With Thankfulness in Your Eyes: A Sermon Preached at Jefferson United Methodist Church

October 13, 2013

[Luke 17:11-19]

Jefferson United Methodist Church, Jefferson NC

            It was Frederick Buechner in his book Secrets in the Dark who said, “I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him is the only life?” Will you pray with me?

God who inspires thankfulness and gratefulness,

            May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

            A year and a half ago, I went to the Avery County Humane Society. You see I had wanted to adopt a dog for some time, but the right one hadn’t come along. As I walked the long hall of the kennel no dog stuck out to me, there wasn’t any one in particular that had that eternal connection that pets create when you meet them and spend any amount of time with them. We came to the end of my tour without any dog to bring home. As I was walking out I heard a whimper behind a metal door, a dog obviously in pain and lonely. Rusty had seen about as hard a life as any dog could see. He was abused, badly injured and in need of surgery. We made the necessary arrangements and got him well. After the first month of living with me it came time to go visit the vet.

            Now I left out one particular detail of importance to this story. Remember I had said Rusty was in need of surgery, after his abuse and neglect he had to have his eye removed. So this one-eyed mut got in my car and we went to the vet. When the vet saw us, she saw the joy that Rusty (who had affectionately become known as little man) had found in his new life. I asked her how she knew he was happy and if it had made a difference. Her response was simple yet something I will remember forever, “He has thankfulness in his eye, but I’m confident in time you’ll see he saved you as much as you saved him.”

            Part of me wonders what Jesus’ expression was when he realized that one leper, a Samaritan at that had come back to thank him for what he had done. I honestly wonder if this man had restored Jesus’ hope in humanity as Jesus declared, “Your faith has made you well.” This leper was the polar opposite of Jesus. On one end you had this 1^st Century Jewish Rabbi, Messiah, and Savior of the Nations and on the other you had a half dead leper from Samaria, that bad part of town across the tracks that no one really liked to go to. But herein lies the hope of this leper. He noticed the holiness in the divine, they saw the messianic promise of Jesus. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”

            Friends we live in a world where thankfulness and gratefulness are things that we talk about in church on Sunday but don’t live out on Monday. We find it odd when people thank us, almost awkward as we go about our lives. Even for Jesus it was odd at best when he says, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?  Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Perhaps we need to remember what a famous UN Secretary General said, “For all that has been, thanks, for all that will be, yes.”

            We’re finding more and more that thankfulness, turning that thanks to yes leads to happiness. A recent study showed that the more thankful you are, the happier you are. You find this in so many ways, have you not just beamed with thankfulness and experienced the warm glow of happiness? You see, that stuff is Biblical.

            However, we need to move into a lifestyle and reality that takes our thanks, our praise, our joys and turn them into action. How are you taking your thankfulness and living with it shining not only in your eyes but also in your actions? How are you accomplishing a saving work in the lives of others simply because someone has initiated that in your own life as well? How has God turned your thanks into yes?

            Perhaps it’s through a ministry here in this church or in the greater community, maybe it’s in a conversation with a friend who is experiencing close to what you have experienced. For it is in these ways that God declares healing grace and love in the lives of all of God’s children.

            If you’re like me, you were taught as a child to be thankful for what you received. When guests would begin to leave as a child I would be remiss with my parents if I did not thank them for being in our home. I was taught to say, “Thank you for coming, I’ve hope you had a wonderful time.” I knew how to rattle that off quickly and as quietly as humanly possible as not to actually mean what I said. I just didn’t get it. But then life changes doesn’t it? You start to grow up and meet someone who you could actually be compatible with in the long run as a friend or spouse and they stand to leave and you say with all your heart, “Thank you for coming, I’ve had a wonderful time!” Or you find yourself visiting a relative who doesn’t have much time left and they say to you, “Thank you for coming, I’ve had a wonderful time.” These moments, this same vocabulary but different context is exactly what Jesus was talking about and what Jesus wants from us. Jesus wants to change our empty hope to present reality. He wants to change our thanks to yes, he wants to heal and restore and redeem. For that is the Christ that we know, resurrected and triumphant over death and pain and darkness.

