Latah Valley

Read Acts 2:1–4

The English word for LIKE has been evolving.   You’ve probably noticed this in the speech of teenagers and sarcastic characters on television.   But LIKE is no longer just way of comparing one thing to another thing, as in the Spirit of God is like the breath of Jesus or like the sound of a violent wind.   LIKE, according to linguists, has evolved into a signal that someone is about to be quoted.  

Like when the rugby player was like, “Get out of my way!”   Or when that waiter at the restaurant was like, “Do you want to order something or what?”    That nurse in the waiting room was so kind and considerate; she was like, “I am so sorry for your loss.”   But then her attitude changed and she was like, “I’m sorry.  My shift is over.  I’m going home now.”

You see, there are probably an infinite number of possible quotes, sayings or slogans that we might preface with the word, LIKE.   But another interesting nuance to contemporary English slang involves LIKE WOW, the way we want to emphasize what we’re trying to say.   LIKE, that’s outrageous!   LIKE, that’s really going to happen!   Or, LIKE dude, will you stop breathing on me with your garlic-breath?

So, let’s review.  The rules of grammar are actually changing to include the following functions for the word LIKE.  

1.  It’s a comparative preposition;

2.  It’s a signal that someone’s about to be quoted; and

3.  It’s a means of emphasizing content.

And what, pray tell, does any of this have to do with the passage from Acts 2, in which “A SOUND” comes upon the disciples in the courtyard of the temple LIKE THE RUSH OF A VIOLENT WIND?   Well, if the Holy Spirit inspires and indwells us so that we might communicate God’s deeds of power (as per verse 11), my premise is that the Spirit must also help us to hear that communication.

Every few weeks the boys and I will catch a program called, Monster Quest, in which scientists are set loose into various areas of wilderness.   These scientists camp out with their gadgets, collecting data like the size of a mysterious footprint, follicles of hair, dry bones and so forth.   But most of what they have to offer are these eye-witness accounts in which ordinary hikers struggle to describe what they’ve seen, heard and in some cases smelled.   And, of course, every report about Bigfoot or the Lock Ness Monster invariably bottoms out into sentences like, It looked at first like a bear, but it walked upright like a man… And yet, it had a head like this giant ape…  And I was like, Wow!  What did I just see?

Now, I do not believe that we can verify the attributes of God’s Spirit in the same way that these eye-witnesses make claims about Sasquatch.   But, I do want us to notice how much of the Bible is comprised of a struggle to communicate a reality or a presence that eludes our analysis.   And I do want to suggest that at Latah Valley we will have to enter that struggle if we truly want to hear like…

“Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”   The Revelation to John repeats that sentence in Revelation 2:7; 2:11; 2:17; 2:29; 3:6: 3:13 and 3:22—and that implies that what God has to communicate isn’t simply written down on a page.   God’s Word, by the power of the Spirit, actually flies off the page.  

Philip Yancey explains how a local gospel choir had been invited to perform at the highfalutin Chicago Cultural Center for a group of well-dressed businessmen and shoppers from the upscale Michigan Avenue.   At first, he says, the audience applauded politely, almost as if they wanted to be politically correct.   But after about twenty minutes of passionate singing and bodies in rhythmic motion, one of the singers leaped backward from the last row of the risers and began hopping on one foot across the stage.   Moreover, he had broken away from the song the choir had been singing and began speaking in a strange language.  

 Yancey writes,

“Two silver-haired ladies in fur stoles grabbed their shopping bags and bustled out.  Men and women wearing office attire looked at their watches and fidgeted.  A sudden epidemic of coughing broke out…” (Reaching For The Invisible God, p. 173-4)    

And finally, at the culmination of the song, to “the faithful few who remained in their seats” the choir director said, “Well, you know how it is, you just can’t hem the Spirit in.”

In fact, you and I may find ourselves in the audience and not very comfortable.   That’s okay.   The point is like, something’s happening!   No matter what level of weirdness we feel, the point of the Pentecost encounter is that those who say that they believe in Christ stay in conversation about God’s deeds of power.

