot, and asks Esther to intervene with the king.

Esther has a choice to make, because to go the king without being sent for could mean her death. Should the king not wish to see her, he would have her killed for daring to enter his court. She says, famously, that perhaps it is “for such a time as this” that she has become the king’s favorite.

The story has some twists and turns, but in the end, Haman is hanged on the very scaffold he had built to use to kill Mordecai. Esther and the Jews are allowed to live, and everyone is happy. Except Haman.

Esther sees that her role in history, her destiny, is guided by God. She is born “for just such a time as this.” Someone told me once, never be sorry that you were born when you were. Never wish you had been born in another time; instead, do great things in these times!”

Turn to the gospel lesson. Some people have been casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and the disciples made them stop. Why? Because they were not part of Jesus’ group, they were not followers, not disciples. They had not been authorized to do this. The disciples had just tried to heal a boy who had a demon, and could not do it! And now these outsiders are doing it, and it makes the disciples mad.

Jesus says, let them alone. Encourage them, for if they are not against us, they are for us. Anyone who acts in Jesus’ name is doing his work and that is good. Jesus erases the boundaries and distinctions that we set up for ourselves.

Stop here a minute. In the course of twenty centuries, much has happened, and we have very different approaches to what it means to be the Church and follow Jesus. We have something over twenty thousand different groups. Maybe what Jesus is saying to us, in such a time as this, is that we mustn’t get all worked up over our differences. Yes, I know we think our theological understanding of this or that is better than the Methodist’s or the Roman Catholic’s. I think so, or I wouldn’t be here. But what may be more important, for such a time as this, is that we unite and present a more unified witness to the world.

Let’s continue. Jesus goes on to say that we should not become a “stumbling block” to any of these little ones. Well, who are the little ones? The ones who are new to faith, or weak in faith, or who look up to us as an example. Anyone who is not among the powerful or the ruling class, perhaps. Those who have no choices. We are not to cause them to stumble.

The word is “scandalize,” we are not to be a scandal, to cause a scandal for them. If we do, it is better that we die! Strong words!

Stop again. Are we a scandal or a stumbling block to anyone? Are we preventing anyone from coming to faith, or causing anyone to fall away from faith? Those are the things that Jesus cautions about, in the strongest possible ways. Don’t do it, don’t cause someone else to lose faith or wander away from him.

He goes on – if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out! Yikes! We don’t take him literally, but we get the idea. If there is something we do that causes us to sin, we need to stop doing that. I was involved in a kind of argument with old friends on Facebook one night, and thought “if Facebook causes me to sin, turn it off!” Sounds silly, but it might be necessary. Putting ourselves in a place where stumble and fall away is bad, and we ought not do it.

So, in such a time as this, perhaps the gospel itself is a scandal, NOT in the sense that it stops people from believing in Jesus, but in the sense that it is so different from our ordinary life, that it is hard to believe. Paul uses the word frequently to say that the gospel message, Christ crucified is foolishness to Greeks and a stumbling block, a scandal, for the Jews. The gospel itself is such unexpected news that it may cause people to have a hard time believing it. That is Paul’s take on this.

I wonder if in our time, in such a time as this, the gospel itself has to be a scandal in order to be noticed. We have to do something different, almost weird, just to be noticed. That is what I meant by a “scandalous faith.” Not that we should do anything cause anyone to turn away, but rather, we may have to scandalize people just a bit in order for them to hear the gospel at all.

In such a time as this, so many people have heard just enough about faith, just enough about Christianity, as to be inoculated against it. They think they know what we are about, and they don’t. They think they are living “right with God,” when nothing about their lives is different from the world around them. And that may even include us, much of the time. A professor once asked me if I thought it would be possible to make the Apostles’ Creed funny. When I asked him why we would do that, he said, “perhaps then people will hear what they are saying.”

GK Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Soren Kierkegaard wrote that many people in his day were trying to make Christianity easy, so he dedicated his life to making it hard.

It is hard! The gospel intrudes upon our world and demands that we give up the things that cause us to sin, demands that we stop and learn the ways of Jesus.

Stumbling blocks– think of the sidewalk. Have you ever tripped on a sidewalk block that was raised a little bit, by a root or something? You don’t even notice the difference in height, until your foot catches it and you fall. Then you see the obstacle. Stumbling blocks have a way of appearing like that. The way of Jesus has a way of suddenly being an obstacle for our usual way of life.

In our day, nothing is scandalous; everything is boring. Nothing is secret, nothing is sacred, nothing is kept hidden. Things that would offend and scandalize people once are now routine. And so perhaps we should turn this around and point out what should be offensive.

What do we have to do to get the gospel heard? What do we do so that people are called to a higher and different way of life? How can we proclaim the way of faith in Jesus Christ?

In our politics, we put up with scandals all the time. It doesn’t matter if leaders have no morals, or don’t do what we elect them to do. We shrug and say, “they all do it.” Theologian Stanley Hauerwas once wrote that “democracy is a bad idea,” – shocking, eh? – it is because liberal democracy values the individual and the individual’s vote above all things. Thus it should be no surprise that government is uneven. The scandalous thing would be for the church to set aside its own commitment to individualism, and call for wisdom in our politics, and then live that wisdom.

In business, we need to simply stand up and say it is time for honesty and ethics. Instead we accept lying and cheating, in small and large affairs. Bob Dylan it was who said, “steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king.” The very people who nearly sank our economy – aren’t they still running our banks and insurance companies? Perhaps it would be seen as a scandal, but the church should speak up and ask for honesty, while being certain we have it in our own business.

And so it goes, In civil life – we call for justice. Justice for the marginalized and oppressed and mistreated, for those taken advantage of, and those who do not have our advantages. Justice for those who are beaten down by the system. I had a call from a man who needs $150 to stay in his apartment. Since the landlord has started eviction process, he will have to pay another $150 fee on top of that. Well, if he doesn’t have $150, you can be sure he doesn’t have $300. The system wins; the man will be homeless next week. The system needs to be changed to stop working against people. Justice.

In Social life – we call for decency. We are tolerant of things that make everyone else in the world blush. Years ago, I had two seminarians from the Middle East working with me. It was amazing to see their reactions to things we take for granted. A young woman came into the church office one hot summer afternoon to deliver something. She was wearing the bare minimum of clothing. We might say it was inappropriate; they were scandalized. How can people go out in public like that?

Personal life – we call for discipleship. We have enjoyed a long run of several decades when the Church was the center of social and personal life for many people, when public life was good enough that we didn’t feel challenged. All of that has changed. In a time such as this, to be a follower of Jesus may be difficult and humbling. We must set aside our complacency and take up the cross and follow him, and that means a renewed commitment to discipleship and service.

In all of these, we must not simply make proclamations, we must live the proclamations! We

live the gospel in such a way that others see and notice our faith in Jesus Christ. Yes, For such a time as this, we may need to be scandalous, so that the Spirit can reach through us into the world.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Scandalous Faith

A sermon by David Roquemore

Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

September 27, 2009

Esther 7: 1-6,9-10; 9:20-22

Mark 9: 38-50

Today we read Esther – I think this is the only time in the three-year lectionary that we read any of it. It is a good story, and I want to briefly mention what it is about. During the time that Israel is in Exile in Babylon, about 500 years before Jesus, a Jewish woman, Esther, becomes one of the king’s many wives. It is unlikely that the king really knew her; he probably had dozens or hundreds of wives. At this time, the man Haman is plotting to have the Jews destroyed. Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, learns about this plot, and asks Esther to intervene with the king.

Esther has a choice to make, because to go the king without being sent for could mean her death. Should the king not wish to see her, he would have her killed for daring to enter his court. She says, famously, that perhaps it is “for such a time as this” that she has become the king’s favorite.

The story has some twists and turns, but in the end, Haman is hanged on the very scaffold he had built to use to kill Mordecai. Esther and the Jews are allowed to live, and everyone is happy. Except Haman.

Esther sees that her role in history, her destiny, is guided by God. She is born “for just such a time as this.” Someone told me once, never be sorry that you were born when you were. Never wish you had been born in another time; instead, do great things in these times!”

Turn to the gospel lesson. Some people have been casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and the disciples made them stop. Why? Because they were not part of Jesus’ group, they were not followers, not disciples. They had not been authorized to do this. The disciples had just tried to heal a boy who had a demon, and could not do it! And now these outsiders are doing it, and it makes the disciples mad.

Jesus says, let them alone. Encourage them, for if they are not against us, they are for us. Anyone who acts in Jesus’ name is doing his work and that is good. Jesus erases the boundaries and distinctions that we set up for ourselves.