            Perhaps you like me look to this time of fall as the first hint that we have reached the holiday that our stomachs enjoy most, Thanksgiving. If you enjoy the holiday like I do, I’m sure you’ve heard the hymn Now Thank We All Our God. This hymn has words such as these, “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
” Beautiful words, but have you ever heard about the man who penned those words all the way back around 1637?

            Martin Rinkart the author of this hymn was a Lutheran minister who came to Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty Years War. The walled city that Rinkart lived in became the refuge for political and military figures, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly plague and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenburg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.

            Friends we come to this place with the lavish thanksgiving of the ages. Countless sung and unsung heroes of the faith just like Martin Rinkart show us that thankfulness is a part of the economy of God. God is just in the business of bestowing incredible grace and love upon us and all we can do in response is be thankful. However our thankfulness, if done right, turns to action, our gratefulness becomes the incarnation of God to those around us. We are lost in wonder, love and praise as Charles Wesley would say and that is beautiful.

            You see our saying thanks does not ground us to the past Christ has restored for us, but it binds us to a future God has planned for us. Saying thank you, showing gratitude is a deeply vulnerable action in which we set ourselves up to be embraced and welcomed by another. The vulnerability we share brings us close to the heart of God, and that is a good thing.

            Let me point out another thing about this text. Notice that unlike other places in the Gospel of Luke as Jesus was heading towards Jerusalem the text says he ‘was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.’ It doesn’t give the exact location as in previous chapters, it simply states a region, if I may ponder if but for this sermon if that was intentional. Perhaps this lack of geographical certainty allows you to cover this text with your own story. We’ve all been in that region between Samaria and Galilee, we’ve all been a part of a leper colony, or a no-good Samaritan, but we’ve also been so lost in our thankfulness we’ve forgotten to thank the one who matters. But maybe, just maybe, we could turn around for a moment and look God in the eyes and thank God for what God has completed in our lives.

            Back to what I first told you about my dog, Rusty. Rusty likes to run in the yard. He’s one of those dogs that almost gallop to show his joy and happiness, but every time he runs he’ll stop to turn around and see where I am. As I pondered what he might be thinking, it could be just seeing if he can get away with running, I often look at him and see the thankfulness in his eye. I see the joy that he has been given new life and the love and attention he deserves. The same could be said for you with God. The next time you are lost in the beauty of this world or the reality of your existence, you could turn around as you are running through this life and have thankfulness in your eyes. You can have thankfulness in your eyes and be unbridled by the fear of death and the grave. You could celebrate the reality that you are beloved. You can be thankful that God has made you to be who you are. With thankfulness in our hearts, we turn to look back for we know our pasts have been restored and that God is looking to a future full of hope.

            Friends be thankful, know that you are the product of love and life and joy. Most importantly, remember that for all that has been, thanks, and for all that will be, yes.

Changed For Good: A Sermon on Healing

Does God Heal?

John 11:17-44

September 22, 2013, The Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

First Baptist Church, West Jefferson

            The 2003 musical Wicked captivated the heart of Broadway. The stories goes that the green ‘wicked witch’ that we saw on the screen of the 1939 motion picture classic The Wizard of Oz wasn’t always bad, ultimately she received a bad reputation throughout her life, when in fact, people often treated her less than kindly. Towards the end of the musical there is a song that has become iconic with the play. The Wicked Witch or Elphaba and Glenda actually become friends and you see the fruition of their friendship in the song, ‘For Good.’

            The song has lyrics such as these: “I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason bringing something we must learn and we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them and we help them in return. Well, I don't know if I believe that's true but I know I'm who I am today because I knew you... Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.” These deeply redemptive lyrics are incredibly spiritual in light of what we know about the Wicked Witch, but we’ll get back to that.

            Does God Heal? I am almost certain that if I took an anonymous poll with you all gathered here today I would get as many answers as people here, if not more. The question I just posed is a question that cannot and should not be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ there are always caveats. We always have to say, ‘Yes, God heals, but how long isn’t certain.’ Or maybe its, ‘No, God didn’t heal my loved one or me in this situation.’ Whatever the case, we are afraid to talk about healing.

            I wonder if Jesus in the Gospel text today was just as scared. I think I can almost hear the quaking in his voice, “Where have they laid him?” Jesus of Nazareth had lost a friend, a friend who many people had wondered openly if Jesus could have prevented his death. “If he can cure the blind, could he have kept this man from dying?” Jesus finds the place where Lazarus had been laid and we hear something fascinating, especially in the lens of Jewish culture. Martha tells Jesus as he commands that the stone be rolled away, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” In the King James Version they used the words, “He stinketh.” Nevertheless the four days is something important to note here.

