Frozen: An Easter Story

Easter Sunday A, 2014

Acts 10:34-43

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.


It has already made more money than any animated film in history, and at the moment is the eighth-highest grossing film of any kind in the entire history of cinema. Everywhere you go, literally or virtually, you will hear people of all ages –- especially young women -- singing its Academy-Award winning sing, Let It Go. It is a phenomenon, and it is called Frozen. It’s got a great story, great music, and great animation. It also happened to be released at the beginning of one of the worst winters in our memory, when we all felt like the citizens of Arendelle, caught in an icy curse with no sign of a thaw.

It’s not an ostensibly Christian film – the writers and the producer claim no theological bona fides. I want to suggest, nonetheless, that the overwhelming audience reaction to this movie – and if you haven’t seen it yet, please do as soon as possible – is because it speaks at the deepest levels to the human condition. It represents -- whether consciously or unconsciously makes no difference – a profoundly Christian understanding of life, of evil, of hope, and of redemption. Frozen is thoroughly an Easter story.

Let me borrow freely from Wikipedia’s synopsis of the plot:

Elsa, princess of Arendelle, possesses the magical ability to create ice and snow. One night while playing, she accidentally injures her younger sister, Anna. The king and queen seek help from the troll king, who heals Anna and removes her memories of Elsa's magic. The royal couple isolates the children in their castle until Elsa learns to control her powers. Afraid of hurting Anna again, Elsa spends most of her time alone in her room, causing a rift between the girls as they grow up. When the girls are teenagers, their parents die at sea during a storm.

When Elsa comes of age, the kingdom prepares for her coronation. Excited to be allowed out of the castle again, Anna explores the town and meets Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, and the two immediately develop a mutual attraction. Hans proposes marriage and Anna quickly accepts. They return to Elsa’s coronation, which despite Elsa’s fear, goes off without incident. When Hands and Anna reveal their love to the new queen, Elsa refuses to grant her blessing and forbids their sudden marriage. The sisters argue, culminating in the exposure of Elsa's abilities during an emotional outburst.

Panicking, Elsa flees the castle, while inadvertently unleashing an eternal winter on the kingdom. High in the nearby mountains, she casts off restraint as she sings the signature song Let It Go, building herself a solitary ice palace, and unknowingly brings to life her and Anna's childhood snowman, Olaf. Meanwhile, Anna sets out in search of her sister, determined to return her to Arendelle, end the winter, and mend their relationship. While obtaining supplies, she meets mountain man Kristoff and his reindeer Sven. She convinces Kristoff to guide her up the North Mountain. The group then encounters Olaf, who leads them to Elsa's hideaway.

Anna and Elsa reunite, but Elsa still fears hurting her sister. When Anna persists in persuading her sister to return, Elsa becomes agitated and accidentally strikes Anna in the heart with her powers. Horrified, Elsa creates a giant snow creature to drive Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf away. As they flee, Kristoff notices Anna's hair is turning white, and deduces something is very wrong. He seeks help from the trolls, his adoptive family, who explain that Anna's heart has been frozen. Unless it is thawed by an "act of true love", she will become frozen solid forever. Believing that only a kiss of true love from Hans can save Anna, Kristoff races back with her to Arendelle.

Meanwhile, Hans, leading a search for Anna, reaches Elsa's palace. In the ensuing battle against the Duke's men, Elsa is knocked unconscious and imprisoned back at the kingdom. There, Hans pleads with her to undo the winter, but Elsa confesses she doesn't know how. When Anna reunites with Hans and begs him to kiss her to break the curse, Hans refuses and reveals that his true intention in marrying her was to seize control of Arendelle's throne. Leaving Anna to die, he charges Elsa with treason for her younger sister's apparent death.

Elsa escapes and heads out into the blizzard on the fjord. Olaf finds Anna and reveals Kristoff is in love with her; they then escape onto the fjord to find him. Hans confronts Elsa and tells her Anna is dead because of her. In Elsa's despair, the storm suddenly ceases, giving Kristoff and Anna the chance to find each other. However Anna, seeing that Hans is about to kill Elsa, decides to throw herself between the two just as she freezes solid, blocking Hans' attack.

