All In (Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve)

This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, November 12, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS.  Listen to the audio here.

Read Joshua 24 and 2Cor8 here.

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What kind of toes can’t be tickled? 

Pota-toes. 

That’s a joke that was in a book that Amy Brownlee set out for me to read to the first graders at Sterling Grade School last week.  I love spending time with them.  It’s fun to see them get excited about stuff.

I’m excited. I’m excited because today I get to talk to you about Jesus.  Ok, so I do that every week.  And I’m excited about that every week.

I’m excited because today I get to talk to you about Clemson football.  Yes, I know that’s probably not your favorite, but it’s going to be ok, I promise.  I’ve got to talk about Clemson football because that’s where I first heard the phrase “All In.” (Today’s sermon title.)  I know it’s not unique to them, but that’s the first place I heard it.  When Dabo Swinney first took over as Clemson’s coach, he used it to explain how they were going to turn things around and become a team that could win football games.  Last year we got to see the how his plan worked.  Clemson won the national championship.

When Dabo first became head coach, he was just the interim head coach.  He could have said, “I’m just keeping things going while we figure things out.”  But he didn’t.  He said, “I’m all in. And if you’re going to be all in with me, because that’s what it’s going to take for this to work – for us to turn this season around – then show up to practice at 6:00 tonight. Otherwise, no hard feelings.”[1]

Total commitment.  All in.

I borrowed the title for this sermon from Dabo Swinney because the Bible passage we read today sounds to me a lot like Dabo’s speech to the team.  Joshua is asking the people to be “all in.”

“Choose this day whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15)

So I’m asking you, “Are you All In?”  I’m committing to you that I am ALL IN. It’s an all or nothing kind of commitment. It’s the commitment we all are called to make.

Jesus puts it this way:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.” (Matt 22:37, Luke 10:27)

All.  What does all mean?  All means…well…all.

Why does “all” matter?

Because there will be tough times, and if we aren’t all in, we won’t do so well in the tough times.  It’s much easier to be sort of in.

In football, one way we see this is players holding back.  Football is rough.  Players get injured.  Around the time Dabo first took over at Clemson, the quarterback had been doing pretty well, but then his performance dropped off because he started being careful.  He wasn’t all in.  He had one foot on the football field, and one on the baseball diamond.  He was soon going to have to choose which way to go in professional sports.  Baseball was starting to look more promising, so he was being careful on the football field so he didn’t get injured and mess up his baseball prospects.  He stopped taking chances and stopped making plays that needed to be made. He let down the team because he was no longer fully committed to them.

Being all in means being committed enough to do whatever it takes.

Often in the Bible our relationship with God is compared to marriage.  I understand that analogy because I have learned over the years how I need to be fully committed to my husband Rob.  Even though we made the formal commitment the day we got married, as with any marriage there have been other deciding points along the way, and there is one in particular that changed the course of our marriage.  We were having an argument, as all couples do, and this particular day we were arguing about money, as all couples do, and I realized in the midst of the argument that this issue we were having was not something we were going to solve, at least not easily, and certainly not in this argument.  If we weren’t going to solve it, that meant I had to be willing to accept things as they were in that moment, and accept that they might never be exactly the way I wanted, or I had to get out.  I asked myself, “Self, if this never changes, can you live with that?”  My answer to myself was yes, because I realized I loved Rob more than I loved having perfectly settled issues, and that even if we never solved this, I couldn’t imagine life without Rob.

This is the level of commitment Joshua is asking for in his call to Israel to “choose this day whom you will serve.”  Joshua knows there are going to be challenges and issues.  They are going to continue to be confronted with other gods, because the people around them are worshipping those other gods.

The people say, “We will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:16-18) And in response Joshua gets prophetic about what will happen.  He says, “You’re not going to be able to do it.” (Joshua 24:19) And he’s right.  As we read on through the Bible in the books of Judges and Kings and Chronicles and the prophets, we see that Israel was continually turning away from God to worship other gods.  Even when they did worship Yahweh, they did it half heartedly, going through the rituals and sacrifices that were required in that time, but then going on doing the things God had told them not to do – treating people badly, lying and cheating and stealing from one another.