            Jews believed it took a while to die. Three days in fact. When a person died, they were immediately taken to the tomb and the stone was rolled in front of the tomb. Three days later, the stone was rolled away for a moment as the family anointed the body with spices and herbs. Myrrh was one of those for those of you keeping tabs with what the Magi presented to Jesus. After the body was anointed for the journey to whatever laid ahead the tomb was sealed for one year. After the year had passed the tomb was opened and the clean white bones were considered pure in Jewish culture. The bones were then taken off to the side and piled up so that Aunt Susie and Uncle Jim’s bodies could hang out together for posterity.

            So this story, full of Biblical allusions from the nativity story to Jesus’ crucifixion and death account is one of certainty. Lazarus was dead. When Jesus called out to the dead man and told the people to unbind him and let him go, he was removing the carpet from under the people’s feet by raising a dead man and asking the people to touch something that was incredibly unclean to their sensibilities.

            This text to me, is peculiar at best. As far as I know, no one is running around saying that they are Lazarus from 1^st century Palestine. Lazarus died, again, in certainty. This story reminds me of my great grandmother who told her family as she was dying that we shouldn’t ‘pray her back.’ For my grandmother and for all of us, death seems like something we’d only like to go through once. Perhaps Lazarus went on to write ‘The five people you meet in Paradise’ or ‘3 days in Heaven’ that topped the bestselling list in Bethany, I don’t know. Perhaps, Lazarus was none too happy with Jesus for waking him from his eternal slumber. However Lazarus’ life played out, an account that we are not privy to, it was one that was never the same again. How would you react if you had buried someone dear only to find him or her back in action? What if you had gone to a funeral only to see the person walking around the local Wal-Mart or Starbucks? Talk about an emotional roller coaster.

            Does God heal? We’ve done a fairly good job in 21^st century America of defining healing. Healing for us is things going back to the way they once were. We want normalcy, we want the familiar touch of love, and we stand aghast if God doesn’t do that for us. We curse God when the Alzheimer’s patient doesn’t get better, we grit our teeth when we hear Jesus say he is the resurrection and the life because the cancer survivor is facing a recurrence of their disease, we don’t want healing, we want our pasts relived in ways that don’t require much work. We want things to return, to go back. We want healing to be restorative; however the question we should be asking is do we want healing to be redemptive?

            Let me ponder if but for this sermon that we receive restorative healing as part of the wonders of medicine or the grace of more time, and you find yourself without the redemptive love in that healing, have you missed the point? What we want and don’t always receive is restorative healing. What we need and always receive is redemptive healing; a healing that completes God’s work in you. Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and mystic said this, “The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.” Redemptive healing brings us to a better understanding of restorative healing if we are to receive it.

            Think about it this way, as Nouwen continues to write, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Who have been those agents of God’s love for you? Who are those people who reminded you that though sorrow might last for a night, joy comes in the morning?

            For Lazarus, healing was redemptive and restorative. I feel like the song from Wicked could have easily been sung by Lazarus, as it goes, “It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime so let me say before we part so much of me is made from what I learned from you, you'll be with me like a handprint on my heart and now whatever way our stories end I know you have re-written mine by being my friend...” God interjected grace in a restorative tangible and redemptive spiritual way. When we leave the mindset that healing means a cure or restoring to our pasts, and move to the hope that healing could be redemptive even if a cure or restoration doesn’t happen, and if God brings the work to completion in your life without the cure you earnestly pray for, if God redeems your life to the point where you are lost in wonder, love and praise in spite of everything, then has not healing and redemption already been brought to fruition? We cannot simply sit by and wonder why God didn’t heal, God healed. The question is whether we will accept that healing.

            Or one could process it this way, if you were estranged from a parent for years and in time you find yourself in relationship again with people who you have not known for years but know in spite of that. You will never recover the missed time, restorative healing of a relationship cannot happen to bring things back to where they once were. But redemptive healing gives permission for the broken relationship to be made whole, the redemptive healing allows you to forgive and live into something old yet new. That is redemption.