As Elsa grieves for her sister, Anna begins to thaw, since her decision to sacrifice herself to save her sister constitutes an "act of true love". Realizing love is the key to controlling her powers, Elsa is able to thaw the kingdom and even helps Olaf survive in summer. Hans is sent back to the Southern Isles to face punishment for his crimes against the royal family of Arendelle. Anna and Kristoff share a kiss, and the two sisters reconcile; Elsa promises never to shut the castle gates again.[1]

This, brothers and sisters, is the Bible story, from Genesis to Revelation, with its stunning climax on Good Friday and Easter Sunday:

We were created to live as sisters and brothers in a beautiful kingdom, and each of us were given wonderful powers to love and to create. But with great power comes great responsibility to use them well. And in the absence of a loving Father to guide us, sometimes we grow so afraid of our powers that we shut ourselves off from everyone who simply wants to share joy with us.

Especially in adolescence – which sometimes can last a lifetime – we can use our power to hurt the people that we love the most. Resentful of people trying to constrain us, we run away and throw off any control others have over us. Frozen’s anthem, Let It Go, is a fascinating song. It’s being sung, especially by young women, as a hymn to cast off the stereotypes and restrictions our culture places on women:

Don't let them in, don't let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know
Well now they know

Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore

That’s a good thing. But listen to the words as she builds an icy palace for herself where no one can touch her:

Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don't care what they're going to say
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway

It's funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can't get to me at all

It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me,
I'm free!

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry
Here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let the storm rage on


That’s the heartbreak of sin: we refuse to live as children of a loving Father, and build our own frozen prisons where no one can hurt us ever again. But our rebellion doesn’t just freeze us: it freezes everyone and everything around us, spreading out its icy death through the whole world. And we even wound the people we love the most, the people who are trying to love us in spite of our cold hearts.

What can save us? Kristoff -- the Scandinavian form of Christopher -- Christ bearer -- takes Anna to the trolls – the outsiders who seem ugly and misshapen, and who are disguised as rocks. Rocks: on this rock I will build my church . . . The only thing that can thaw a frozen heart, say the outsiders, is an act of true love. And what jumps to everyone’s mind when we think of true love? Romantic love. Love’s true kiss.

But, it turns out, that’s not it at all. In fact, Anna’s supposed true love, Hans, turns out to be truly evil, because he uses love as a means to power – to seize the kingdom. At the end, dying, Anna has to choose between what she thinks will save her life – a kiss from Kristoff, who truly loves her – and saving her sister Elsa, who is the very one who is responsible for Anna’s fatal illness. So Anna, with her dying breath, places herself between Elsa and Han’s sword, touching Elsa with one hand so she will turn into ice, and blocking and shattering Hans’ sword with the other. Anna assumes the shape of the cross: it’s Good Friday.

There is silence. Then, as a weeping Elsa embraces her frozen sister, Anna begins to thaw and come back to life. The act of true love wasn’t a romantic kiss – it was an act of self-sacrificial love, a sister putting herself between the weapon of evil and her undeserving sister’s life. And that act of self-sacrifice thaws Elsa, brings Anna back to life, and then spreads out to bring spring to a frozen world. It’s Easter. Queen Elsa learns that the key to using her power wisely is to use it with love, not with fear. The movie ends with the promise that the gates of the city will never be shut again. And that, brothers and sisters, is how the Bible ends in the Book of Revelation.

I am convinced that Frozen is wildly popular because it speaks to the deepest experience and longings of the human heart: we want to play with each other in God’s beautiful kingdom, but out of fear, we misuse our God-given powers to protect ourselves from hurt. In the process we build ourselves icy prisons and wound the people closest to us. The only cure is an undeserved act of true, sacrificial love. Jesus has done that for us all. In Paradise Lost the center of hell isn’t fire – it’s frozen. Jesus entered the frozen hell of death, standing between the sword of hate and us. That, and that alone, is the love that can thaw our frozen hearts and lives.

It’s been a long, hard winter that we thought might never end. All of us have frozen places in our lives – ice palaces into which we’ve crawled to protect us from being hurt. We’ve been wounded by the curses of people we wanted to love, and we’ve shot icy bolts into the hearts of others who were trying to love us. Listen to the Good News this Easter Sunday: only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart. Jesus died for you, and God has thawed him out this Easter Day. Wrap your arms around him, and let spring come flooding into your frozen heart.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_(2013_film)#Plot

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Christmas Eve, 2016

I was wondering last night: if Jesus is truly God-with-us, if Emmanuel is fully real . . .

did he know what it felt like to kneel by a privy or a ditch and hurl his guts out? Did he know what it was to lie in bed and shiver from a fever; to bend over from stomach cramps; to splinter or cut his hand in his father's workshop; to twist an ankle, wrench a knee, bang his head; to blow his nose for days from a cold?