Stop here a minute. In the course of twenty centuries, much has happened, and we have very different approaches to what it means to be the Church and follow Jesus. We have something over twenty thousand different groups. Maybe what Jesus is saying to us, in such a time as this, is that we mustn’t get all worked up over our differences. Yes, I know we think our theological understanding of this or that is better than the Methodist’s or the Roman Catholic’s. I think so, or I wouldn’t be here. But what may be more important, for such a time as this, is that we unite and present a more unified witness to the world.

Let’s continue. Jesus goes on to say that we should not become a “stumbling block” to any of these little ones. Well, who are the little ones? The ones who are new to faith, or weak in faith, or who look up to us as an example. Anyone who is not among the powerful or the ruling class, perhaps. Those who have no choices. We are not to cause them to stumble.

The word is “scandalize,” we are not to be a scandal, to cause a scandal for them. If we do, it is better that we die! Strong words!

Stop again. Are we a scandal or a stumbling block to anyone? Are we preventing anyone from coming to faith, or causing anyone to fall away from faith? Those are the things that Jesus cautions about, in the strongest possible ways. Don’t do it, don’t cause someone else to lose faith or wander away from him.

He goes on – if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out! Yikes! We don’t take him literally, but we get the idea. If there is something we do that causes us to sin, we need to stop doing that. I was involved in a kind of argument with old friends on Facebook one night, and thought “if Facebook causes me to sin, turn it off!” Sounds silly, but it might be necessary. Putting ourselves in a place where stumble and fall away is bad, and we ought not do it.

So, in such a time as this, perhaps the gospel itself is a scandal, NOT in the sense that it stops people from believing in Jesus, but in the sense that it is so different from our ordinary life, that it is hard to believe. Paul uses the word frequently to say that the gospel message, Christ crucified is foolishness to Greeks and a stumbling block, a scandal, for the Jews. The gospel itself is such unexpected news that it may cause people to have a hard time believing it. That is Paul’s take on this.

I wonder if in our time, in such a time as this, the gospel itself has to be a scandal in order to be noticed. We have to do something different, almost weird, just to be noticed. That is what I meant by a “scandalous faith.” Not that we should do anything cause anyone to turn away, but rather, we may have to scandalize people just a bit in order for them to hear the gospel at all.

In such a time as this, so many people have heard just enough about faith, just enough about Christianity, as to be inoculated against it. They think they know what we are about, and they don’t. They think they are living “right with God,” when nothing about their lives is different from the world around them. And that may even include us, much of the time. A professor once asked me if I thought it would be possible to make the Apostles’ Creed funny. When I asked him why we would do that, he said, “perhaps then people will hear what they are saying.”

GK Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Soren Kierkegaard wrote that many people in his day were trying to make Christianity easy, so he dedicated his life to making it hard.

It is hard! The gospel intrudes upon our world and demands that we give up the things that cause us to sin, demands that we stop and learn the ways of Jesus.

Stumbling blocks– think of the sidewalk. Have you ever tripped on a sidewalk block that was raised a little bit, by a root or something? You don’t even notice the difference in height, until your foot catches it and you fall. Then you see the obstacle. Stumbling blocks have a way of appearing like that. The way of Jesus has a way of suddenly being an obstacle for our usual way of life.

In our day, nothing is scandalous; everything is boring. Nothing is secret, nothing is sacred, nothing is kept hidden. Things that would offend and scandalize people once are now routine. And so perhaps we should turn this around and point out what should be offensive.

What do we have to do to get the gospel heard? What do we do so that people are called to a higher and different way of life? How can we proclaim the way of faith in Jesus Christ?

In our politics, we put up with scandals all the time. It doesn’t matter if leaders have no morals, or don’t do what we elect them to do. We shrug and say, “they all do it.” Theologian Stanley Hauerwas once wrote that “democracy is a bad idea,” – shocking, eh? – it is because liberal democracy values the individual and the individual’s vote above all things. Thus it should be no surprise that government is uneven. The scandalous thing would be for the church to set aside its own commitment to individualism, and call for wisdom in our politics, and then live that wisdom.

In business, we need to simply stand up and say it is time for honesty and ethics. Instead we accept lying and cheating, in small and large affairs. Bob Dylan it was who said, “steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king.” The very people who nearly sank our economy – aren’t they still running our banks and insurance companies? Perhaps it would be seen as a scandal, but the church should speak up and ask for honesty, while being certain we have it in our own business.

And so it goes, In civil life – we call for justice. Justice for the marginalized and oppressed and mistreated, for those taken advantage of, and those who do not have our advantages. Justice for those who are beaten down by the system. I had a call from a man who needs $150 to stay in his apartment. Since the landlord has started eviction process, he will have to pay another $150 fee on top of that. Well, if he doesn’t have $150, you can be sure he doesn’t have $300. The system wins; the man will be homeless next week. The system needs to be changed to stop working against people. Justice.

In Social life – we call for decency. We are tolerant of things that make everyone else in the world blush. Years ago, I had two seminarians from the Middle East working with me. It was amazing to see their reactions to things we take for granted. A young woman came into the church office one hot summer afternoon to deliver something. She was wearing the bare minimum of clothing. We might say it was inappropriate; they were scandalized. How can people go out in public like that?

Personal life – we call for discipleship. We have enjoyed a long run of several decades when the Church was the center of social and personal life for many people, when public life was good enough that we didn’t feel challenged. All of that has changed. In a time such as this, to be a follower of Jesus may be difficult and humbling. We must set aside our complacency and take up the cross and follow him, and that means a renewed commitment to discipleship and service.

In all of these, we must not simply make proclamations, we must live the proclamations! We

live the gospel in such a way that others see and notice our faith in Jesus Christ. Yes, For such a time as this, we may need to be scandalous, so that the Spirit can reach through us into the world.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Draw Near to God

A sermon by David Roquemore

Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

September 20, 2009

James 3:13 -4:3, 7-8

What is driving you, what is running you, what programming makes you tick?

Once in the dim dark ages of ancient computer history, I had a TRS-80 computer in my office. It was the big thing that looked like a tv set.  I used it to write sermons and keep lists — this is maybe 1986 or so.  One day I was trying the commands for its operating system, and was writing a simple program to do logic and addition. I worked over it very carefully, and was satisfied it was correct. I plugged in some numbers and was doing well, until it told me that 3 + 5 was -7. I don’t know how it arrived at that conclusion.

I mentioned this in a meeting that night — most of these people were computer engineers who design secret code for the government. They all had advanced degrees in computer science. They told me my code was wrong; I assured them it was not. They said, “garbage in – garbage out.” If you put in bad data, or have an error in the programming, you get bad results, they said. (I still think my code was correct and that machine had the hiccups.)

If you have an error in the programming or start with bad data — well, James never heard any of that, but he would agree. When we read James, we think about our programming!

James says, in verse 4:1, that fighting and conflict comes from what?  They come from cravings and desires. That is a problem because we have desires built right in — part of the hardware, you might say. We have physical needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs built in as part of our human being. Those things are a part of us, and as long as they are controlled and ordered, cause no trouble. It is when they are out of control that the problems arise.

Back in Chapter 1, 14-15, James wrote, “one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.”

So desires, cravings, lead us to sin, because we are enticed by them. We see something attractive, and we say, “that is nice,” and pretty soon we want it. Gotta have it. Now! We might say that desire, innocent enough, becomes like a weed that grows, and the more we water it, the more it takes over our garden. We let our desires take us, James says, until they lead us to sin. Here in chapter 4, he makes it clear that the sin involved leads to taking what belongs to others, stealing and killing and fighting. And that sin left unchecked bring spiritual death.

Well, we don’t want that, do we? What should we do? We could pray. “O Lord, won’t you buy me a color tv,” the old song says. We ask God. God, I gotta have that. Please get it for me. And God’s answer?

James says, in 4:2 and 3, “You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”

Asking God for things so that our desires and cravings can be satisfied gets us nowhere. God doesn’t want us to satisfy our cravings; he wants us to control them! Why? Because cravings can never be satisfied. You always want more. You always want something new, something else, something more. The law of diminishing returns sets us up to endlessly crave more and more, satisfied less and less by whatever it is we are addicted to.

Garbage in, garbage out, the engineers said to me. It takes ever increasing amounts of garbage to satisfy the lusts of the human soul.

Long years ago someone said to a youth group I was in: what do you think influences you most? You read the Bible for five minutes and then listen to the radio for ten hours? Which one?  That was before we had 400 television channels and the internet and facebook and twitter. What do you think influences us these days? What influences you? What are you feeding your soul? Remember, garbage in, garbage out.

Is it hopeless? No! There is grace, and God wants us to have it. James continues, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” Often when we pray “backstage” before the worship services, I pray that we will be drawn near to God. This is God’s desire for us, that we get close to him, that we find a way to handle those desires before they are out of control.

