You Can Belong Before You Believe

You Can Belong 

Before you Believe

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 26, 2014; 2 Easter Sunday, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 20:19-31)  When it was evening on the day of Resurrection, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

_____________________

One of the things we like to say around here is, “You can belong before you believe.”  God is a mystery.  Life is mysterious.  We are all mysteries, each of us.  Mysteries are ultimately unfathomable.  We are always learning, growing.  Growing into the mystery that we are – growing into the mystery of everything. 

From the beginning we all belong to God though we may know nothing of the Divine Mystery.  From the beginning we all belong to life, and life continually uncovers its mysteries to us.  From the beginning we all belong to each other – fellow earthlings, breathing the same air, neighbors and fellow travelers on this fragile island home. 

So here at St. Paul’s we want a warm welcome to all to belong.  We want to practice radical hospitality.  Welcome, fellow seeker.  “You can belong before you believe.” 

There’s not a certain level of understanding about the nature of God that you have to accomplish before you are allowed admission.  There’s not a particular theology of the nature of reality or a distinct definition of humanity that you have to understand and subscribe to before we let you in.  There is simple acceptance.  After all, that’s God’s model in Jesus.  Welcome.  Accept the fact that you are welcome.  Jesus was radically inclusive.  The only people he scolded were those who tried to separate others because they thought they were better than those others.  Jesus called them “blind guides.”

We do have some insight in the Church.  We’ve tried to put some of our best guesses about the mystery of God and the nature of reality into words.  But words are never enough.  Mystery transcends words.  Yet we have the scriptures.  We have the creeds.  They are like fingers pointing toward the unfathomable mystery.  They are good guides, maps, written by our fellow travelers along the way.  Unfortunately some people focus a little too fundamentally on the fingers rather than on the ultimate mystery that the words point toward.  The Church itself – a relationship of union within the mystery of Christ – the Church existed before the New Testament existed; the Church thrived for 300 years before the creeds were composed. 

Thomas, the Apostle, was part of the Church from the beginning.  And when he didn’t believe in the resurrection, the others didn’t kick him out.  Relationship transcends belief.  Love and compassion are more primary than theology. 

You heard the reading from John’s Gospel.  On Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared in the midst of the grief and mortal fear of the huddled disciples and gave them peace.  Deep, restful peace.  Joyful peace. 

But Thomas wasn’t with them.  The others witnessed to him, testified to him evangelized him, if you will, saying, “We have seen the Lord.”  It didn’t work.  Thomas knew what he had seen.  He speaks like someone suffering from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  He’s having flashbacks.  He’s probably waking up in the middle of the night, seeing the nails and the struggle, watching again the spear in Jesus’ side and the gaping cut.  He can still see the horrible wound with Jesus’ life pouring out of his body.  Thomas can’t get it out of his head.  NO!, he cries.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  His grief is deeper than someone else’s beliefs. 

Union is not the same thing as uniformity.  Union/Unity is not sameness.  In fact, union and unity is the reconciliation of differences as the differences are maintained, even sharpened.  Difference remains, yet is overcome, transcended in unity.  Jesus says in marriage the two become one, and in a healthy marriage each partner supports the other’s becoming more and more one’s own distinct, unique self, while remaining united. 

The disciples seemed to know about that.  Thomas remained with them, though he did not believe as they did.  Their relationship of union transcended the differences even as the difference was maintained. 

Think how much love and acceptance was present in that company, allowing Thomas to be with them in unity.  You can only be in community by being yourself, by being honest.  Thomas didn’t cave in so he could fit in.  And his friends didn’t force him to be like them.  They accepted him in his difference.

So a week later, Thomas is still with them.  Still belonging.  Still accepted.  Still respected.  Still loved.  Still in relationship.  That’s community.

Jesus honors Thomas’ honesty and his vulnerability.  Jesus comes to be with Thomas in Thomas’ pain and trauma and isolation.  Jesus comes and enters Thomas’ vulnerability, and when he does, Jesus’ wounds are still there.  The vulnerable and wounded one comes to share Thomas’ vulnerability and woundedness, and Thomas is healed.  Jesus is still crucified, but Thomas is no longer traumatized.  Thomas can live with renewed hope in this new and mysterious world.