If Wesley's last words are right -- "the best of all is, God is with us" -- then Emmanuel finds its truth not just in a manger or on a cross, but in all the bloody, messy, puke-filled vagaries of our lives. Christmas is but the beginning and Good Friday the conclusion of a life utterly like ours in every respect. Every.

And Easter, in Keith Miller's words, is like God's signature scrawled across the end of Jesus' life, saying, "This is mine."

Several Apocryphal/Gnostic gospels attempt to fill in the missing thirty years of Jesus' life with stories of how he made clay animals come to life when he was lonely, how he healed sick friends as a child, and how he struck dead a town bully and then revived him. The Gnostics discounted humanity -- Jesus is Superboy, only worse. That's why the Church, in its wisdom, decided they were apocryphal: they did not represent the fully human Jesus it worshipped. Dan Brown to the contrary, those "gospels" were rejected not because their Jesus was too human, but not enough.

We're having a very incarnate Christmas here at Yellow Tavern, sharing a stomach virus in the way all close and loving families do. We are kneeling, but not at a manger. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh have been replaced by ginger ale, imodium, and Febreeze. We're not following a star: we're looking for some sleep.

And that, it seems to me, is the real meaning of Christmas. Fear not.

The Day After Trump

     I was a junior in high school, studying one spring evening at the desk I still use, the radio playing softly in the background. The music was interrupted by a news bulletin -- the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis. I listened, then ran to tell my parents. Two months later my mother woke me for school by telling me that Robert Kennedy had been assassinated that evening in California. Between those two slayings by lone assassins, I felt something had changed in America, and in me. We had lost our innocence. Something had broken in me and in the world, and as I watched from the roof of my house as Baltimore burned after King's death, and then watched the riots in Chicago that summer during the Democratic Convention, I knew something inexplicable would never be the same.

     This morning, as I try to imagine my country led by Donald Trump, I feel as though something, again, has changed in me and in America. Instead of murder perpetrated by two individuals, now a majority of voters have done violence not just to where I thought we were heading as a nation, but to the very notions of honor, decency, justice, hospitality, and kindness that I always believed were foundations of our society. We -- and I do mean we -- have chosen a very dark path. 

     Many, no doubt, will view this as another swing of the Hegelian pendulum that will eventually swing back. Maybe so. It feels qualitatively different to me -- that something has fundamentally changed in this country. I've been trying to find a better metaphor than "putting the fox in charge of the henhouse." It's more like making the atheists our priests, or taking the car to the scrapyard for repairs, or -- closer -- hiring a demolition contractor to paint the house. Trump and the Republican Party essentially believe that government has two purposes: local and national security, and the protection of business. The other items in the Preamble to the Constitution -- to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity -- can be covered by those other two priorities. 

     For eighty years Republicans have opposed public welfare, public health care, extension of civil rights, and integrated public schools. They finally learned they couldn't openly kill any of those things because they're too popular. But they learned -- from some very dark historical examples -- that if you slowly increase the demands on an individual or system while slowly decreasing its nourishment, it will eventually collapse. That has been happening for a long time with schools, health care, Social Security, and the like. Now there's the opportunity for our newly elected government to kill those things outright.

     What's different today is that the nation has given them license for that project. In the name of "fixing what's broken," there's the very real probability that what gets undone or demolished in the next two to four years -- or more -- can never be repaired. This is more than Van Jones' excellent term "whitelash" -- it is a repudiation of the outcome of the Civil War. In many ways, I feel, the Union is being dissolved.

     Last week I said to a woman at the church I attend that if Trump were elected, those of us in the progressive wing of Christianity would learn how Christians live in the rest of the world. We would no longer be able to count on the culture or the government to do our work of Kingdom-building for us. That white evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump signals to me that there are now, officially, two Christianities in America: one like the state church in so many countries, allied with the existing powers; and another, counter-cultural church that makes prophetic and sacrificial witness to the God who is above and beyond all earthy powers. 

     We dare not pretend now that, with time, it will all get better. The tectonic plates have shifted.

     In 1845, James Lowell put ink to paper to protest the U.S. imperialistic war with --- Mexico. The poem, still sung in Christian churches, rings still:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Try Easier

 In the spring of 1985 I decided to buy my first personal computer.  The choices were the CP/M machines – represented by Radio Shack and Kaypro; the Microsoft machines – represented by IBM; and two machines from Apple – the then-not ready for prime time Macintosh, and the Apple II series.  The Apple IIc was compact, user-friendly, and came with the glorious integrated word processor/database/spreadsheet program, Appleworks.  I’ve been an Apple guy ever since, in no small part because – to me at least – they’re so much easier to understand and use.  A computer technician at one of my churches admitted to me that had Apple become the dominant platform instead of Microsoft, he probably wouldn’t have had a job – he was constantly rescuing crashed Microsoft computer programs and machines.