Where  do we find that way? Again, in our reading: at the end of chapter three, James writes that “the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

The wisdom from above – God’s wisdom. In the scripture wisdom is sometimes personified in such a way that we see that the wisdom of God, the way God wants us to live, is Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, the wisdom of God.

The programming, as it were, is for us to be like Jesus, to be pure, peaceful, gentle, willing to get along, merciful, with good fruit, (things like love, joy, peace, patience, self-control), willing to share our good with others impartially.

So, which do we want to start with? God’s wisdom or our desires? If you want to pursue your desires, you should see where the end of that road is: death. If you pursue God’s wisdom, the end is a joyful union with God.

Of course, one road is downhill, full speed, accelerating with no way to control it.  I had this dear friend, who when we were students used a wheelchair. Once we encountered a place where a church had made some steps “accessible” by putting a ramp right on the steps. It was very steep. I volunteered to ride the chair down the ramp to see if it could be done. I got in, someone pushed me, and before a few hundredths of a second passed, I realized something important about wheelchairs: they have no brakes and no steering wheel. I was at the mercy of gravity. Happily, I lived. The road of our own desires is like that ramp: no steering and no stopping.

The other way, God’s way, is hard. It seems to be uphill. Once in the boy scouts while hiking the Appalachian trail in Georgia we took a logging road as a shortcut. Up we went. When we came to the top, we saw to our dismay that the road started up another hill right away. And so it went, over and over, until finally we reached the summit. The way was steep, but getting there was terrific! Following God’s way is like that: we have all these impulses and desires to train, and it isn’t easy.

The Church has long said, for centuries, that the training consists in daily prayer and scripture reading, fasting, and giving alms, combined with weekly worship. Think about that: we feed our souls with prayer and scripture rather than the garbage we might find in other places. Fasting is about controlling our desires. Giving is the antidote to selfishness. Worship takes us away from our self-centeredness. All of these are ways to put the focus on God, to draw near to God.

And the good news is, as we draw near to God, as we seek his wisdom, God draws near to us. God comes to us and gives us aid. He heals our wrong desires and leads us to desire him. He lifts us out of the miry bog and sets our feet on the right path. We become like a tree, watered and fed by the Living Water of Jesus Christ.

So, change your inputs. Good things in, good things out – let that be your way of life. Draw near to God and God will draw near to you and change you!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hold Your Tongue

A sermon by David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

September 13, 2009

James 3: 1-12

Try to grab your tongue with your fingers. Not easy, is it? Now speak. Not easy! It’s very hard to talk while holding your tongue. Conversely it is very hard to get hold of your tongue while you are talking.  Therein lies the lesson.

James says “how great a fire is started by one match.” Think of the seasonal wildfires in California — often started by arson. One match.

James says a great ship is directed by a very small rudder. If you could put the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier right here, it would stretch from 23rd St. well beyond the fire station, beyond 21st St. It has two rudders, 29 x 22 feet. That is about two thirds the size of the wall behind me.

We get the idea. It doesn’t take a very large rudder to direct a very large ship. James sees a parallel: a very small part of us, the tongue, can do a great deal of good, or harm.

James doesn’t have a very high view of the tongue: it is a restless evil, he says, full of deadly poison. Why does he sayd this? Because with it one minute we bless God, and the next, we attack someone made in God’s likeness and image.

Well, he’s right. Controlling our tongues is key to controlling ourselves. The most trouble we get into is through things we say.

Probably I don’t even have to give you examples:
* we have all said something we didn’t mean.. but then, why did we say it?
* we have all said things that we wish we could take back, because they hurt someone in a way we didn’t foresee
* we have all had things we say to one person repeated to another, in a way that is hurtful.
* we have all made these mistakes.
Email is especially bad for this. Just don’t send it. One intemperate email, and we lose friends.

But you know all of that. What does James say? Simply “it ought not to be.” True, but not so helpful. What do we do?

In scripture, one’s word has a certain power. We think of words as symbols; just as written words stand for ideas, words we say represent thoughts. But they are “just words.” In ancient times words were thought to have more power than we assume. Words more or less equal deeds, in the Bible. Especially when God speaks: God says, “let there be light,” and there is light. God speaks, and things happen. God’s word “happens.”

When we speak in certain contexts, we see this same thing. Think for example of a wedding — when you say “I do” in that context, something life-changing occurs. You are bound to this other person. Yet actors who say this in a play are not married –so there are issues of intention and context that affect speech. Nevertheless, in some situations, when we say a thing, it happens.

In everyday speech, the same thing happens, but we don’t see it, or hear it. We say things with little regard to what they might mean or how they might be heard by others. For example, you hear someone say something about say, the Governor, and you make an idle comment that is critical. Well, the Governor didn’t hear you, so who is hurt? But the person who did hear you now has a critical view of that Governor, that may not be true. This happens constantly in our political discourse, but it also happens as we talk about one another. Our idle comments and criticisms have the power to hurt others more than we know.

Such speech comes boiling out of our mouths — why?

Some of it comes from anger. Life is stressful and busy, life frustrates our wishes and desires, life makes us angry. And we carry that around, and when something sets us off, it is like a match to gasoline: we explode.

Some of it comes from hurt. We have been hurt, we carry around grudges and pain, we are hurting over things real and imagined that happened yesterday, or years ago. And that hurt can set us off when we find ourselves in similar situations.

Some of it comes from habit. Perhaps we have a gift for discernment, or an ability to see issues clearly. But we use that cynically and uncharitably, and so we get the habit of criticizing others constantly. And we don’t even see that what we are doing is wrong.

What can we do?

First, as we become aware of it, we must simply learn to stop talking. There are long histories of discipline in the church, all geared to help us control ourselves and avoid sin. Controlling our tongues should be first priority for us. Now that you have heard me say that, you — and I — are accountable for it. We must find ways not to say things that don’t need to be said.

Second, we see that what we say has power, and so rather than be hurtful, we can be helpful. We can build each other up, say good things, encourage one another, and be positive. Wouldn’t that change a lot of things!

Third, though James doesn’t mention as much as he assumes it, there is grace. God does act, God declares his Word, and that word is Jesus Christ. What would God say to us? Look to Jesus and you will know. God speaks, and the world is created. God’s Word, Jesus Christ, lives among us and teaches us, then dies for us, rises again, and lives among and within us. Jesus Christ is God’s word of grace and goodness to us.

This might sound simplistic, but one way to approach this is to ask yourself, would I say this in front of Jesus Christ?

I had this youth group once that wanted to know the rules on a trip. I said, “don’t do anything you wouldn’t do in front of your mother.” Aww man! But that is good advice: imagine your mother, and God the Lord are right there when you say something. Perhaps that will help you season your speech.

If you do say something wrong, stop and correct it. Ask forgiveness, from those who hear you and from Jesus.

If you find you react out of anger or hurt or habit, ask Jesus for the grace to change. Ask him to teach you what to do to be different. Becoming aware of our anger gives us a chance to be rid of it! Seeing our hurts gives us a chance to be healed! No longer being blind to our habits offers the chance to learn new patterns. There is grace.

We come to the Table, where God’s Word to us is made clear: God has the last word, and the last word is always one of grace, forgiveness, and love. We rejoice that we are called here to hear that word, and that no matter what we say, God’s word overrules our words.

Finally, rather than letting all kinds of ugly stuff come out of our mouths, we lift our voices in praise of God. “O for a Thousand Tongues to sing my dear redeemer’s praise” says our hymn today. If we are praising God, then we can’t be speaking ill of one another!

As Psalm 19 sayd, “may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord.” May it be so! Hold your tongue, and may the Word of God speak through you!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Song for Lovers

A sermon by

David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

August 30, 2009

Song of Solomon 2: 8 -13

The great Percy Sledge wrote and sang the classic rhythm and blues song, “When A Man Loves A Woman.” Do you know it, do you remember it? Percy Sledge wrote this song when his girlfriend left Alabama to go to Los Angeles. He didn’t have the money to follow her. He had been offered a job singing with a blues combo, and one night he told them just to play, while he sang. He got up and sang his heart out. Later, the song was written down and edited into the classic we know. (Incidentally, he gave the guys in the band writing credit, so they get paid when it is played; he doesn’t.)

It is the pure expression of a man’s desire for his beloved. He would do anything to get her back, to be with her, to win her love. The best line, I think, is when he says a man would “give up all his comfort, sleep out in the rain, if that’s the way she said it ought to be.”

The Song of Solomon is also a pure expression of love for the beloved. It is wonderful poetry. You hardly ever hear about it, hardly ever read it; it is only in the lectionary once or twice. All the better reason to read it today.