Last night our McMichael speaker Nora Gallagher told a story about her own separateness when she was diagnosed with a serious illness that threw her into another country.  Healthy people went on with their lives, giving their bodies little thought, while Nora, on the other side of a glass wall, cancelled every project and appointment to struggle with her threatening illness. 

One morning at the Mayo Clinic as she left another test, her husband pushed her wheelchair out of the elevator onto the main floor.  I saw a little girl ahead of us, in a wheelchair, pulling herself expertly along. For most of my life I had not known what do say or do around people in wheelchairs; I nodded or said hello and looked away. They lived in another country; a place I’d never be. But this time, as we pulled alongside her, I looked over and said, “Hi.” And she looked at me with a full open smile, and said, “Hi,” and there we were, momentary companions, on this particular road, in our own country. No advice given or needed. No wall. Our mutual vulnerability was the cord between us…

Later, Nora went on to reflect, When I looked over at the girl in the wheelchair at the Mayo Clinic, and she looked at me, I had the sense that there was a third person there. He was there because she was there. And I was there. A very fragile line connected the three of us. Whoever this man was who lived and died and lived again was there, not literal, not visible but not absent, not without influence, not dead. The resurrection when looked at this way is not a magic act, but is instead a revelation of what stays alive and what does not. Love and its close cousin vulnerability stay alive.” [i]

Jesus shows us how God incorporates the whole human situation into the Divine Life.  God in Jesus enters our vulnerability, brokenness, pain and isolation, accepts and absorbs it into his own life, and dies the death we will all die.  We also see in Jesus all of our human capacity for good – the possibility within each of us for love, compassion, wisdom and insight, connection, trust and hope.  Jesus’ immersion into the human condition shows us the radical belonging of God, a connection with every human life.  Jesus absorbs all of humanity into his own being and takes that into the very heart of the Trinity, where it has always been from the beginning. 

Jesus shows us that all belong before or whether they believe.  All humanity belongs to God, in our brokenness and in our virtue.  As Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation,” (Romans 8:1), “but Christ is all and in all!” (Col. 3:11)  All humanity is united to God, even as our distinctions remain, and maybe are even sharpened. 

That's why I like to think that people of all other religions belong to us, to Christ, and to St. Paul's Episcopal Church as an expression of Christ's Body, in all their distinctive difference.  That why we welcome all to Christ's communion with the word, "Whoever you are, or wherever you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place; you are welcome at God's table."  And so we say, "You can belong before you believe."  When you belong, you may find, like Thomas, that you grow in your experience, even in belief.  Yet no matter how much you may grow and how much you may understand and believe, we all still move toward mystery -- Mystery that draws us deeper into life, into the All.

---

[i] the full text of Nora Gallagher’s talk is online: http://stpaulsfay.org/nora.pdf

"She Loved Much"

“She Loved Much”

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 20, 2014; Easter Sunday, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 28:1-10)  After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, `He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

______________________________

Here’s a Bible Trivia question.  Who was the first witness to the resurrection? 

As we just heard in the account from St. Matthew’s gospel; it was Mary Magdalene.  St. Augustine called her the “Apostle to the Apostles,” a title that is popular in Eastern Orthodoxy.  She’s also called the “Witness to the Witnesses.”  It seems that Mary Magdalene was the first person to realize that Jesus had risen from the dead and she was the first person to give voice to that realization.

How interesting that in a patriarchal culture, our movement’s first public witness was a woman.  And not just any woman.  The Gospels say that Jesus freed Mary from seven demons.  Whatever that means, it is profound.  A profound condition of lostness, bondage, compulsion.  Maybe because of that image, ancient interpreters identified Mary Magdalene with the unnamed woman in Luke’s gospel who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and tears, and dries his feet with her hair at a dinner in the home of a Pharisee named Simon.  The proper people at the table are scandalized, because they know the woman to be a sinner.  She has a reputation.  Jesus should have known better than to allow her to touch him in that way.  Simon and his guests disapprove.

Jesus used that as a teaching moment.  He complemented her extravagant expression of affection.  The punch line:  “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.” (Lk. 7:47) 

“She loved much.”  The crucifixion accounts vary, but the most likely scenario has all of the male disciples fleeing in fear.  Only the women – Mary Magdalene and the others – remain steadfastly within the trauma of Jesus’ slow death. 

“She loved much.”  Legends abound through the centuries about the intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  A few scholars argue that she was Jesus’ wife.  Beyond the speculation, there is the church’s deep, consistent intuition – “She loved much.”  She loved Jesus deeply. 