During my four decades as a clergyman, I sometimes joked with parishioners that my job was to take a very simple idea – that God loves us – and make it so complex that I and thousands of my colleagues would be assured of careers.  Sunday after Sunday I stood in the pulpit and explained the complications and intricacies of trying to follow Jesus.  And, in all modesty, I was pretty good at it.

During that career, I read dozens of books and attended dozens of workshops and classes led by church consultants, each of whom had their own spin on helping congregations – and whole denominations – discover their vision/calling/purpose/identity/goals.  I even led a few of those workshops.  But, because I never wrote a book or got a Doctor of Ministry degree, my stages were fairly small.  And deservedly so.

Now, having spent two years sitting in the pews of churches listening to some very fine pastors help their congregations as they try to define their vision/calling/purpose/identity/goals, it seems to me that maybe I was more right than I knew about making things more complicated than they really are.  Why, after all, would God make God’s message to the world complicated?  Wouldn’t God make it simple enough for the children and the less educated and the less brilliant and the less nuanced to understand?  One of the first heresies the early Christian Church had to battle was Gnosticism – the belief that salvation came only to those who had received some elite and secret knowledge (gnosis) unavailable to common folk.  There are many ways the Church has been battling aspects of Gnosticism ever since, but perhaps church leaders have been double agents, needlessly complicating what was supposed to be Good News.  Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said that unless we became like children, we could not enter the Kingdom.

Or, in the words of the late, great Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mike Flanagan, sometimes you need to try easier.

My United Methodist denomination, a number of years ago, adopted a new mission statement that stands at the beginning of our church law book.  It says that the mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  A few years later they added a coda:   . . . for the transformation of the world.  Ever since, we’ve been wrestling with what it means to make a disciple.  How do we do that?  What does a disciple of Jesus Christ look like – especially, can they be gay?  Into what are we transforming the world?  Do we transform the world, or does God transform the world?  The mission statement clarified . . . nothing.

Maybe we need to try easier.

A man once asked Jesus which of the six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Hebrew Bible was the most important.  No, there are not just the Big Ten – there are hundreds more dealing with family life and ritual conduct and sex and animals and diet and personal cleanliness and women’s menstruation and wearing blended fabrics and on and on.  This whole God thing is really complicated, Jesus.  Can’t you just boil it down to one phrase?

Ask a run of the mill preacher that and s/he will roll his/her eyes, issue a long sigh, and then explain that it’s much more difficult than that.

Jesus – no run of the mill preacher – boils it down.  The most important thing, Jesus said, was to love the Lord with all your heart and mind and strength.  But – this is where his seminary training peeks out from under the terrycloth robe – there is one more thing:  love your neighbor as you love yourself.  That, he concludes, sums it all up.

Later on, he clarifies that second bullet point a little.  He’s noticed that some of his parishioners don’t love themselves very well, and if they’re going to love others as they love themselves, then the rest of the world is going to be in a heap of trouble.  So, he says, I’m giving you a new commandment:  love others as I have loved you.  That is, love others to death.  Not theirs – yours.

Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world is Biblical – it comes from what’s called The Great Commission.  But it seems to me that being a disciple of Jesus Christ means loving God with everything we’ve got and loving others the way Jesus loved.  If we did those things, the world would be transformed.

Love God, and love others like Jesus loved.

Try easier.

Now, about church vision/calling/purpose/identity/goals:  love God, and love others as Jesus loved.  It’s not that complicated an idea.  But each congregation, like each person, is a little different, and lives out that loving a little differently.  Identity, whether corporate or personal, involves two questions:

1.  Where are we?  The Kentucky poet/novelist/essayist Wendell Berry says we can’t know who we are until we know where we are.  We are magnificent products of families and regions and cultures and languages and experiences and races and genders and epochs.  Berry insists it’s impossible to “think globally and act locally” – the best any of us can do is to really, really get to know where we are, and act appropriately in that place.  That’s why if you’re in Great Britain you need to drive on the left side of the road, and why you don’t try to grow rice in Montana.  A church, like mine, in the inner city, is in a different place than a church on the open prairie.  And a church with fifty worshippers on a Sunday morning is in a different place than a church with thousands.