            In our time and place, our lack of redemptive healing has been brought to the forefront of culture. If I go to Barnes and Noble, my parents and close friends know to look for me in the religion section, I can really geek out and find a good book. Statesville and Boone just don’t have good bookstores so it’s always nice to have a chance to see what’s new in the world of books. However the other day while I was there my heart sank when I saw that beside the section for Bibles was a section entitled, ‘warfare.’ Is it any wonder to us, that redemptive healing doesn’t take place when bombs are more valuable than education? Is it any mystery to humanity that redemptive healing doesn’t take place when in a weeks span more than 50 people die in mass shootings from Washington DC to Nairobi, and our society sits idly in a daze as if nothing happened?

            Friends we need Jesus to speak words to us, commanding and begging us to unbind each other and let each other go. If you notice Lazarus was in a bind as unclean as he was, he needed people to give him permission and assistance for his healing to be complete and full. For us, we must give each other permission to affirm the brokenness in our own lives and work towards redeeming it.

            Last night, a friend and I went to see the Banff Mountain Film Festival. This is the perfect film festival to be screened at Appalachian, it’s a celebration of all things outdoors. These short films document people who kayak, backpack, mountain bike, if it can be done outside, you best believe people are documenting it. One of the films that struck me was the story of three people bound together by fate. The pair of men from Australia set out to traverse the south pole, now this is no easy task, but complicate matters, they wanted to do something never done before. The men wanted to walk without the assistance of dogs or motors to the South Pole and back, a distance of over 2000 kilometers, all while hauling 350 pounds of gear. As they journeyed they realized there was a man from Norway named Alexander who was able to start a day before them, and was well ahead of them on the trek. They met him along the way and continued to talk through satellite phone as they all journeyed. The two men faced enormous challenges and were counted out by everyone, all the people watching assumed that the Norwegian Alexander would win the coveted fame of being the first person to complete the arduous trek.

            However something incredible happened as the two men reached the edge of base camp on their return trip, right before the finish line a tent stood, and in that that tent was Alex, who wanted to wait for the people he had journeyed in front of to cross the finish line and create history together. Two men and a stranger found redemptive friendship and made history in the process.

            That’s what healing is all about, the community of saints helping each other cross the finish line, a group of people helping each other complete redemptive work. You see in that reality things don’t go back the way they used to be, we move forward together as healing agents and redemptive examples of grace. We unbind each other and send ourselves forward.

            As you are all aware, I have not been here for the past two weeks. Now this sermon was scheduled to be this text and this sermon title long before two weeks ago. Part of me wanted to not address all that has gone on, or address it in a roundabout way that didn’t let you know what happened was about me. However as I sat and wrote this sermon, as I pondered the text I realized that Jesus’ call to come out of the tomb was one he gives to all of us. You see we discovered that an illness I have been facing for some time is a symptom of a deeper problem; we had been treating the symptom, not the disease. I remember someone asking me how I felt knowing that what I faced could be considered worse, and I realized in writing this sermon that my answer was working towards God’s redeeming work in my own life. I responded that while some might consider what I am dealing with worse, I was happy to know it had a name and a face and that with the help of friends and families and doctors I could beat it to the ground. What my friend considered to be a worse outlook was a saving, redemptive outcome for me.

People of God, we are called to have resiliency, we are called to redemption, and we are called to healing. God invites us and loves us into redemption in life, in death, and in life beyond death. God continually and presently redeems even a situation where the outcome is bleak, or the situation grim. God heals. So the next time we are facing the question whether the God of all existence heals, our answer is there. The question will be whether we have enough awareness to realize redemption even in the face of immense trial. For you, for me, for everyone on God’s earth the answer to the question, ‘Does God Heal?’ is, ‘Always, always, always, yes.’ And if you need help articulating that, if in those moments you find yourself speechless, do what I did this week and simply remember that Broadway hit, “Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea like a seed dropped by a bird in the wood, because I knew God, I have been changed for good.” Amen.  