A sensitive reader of the resurrection encounters on Easter day feels the yearning love inside her.  Mary needs to be near Jesus, even if it is his corpse.  Richard Rohr says “Mary Magdalene is the icon and archetype of love itself – needed, given, received, and passed on.”[i]  Maybe it is because she knew her own sense of failure so deeply that she could love so deeply.  The quality of her love seems to have been something that Simon and the other respectable people seemed incapable of. 

The core of the Christian message tells us two simultaneous things.  First, we are all a mess.  Every one of us is fouled up.  We don’t measure up.  We fail.  We embarrass ourselves.  And then, whenever we do something right, we mess it up by being proud or elitist about it.  The personal development project is doomed from the start.

But the second simultaneous truth is this.  God loves us infinitely.  God loves, forgives and accepts us without condition.  So we’re fine.  You can quit the personal perfection project.  You are given your perfection as a gift.  So stop trying to earn your place.  It’s yours already.  As we heard earlier from Colossians:  “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” 

Mary Magdalene, the women who Jesus freed from seven demons, was bulletproof.  Nothing could threaten or frighten or shame her because she knew how much she was loved, therefore “she loved much.”  When all the men ran away, she stayed.  She was held by love, and she saw the resurrection. 

William Stafford has a poem I like called “The Way It Is.”  I think it is a poem about the kind of love that Mary Magdalene knew.

There’s a thread you follow.  It goes among

Things that change.  But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.[ii]

The thread of love goes among things that change, but love doesn’t change.  Stuff happens – tragedy and death.  But “you don’t ever let go of the thread,” because you can’t.  Love holds you.  Love is you.  At your deepest and truest place, you are love.  God is love.  And God is one with you at your deepest, most authentic self.  We are all loved into being by God. 

Whenever our eyes or ears or heart are open, we become aware of the love that fills all things.  All things, including executions and corpses.  Love overcomes all.  Sometimes it is through our darkest times that we come to the deepest experience that we really are held by love.

I have another poem about that, and I want to share it with you as we finish.  It is a poem by a woman who, like Mary Magdalene, is a sinner.  Nicole is a prisoner at the Northwest Arkansas Community Corrections Center.  She’s part of our Prison Story Project.  Each week for a season we send people into the prison – artists, writers, storytellers, poets, friends.  They work with some of the women to help them give voice to their lives – to paint and sing and write their stories.  The women in the prison all wear the yellow uniform of convicts.  They are all given a number for identification.  They are treated like anonymous sinners in a place with few smiles.  They are doing time.

Here is Nicole’s poem, “Thank You Time.”

Blue lights, radio signals and numbers

No words

There is nothing to be said

Just salt and tears

Lost!

All of it, Everything.

Again and again and again.

Because just one more time,

Is one more time, is one more.

Time

Could be the very last and yet

Death is far less a threat than

Stripes, bars, and a number

Just a number no words

Nothing.

It’s all been said

Sink or swim

Red or black

Fire or ice, not both

And now it’s Yellow

And now it’s safe, or maybe?

A castle guarded day and night.

The walls are the enemy!

Still nothing no words

Until yellow is mixed with colors!

Hope

And TIME freely given

To the numbers

The color

They smile, Smile!

There are tears and salt

The walls are crumbling!

The number is a NAME!

With a story

And a face

Not a nobody face.

Not a scarecrow

Because hope is in TIME

Freely given

It is in ears that are open and hearts.

Yellow doesn’t know why

Yellow doesn’t care color has no feeling

Ahh but TIME cares and the NAME cares

One more life no bars and a face!

Not a nobody face

Not a failure

A name with a smile

On a somebody face

Thanks to TIME![iii]

People wearing smiles and color come behind the bars to give their time to Nicole who is doing time, and the thread of love takes her from bondage into freedom, restoring her identity as a child of God. 

Love needed, received, given, and passed on.  That’s what we do.  We do that every Sunday here.  But all humanity does that every time we let love work in us. 

The message of Easter is this – You are loved much.  God enters all of our prisons with an eternal, loving smile.  God speaks your name, and loves you infinitely.  There’s nothing left to do.  It’s all done.  So in thanksgiving, why not, like Mary Magdalene, “Love much."

---

[i] Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, London: SPCK, 2013) p. 180-1.