         The preacher and teacher Bill Pannell said he believed that when Jesus said to love our neighbor as ourselves, the first place we should look was to our right and to our left.  I was once on the staff of a church that sat across the street from a major university.  The congregation was trying to define its mission, and decided they were being called to work with homeless people.  There were two problems with that calling:  first, the homeless lived on the other side of the town.  Second, there were eighteen thousand “homeless” students across the street from the church.  There were downtown churches working with their literally homeless neighbors, but no one was embracing the students.  First look to your right and to your left.

The church my wife and I have elected in retirement to join is one of the few Anglo churches that stayed downtown when the complexion of the city changed years ago.  It is committed to ministry in its inner city neighborhood, and feeds one hundred fifty to one hundred eighty homeless people every Friday – a ministry with which I help.  Yet, as the congregation ages and shrinks, it is naturally concerned about its future.  Like many of its members, I drive in from the suburbs because of the music, the liturgy, the preaching, and the mission of that church.  But all around the church is residential redevelopment – a former bookstore and office building next door has become a restaurant and apartments; a skyscraper bank has been turned into condominiums; the street on which the church faces has become “restaurant row.”  We have fascinating neighbors all around us:  that is who we are.  What would it mean for us to first love to our left and to our right?

2.  Who are we?  The late church consultant (I know, I know) Kennon Callahan asked what might happen if we stopped believing that congregations were random assemblies of self-selected individuals. What if, he posited, every congregation is in fact a unique gathering of gifts and graces that God has brought together for a specific purpose?  I once served an aging rural congregation that was enormously jealous of the other, younger, larger church on the same charge.  They were convinced they couldn’t do anything significant because they didn’t have any “young people” (which in that church meant under fifty).  They had tried to reach out to young families, but the young families went, naturally, to churches where there were other young families.  “Then why don’t you become the best Senior Citizen’s church anywhere around?” I asked.  Free from trying to be something they weren’t, they could make use of the gifts they had.  In fact, some of the older members of the second congregation moved to the first, just as some of the younger families had moved in the opposite direction.

At another of my churches, a woman approached me one day and asked if we could start a prayer shawl ministry.  She liked to knit, she said, and she thought it would be nice if there were other people who liked to knit and would be interested in making shawls for the sick.  I managed to avoid rolling my eyes, counted to ten, and blew her off by saying, “I’ll tell you what.  Next Sunday why don’t you make an announcement at the beginning of worship, and invite anybody interested to meet with you during our Wednesday program night activities.”  She made the announcement, and that, I thought, would be the end of that.

The next Wednesday night twenty women gathered in a classroom and began knitting.  And the prayer shawl ministry became a huge ministry in the life of that congregation.  Quarterly, we had to bless the prayer shawls during worship.  People were buried wrapped in their prayer shawls.  Shawls went to Iraq and Afghanistan, and soldiers sent us pictures wearing them.  And the shawls opened my eyes to how to discover God’s call in a congregation:  don’t sit in a committee meeting and debate the millions of shoulds.  Look around the congregation for small groups of people who have passion about a need in the community and in the world.  Those people are not there by accident – they have been called by God to be together to do ministry.  Where two or three are gathered in my name . . . The writer to the Ephesians said that the task of church leadership was to equip the saints for the work of ministry.  People are in church because, to one degree or another, they care about the work of God.  They are there because they have passions and gifts for ministry.  The function of church leadership is to do what Bishop Joe Pennel used to say when the Virginia Conference was stuck in a parliamentary rut:  Let me try to help you do what you want to do.  You want to feed the hungry -- how can we help you do that?  You want to teach children – how can we help you?  You want to make music . . . you want to rebuild houses . . . you want to end war . . . you want to knit shawls – how can we help you make that happen?  If we’d structure our churches around the passions and gifts of our congregations, we’d have little problem getting people to do the things they already want to do.

And if no one in the congregation wants to do it . . . maybe it shouldn’t be done.  In my last congregation, no one wanted to be the church treasurer.  And, frankly, no one was qualified.  So, we hired a CPA, and it worked beautifully.  Best treasurer I ever had.

Love the Lord your God with all your being.

Love others as Jesus loved you.

Look to your left and to your right.

Follow your gifts – they’re not accidents.

Sometimes, you have to try easier.