They weren’t all in.  They worshipped with their lips, but their hearts were far from God. (Matthew 15:8, Isaiah 29:13)

So today, on the day we’re making our pledge commitments, I’m challenging us to commit, or to recommit, to be all in with our hearts, to be committed to loving the Lord our God with all our hearts, and souls, and minds and strength.

If we say we are committed to God but we aren’t willing to do and be what God calls us to do and be, then we aren’t really all in.

This is the challenge that Paul is making to the Corinthians in our New Testament reading for today.  Paul knows that we grow in our relationship with God and in our commitment to him when we trust him and step out in faith.  If we trust that God is our provider, then we will trust him enough to share what we have been given.  If we trust that God is helping us to be more and more like Jesus, than we will see the world more and more through God’s eyes and have compassion for the needs of the people around us, and we will share what God has given us to help them.

If we are all in, that means with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, with all our lives loving and serving God, trusting that God keeps his promises, that God demonstrated the depth of his love for us in sending his only son to die for us.  Jesus gave his all for us, and asks nothing less of each one of us. (Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Eph 5:25)

That’s why I’m so often saying that everything we have and everything we are is from God.

2 Peter 1:3[2] His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

God has already given us everything.  We’ve been working on practicing gratitude for the past six weeks to help us see how much God has given us.  We have so much to be thankful for.  As a church we have so much to be thankful for.  God has already done so much among you here at UPC, and I’m excited to see what God’s going to do next!  We’ve only just begun!

I’m so thankful for all the ways that you have already been following God to get to where we are today.  God was at work in my life bringing me here, and he’s been at work in your lives bringing you here as well.

As I was thinking about this message this week, I got to thinking about a phrase that you may have heard me say:  “We’ll get there.”  We already know we have some things to work on, and we’ve already done quite a bit, and we have lots of ideas brewing and we really are just getting started together.  And I realized that “We’ll get there” isn’t just something to say, but something I really believe.

Together we’ll get there.  Wherever “there” is.  “There” is where God is leading us.  And here’s what I know for sure about that:

Isaiah 41:13 God is with us, always leading us and guiding us.  We just have to keep on holding on to his hand and following – keep on praying.

Matthew 28:20 Jesus has given us our marching orders – to go and make disciples, and baptize and teach them.  We come to church to reorient and refocus and be renewed and then we go out.

Acts 1:8 We go wherever God is leading us – Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  That means we’re sent out to do ministry here in Sterling, among our neighbors and friends, and at the college and surrounding areas, and out beyond.  Next week we’ll get a chance to hear about some of the “beyond” as we’ll hear about some of the missions that we help support.

I want to be clear – our primary commitment is to Jesus, to letting Jesus be Lord of all of our hearts and all of our lives.  The vehicle that Jesus has given us to help us with that is the church, the gathering of believers to encourage one another and to hold each other accountable in our commitment to Jesus.  That’s what we see Joshua and Paul doing in our scripture readings today. Encouraging the people and challenging them to accountability.

Joshua says, “Choose this day whom you will serve.” He’s asking, “Who or what is Lord of your life?  Who or what is behind the decisions and choices we make?”  Paul says, “Let your commitment show in your giving” (2 Cor 8:11).

Our commitment as a church is to helping one another follow Christ with all our hearts and all our lives, and to obeying Christ’s charge to us go out and help others know his love.

It’s a commitment we have to keep making and renewing, because we get off track, and sometimes we don’t realize when we have let other gods, other idols, rule over our choices and decisions.

One of the ways we get off track in church is that we get focused on doing the things we’ve always done – our traditions.  I was reminded of this while watching the musical at Sterling High School Friday night – Fiddler on the Roof.  Tevye, the main character, explains at the beginning how tradition defines their lives and helps them to know who they are.  But we see as the story unfolds how the traditions that hold them together also become something that breaks them apart, and eventually Tevye and Golde have to let go of tradition.  Tradition is a wonderful guide for us in the church, and our traditions can be beautiful touchstones, markers that remind us of God’s love and grace.  But when tradition becomes our god, then we have forsaken God to follow other gods.