It is a love poem, and quite a saucy one at that, though most the imagery is ancient near eastern, and so pretty foreign to our ears. The rabbis of the first century had a real debate over whether the Jews would consider it sacred scripture. The book was too racy, even if it does have Solomon’s name on it. Finally it was accepted as part of the writings.

In the church the history of interpretation is interesting. Just as the Jews read this as an allegory of God’s love for Israel, the Church read it as a description of Christ’s love for the Church. More commentaries were written on this book than any other in the Bible. This way of reading the book was more acceptable than the erotic themes one might otherwise encounter.

Of course, allegory is out of favor in Bible interpretation, even though popular culture is full of it. So we are left trying to read this literally, which quickly becomes unsuitable for Sunday school. That is why we ignore it, I suspect.

Verses 10 and 11 say, “My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.’”

The lover wants the beloved to go with him. There is every long song ever written, every story, every love letter. And what do we read in it? Thinking theologically, we are reminded of some basic truths about ourselves. We have a need for human community, for meaning, for the other. We are not happy alone. No man is an island. We need each other. We need other people.

The Song of Solomon is often read in conjunction with Genesis 2, where we are told that God created human beings, “male and female he created them.” It is not good for us to be alone, God had said, and so he did this. The Song simply restates our need for others. We need love.

One of my colleagues and mentors used to answer the phone, every time he was told his wife was on the line, by grabbing the receiver and shouting, “lover!” I was always afraid the receptionist would be wrong, and he would shout that to the clerk of Session. We need love. We are built, you might say, to have a lover.

Now, once upon a time it was fashionable to preach sermons that said there are three Greek words for love, one meaning the love of friends, one erotic love, and one, agape, the love of God. Well, that is nice, and would be nicer if it were true. There are at least four Greek words for love, and their meaning overlaps a bit. Let’s forget the Greek and look at how “love” can be understood.

We love chocolate. We love the Phillies. We love weekends. Those meanings are about preferences, and aren’t really love. They are about liking things. Things please us, and we like them. So there is a kind of “love” that isn’t really love at all.

“I love money. I love redheads. I love to go to Barbados.” Those meanings are about desire. We want this or that thing or person, because we imagine we will be fulfilled and made happy if we can possess them. All of our television ads work on our desires. Did you ever see unattractive, unhappy people enjoying a Pepsi? Of course not, because Pepsi will solve your every problem and make you happy. Desire. And desire unleashed becomes lust, and is a terrible problem in our time.

I love my country. I love my neighbors. That is a kind of abstract love – a higher love, we might say, that motivates people to do good and serve others. This kind of love is not selfish, not really a part of desire.

When we say we love our brothers and sisters, or our family, we love in a way that seeks the good of the other, rather than satisfying our own desires.

Much of the confusion in our time comes because we are sexualized the word love – to the point that to say “I love you” to someone is difficult without a connotation of desire. But you see, love operates on a different level than that. Men especially find it difficult to say “I love you” to another man.

Then there is a love which not only seeks the good of the other, but exists solely for the other. A love that will sacrifice itself for the other. That is the love that God demonstrates in Jesus Christ, loving those who do not deserve love with a love that knows no limits.

It is perfectly possible to have more than one of these at the same time. A person might have this highest kind of love for another, and at the same time have an erotic desire for them as well.

Love then is complicated. Human beings are built to love, and there are many different kinds of love or levels or states of love.

St. Augustine famously wrote, that “our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee, O Lord.” That is in a prayer on the first page of his Confessions. That is another way of saying we are built to love: we have a restless need for another, and seek to fill it with all kinds of “others,” but will not truly be filled or fulfilled or find rest until we find peace with God. We yearn for something. We seek something that will give us peace and happiness. Just look around you – this is what the world is doing. We yearn, but we will not be happy until and unless we find our meaning and purpose in the Lord God.

Those who read and think hard about God the Trinity usually come to the conclusion that the thing about the Trinity that we should pay attention to is the relationships between the Three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They exist in an eternal, equal, interpenetrating relation of pure love. We are built in their image – we need relationship. While human relationships are good and necessary and fulfilling, the ultimate relationship we need is one with Jesus Christ.

How good it is to have a baptism today! We are baptizing John Enrique Willshier, who has been worshiping back on the back pews with his parents Jim and Ana for some weeks. They will be joining the church at our September new members class. This little fellow needs God just as much as we do. And God yearns for a relationship with him, just as he does with us. And so we baptize to demonstrate and symbolize that relationship. In our baptism we are grafted into Christ Jesus. We come into relationship with him.

So how is it with your relationship with him? Is the lover calling out to you, as in the Song, “My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.’” Perhaps God is calling for you to come and enjoy a renewed relationship!

Our hymns and songs and prayers speak of our love for God. We say love all the time, in all kinds of contexts. But what do we really mean? Do we know the goodness of God’s love for us?

When we know it, then we love others, even those whom nobody loves, for Jesus’ sake. When we know God’s love, then we love neighbors, even those we don’t like, for Jesus’ sake. When we know God’s love, then our loves move out of the realm of selfish desires and into a purer, more holy state.

Arise my fair one, and come away. Jesus calls us out of all that is unlovely and unloving, all that misuses others and perverts true love, all that seeks its own satisfaction at the expense of others, all that is wrong and ugly and bad, and calls us to come and rejoice with him, finally in his coming kingdom, but for now, day by day, living the gospel in the world for others.

One more song lyric. Singer Bruce Cockburn wrote what could almost be a hymn, called “Lord of the Starfields.” In it he praises God, saying “Love that fires the sun, keep me burning.”

Indeed. May the love of God which fires the sun, and which gives life to every creature and to you and me, keep us burning with love for Jesus Christ, and in his name, for everyone else.

Amen!

People Get Ready

A sermon by David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

August 23, 2009

Ephesians 6: 10-20

A while back I was reading some novel, a long complex tale that jumped all over the world and through several centuries. It had to do with vampires and such. I noticed that I just couldn’t sleep well, and was having bad dreams. By and by I lost interest in the book, and my sleep improved.

Coincidence, you say. In our modern world we tend to believe only what we can see and prove. But Paul says we ” struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh….but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Eph. 6:12 Maybe this sounds strange, but who can deny the reality of evil in our world? Maybe it sounds strange, but I suspect some of you know of realities that can’t be seen nor proved.

And so we need the armor of God to protect us.

Once upon a time there was a basketball team, one of the best teams ever assembled. The coach was Frank McGuire, and the team was at the University of South Carolina. As the story goes, he sent his recruiters to New York city to enlist Bobby Cremins, and the recruiter came back with a bunch of other kids as well. They were just phenomenal, and had the potential to defeat John Wooden’s ever-dominant Bruins of UCLA. Well, that game never took place, and many of us will never get over it. Anyway, these fellows were making up new basketball plays every time they got on the court. Basketball fever swept the state. I clearly remember seeing kids in my 7th grade class on the court, doing whatever they had seen in the game the night before.

These guys from New York were mostly Catholics, and had the habit of crossing themselves before free throws. Soon every Baptist kid in the 7th grade was doing the same thing.

Well, despite the fervent prayers of an entire state, crossing one’s self doesn’t seem to help in basketball. God it seems is neutral with regard to basketball.

But the idea of crossing one’s self — it serves as a physical reminder of our spiritual warfare. Luther said we should do it as soon as we get out of bed in the morning, both to remind us to whom we belong, and as a prayer of protection. Calvin hated anything that seemed superstitious, but he might even agree with Luther on this point. It is a way to arm yourself against evil. Calvin agreed on our need to be prepared – so how do we do that effectively?

Paul says we need to arm ourselves. He writes this stuff from prison. He is often chained to a guard. Always he can see one, and uses the armor of the guard as a description for us of how we might armor ourselves, how we might defend ourselves against the evil that assails us.

Paul tells us to gird ourselves with truth; the phrase suggests preparing for a struggle, and a struggle it will be. For us to say that what we believe is true means others will want to know why they should accept it. The old answers will not work. The old answers often beg the question, assuming the answer before they start. We cannot tell people to believe because the Bible says so. We cannot rationally prove that Christ is the answer. We have to show people the truth in our lives. Put on the belt of truth.

Next, the breastplate of righteousness. This protects our hearts. We are to put up the righteousness of Christ as our protection. The blows of the enemy bounce off of the breastplate. Think bullet-proof vest here. (Not many people know that Frank McGuire had to wear a bulletproof vest to one particular game against some unsporting rivals, but that is another story.) This is to keep us from being wounded by the temptations and snares of evil. Without righteousness, we will be vulnerable to whatever comes our way through the television or the internet.