Westhampton United Methodist Church,

Richmond, Virginia

8/21/2016

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

The Weeds and the Wheat 

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

It’s always dangerous for me to talk about farming in a sermon, since my farming expertise is best illustrated by something I did at about seven years old on my grandparent’s farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  I was staying with them, and went with my grandmother to the store in nearby Seaford, Delaware, where I fell in love with a model of a Palomino horse, just like Roy Rogers’ horse, Trigger.  I asked my grandmother if she would buy me the horse, and she answered that I should ask my grandfather.  When we got back to the farm, I asked him, and he asked me what I was going to do to earn the money.  I had no idea, so he suggested I go hoe the soybeans in the field.

The next morning I got out of bed early, got a hoe out of the barn, and started down a row of soybeans behind the garage.  I had no idea how or what to hoe, so, after experimenting with several weeding techniques, I decided the most effective way to do the job was to swing the hoe like a golf club, taking out weeds and not a few soybeans in the process.  A few minutes later my grandfather came out to watch my progress.  When he saw what I was doing, he cried out, “For God's sake, STOP! I’ll pay you the money if you’ll just STOP!”

In the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, Jesus recognizes that sometimes it’s hard to tell the weeds from the wheat.  Although this story follows hard on the very similar parable of the sower and the seed, the stories have two very different destinations.  The sower and the seed addresses the question of why God’s outpouring of grace in the world receives such very different responses, from nothing to abundance.  The parable of the weeds among the wheat is a story about life within the community of faith – the church.  This is not the hard path or the rocky soil.  We thought this ground was well plowed and cultivated.  There was abundant growth in this field, but now it seems as though not everything here is godly.  In the midst of the church there are – God forbid – sinners.  And not just struggling-with-the-usual-stuff sinners, but people who seem to be genuinely destructive to the work of ministry.  People who keep ministry from coming together; people who unravel the fabric of community and ministry, people who are bad influences upon other people’s lives and faith.  Did God sow bad seed along with the good?  Should we go through and clear out the bad seed, to protect the good?

Like my seven year old self, trying to separate the weeds and the wheat can be dangerous for everyone.  That’s why Jesus says, clearly, that it’s not the job of the wheat – you and I – to separate the two.  The time will come for that, Jesus says.  Just as at the end of the soybean season when my grandfather pulled his Allis-Chalmers combine through the crop, cutting everything off at ground level and separating the beans from the weeds and the rest of the bean plant, so, Jesus said, the angels would come at the end of the world and separate the good from the bad.  It’s not the wheat’s job to judge – that is God’s job, and God’s alone.

There are at least two reasons why the wheat doesn’t make the judgment.  The first reason is because not everything that doesn’t look or act or think like us is a weed.  New Kent County farmer Jimmy Talley says that a weed is just something growing where you don’t want it to grow.  I can remember orphan corn stalks growing in the soybean field the year after that field had been planted in corn, and going out to those random stalks when the corn was ripe and bringing the ears back for supper.  Farmers who used to plow to the edges of their fields are relearning the Biblical principle of leaving hedgerows for erosion and pest control, and for pollination.  I am always impressed, watching the beautiful French countryside during the Tour de France in July, with the incredible diversity of French agriculture.  France is not Kansas or Nebraska or Iowa, with thousands of acres of corn or wheat as far as the eye can see – there is a field of corn next to a field of sunflowers next to a field of beans next to a vineyard. 

Jesus knew all too well the Pharisees who believed that anyone who didn’t look or act or think or believe as they did were wrong, needed to be corrected, or even excluded.  Jesus had been the victim of that theological monoculture, harassed by the Pharisees when he befriended sinners and tax collectors and Roman collaborators and Gentiles and children and women.  The Pharisees were purists, trying to restore Israel to a glory they imagined but which history never revealed: they wanted to make Israel great again.   But Israel had always lived in the tension between what was and what might be, and her greatest days came, in fact, from unlikely combinations of people and circumstances:  Joshua’s triumph was aided by Rahab the Canaanite prostitute; King David was the great-grandchild of a Moabite undocumented immigrant named Ruth; God used Assyria and Babylon to punish his people and a Persian to redeem them; Jesus was born out of wedlock in a barn.  Sometimes what we think doesn’t belong is in fact a gift from God.