That’s why I want us to be clear that our commitment is to Jesus and to following him.  That’s especially important because sometimes the way won’t be perfectly clear.  God will lead us to do new things in new ways that we have yet to discover.

A missionary society once wrote to David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, and asked, "Have you found a good road to where you are? If so, we want to know how to send other men to join you." Livingstone wrote back, "If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all."[3]

This church has already demonstrated that it can make new roads.  The daycare center is a shining example of your willingness to follow Christ in new ways.

I can’t promise that it will be easy, but I can promise that being totally committed to God is way more fulfilling than following God halfway.

Choose this day whom you will serve.

If it is God, then let us commit today to loving God with all our hearts, minds, soul and strength, and let that be reflected in our pledges and in our lives.

Let us be all in.

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[1] https://upstatebusinessjournal.com/news/clemsons-dabo-swinney-just-slogan-leadership-philosophy/

[2] Message version: Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received!

[3] Good News Broadcaster, April, 1985,  p. 12.  http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/c/commitment.htm

I'm Feeling A Little Grateful-ish - Joshua 3-4

This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church, Sterling Ks.  Listen to the audio here.

Read Joshua 3-4 here.

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“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

~ Attributed to Charles E. “Chuck” Dederich, Sr., (1913–1997) ~[2]

Say this with me: Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

 . . .Unless you live on the other side of the international date line, in which case yesterday was the first day of the rest of your life.[3]

No, just kidding.  Today is the first day of the rest of your life.  You really can’t argue with that.

You might prefer the Bible version of this – Psalm 118:

“This is the day that the Lord has made

We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

~ Psalm 118:24, The Holy Bible ~

Very similar.  Both true. But let’s go back to the other one:

“Today is the first day

of the rest of your life.”

…because today we’re talking about Joshua and the major transition happening for the people of Israel in our scripture readings, and this statement is so fitting for their situation.  God had sent Moses to rescue them from slavery in Egypt.  They spent 40 years in the desert headed for the land that God had promised to their ancestors, and now all that separates them from that land is the Jordan River.  As they cross the Jordan, they are leaving wilderness wandering behind, and they are beginning a new season in their lives, a new chapter in their history, with a new leader, Joshua, the man that Moses anointed for leadership before he died.

There is so much going on here – so many parallels to other parts of the Bible* and so much symbolism that has become so engrained in our culture that we may hardly even notice it.  But God wanted to make sure they always remember what’s happening here, so he gives Joshua some very specific instructions, and that’s what we’re going to focus on this morning.

First he tells them to prepare themselves.  He says:

“Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” --Joshua 3:5

Joshua was reminding them that this is not just a sight-seeing excursion.  They are following God.  They need to be prepared to experience what God is going to do.

The Holy Spirit is at work in us, preparing us, and we tap into that preparation, we participate with prayer, praise, confession.  We demonstrate that together in worship:

• By asking God to prepare our hearts as we come to church and into the sanctuary
• We begin with praise to renew our focus and get our hearts and minds turned toward God
• We confess our sins, getting rid of the things that would get in the way of hearing and seeing God.
• We come expecting to see and hear God, as Joshua has told Israel to be – expectant that God will do wonders among us.

The Israelites had been camped there by the Jordan for weeks.  Now they were finally moving forward and they needed to be ready.

Today, on this first day of the rest of your life, what will you do to prepare?  How will you make sure you are ready to see and hear God at work in your life and in the lives of those around you?

2. Then Joshua tells them how to know that God is there. Joshua says…

“By this you shall know that among you is the living God . . .  the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan. . .  When the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off; they shall stand in a single heap.” –Joshua 3:10-13

The Ark of the Covenant was the sacred box that was the sign of God’s presence with them.  When they were camped, it was kept in the tabernacle behind a special curtain.  When they were travelling, only certain priests were allowed to carry it, and they never touched it.  They carried it on long poles.

When the toes of those priests carrying the ark got to the edge of the river, the water stopped flowing, so that Israel could cross the river on dry land.  This might sound familiar.  This is just like what happened back at the beginning of their journey, when they first left Egypt and were standing on the edge of the Red Sea.  Then Moses raised his staff and God made a strong wind blow the waters back so they could cross. 