Put on the shoes of peace. What do we do with shoes? Shoes can take us places. Isaiah says “how beautiful are the feet on the mountain, of those who preach peace.” Beautiful as in, it is so good to see you. We are glad you are here. Does the community say that about us? Do our shoes take us places where we are welcomed because we bring good news? Put on those shoes!

Take the shield of faith. Paul’s image here is a particular kind of shield, one that had two layers of wood. When enemies shot flaming arrows, they would sink into the first layer of wood, and the flame would go out. That way, no one got hurt. This shield will protect us from the flaming darts of the enemy, meant to kill our souls. I don’t know about you, but every time I get busy with what God really wants of me, the darts begin to fly.

The helmet of salvation protects our minds from the doubts that come. It is also an insignia of sorts – imagine a Roman helmet: you had no doubt who that soldier served. We serve Jesus Christ, and so we wear his helmet. I think it was Annie Dillard the writer, who said we should be issued hard-hats, not hymnals, at the door of the Church. The message we hear is so audacious: that the God of the universe wants to save…us! Look out!

Thus armored, we take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. There we go. Now we are getting somewhere. The sword is a weapon of offense and defense, and the Word of God will both defend us and be our means of proclamation. We need this word, if we are to do anything. Otherwise, we are just armor-bearers. With the word, we can tell the truth, demonstrate righteousness, bring peace, stand strong in faith, and be assured of our salvation. With it, we are ready.

As I was pondering these things, I was thinking about Paul’s final advice: that we pray. All armored up, we pray. Prayer is the tactic for the battle. When the enemies assault, prayer is the way to respond. Those basketball players crossing themselves, that was a kind of prayer. It was a prayer enacted, even if superficial or superstitious. Not a bad thing for us.

Anotherway, a better way, to get there is to memorize the Word: the words of scripture make great prayers as you go through the day, reminding you that the Spirit prays for you with sighs too deep for words, and giving you strength to meet the challenges.

Maybe you have memorized the Lord’s Prayer, or a favorite psalm, or a verse of a hymn. In times of trouble these things come to us. In times of need a bit of the liturgy and prayers of the service may bubble up and give you aid. Memorizing is worth the effort, and much of it you already have.

For centuries, Christians have prayed, “Lord Jesus Christ be merciful to me, a sinner.” That is a short and sweet way of wielding your sword when you need to. There is a story that theologian Walter Brueggeman, not known for mincing words, was sitting on the stage at a conference while someone gave a very long and very flowery invocation. In desperation, Brueggeman was heard to whisper, “Hey God, it’s me, Walt. Help!”

So then, in times of need, you can even pray just “help.” But if you want to be more articulate, it helps to have armed yourself. It helps to have spent some time learning the weapons we are given. It helps to learn the words if you need to pray!

Perhaps it was the word, “breastplate,” that did it, but I thought of a long and beautiful prayer for protection ascribed to St. Patrick. We are going to use some of it as our confession of faith today, since we have it in one of our hymnbooks. The full version is wonderful but two or three times as long. The translation here is something of a Victorian paraphrase; the real thing is a series of phrases that are almost as short and sharp as Brueggeman’s “help!”

Well, while looking for the words to that, I found another prayer of protection. The Irish called them “Lorica”, so here is the Lorica of St. Fursa, who in 650 AD.

The arms of God be around my shoulders,

the touch of the Holy Spirit upon my head,

the sign of Christ’s cross upon my forehead,

the sound of the Holy Spirit in my ears,

the fragrance of the Holy Spirit in my nostrils,

the vision of heaven’s company in my eyes,

the conversation of heaven’s company on my lips,

the work of God’s church in my hands,

the service of God and the neighbor in my feet,

a home for God in my heart,

and to God, the Father of all, my entire being.

Now there is a prayer to memorize! It is a wonderful word picture of arming yourself.

And once armed, may we go out to find and reach our neighbors, our friends, yea even our enemies, with the good news that in Christ, God has redeemed them from all evil.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Benediction for August 23, 2009

May the whole armor of God surround and protect you:

the belt of truth keep you from all falsehood;

the breastplate of righteousness keep you free from sin;

the shoes of peace make all your travels easy;

the shield of faith keep away all evil;

the helmet of salvation give you the mind of Christ;

the sword of the Spirit give you the words to say, now and forevermore.

Alleluia! Amen.

Confession Is Good For The Soul

A sermon by David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church
August 2, 2009

Psalm 51: 1-12

2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:13a

John 6: 24-35

Today we read the end of the story of King David’s problem with Bathsheba, Uriah, and Nathan the prophet.  We didn’t read the other parts of it, so a synopsis is in order. David saw Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop, sent for her, and got her pregnant. Then he had her husband, Uriah, one of is faithful soldiers, killed on the battlefield. Bathsheba comes to David’s palace as a wife as our story begins.

The prohpet Nathan tells him a story, about a man who had lots of sheep, but who took his neighbor’s only lamb to make dinner. David is incensed by the injustice of this rich man, and says so. Nathan then says, “you are the man,” and pronounces God’s judgment on David because of his sin with Bathsheba.  At some point then David writes a psalm, number 51 in our Bible, which we used as the Confession of Sin today in worship. David confesses his sin and asks God to forgive and restore him. Over the centuries the Church has used that psalm more than any other prayer to confess sin.

Once upon a time I was given a car by some people in a congregation. A man died, and all the cars in the family got passed down one, leaving this old clunker to be dealt with. They knew I needed one, so they gave it to me for a dollar.  It was an American Motors Hornet. It  had been used as work truck by a guy who worked for gas company. It had nothing in it that worked except the engine and the headlights.

The day I got it, I tried to take it to get it inspected, but it would barely move. So I took it to a man in the congregation who had a garage in his yard. We took the head off and looked in the cylinders. They were full of gunk. He looked at me and said, there’s your trouble. We scraped the crud out of the cylinders with popsicle sticks, then put it back together.  You know, after that it ran OK! Not great, but once you got it warmed up and up to highway speed, you were OK.

When it comes to confessing sin, I think of that car. You have to get all the gunk out if you want to achieve any speed in your spiritual life. You have to clean out the stuff that is clogging you up spiritually.  You have to get well from the disease. You have to get the weeds out of your garden.

Sin is, according to our Presbyterian standard, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, any “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.”  (Question 14) Sin is disobedience to God. Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the beginning. David disobeyed God’s law and committed adultery, then murder.

All of us sin. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Paul says, (Romans 3:23) and all are in need of forgiveness. God brings forgiveness and deliverance from sin and death in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe that — we say it every week.

The trouble is, we keep sinning. We keep doing things that fall short. Like my old car, we still can’t go very fast, because we are full of gunk. What do we do?

We confess. Some say they don’t need to confess, that they haven’t sinned, that they are already saved, or something like that. I don’t want to argue, just to say that the overwhelming testimony of the saints in the scripture is that even though we are forgiven and redeemed by God in Jesus Christ, we still sin, and so we still need to confess.

Some say they don’t need to pray the prayers of confession in worship, because confession is an individual thing, or that the sins mentionedin the prayer are not ones they commit. First, that prayer is a corporate expression of our common faith, just as congregational singing expresses our praise. We all do sin, and we recognize that together. We don’t list every sin that any of us may have committed, just a representative sample.  That is a weekly symbol of our common need of forgiveness.

But once a week won’t do it. I suggest you confess every day.  You may have heard that prayer that goes, “I am doing pretty well today, God. I haven’t been angry with anyone, haven’t been selfish, haven’t lusted, haven’t murdered anyone. But I am going to get out of bed in a minute, and I may need a little help for the rest of the day!” I suggest you confess at the end of the day, if not before. Making peace with God makes for a peaceful sleep.  Like I said, getting the gunk out of your  cylinders, the weeds out of your garden.

What to confess? Martin Luther is said to have kept his confessor busy for hours – and he was a monk! It was this feeling of guilt that led him to look again at scripture for assurance, and that in turn led to the Reformation. So, the lesson from Luther is that we cannot confess every single thing we do that falls short. What we can do is confess all that we know, the ones that bother us, the ones we know about. There is a prayer in the Orthodox tradition that asks forgivness for sins “voluntary and involuntary,” known and unknown. That is good advice.

To whom do we confess?  Well, to God. And there are several things about this. First of all, confessing to others has gotten a bad name since the Reformation, but it isn’t a bad idea. The  idea behind it is accountability. In the Greek Church, you confess to God, in the presence of the priest, who encourages you and keeps you honest.  It isn’t that he grants absolution, as in the Roman Church. That is what  the Reformer’s objected to. They understood that no one can really come between us and God. But we need accountability and we need assurance.  So we proclaim an assurance of pardon each Sunday, to assure one another of God’s forgiveness. To confess sin to one another is very difficult, but it helps get us over the pride that won’t face the truth.