[ii] William Stafford, The Way It Is (St. Paul, Minn.:  Graywolf Press, 1977), p. 42; quoted by Rohr, p. 176

[iii] Nicole, Thank You Time, written from the Prison Story Project, spring, 2014.

The Passion

The Passion

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 13, 2014; Palm/Passion Sunday, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 7:11-54)  Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus said, "You say so." But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer. Then Pilate said to him, "Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?" But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.

Now at the festival the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?" For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, "Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him." Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, "Which of the two do you want me to release for you?" And they said, "Barabbas." Pilate said to them, "Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" All of them said, "Let him be crucified!" Then he asked, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Let him be crucified!"

So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." Then the people as a whole answered, "His blood be on us and on our children!" So he released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."

Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, `I am God's Son.'" The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way.

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o'clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, "This man is calling for Elijah." At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him." Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, "Truly this man was God's Son!

________________________

I’m not going to preach.  The story preaches itself.  I just want you to spend some time silently thinking about the Passion according to Matthew.  Use all of your senses.  Imagine yourself in the scene.  Let yourself be there.  What do you see?  What to you hear?  What do you smell and touch and taste?  Observe your emotional reactions.  Enter the story.

See Jesus silent before Pilate.

Hear the negotiation over Barabbas and Jesus, “Whom do you want me to free?”

Watch and listen to the chief priests and elders as they work the crowd.

Feel the crowd as they cry, “Let him be crucified!”

If you were in the crowd, what do you think you would have said when Pilate’s asked, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

Pilate’s hand washing. 

The mocking and torture.  The walk to Golgotha.  Simon, compelled to carry the cross.

The crucifixion.

Be there.  Watch.  Listen.  Feel.

The casting lots.  The criminals.  The mocking.

Finally the darkness, and Jesus’ cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

His last breath.

The earthquake.  The temple curtain torn.

An awed Centurion.

Let yourself be there and experience Christ’s Passion.

You might choose to be one of the characters.  A disciple.  One of the crowd.  Pilate.  A soldier.  One of the religious authorities.  Maybe Simon.  Even Jesus himself. 

Use your active imagination to dwell with the story for a while.

[A period of silent meditation.]

It is an awesome, dark and troubling scene.  But the reality underneath Jesus’ cross and resurrection is this:  Every person in that scene is forgiven, loved, and accepted by God.  Completely.  Every one of them is God’s beloved child.  Yes, they all failed love, some failed miserably.  But God loves and accepts us all.  Every one of us.  God’s love is stronger than any failure, any evil we humans can fall into. 

What happened thru this evil?  Eternal good.  Eternal light.  Eternal love.  Eternal life. 

That is the eternal condition at all times and in all places.  No matter what happens, God loves and accepts us, and God brings new life out of all our darkness.  All is well.  Always.

______________________

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Bob the Dog

Bob the Dog

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 5, 2014;5 Lent, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Romans 8:6-11)  To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law-- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.   

______________________________

There is a dog who needs a new home.  His name is Bob.  Bob the Dog.  We kept Bob for a few days, but Bob was miserable.  Except when he was in a lap or curled up near a human being.  As long as Bob was with a person, Bob was okay.  As soon as Bob was not with a person, Bob panicked.  He barked a high, anxious bark; he howled; he scratched at doors and windows. 

Bob did not bond with the other dogs.  He didn’t play with them.  He paid them no mind, except when they got in his space – then he let them know he was the alpha dog.

Unfortunately, our family’s life is too complicated for one of us to always be with Bob.  So it just didn’t work out.  It seemed a shame.  I really liked Bob.  I did my best to explain to him:  “It’s okay, Bob the Dog.  Just trust me a little bit.  When I go away, I promise I’ll return before long.  If I go upstairs, I’ll come back downstairs again.  Don’t worry.  In the meantime, have some fun.  Play with the other dogs.  Relax.  Lie down.  Chase a squirrel.”  He didn’t.  He just howled.

I thought about Bob when I read today’s passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  I’ve been spending some time with Paul lately as I prepare for a new Sunday School class on Paul and his letters.  Much of what Paul writes sounds a little bit like what I was trying to tell Bob.

Paul says there are two ways of being in the world.  One way is full of anxiety and even fury.  Life in the flesh.  The other way…?  Well, he calls it living according to the Spirit.  And it has something to do with letting go of our self-absorbed anxieties and trusting God.  Trusting that God is near.  Trusting that God actually loves us and forgives us and accepts us.  Just as we are.  So we can relax.  Have some fun.  Play with the other people.  Lie down in peace.  And chase squirrels.  I’ve got lots of squirrels in my life.  A lot of them are on my “to do” list.