It happens a little differently here – the Ark instead of the staff – but still the waters part and make it clear that God is there working, just as he was at the beginning.

3. And then Joshua tells them to mark this for the future.

A common way in the Bible to mark when God does something is with stones.   Joshua tells the people to choose a man from each tribe – 12 men to each pick up a stone from the riverbed.  These weren’t small stones – they had to carry them on their shoulders.  They carried them to their new camp and used them to build a monument, so they would always remember what had happened that day and how God had worked a miracle in bringing them into their new home, in bringing them across the river on dry land, in giving them a new start.

We are also in transition and making a new start, and today we will also mark the day with stones.  We are:

o   finishing a series on growing in gratitude

o   getting used to a new pastor

o   preparing for the coming year by getting ready to make our pledges next week

o   just getting started on the new work God for us as a church

No matter what is going on in our lives, every day is an opportunity to start fresh with God.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

We too need to prepare for the transition, recognize God’s presence in the midst of it, and mark the transition to remember what God is doing among us.

Our series on growing in gratitude has been an important part of our preparation.  As we practice gratitude, we are also practicing seeing what God is doing, and hearing what God is teaching us.  By practicing gratitude daily, we are preparing ourselves each day to see and hear and follow God.

Together, let’s decide today to make this a forever practice, something we will commit to doing daily from now on. 

I’ll be honest, there are days when I am annoyed with myself for having committed to practicing thankfulness, because I really don’t want to.  I want to stay in my grumpiness a bit, but it’s a commitment God calls us all to make, and so I do it anyway. (Remember our theme verse: 1 Thess 5:18 and today’s Psalm 107)

The Bible tells us to be thankful, so I do it, and so many days this is a game changer for me.  I sometimes don’t even notice until the end of the day that although I started out grumpy,  I did my thankfulness practice, and ended up having a better day.

We are always in transition in some way, and our thankfulness needs to include what Moses and Joshua demonstrate in leading Israel through their transition:

• Thanks to God for what’s happened in the past – thanks for bringing us to this moment.
• Thanks to God for right now – thanks for God’s presence
• Thanks to God for the future – thanks for whatever God has in store for us

We need to remember to be thankful in all our transitions for whatever God is doing. 

Alex Haley, the author of "Roots," had an unusual picture hanging on his office wall. It was a picture of a turtle on top of a fence post. When asked, "Why is that there?" Alex Haley answered, "Every time I write something significant, every time I read my words & think that they are wonderful, & begin to feel proud of myself, I look at the turtle on top of the fence post & remember that he didn’t get there on his own. He had help." That is the basis of thankfulness - to remember that we got here with the help of God, & that He is the provider of every blessing we have.[4]

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.  We’re marking this day with stones as well.  Israel used the stones to remember and to teach their children about what God had done.  They gave thanks for the past and prepared for the future. 

 Throughout the Bible, people use stones to mark for themselves that God has done something significant.  The most significant is Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we refer to him as the rock on which we stand.  Jesus is our rock, and because through our faith in Jesus he lives in us, we too become rocks, living stones.

The Bible says in 1 Peter that we are “like living stones, … being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”   –1 Peter 2:4-5

We are living stones.  And here’s something really cool.  Did you know there are stones that grow?  There’s a plant that looks just like a rock

. . .until it blooms and a flower grows up out of the middle of it

We are just like those plants – living rocks.  Sometimes we might just look like plain old stones, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, God is making us grow and we too bloom – maybe in unexpected ways and at unexpected times and places. 

In just a few minutes, we’re going to celebrate communion, one of the ways we mark and remember what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, and as you come up for communion we’ve got something special for you - a rock to take home with you.  Written on each rock is the word Eucharisteo, the Greek word that means “he gave thanks.” Jesus, on the night he was betrayed and arrested, gave thanks.5  Eucharisteo to help us remember to be practicing thankfulness.  This week as you are considering your pledge commitments that we will bring back next week, use this rock as a way to prepare –

• To remember and give thanks for all the ways that God has brought us to this day, including thanks for all the people who have been a part of making the church worldwide and this church here in Sterling what it is today, and thanks to God for providing all that we have needed so far.
• To acknowledge and give thanks to God for his presence with us right now and for all the ways God is working among us today, helping us grow as the living stones that make up his church. 
• To give thanks to God for all the ways he is leading us into the future, to be living stones who bloom and grow in ways we have yet to discover.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. 