And you see, when we are talking to God, God already knows what we have done. Confession is an exercise in facing the truth and admitting to ourselves what we have done, not making light of it or excusing it.  And so confessing and holding another accountable is very good spiritual practice. (Of course, it involves a lot of trust and even guidance, and is not to be entered into lightly.)

You see, we are prone to deceiving ourselves. Scripture says, that the heart is deceitful above all things. We are good at finding ways to excuse ourselves for our sins. We might say, “well, that is how I am.” Or “it wasn’t really that bad.”  Suppose you get into a disagreement with someone, and you treat them badly. It is easy to say to yourself later that you won’t do it again, and it is OK. But the right thing to do is confess the sin, and then perhaps go to the other person and ask forgiveness.  I say perhaps because there are situations when you can’t or shouldn’t go back to the other person. But those are extremely rare: most of the time you should. And you should ask forgiveness.

Similarly, when you are on the other end of the disagreement you should tell the person, “when you said and did those things, I felt hurt.” That gives him a chance to ask forgiveness. Saying, “you hurt me but I forgive you” is using forgiveness as a weapon. That is not what we are doing.  Forgiveness isn’t a weapon, nor something we get to dispense. You cannot refuse to forgive someone who asks, because Jesus Christ does not refuse to forgive you.

There is pride here: two kinds. The first kind is the one we usually call pride; a kind of arrogance that thinks we are just fine, that we have no sins, that we are just fine, thank you. Then there is a negative form of pride, that says “I am no good. Nothing I do is right. I am such a sinner.”  We talk about low self-esteem and good self-esteem, but it is all self-esteem, all about my self.  All selfish. Ignoring our sin is self-deception, and wallowing in it is too. Both refuse to take seriously the good news of the gospel.

And that is where we end up. There is much to be said that I have hinted at, and much I have skipped over here, much for us to learn. But the good news is that our sin is forgiven, the disease is healed! There is nothing you have ever done that God won’t forgive, indeed that Jesus hasn’t already forgiven on the cross.  That is good news, and it will never change.

So we take it seriously, our sin. We take seriously the commandments that God gives, to live just and holy lives. We take it seriously enough to be honest, but in that honesty we find freedom, release, forgiveness from God. We confess, and God gives us, as the psalm says, a new and right spirit, a clean heart. We are able to rejoice and be at peace with God.

Practically, what now? As we come to the table, review the prayer of confession. As you hold the bread in your hand, remember that it is Jesus’ broken body, broken for the sins we commit. Confess your sin to him. As you dip the bread in the cup, think of that old hymn, “washed in the blood.”  Sins are washed away. Take the bread soaked in his blood and eat it. Let it become a part of you. Let his body and blood become a part of your body. Let his love and forgiveness become a part of you, taking away all the guilt and anger and fear that sin produces. At His table there is peace.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Feeding Hungry Hearts and Bodies: MATE 2009

A sermon by David Roquemore and others

Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

July 26, 2009

John 6: 1-13

Six months wages would not feed all of these people. Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little, says Philip. Jesus is unruffled — feed them, he says. Give them what you have.

Give them what you have. Today you are going to hear stories from some of our Mission At The Eastward workers, telling what they did, giving what they had to some people.

Most of these stories will be about people receiving materially and physically — getting a leaky roof fixed or having a house made more energy efficient for the winters in Maine. But in each story there is also another level — Jesus feeds the people not only with bread, but with the bread of life. And so it is in Maine, and so it is with us.

My own contribution to this is a story I put in the MATE devotion booklet. Way back in 1985 a group on a youth mission trip painted the house of a very old woman who lived high in the NC mountains. She was very poor. One day she asked the work crew to come inside, and on the table in her sparsely furnished home she had sandwiches, drinks, and a freshly-baked cake for their lunch. They instantly realized she had spent most of her month’s income on this lunch. Their gut reaction was to say they could not accept this, yet they knew they could not turn her down. They ate and enjoyed.

After lunch she had them stand in a circle while she prayed for them. The boy who told me about this said, “everyone left the room but me. She wouldn’t let go of my hand. She was crying. I was crying. I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t want her to have to live like this any more, poor and alone.” That boy began to come to church every Sunday, and went on the youth mission trips long after he was no longer a youth. That lunch touched his life powerfully.

God feeds the people. And feeds those who do the feeding. God works in ways that may not be obvious at all. Jesus says, you feed the people, and we try. And in the trying we are fed. And in all of this, as the scripture says God is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”  Thank God the ways that the hungry are being fed.

Julie Thompson, Eric Williams, and Robin Reilly added their stories and insights.

Lift up your hearts!

A sermon by David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

July 12, 2009

Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere.

My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.

John Calvin turned 500 years old on Friday. Why should we care about some dead white guy?

Let’s have the very brief version of who he is and why we care. He was a law student in Paris in the 1500’s, a faithful Catholic Christian who had some minor position in the church that provided him a stipend for his studies. In Paris in the 1520’s, this new thing from Germany, Lutheranism, was spreading rapidly. There was much theological ferment and debate, a lot of things being written and published on this new technology, the printing press.

Sometime around 1532, Calvin becomes an adherent of these new ideas. We don’t know the story, as he would never put it in writing. Accused of being a leader in a protest, he flees Paris in the middle of the night, and goes to Switzerland. He is literally commanded by the leaders of Geneva to stay there, and so he does. He spends the rest of his life as a teacher, preacher, and leader in Geneva, with one short exile in Strasburg. He had insisted on serving communion on Easter one year, against the wishes of the leadership, and so they ran him out of town. He went to Strasburg, and after a year or two, was summoned back to Geneva. He agreed to come, but he didn’t get his way after that either.

He spent the rest of his life in Geneva, writing a huge amount of theology: essays, books, commentaries, and sermons. Though he was never ordained, he preached several times a week, and trained pastors to go back into France furthering the Reformation.

The Church in that time, the Western Church, had some corrupt leaders. The Reformers objected to things they were doing, and to some practices that had grown up over the years. Coming at the time when Europe was re-discovering the classical world, there was great interest in early manuscripts and going back to the sources. The Reformers wanted to purify the Church of things that had grown up during the centuries, and return to the original teachings of the Scriptures. We can argue whether they threw out too much, and we Protestants have argued incessantly every since over what things to throw out, which is why there are some 27,000 Protestant denominations, each claiming to follow the Bible alone.

In the case of Calvin, those who followed his brand of theology and church organization were known as the Reformed Churches, except in Scotland, where the name Presbyterian took hold. And so here we are, theological descendants of this man, John Calvin.

He was far from perfect. He was hard on his opponents, most notably a Reformer named Servetus, who went so far as to deny the Trinity. The trouble with throwing out things the Church teaches is, when to stop. When have you gone to far? What things are needed and what are not? Servetus went too far, and Calvin agreed to have him burned at the stake. Most of his other opponents fared better, but he was rough on them.

There is so much about this period, this man, and his theology that we could look at. I want to lift out one thing: how his tlegacy leads us to faithful action as a congregation.

John Calvin’s work has some well-known themes: he lifted up the transcendent majesty and glory of God. Everything in his theology points to God’s greatness and glory. But he does not, as is sometimes caricatured, have a God who is cold and distant. Calvins’ favorite way of describing God is “the fountain of all good,” from whose “fatherly hand” we receive blessings and grace and mercy far more than we deserve. Indeed, for Calvin, we deserve nothing, ever. It is all grace.

Calvin is an early modern person. Luther lived in Germany and was very much of a medieval monkish mindset. Calvin is a generation later, living in France and coming of age in Paris, surrounded by the ferment of ideas that led to the Enlightenment and modern times. He has a clear and rational way of thinking that is very much like ours today. As he looked at his world, it made him nervous and scared. Much was changing, and indeed he was a leader in much change. Yet it was difficult to live without the old assurances. Calvin looked at society and sought ways for us to live as Christian people who are very much a part of society and not separated from it.

And so he taught ways to live one’s spiritual life in the community. We are not a tradition that retreats to the woods for succor and comfort; rather we live in the street, in the business world, in the life of the student and the teacher. We live the faith in the world, in the place in which God put us. That is Calvin’s approach. For example, if we are in business and able to make money, Calvin says, we should make as much as we can, for then we have more to give to the work of the Church, after taking the little we need to live on. You can see how capitalism grew out of this teaching, and once it was divorced from the idea of giving to work of God, became a tool of greed.