A few years ago I had a conversation with a pastor from a different denomination about who is welcome in the church, which ultimately became a conversation about who is a child of God.  He comes from a denomination – oh, heck, he is a Baptist -- which was founded in the sixteenth century specifically to purify what was believed to be a corrupt Christianity.  This pastor recognizes that we are all sinners, but he also believes that certain behaviors disqualify people from church membership.  We’re not talking about anything in the Ten Commandments, or in anything that Jesus taught, mind you.  He doesn’t seem to mind people eating shrimp, or wearing blended fabrics, or associating with women at certain times of the month, or with people who store up treasure in ever-expanding barns while ignoring the needy at their gate, all of which are prohibited in the Bible.  The conversation really came down to who is a child of God.  He believes that only Christians – and, I would suggest, only his kind of Christians -- are God’s children.  He believes everyone else is made in God’s image, but is not a child of God until they personally accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  I agree that people should accept Christ as Lord and Savior, but I also believe that when the Letter to the Ephesians says there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all, all means everyone, not just those who recognize it.  But then, this pastor doesn’t believe in one baptism, either.  I believe that children who die in utero or in infancy, and the mentally challenged who can never make a profession of faith, and people who have never heard the gospel, are all children of the same Father, who loves them all just the same.  God is not our Father and we are not God’s children because we say so – we accept it because it’s already true.  And that’s why I believe this parable is telling us to be very careful about whom we call wheat and whom we call a weed.

The second reason why it’s not our job to separate the wheat and the weeds is because eternal judgment belongs to God and to God alone.  We are expected to be discerning – not everyone in the church can be treasurer, or can work with children, or be a musician, or preach.  But the first and most important act of faith is to say that Jesus Christ is Lord, which means we are not Lord. The judgment of the world is not our call.  Who is saved and who is damned is not our call.  Who is in and who is out is not our call.  Yes, we live amongst the weeds.  We need to put our energies into producing fruit with which God can feed a literally and spiritually starving world, not waste our efforts pointing out the weeds.  The weeds will get taken care of, at the right time, more surely than we ever can manage.  Stop playing God, deciding who is saved and who isn’t.  Make room for all God’s children, and let God do the sorting.  You might discover that that plant next to you, which you thought was a weed because it didn’t look like you, might be wheat and you’re the weed.  Or you might just discover it’s a different strain, and the mixture makes the loaf all the more healthy and delicious.

Every ounce of energy we put into judgment is energy diverted from being fruitful for God.  Yes, there are weeds among the wheat.  That’s not our problem.  Instead, grow and shine and be fruitful for your Heavenly Father, who alone is Lord of the Harvest.

Christmas Eve, 2013: Signs In The Night

Isaiah 9:2-7                                                                                                  

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Luke 2:1-20

 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

How many times has it happened to you – you’re traveling down a dark, lonely road you’ve never been on before, not sure where you are or if you’re heading in the right direction?  Either you don’t have GPS in your car or it’s not working.  You’re looking, desperately, for a sign – a town sign, a road number, a direction. 

At the beginning of my third year as a student at UVa, I took a group of students to a Christian retreat at Smith Mountain Lake.  I’d never been there before, I hadn’t driven in Virginia very much, and I was following the directions to the retreat center carefully.  We got there just fine, but somehow, on the way back to Charlottesville, I got lost.  I finally saw a sign for Interstate 81 and, with great relief, headed for Charlottesville.  Speeding along at 70 miles per hour, the five of us crammed in the Datsun talking at full volume, we were in great shape.  Until a sign loomed in the twilight:  Blacksburg, 10 miles.  Sometimes the signs don’t say what you want them to say.

Sometimes you can see the signs, but you can’t figure out what they mean.  Winter storms shift the channels in the shallow creeks on the Eastern Shore, often in directions inconsistent with the official channel markers.  Early in the spring, watermen head out in their boats and stick saplings in the mud to show where the edge of the channel really is.  One spring early in my sailing career we headed out Nassawadox Creek, carefully watching the saplings to stay in the channel.  Suddenly we ran hard aground, right where I thought the channel was supposed to be.  A waterman came by in his boat and offered to give us a tow.  “I don’t understand it,” I yelled to him.  “I was following the markers you guys put down.”  “Yeah,” he yelled back.  “You’re just on the wrong side of them.”

We’re all looking for signs.  Some read the astrology column in the newspaper, some pay attention to the fortune in the cookie, some use their birthday and anniversary to play the Mega Millions card.  We take vocational preference tests, we watch the Dow Jones, we listen to the talking heads on radio and TV.  We play with the Ouija Board or the Tarot Cards, we go to the palm reader, we study our tea leaves – all just for fun, of course.  We’re all looking for signs.  Is this the person I can love, and who will love me for the rest of our lives?  Is the job where I can finally not just earn a decent living but actually enjoy going to work?  Is this the person I can vote for who will finally bring some hope to the mess in New Kent, or Richmond, or Washington?  Is this lump, this cough, this pain, a sign?  Is this comet, this political event, this crazy weather, this change in the culture a sign?  We’re all looking for signs.