How will this be a new start for us all? 

Let us be prepared to follow Jesus wherever he leads us on this great adventure!

. . .

Our playlist for the day this was preached:

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[1] By Rev. Melissa Krabbe, preached on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church, Sterling, KS.

[2] http://www.theredheadriter.com/2014/02/today-is-the-first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life-quote-song-lyrics-history-who-said-and-why-it-is-true/

[3] From the Google books version of 2400 Jokes to Brighten Your Speeches By Robert Orben

[*] Joshua is indispensable to the larger biblical account, referred to or quoted in 14 other biblical texts:  1 Kings 16:34, Ps 44, Ps 68:12-14, Ps 78:54-55, Ps 94:4-5, Hab 3:11, Acts 7:45, Heb 4:8, Heb 11:30-31, Jas 2:25 (Jerome Creach, Interpretation, pg 3)

[4] Melvin Newland, Minister, Central Christian Church, Brownsville, TX https://www.sermoncentral.com/illustrations/sermon-illustration-sermoncentral--quotes-thanksgiving-10679?ref=TextIllustrationSerps

[5] Inspired by Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts

Generous Opportunity - A Sermon on Luke 16:19-31, Ephesians 2:1-10

Read Luke 16:19-31, Ephesians 2:1-10

What comes to mind when you think about heaven? 

According to studies, about 90% of us believe there’s a heaven, and about 85% of us think we’ll go there when we die.  Here’s something that is odd to me---80% of women think they’re going to heaven, but only 69% of men do.[1]

I’m betting just about 0% of us think of heaven as going to sit in the lap of Abraham.  Am I right?  But that’s what happens to the man in this parable we just read from Luke 16.  That’s just one of the reasons this is an interesting parable.  In it, we get three different scenes – one on earth at the rich man’s house where we see Lazarus laying outside his front door, and then two scenes of the afterlife – Lazarus in heaven with Abraham, and the rich man in hell in eternal torment.

Luke gives us vivid descriptions of both the richness of the rich man and the poorness of Lazarus:

·        The rich man is clothed in purple, the color of nobility or royalty, and in fine linen.  He eats sumptuously, feasting every day on fine food.  He lives in the lap of luxury. 

·        In stark contrast, Lazarus apparently has little or no clothes.  We know this because we can see his skin that is covered with sores.  He longs to have even just the crumbs from the rich man’s feast.  His only friends are the dogs who come to lick his sores. For the rich man it’s feast and for Lazarus it’s famine.

Notice that Luke doesn’t tell us the rich man’s name, but he does tell us the poor man’s name – Lazarus, which means “God is my help.”  Lazarus is the only character in any of the parables that gets a name.

In this parable, there are two great chasms. The rich man is in agony in the flames of Hades and calls out to Abraham in heaven for some relief.  But Abraham cannot help him because of the great chasm that separates heaven from hell.  Abraham tells the rich man that this chasm is uncrossable.  There is another chasm in this story. It is between the rich man and Lazarus in life.  This one isn’t uncrossable but it might as well be because the rich man does not cross it.  Maybe he doesn’t even see it, just like he doesn’t seem to see Lazarus.

Life and afterlife. 

This has been a busy week for my DVR recording TV shows.  Maybe it has been for yours, too.  This was the week that many TV shows started their new seasons, and some new shows premiered.  One of the new shows is called “The Good Place.”  It’s on Thursday nights on NBC (or any night on my DVR) and stars Kristen Bell as a woman who has died and wakes up to find herself sitting in an office.  Ted Danson is sitting behind the desk and reassures her that she has come to “The Good Place.”  The show doesn’t use the words heaven or hell, but that’s definitely what they want us to think.  Kristen Bell’s character is surprised to find herself in the good place for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that she wasn’t a very good person in life.  In the show, she keeps trying to cuss and the words will only come out as sanitized versions.  For example, she says fork a lot!  When Ted Danson explains to her how people get to the good place, he tells her that a remarkably small percentage of people are good enough to get in there.  Admission is entirely based on good deeds.