Calvin’s motto is, Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere.“ My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” He lived that motto — the phrase in the communion prayers, when the leader says, “lift up your hearts,” and the people respond, “we lift them to the Lord.” Calvin thought this was the model of Christian living. In whatever you are called to do in life, whatever your place is in this world, lift your heart to the Lord and do your work with obedience to God in mind. And so his could be a very public faith, with a public witness.

Jesus said “you are the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” He says, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Those verses are a command to live a public faith, a faith that is not afraid o f being known, of proclaiming in word and deed that God is good, and God acts in Jesus Christ. That is the life that Calvin taught.

Whatever one might say about John Calvin, he was not afraid to speak his mind. If he thought something needed changing, he said so. If he thought something should be preserved – for people were changing everything under the sun, once the tide of reform was loosed – he said so. And so it has always been in our tradition: if the world needs changing, Presbyterians are in the front of the line to say so, and to witness to the call of Christ toward the kingdom of God.

But Jesus also warns that salt can lose its savor. The light can be put on a stand for all to see, or hidden under a basket. In short, our witness can be clear and strong, or weak, hidden, tentative. And that is the whole point of remembering who Calvin is – to recall the call we have to be light shining in the darkness.

King David brought the Ark of God toward Jerusalem. This was the locus of the presence of God – it was quite literally thought to be God’s seat (by the way, some people in Ethiopia claim to have it, you may have seen that on the news recently.) The Ark is the presence of god, and they find as they move it, that it is dangerous, threatening. Uzzah dies because he touches it. David becomes scared to bring it to the city. He isn’t sure that living that close to God is a good thing after all.

In a way, our lives are like that. We keep God off at a distance, just as David did. We like this culture that has grown up out of the roots of Calvinism. We find it hard to judge it, or even question it, because we have so much invested in it. When anyone talks about changing it, the opposition is immediate and virulent. Don’t change the way things are, because the way things are suits us very well. Presbyterians have been on the front of social change, but often, that has been a means of control. We change things, and at the same time we must admit, we control enough to prevent radical change, and so our lives continue as they were, and all is well with us.

Jesus would call us, in Calvin’s words, to offer our herats to God, anew, and do whatever it takes to be faithful to that call.

And that is why Mr. Alford gave us the introduction to Neighborfest this morning. Our mission committee has talked about how we do mission in the local community. How do you reach, feed, help people who have no needs or hungers, or at least, none they will admit? How do we reach out to our neighbors? One way is to do what has been described. Congregations around the county are doing this, here and there, to be a witness for Jesus on the streets.

That is why we ask for your help. Maybe your neighbor is elderly, or lives alone, or has health problems, or works two jobs to keep home and hearth together. And maybe that person really needs something done but doesn’t have time or money or health enough to do it. We could just go over there and do it. Someone needs a porch railing fixed? How many of you have been to MATE – that is what we are good at. So we could just go over there and fix that railing. On a Sunday afternoon. We could worship, eat lunch, and go work. Maybe when Penn State is far away, at Illinois. Maybe the Eagles are not playing that day – we didn’t chose the date based on these things, we learned after the fact about these acts of God’s providence. There are not any conflicts, then. Other than the ones that come up as our selfishness shies away from reaching out to others.

But I can’t wield a hammer, someone will say. True, but you can look for neighbors who need something. And the work could be as simple as visiting someone, taking them a slice of pie and a kind word. Or running an errand. Or listening to their story. There are ways that every one of us can be involved.

I don’t care if you like John Calvin or not; there are things about him I don’t like. I do care if your spiritual life is alive or dead. I do care about your life of discipleship and obedience to Jesus Christ. This Neighborfest is one way we can take up the call that we have from Jesus and obey. I urge you to take part in every way: telling us of those in need, and finding a way to be a part of the action in October.

What is important is that we do it, that we offer our hearts to God, and become again, the light of the world for this community. In all that we say and do, we give God glory, which is something else John Calvin would always say: all things are done for the glory of God, in thanksgiving for his grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

In Praise of Weakness

A sermon by David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

July 5, 2009

2 Corinthians 12: 2-10

Mark 6: 1-13

This may seem like a strange sermon title, In Praise of Weakness, especially on July 4^th weekend. We don’t celebrate weakness; we celebrate strength. We light fireworks as an echo of military strength. We expound on the benefits and blessings of our American revolution and the democratic experiment that has served us so well.

In personal life, we don’t tolerate much weakness either. We prefer competence, confidence, self-assurance, self-reliance. To admit weakness in anything is tantamount to failure, even moral failure. We expend great emotional energy trying to present ourselves as having no weaknesses at all. And we know in the depths of our hearts that our weaknesses are legion, and we are not happy.

The appearance of weakness makes us vulnerable: even Jesus had this problem.  The locals had a hard time hearing him because they knew his family, knew his history and background.  The particularities of who we are make it difficult when our confession, our message, our faith, is not aligned perfectly with our behavior. People may say, “what do you mean, he is a Christian? I remember when….” you fill in the blank. And so weakness blocks our witness to Jesus.

How then can weakness be a good thing, a thing to be praised?

Saint Paul demonstrates for us in 2^nd Corinthians how weakness can be good. First he tells of an experience he had, a kind of vision or something, of heaven. He can’t even say if it was a vision, or if he were literally taken to heaven, but much truth was revealed to him there. In the letter he pretends this is someone else, but then says he can’t boast about this, because of his weakness.

If Saint Paul were alive today, he would be boasting about his experience: he would write a book, set up a website, and go on a preaching tour, telling people all about it. He might even offer a seminar on how you too can have this experience, for only $89.95. In our day, such a thing would be exploited – and many in Paul’s day would have done the same (without the website!), but not Paul. He doesn’t exploit this rare gift God has given him; instead he tells us that he has a weakness, a thorn in the flesh.

What that thorn might be no one knows. There is much speculation, but no real answer. Whatever it was, it was something that hindered Paul’s ministry, and caused him trouble. It was something that tempted him to sin. It was something he saw as a weakness. A shortcoming. A problem.

And so he prayed to have it removed. “Heal me, Jesus” was his prayer. And the answer was, “no” – and here is the good part – “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Jesus told him that this weakness was an opportunity for grace to be manifest. It was a way for the power of God to work in his life. It was, in short, a good thing.

Recently I read a summary of a book by a Russian priest, who, back in the 1920s, wrote:

The kind of man we most often encounter presents a combination of three traits:   (1) pride – faith in his own strength, delight in his own creations; (2) a passionate  love of earthly life; and (3) the absence of any sense of sin.

It seems to me that this is right on target for our time! The people we encounter in the world around us are confident of their own strength, routinely self-indulgent, and unwilling to admit any weaknesses. That is the world we live in. And it rubs off on us. We find ourselves unwilling to admit weakness; Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that “the pious fellowship admits no sinners.” He meant that congregations have a habit of setting a standard that says, there are no weaknesses, no sins, here. We are all perfect. Not true, is it? We are all sinners. That is why we pray the confession of sin each Sunday – a recognition of our sin, our weakness, and a recognition that before we even start praying, we are already forgiven in Jesus Christ. Grace is sufficient for us, and we can admit our weaknesses.

Rudolf Bohren meditated on those matters in a book on depression and the Heidelberg Catechism. He talks about the fact that our weaknesses are not all bad, because they afford an opportunity for us to learn to depend on God and God’s grace in Jesus Christ. He writes what he calls an “untimely parable.”

“In the maturing process Emmentaler cheese collects a little saltwater in its holes, which improves the taste. Humans are like cheese. In life’s maturing process everyone somehow gets holes in their soul, which collects bitter moments. Because of that God loves us. It is a mistake to think a Christlike soul must resemble a pudding, and be sweet through and through. Jesus’ disciples are not the sugar of the world but the salt of the earth. Why shouldn’t I resign myself to those bitter moments that have gathered within me? They make all things new.”

(In the Depth of the Cistern, unpublished translation)

He doesn’t mean that we should pursue weakness or temptation or sin – as Paul says, should we continue to sin so that grace may abound? By no means!  What these mean is that we can admit and accept the fact that we have weaknesses. That is the first step to receiving the grace that leads us to growth. We can overcome weaknesses, some of them, and when we can’t, then we know with Paul, that Jesus “grace is sufficient” and that “power is made perfect in weakness.”

Twenty years or so ago, I took a mission trip group of about 45 teenagers to do some work in South Carolina. Many of the kids were pretty young, and many were female. When we got there, we learned that we would not be repairing this one house that a hurricane had damaged; we would instead be tearing it down. The owner hoped to build a new house on the property some day. The owner looked at the teens that were with me and said, “Where are your workers? All I see are little girls.” I told him these were our workers. He was not impressed.  The next day he came back and saw them working. The kids had swarmed over the house like ants, and were rapidly taking it down.  That day the man said, “I have seen grown men who couldn’t work like those girls.”