In his former life, Paul was like a nervous dog who thought he had to make everything right in his life.  And not only make everything right in his life, Paul thought he had to make everything right in everyone else’s life.  That’s what he was doing on the road to Damascus.  He was busy trying to straighten out some mistakes.  He was going to fix those Jesus people. 

And Paul had a vision.  Suddenly he knew – he knew deep in his bones – he knew that he didn’t have to fix anything.  He didn’t have to fix himself.  God accepted him and loved him infinitely.  He didn’t have to fix other people or make them in his own image.  Instead, he could just forget himself and simply serve others. 

So, Paul gave up his project of trying to measure up, and he simply accepted the fact that he was okay, he was safe, he was loved, he was accepted.  We all are.  And it’s a sheer gift from God. 

That’s like the gift I wanted to give Bob the Dog too.  Just trust us, Bob.  You’re safe.  We’ll come back.  In the meantime, relax and have fun.  Enjoy the other dogs.

But Bob was trapped in a prison of his own making.  If he couldn’t control his humans and make them stay with him, he was going to be miserable.  And that’s a miserable way to live.

I live with a wonderful grandchild who is in what some call the “terrible 2’s.”  Every once in a while she decides she needs something, and if she doesn’t get it she will melt down into an apocalyptic despair.  “NO!  I want the orange t-shirt, not the blue one!”  There follows a torrent of tears and a wailing that sounds like imminent death.  Instead of getting the blue t-shirt she wants, she usually gets a “time-out.”  Prison, in other words.  A prison of her own making.

Paul described his old life like a prison.  His old life of trying to measure up, and trying to control himself and everyone else.  When he gave that up and instead simply trusted whatever the Spirit would do in him, he experienced a new freedom. 

Here’s what Pauline scholar Robin Scroggs says about Paul’s freedom.  “What are we freed from?  All sorts of things:  freed from the old world and that part of it which is our own past history; freed from what people think about us; freed from what we think about ourselves, either positively or negatively.  Thus we are freed from the agony of failure and the tense striving for success, either in memory or in prospect.  We are freed from the tyranny of someone else’s claim about what is true and what is morally correct behavior.  We are freed from the claim that some set of rules and regulations is ontologically true and eternally binding.  We are even free from the fear of going to hell unless we can subscribe to a given set of theological dogmas.  As Paul says, it is more important to be known (by God) than to know God.” [i]

I decided to try it out.  You see, I carry some anxiety about preaching.  I want to preach good sermons.  I’d like all of my sermons to be good.  They aren’t.  But I’ve learned to live with that. 

This week was one of those weeks when I had something like writer’s block.  Good scriptures – Dry bones and the raising of Lazarus.  But I was dry bones.  Didn’t have a angle or a hook to get started.  Worse – I didn’t have a story.  A good story can always save a bad sermon.  And I was out of time. 

So I looked at this little passage from Paul and said to myself – Okay.  God loves me infinitely whether I write a good sermon or a stinker.  It really doesn’t matter whether people sleep or are saved.  God loves them too.  That’s what’s important.  So relax.  Trust the Spirit and just write what you can.  You never know what people will hear anyway.  The Spirit inside a listener’s ears can make my most mundane words a treasure.  And without the Spirit, eloquence falls flat.  

I decided that I could be miserable trying to research and study and force myself to write something wonderful when it’s not there.  Or I could feel guilty, or judged, or less-than, or even afraid – what if people quit coming to church because of me?!  That’s a miserable way to live.

So I just decided to start writing and hope the Spirit would take me somewhere.  And I decided to trust that if it wasn’t any good, most of you will probably come back again next week anyway.  It’s okay to preach a stinker every once in a while.  God loves me anyway.

So I knocked this out pretty quickly.  And then I went downstairs to have some fun with my wife, my dogs, my son, and my wonderful two-year old granddaughter.  I even laughed a bit as I typed this last line.

P.S.  If there is someone who takes care of a loved one at home who can't get out much, I do know a really good dog who would love to keep you company.  Let the Spirit guide you.

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[i] Robin Scroggs, Paul for a New Day, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1977, p. 

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