What’s wrong with that premise?  For a TV show, nothing because it’s fiction and you can do whatever you want with fiction.  But in real life, admission to heaven is not based on good deeds.  Salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ, and even that faith is a gift from God.  That’s what our reading from Ephesians 2 is talking about.

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. ¹⁰ For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Eph 2:1-10 NLT)

We might be tempted to think that the story of the rich man and Lazarus is telling us that it’s the rich man’s lack of good works that kept him out of heaven.  It’s not his actions, although his actions are certainly telling.  They reveal a man whose heart was far from God, otherwise he would have been concerned about what God’s concerned about, namely people in need, like Lazarus. 

We have to be careful not to mix this up.  Through faith, the Holy Spirit renews us and guides us and helps us to do the good things that God has planned for us. We cannot earn salvation through good works.  But we find that our faith  and our gratitude for salvation prompts us to action. 

We see this sequence in the greatest commandment as well.  The first part is to love the lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. (Luke 10:27 et al).  That’s what gets us started, and what prompts and equips us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Without the love of God, we will not be able to sustain the love for our neighbors.  The first part provides the motivation and the strength for the second part.

We see this in another parable – the story of the sheep and the goats.  Jesus says to the goats, “Away from me.  I never knew you.”  The goats ask for explanation, and he explains that when they didn’t feed the hungry or give water to the thirsty or welcome strangers, it is as if they didn’t do these things for Jesus himself.  The point is that those who love God and are seeking to do God’s will would have loved these people.  Our good works are the outflow or symptom of our faith.[2]

It’s like taking your computer in for repair.  For the technician to be able to figure out what’s going on in the computer, you have to give him access to it – the password to get in.  Otherwise he won’t be able to do anything at all and it’ll just stay like it was.  If you give him access, he’ll get into it and clean things up and get them running right again.  And it’ll run great for awhile and do lots of good things, but every now and then you’ll need to take it back for more clean up.  It’s like that for us, too.  For God to work in our lives we have to give him access – use the gift of the faith that he’s given us to accept the grace and forgiveness being offered, and accept the new life Jesus brings us.  And he’ll get inside and clean some things up and get us back on track and running right and doing good things, and the more we give him access, the more he can do in us.

When we let God have access, we get a generous opportunity, which is to do the will of God and to know the blessings that come with doing God’s will.  In the process God helps us change from a perspective of entitlement to one of stewardship.  We see entitlement in the rich man[3] – all this is mine and I’m entitled to enjoy it.  Instead, he could have been thankful to God for giving him all that he had and used his richness to bless others. 

God gave the rich man a generous opportunity.  God was generous to the rich man, and God generously put Lazarus right on his doorstep, a most convenient opportunity to share his blessings.

Whenever I read this story about the rich man and Lazarus, I get to thinking . . .  Who is on our doorstep?  It can be easier to be generous to different organizations, to send money off to different countries, and fail to notice the need right in front of us.

There’s a pastor who tells about a time when he was about to send away the stranger at his doorstep.  He lived in the house on the church property and a young man came to his door asking for help.  The young man turned out to be the son of one of the church families.  He struggled with alcohol and had gone away and come back so many times that his parents had given up on him.  The pastor was trying to keep up with a busy agenda that day and was feeling somewhat sorry for himself, so he wasn’t feeling very charitable.  He said to God, “Lord, I can’t take care of every drunken beggar in this town.”  In response, a voice seemed to say, “I didn’t ask you to take in every drunk—just this one.”  And so he did.[4]

What opportunities is God putting on our doorsteps to share the blessings that we’ve been given? 

·        Are we responding with cheerful gratitude or grudgingly minimal response? 

·        Or are we turning a blind eye, looking past those right before us to do something easier or more acceptable? 

·        Have we allowed a seemingly uncrossable chasm to exist between us and someone who needs our help?