A Prayer to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

Oh God our help in ages past,

            You have knit together such a great cloud of witnesses in this space. People who have dreamed for decades, and those who are just learning what it means to hope in your grace. Give us the eyes to see the dreams of others, and enable them to live out the calling on each of our lives. For prophets of the modern age, For people like sister Rosa who had the courage to say enough is enough. For brother Martin who caught the attention of his time by marching to the sound of equality, and the countless other people sung and unsung of the Civil Rights movement:

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

            For people today who still languish under the weight of oppression and prejudice even here in our county and beyond, for children who have never felt the warm embrace of a loving parent. For those who struggle with addiction, for those whose jail cells are their minds, and for those whose jail cells are because of a court system. For the people who walk our streets that are homeless, for the people who turn their heads so they don’t have to notice:

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

            We are especially mindful of the needs of this community of faith, the realities that we all are facing. For those who know death’s dark greeting all too well, for those who are bringing life into this world. For those who have begun school, and for those who go about their daily lives, today we name:

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God we have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For this is our hope. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation [and world] into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day1:

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God for your revelation of yourself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, for the hope he gave us as he taught us that freedom is coming and is an important part of the dichotomy of the Kingdom of God. The Jesus who gave inspiration to the spirituals and hymns we still sing today, who taught us to pray with our hearts, and minds, and feet and hands, we still pray the prayer he taught his disciples when said pray this way,

Our Father, who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day, our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive

Those who trespassed against us, and lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom,

And the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

---

1 I am forever indebted to the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington. His words (slightly edited to be a prayer )from his ‘I have a Dream’ Speech are included here.

Being at Home is a Mindset of Faith

Recently, I was in a situation where I visited someone who kept saying she wanted to go home. This lady, who was obviously very ill, yearned for the home she had known for so long. This home for her was a place where children were raised, a marriage cultivated to fruition, and a harbor of hope, joy and love. She yearned to be home. I knew in those moments that while she wanted to be in a place with a physical address and tangible elements, what she needed were the implications of being in that place.

We all deal with those emotions don’t we? This is a season of endings and beginnings for many. Students are heading back to schools in Iredell County, while other students are beginning their tenure at universities across the state and country. People are entering our community because of jobs, opportunities, or retirement, and the landscape of our time and place can change drastically from day-to-day. I often wonder if that’s a symptom of a deeper problem. Many people opine that these days, people don’t have the roots that generation of yesteryear had. I would argue that while people don’t stay where they were planted the roots matter more than ever.

We are a people built by our homes and the God who reigns over our homes. We are loved beyond measure by the people who represent the Divine to us, that is why deep down all college students wish they could come home, why all parents strive to make life better for their children than what they had, and why those in their golden years hope for the simplicity they once knew in the homes of their youth. But in all those situations we forget one important element. Home never left us. God has inspired a life in all of us that allows us to journey to the far reaches of the earth not only with the presence of our Creator but with the hopes, dreams, joys and frustrations of that which we know as home. The reason all of us work for a home is that in those moments when we are home, wherever that is, are moments in which God intricately weaves moments of holiness there.

This week, be thankful for your homes. If your homes are changing for whatever reason, know that home is more than a building, home is a mindset. It is a mindset of grace that leads us to a deeper understanding of our faith in the midst of this transient life. Never be afraid to dream and wish for home, but be forever reminded that home is never too far from that dream or wish, for God is our home. God is the surrounding presence that inspired those first feelings of belonging so long ago. Let us give thanks that no matter our reality, God is there, love is incarnate, and home is the mindset we can all work toward.

When Grace Gets Messy

August 4^th, 2013 The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

First Baptist Church, West Jefferson

Matthew 22:1-10

Before we pray I would like to comment that this sermon is not about our own Grace Miller playing in the compost pile in DC.  The youth would like me to clarify she may have been messy then but that's not exactly the grace we are talking about. Will you pray with me?

Will you pray with me?

            God who enlivens and sustains us,

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

            Think back to your oldest memory. That memory that you can’t think of anything before that and beyond that you have to rely on the stories you’ve heard about your growing up. For me, my oldest memory is one that I cherish because I think it sums up a lot of things, my relationship to the person this memory involves, it sums up what I enjoy most in life, and most importantly it points to the reality that one overarching quality has encompassed my life, I am a nerd.