Two thousand years ago in Israel, there were plenty of people looking for signs.  They were looking for them in the usual places – the same places we look for them yet today.  They were looking for them in the palaces in Rome and in Jerusalem.  They were looking for signs among the leaders of church and state.  They were looking for them among the movers and shakers in the economy.  They were looking for them in the scriptures, debating ceaselessly about symbols and numbers and hidden meanings.  Everyone was looking for a Messiah – a Savior to rescue the people from their oppression by the Roman overlords.  Caesar and Herod, the kings, were watching for a Messiah, so they could kill him.  The religious leaders were watching for a Messiah, because they wanted to use him to consolidate their power.  The poor were looking for a Messiah because they believed he would make them rich.  The sick were looking for a Messiah to make them well.  Everyone was looking for a Messiah, and looking for a sign, in all the places any sane person would look for something they expected.

Signs are wonderful.  But if you’ve already made up your mind what sign you’re looking for, you might miss something much better along the way.  Years ago Vicki and I were coming home from Philadelphia, and instead of taking I-95 got off on old Rt. 1.  We were cruising down the road when suddenly Vicki pointed to a sign and said, “West Grove:  I think that’s where the Red Rose Inn is.”  We’d been reading about country inns, and the Red Rose has a long history dating back to William Penn.  We took the road to West Grove, found the Red Rose, and went in for lunch.  We were the only people in the entire restaurant.  It was a wonderful meal, and the service was -- as if we were the only people in the restaurant.  If we’d been focused on getting back to Virginia, we probably wouldn’t have noticed the sign to West Grove.  Instead, we were open to something happening that we never expected.

The shepherds on the hillside above Bethlehem weren’t looking for signs of a Messiah.  They were looking for signs of rain, signs of wolves, signs of thieves, signs of straying sheep.  Messiahs were the business of the rich and the powerful, of the holy and the righteous.  Shepherds were at the bottom of Israelite society – the dishwashers, the migrant farmhands, the construction laborers of their time.  Not only could they not see the signs pointing to the Kingdom of God, they couldn’t even see the signs pointing to a road headed there.  They were not looking for signs of a Messiah that night.

And because they hadn’t made up their minds about what the sign would say, or where it would appear, or what it would look like, maybe the shepherds – the poor, confused, clueless shepherds – were the only people in Judea that Christmas night with their hearts open enough to see the angels.  They saw the angels because they weren’t looking.  They heard the angels because they hadn’t made up their ears what the angels would say.  And they were able to leave their sheep and go to Bethlehem and see this thing that the Lord had made known to them precisely because they hadn’t decided what a Messiah would look like.  They were able to see the signs in the night because they weren’t looking.

Maybe Mary was chosen to be the mother of the Messiah because she was the one girl in all of Israel who didn’t expect it.  And all Jesus’ life, the only people who get what he’s doing are the people who haven’t already made up their minds about what the Messiah is supposed to do and say and be.  Every time somebody tries to make Jesus fit their own signs – God forbid, Jesus, that you should go to Jerusalem and be crucified – Jesus smashes their signs and their directions.  And on Easter morning, God gives another sign to the disciples and to the women that they weren’t expecting in any way.  We can only see the signs when we stop looking for them.

One Christmas when our children were small, Vicki and I managed to get everything on our daughter’s wish list.  We were so proud of ourselves, and watched her, on Christmas morning, as she opened requested gift after requested gift.  When they were all opened, she seemed disappointed.  “But we got you everything you asked for!” we said.  “I know,” she answered.  “But there were no surprises.”  Since then we’ve never asked her what she wanted for Christmas, and she’s been much happier.  And so have we.

We’re all looking for signs.  We are desperately looking for signs of healing, for signs of love, for signs of hope, for signs of life.  But on Christmas, the most glorious signs come to the people who haven’t made up their minds what the signs are going to be.  It’s when we’re out on the hillside, staring into the darkness, expecting nothing, expecting anything, expecting everything, that we’re free enough, open enough, faithful enough to see and hear when the skies open, hosts of heaven break forth, and choirs of angels lift a song of eternal love.

We’re all looking for signs in the night.  Tonight, don’t.  Just look, and listen, and be still.  Love will come exactly when and where you least expect it.