He assumed weaknesses that weren’t there. No, those girls were not tall or strong, but working together they were able to tear down the house completely in three days. Sometimes individual weaknesses are overcome when we work together. We do not live the spiritual life alone; we come together in the Church. Here we find that the strengths of others complement our weaknesses. The Spirit draws us together, and with the gifts of each of us, the whole Body is made strong.  Grace makes up for our weaknesses as we work together.

There is another angle on this idea of power made real through weakness. Andrew Young tells the story of marching in the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. On Good Friday a group led by Martin Luther King was arrested, then the police turned their batons and dogs on the bystanders, and the world watched. On Easter morning they were back, this time five thousand strong, local people, not outsiders, walking from church to the jail. Two blocks from the jail they met the police, and not knowing what to do, they told the crowd to kneel to pray while they figured out a plan. They told the sheriff they intended to visit those in jail and pray. Then the people got up and marched. The sheriff yelled, “stop them,” but no one moved. Young writes,

“Even the police dogs that had been growling and straining at their leashes when we first marched up were perfectly calm. The firemen just stood there, holding their hoses. We were walking right past them and Bull Connor was yelling, “Turn on the hoses!” But the firemen didn’t move either. I saw one fireman, tears in his eyes, just let the hose drop at his feet. Our people marched right between the red fire trucks, singing, “I want Jesus to walk with me.” … Bull Connor stood there cussing and fussing. All of his resources had failed him. His policemen had refused to arrest us, his firemen had refused to hose us, and his dogs had refused to bite us. It was quite a moment to witness: I’ll never forget one old woman who became ecstatic when she marched through the barricades. As she passed through, she shouted, “Great God Almighty done parted the Red Sea one mo’ time!” (An Easy Burden, p.223)”

Perhaps some of you remember those pictures, of fire hoses and dogs turned on innocent praying people. The image of a man kneeling is weakness. That was the genius of the civil rights movement in those days: in its weakness it exposed the corruption of the powerful. It succeeded because it was weak, not strong; peaceful, not violent. In the story as Andrew Young tells it, when the people came to an obstacle and didn’t know what to do, they prayed. In their weakness they asked God for help, and they received power.  In their weakness, the very power of God is shown.

So, what do we see? The grace of God is sufficient for us in our weakness. Whether our weakness is a sinful habit, or a physical limitation, or our place in society, God’s grace is sufficient. When we sin, there is forgiveness and grace which gives us the strength to repent and withstand temptation. When we are not strong enough to accomplish the task alone, like the young teens on my mission trip, we find that God gives us strength as we work together. When we face the powers that be, as the civil rights marchers did forty-six years ago, or as the citizens of Tehran did last week, we find that God gives us grace to face the violence of the powerful.

When you are weak, be it a temptation or a frailty or a fear you have, turn to Jesus Christ and seek his strength. Don’t seek to be strong – that was Paul’s prayer. Seek instead for His strength and grace and power and glory to be made real in you.  In his grace, there is the paradoxical power that works in weakness.

And we come to the table today. Think of the weakness it shows: a man dies a humiliating death, and in that death, gives us life. A man is beaten and killed, but in that death, beats and defeats all the powers of evil. Jesus gives us his strength precisely in his weakness. Let us come to his table and be fed with his grace, the grace that is sufficient always for us in all things.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

With Deepest Sighs

A sermon by David Roquemore

The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church

June 14, 2009

Genesis 1: 1-5

Romans 8: 18-28

Mark 4

We continue our reading through Romans 8 today, looking more at the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.Where we left off last week, in verse 17, we are called children of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus of the promises of God. Then he goes and mentions suffering.. if in fact we suffer wtih him so that we may also be glorified with him. That leads Paul to reflect on suffering: first he says the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. That is a wonderful sentiment he repeats often: this world has pain and trouble, but you just wait — what’s coming is incomparably better!

The Creation itself waits for the revelation of God’s glory. Creation suffers with us! Creation suffers? What does that mean? We read Genesis 1 today, a bit of it, and we saw that the Spirit of God was present: our translation says, a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Other translations put it,  the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. The Spirit brooded over the waters of creation, waiting, pondering, yearning for creation to be fulfilled. And the Spirit still does. The creation waits with eager longing, we read, and the Spirit waits with it.  God’s creation was good, and God’s Spirit still tends it.

We look at the world around and see that creatures are born, flourish, and die. They kill other creatures to eat and stay alive. That is the way it is. There is violence and corruption. That is the way this grand blooming buzzing universe works. But the Scripture hints of a different view. The Bible suggests that death and decay, and violence, are the result of sin, of evil in the world. What would it mean for the world to be different? We can’t quite say, but it seems that the entire creation suffers because of the sin of men and women. But one day it will be different. One day God will redeem it all.

I want to pause here and make an observation. In our time there is much said about the environment and global warming. We find it easy to take sides: one scientist says this, another says that, and so we are able to debate a lot of this. That is a distraction from the facts: we have been polluting this place for quite a while and we are starting to see terrible results. We must change our ways. I don’t know if global warming is a natural cycle or a man-made catastrophe. I do know that we have abused and mistreated the world that God gave us, the world that God made and called good, the world that God loves. I believe the Church should be in the forefront of the move to call us all to change our ways and live differently.

The creation will be healed, Paul says, when God’s glory is revealed. Just now it waits and groans — the words bring up the image of a woman groaning in anticipation of childbirth. Creation yearns to see God give birth to something new.

Stop again: we live in a time that has demystified the universe. Animals and plants are just out there. But the Bible hints that they — somehow, in some limited way — know the Creator. How do trees glorify God? By standing tall and waving their branches. What does it mean if we begin to see the world not as raw material but as the place the Spirit dwells?

And then Paul turns — not only does the creation wait, groaning, but we ourselves do also. We wait for the redemption of our bodies, for our final adoption as God’s children. We wait for the promises to be fulfilled. Paul indicates this happening in a very literal way. Salvation includes the physical redemption of creation and our bodies.

There is a story that St. Augustine was asked how old we will be in heaven, and after some thought, he said, “thirty three, because Jesus was thirty-three when he died.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty good to me. We don’t know what the “redemption of our bodies” might mean, but it surely will be good. Our bodies will be as God intended them to be, without illness or defect. How about that?

And so we patiently wait for that day to come. We wait, and while we wait, something else wonderful is happening: Look at verse 26: Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

We wait, and we don’t even know what to pray for. But the Spirit does, and prays for us in our weakness. Let’s take this apart: The Spirit helps us in our weakness. When we need it the most, God is with us, in the most intimate way possible. Sometimes it feels as though God is far away. Sometimes it feels as though God is not with us. But God is, always. WE might not be with him, so to speak, but God never deserts us. So when you most need God, and when you least feel like praying, take comfort in the knowledge that God is with you. In our bleakest darkest moments, when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us.

In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis describes how Narnia has been taken captive by the White Witch; all are under her evil spell. It is cold and snow is everywhere. Lewis famously describes it as “always winter and never Christmas.” That is a good description of creation subjected to futility, to the effects of sin and evil. And it is not a bad description of how life seems sometimes: always winter. If you have ever lived in the Midwest, you might agree with my paraphrase, “always February. and never Christmas.” Never Spring. Never sunny and balmy and beautiful. When life is like that, know the Spirit of God is ever with you.

Doing what? The Spirit is praying for us! Praying with sighs too deep for words.. Isn’t that wonderful? The Spirit speaks directly to God the Father about our troubles, in ways that cannot even be expressed. The Spirit of God knows us thoroughly, knows our weaknesses, our strengths, our needs, our hopes, and our dreams. We are not alone: the Spirit prays for us.

Because of course we don’t know how to pray. We pray for the wrong things. We pray for ourselves. We pray “God, get me out of this mess.” We promise God we will do great things if only, just this once, he will help us, and then we don’t fulfill our promise.

How do we pray rightly? The last verse of our reading says, And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Right prayer is praying according to the will of God. So we can ask ourselves, given what we know about God from the Bible, are my prayers in accord with that will? The Spirit will tell us what God wants from us, and God knows the mind of the Spirit, and grants our prayers as the Spirit prays for us. It is kind of a circle, a wonderful interchange in which God takes good care of us in all we do.

What do we learn about the Spirit in this passage?  We learn that God is always with us. That God only wants our good. That when we cry out “Abba! Father!” in our prayers, the Spirit prays with us, even and especially when we have nothing else to say.  We learn that there is an absolute certainty of that which has not yet happened: the Spirit will redeem all creation in God’s good time and we will be fully adopted as God’s children. And in the meantime, God the Spirit prays for us.

Thanks be to God for his goodness to us! Amen