            My oldest and most vivid memory of my childhood is of me, sitting on my Dad’s lap and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I remember as we sat there he shared just a little bit of his Bunny Sliced Bread, I couldn’t have been old at the time but I remember the thrill of watching Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew race across space to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. To this day I still can tell you what the warp theory is that enabled them to do that, I can tell you that first contact with an alien species happened on April 5^th, 2063 and that when people were beamed aboard the starship Enterprise it was a combination of glitter, water and special effects that made that happen. To be a nerd might be an understatement.

            Something happened this week that I saw that might have changed my outlook on being a nerd. It wasn’t the best idea to want to be Spock for Halloween growing up, it wasn’t always popular to play with a model starship instead of a football, but this week a fan was at a Star Trek convention (yes they have those) and asked one of the stars of the Star Trek: The Next Generation stars to impart some wisdom to her newborn baby. In a world of social media she recorded it and now we see the wisdom in being a nerd.

            Wil Wheatonwho played young Wesley Crusher in the 1980’s and 90’s said this: “Hi Violet, my name is Wil Wheaton and it’s 2013 and you’ve just joined us on earth, so welcome. I’m an actor, a writer and a dad… I don’t know what the world is going to be like by the time you understand this, and I don’t know what it will be like to be a nerd when you’re a young woman. For me when I was growing up, being a nerd meant liking things that were weird and took a lot of effort to understand… I really wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on instead of riding this planet through space. When I was a little boy, people teased me and made me feel like there was something wrong with being a nerd. The world has changed a lot, because being a nerd or geek is not about what you love, it’s about how you love. There will be something in your life that you love, it might be sports or science, or building things, it doesn’t matter what it is, the way you love it and surround yourself with other people who love it is what matters and what defines you. The defining characteristic of being a nerd is that we love things, whatever that is. Some of us love completely different things but we all love… We come from all around the world and love with other people. That’s what being a nerd is.”

            I feel like Jesus could have imparted those words to us a night long ago. I wonder if he lovingly looked at his friends, and he probably said something along the lines of ‘I don’t know what the world will be like when you finally understand what is about to happen.’ That voice has echoed throughout time as we come to a table and feast on the Blessed Sacrament.

            Our youth had experiences with communion a few weeks back in the very heart of our nation. In a place often characterized as godless and soulless the youth of First Baptist Church were in mystic sweet communion with the people on the streets of Washington at a park not too far from the center of power in our world. They sat together and in some holy humor they took sliced bread and Dixie cups and celebrated a faith older than all of us combined. It was messy, grape juice would sometimes splatter and the people we shared in communion with weren’t the epitome of cleanliness but it didn’t matter because love was involved. We were nerds for communion. It didn’t matter that we were out in a park in 87-degree weather, it didn’t matter that they had spent their day making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and it didn’t matter that they had to walk back on feet that were sore because in those moments they were experiencing the very kingdom of God.

            My great-grandmother Lee was a bulwark of what some would consider the old guard of southern aristocracy. She was quick to tell people when they would first walk into Broad Street United Methodist Church if they were sitting in someone’s usual seat, much less her own. About 10 years after her death I was talking with her pastor from the 1970’s who I still maintain a friendship with. This particular pastor led the congregation as they began the “new” way of celebrating the Lord’s Supper through intinction. He said the first time Broad Street celebrated communion that way my great grandmother came down the aisle to the front of the church with a napkin ready to be tucked in her collar to make sure she had a clean break with this communion. The worst reality for her was the possibility that grace might be messy. Her pastor told me that ever since then he wondered if she ever ‘got it.’

            My prayer is that she did. My prayer is that one day she realized that grace is messy and if the worst thing that happened to her that day was some grape juice splattered on her hands then she was doing pretty well. You see when we were out there on the streets with the homeless of DC this Eucharistic action was more than a moment to walk down the aisle and look around nodding to the congregation who watches us take communion. It was not an act of public faith it was an act of survival. They took the bread and ate it as if it was their last meal they might have for a while. They feasted because they had been invited to the feast.

            There weren’t any stipulations placed on who was welcome. There were people there in that park that had 401k packages with more money than your entire staff makes in a year. There were people who had been in and out of jail, people who knew what hell was like because they were living it. But in a holy way they came together and hoped for a brighter tomorrow. Their feast was what mattered to them and they joined with us in a magnificent moment of messy grace.