One thing that is very clear in this parable – we don’t have an unlimited supply of opportunities to be generous.  The ultimate reality is that life is finite, and so are the opportunities.  Opportunity is on our doorstep, but so is death.  I don’t know if your week was like mine, but it seemed that death was in view daily.   There was a lot of it this week on my Facebook feed.  Three friends lost their mothers this week, and one her father.  We heard a lot this week about people getting shot.    Life and death is our reality.  Both are always happening. 

The juxtaposition of death and life this week got me to thinking metaphysically.  In our parable we see life and death almost overlapping, as both are in view in the telling of the story.  And I got to wondering….

 What if heaven isn't a place or a time (future) but a dimension that we only intersect with in fleeting moments in this life . . .because we are bound to this place and time and linear thought . . .but that we get glimpses of when we worship and when we touch sometimes heart and when we do something that impacts eternity?

And is so often the case, I discovered I’m not the first person to think about life this way.  You might already be thinking of some stories or movies that play with this idea.  Some ancient people had a theory about this idea.  The Celtic spiritual tradition says that heaven and earth are actually rather close together and that there are thin places where the distance between them is much smaller, where the veil between heaven and earth is quite thin.[5]  In those places it is easier to feel the presence of God and to have glimpses of heaven, and to see God’s glory.[6]

I do believe thin places exist, but I don’t think they are always static places.  There are certainly places that are special because they show us the glory of God through their beauty or because special things happen there.  But we ourselves have the ability to create thin places whenever we give God complete access to our hearts and lives.  We make thin places when we pray and sing and worship God with all our hearts.  We make thin places when we reach out to other people and touch their hearts.  We make thin places when we do the will of God.

“And the world is passing away along with its desires, but

whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

 –1 John 2:17

·        Churches can be thin places but they aren’t always. 

·        St.Vincent’s House is often a thin place for me, and for people who come there looking for hope and reassurance. 

I found a thin place this week watching the season premiere of the TV show The Voice.  This is a show where people come and sing for a panel of judges who can hear them but can’t see them.  The judges will accept or reject them based on their singing alone, and often based on some rather intangible qualities that can come through in a performance.  Many of these performers see this as their one chance to live their most deeply heartfelt dream.  Some of these performers have known incredible heartbreak and that comes through in their singing and allows their performance of that song to be a thin place.  Most of them don’t mention God, but I felt like I was hearing the heart of God through them. 

Where and when have you experienced thin places?

Sometimes a hospital room is a thin place.  There was college student doing an internship as a chaplain at a hospital.  It’s a tough internship at first because the student has very little training before they start visiting patients and their families.  In one of this chaplain’s visits, she walked into a room where a man sat beside the bed of his wife who was unconscious.  The man had just been told that his wife had very little time left.  He was angry at God and not much interested in talking to the chaplain.  He told her, “Unless you can tell me where God is in this, you can leave.”  The chaplain stood there unsure what to do or say.  She said a silent prayer.  “God, help me.”  And suddenly she was overcome by the man’s grief and she began to weep.  In that moment, through that chaplain, the man was able to see the heart of God.  God was there weeping with him.  And the chaplain stayed and sat with him for quite awhile.[7]  That was a thin place, a generous opportunity to encounter heaven on earth.

God gives us a lifetime of opportunities to know him personally, to know his generous grace, and to be a part of heaven on earth. Once we are dead, the opportunities have ended, but the most amazing thing about life is that every day, every moment is a new opportunity to have a fresh start and to find and create thin places through our heartfelt seeking of God and of sharing God’s love and grace with other people.  Sometimes it might seem like there are uncrossable chasms between us and God, and between us and other people, especially between us and people who are different from us. 

Every moment until we breath our last moment is an opportunity to cross those chasms, and to find or create thin places.

Let us thank God for all of these generous opportunities.

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[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/Beliefs/story?id=1422658

[2] http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-sheep-goats.html

[3] Bruce Larson, The Communicator’s Commentary: Luke (Word Publishing)

[4] Bruce Larson, The Communicator’s Commentary: Luke (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 236-7.

[5] http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2015-03/thin-places-week-s-readings

[6] http://www.explorefaith.org/mystery/mysteryThinPlaces.html

[7] Borrowed from Roger Nishioka who told a similar story to the Presbytery of the New Covenant at one of it’s meetings in 2015.