            You know this past week I had another moment of messy grace. Michael and I went to Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem to visit Terry, Carl and Mary Simmons. These members of our church are grappling with the realities of making moments count, of facing the thoughts of death and endings, and sleepless nights in a hospital room. As Michael and I visited we both got the sense that this was no ordinary hospital visit. I feel as if we were both extended a grace that was messy but nonetheless beautiful. You see Carl, Mary, and Terry didn’t act like people who faced such realities. They talked as if a victory had already occurred, because ultimately it has. The beauty in the life of this church is we have countless church members from the youngest children to people like Carl and Mary who have been married 59 years experiencing this messy grace in a way unique to them. Messy grace can be painful, tiresome and depressing, but it reminds us that the life of faith is full of God’s incarnate love.

            You see we’re all broken and in need of redemptive, messy grace. If you’ve ever broken a plate you know that the pieces don’t always go back the way they used to. When you are broken you don’t go back the way you used to be, and in an act of love, messy grace comes in and fills the brokenness with new life and redemption. When we share in an act of worship like communion we stare everything that has ever broken us in the face and in an act of defiance we share together in proclaiming victory.

            The hope of communion, the hope of our faith is that we love. They will know we are Christians by our love. They won’t know we are Christians based on our favorite form of the Lord’s Supper, they won’t know you are Christians by your political party or particular opinion of a hot button issue such as sexual orientation, the nation’s budget, the war, or teacher pay. They will know you are Christian by the fact that you respond to all those issues informed by the love that makes you whole.

             And in the end those things don’t matter as much as they used to when we are informed by love. It almost seems rather petty when you think about our disagreements in the light of God’s glory and grace. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if people shared in communion at all the disagreements in the institutional church. What if the Crusaders decided to eat with their enemies? What if Luther would have been willing to share a meal with the Catholic Church for whom he ardently disagreed with? What if the Moral Majority would have broken bread with the Progressive Mainliners? What if the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship were willing to share a meal in the midst of all the pain they’ve both encountered?

            You see what’s scary about all that is when you share a meal with someone; you have to get to know them. That’s what Jesus wanted, and we experienced that in the park that hot summer day in Washington DC. We were forced to abandon our safe harbor and find the grace of talking to someone. We were as much recipients of Christ’s grace as we were people sharing that gift. We encountered people there like Matthew who taught us what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, of John Spencer a kid from another church who embodied servant-hood even though it looked a little funny, we found out about friendship from David a kid from Texas, and if you’re brave enough, ask our youth about what they experienced when they met a kid named Henry.      

            But it didn’t stop there. Our own youth became for so many the incarnate presence of a living and life-changing God. Church family if you want to see what it’s like to experience communion you need only look as far as a conversation with Evan, Parker, Adrian, Ethan, Caroline, Amanda or Grace. If you want to share in a feast ask Ava Rector, Chelsie Bobbitt and Kennedy Reeves about the important task of inviting Justin Bieber to church. When I went on these trips I went as a cautious observer at first, I think most people think that because you are young you are automatically qualified to do youth ministry, let’s be real with one another I was terrified. But each of these youth and children in their own unique way invited the chaperones, the homeless of Washington, and other churches into a feast of fellowship, of messy grace, and of love that is bigger than I could have possibly imagined.  

             Back to the story I first told you about my Dad and that night years ago watching Star Trek. I’ve experienced a lot of church services in my life, I’ve been to a bunch of communion services some which I felt so close to God it was overpowering and some where I felt so far away I couldn’t imagine sharing in the feast. But one thing I’m thankful for is that my first memory with my dad watching Star Trek was one of profoundly Eucharistic implications. Honestly we could have been watching anything at the time, it didn’t matter. What matters for both of us that I had the opportunity to have some bread and coke with my dad, the dad who knew me before I knew what it was like to be known. The dad who taught me to drive and live and love through his example, and he got to share that with me. We too are invited today, not because we do anything particularly special or because we all agree on everything, but because we love, we love a God who loved us before we knew how to even acknowledge that love. God like my dad back years ago takes these elements well-off people like us take for granted and makes them tools necessary for our spiritual survival. Yes you might get messy, but you know that old saying you are what you eat? What if you eat this bread and take this cup and become what we hope to experience through it? You never know, you might end up in a park in DC, or watching Star Trek with your son, either way you’ll never be the same again. Thanks be to God.