In southeastern Pennsylvania there’s a Latino congregation which is comprised of a lot of the people who pick mushrooms and do construction projects at an extremely low wage.   Our predominantly white church reached out to the pastor, Gadiel Gomez, and offered to support them financially.  Gadiel couldn’t speak English very well, but he had a member of the congregation who used to be involved in the drug cartel in Columbia.   This young Hispanic man did speak English and could often translate.   So, in front of a large crowd of Presbyterians in downtown Philadelphia, I invited Gadiel and his protégé to share about what God had been doing among them.   Well, after about five minutes of back-and-forth translations—about things like “We provide people with food who live beneath the bridge…  We help families with legal issues… We proclaim the love of Jesus…”  After listening to that I became worried about how long the speech was going.   People in the pews were nodding off, or reading other papers that they had brought to the meeting.   And just when I was about to step in and wrap up the presentation, the translator started to weep.  He explained how anxious he had been to stand before such people and how God had changed him inside and out.   “Dome La Mono,” I said.  Give me your hand.

You see, a good signal for the Spirit’s speech is LIKE when we find ourselves saying things we don’t ordinarily say to people we wouldn’t ordinarily meet about experiences over which we don’t ordinarily have much control.   Jesus once said of the Spirit in John 3:8, “You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes…”   In fact, that fundamental lack of control or lack of total comprehension is the very quality which puts us on a level playing field with others.   No one personality controls the conversation or the relationship.  The Spirit overtakes all of us.

In one of the episodes of The Simpsons, Homer is having one of his conversations with God.   Apparently things are going very well, and so Homer prays that everything would stay exactly as it is, with no change.   He then asks that as a confirmation of the deal that God would provide absolutely no sign.   Then, of course, when there is no sign, Homer expresses his gratitude and prepares an offering of milk and cookies.   He wonders if God wants him to drink the milk and eat the cookies himself and that if he did God should let him know again by providing absolutely no sign whatsoever.   “Thy will be done,” declares the cartoon character before devouring the snack…

This, you see, is our relationship with God without the Spirit.   Without the Spirit we have pseudo-conversation, essentially with ourselves.  Without the Spirit, we generally will drink the milk and eat the cookies ourselves and nothing really changes.

By contrast, with the Spirit, it’s like the sound that a mother of two children heard while she sat on a bar stool, smoking a cigarette.   She’d been there, nursing a beer, all afternoon on September 11^th, 2001.   And while newscasters relayed the tragic stories about planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers and into the Pentagon, others in the bar rattled on about Armageddon and biblical prophecy.   Cynthia overheard this talk, but nothing on the television could explain the noise that she heard.   It’s was a sound like the voice of someone telling her to go home.   So she listened and went home and spent the rest of the day, reading the Bible, not understanding very much, but forcing herself to read into the night.   And then, while she nodded off to sleep, the sound came again, the sound like the voice of someone talking in her head, whispering words of love and peace and how things were going to change.  

Of course, when Cynthia woke up she did change.  Instead of going back to the bar she went to the church that had been started down the road.  She took her two children and her new fiancé.   She took them not because she wanted them to learn their Sunday School lessons or that she wanted to get married.   She came because of the sound like…  And when we worshipped that day, we all heard it.   Woohoo!   And I remember on the dinner that Crossroads hosted for us; there was her youngest child, Michael.   He stood up and said how glad he was that his mother listened to the sound because it’s like…   It’s like…  It’s like…

I know that I’m stating the obvious when I say that breathing is a prerequisite to running.   It’s also a prerequisite to walking and to crawling.   Especially on a day like today, in a place like Spokane.    But, at this hour when many men, women and children are still pounding the pavement with their feet, when many still find themselves on the side of the road, massaging a cramping muscle, or untwisting a twisted ankle, we need to point out the significant place that breathing has in the exercise of faith in Christ.

Think about this.  Early in the book of Genesis, the Lord God takes a heap of humus, forms it into something that resembles a human creature, and then chapter two, verse seven says “he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”   What we know, from that moment on, is that God gives each person the gift of inhaling and exhaling.   And from that moment on, an infinitesimal number of breathing opportunities are open to us.   There’s the first time mother, going into labor.   There’s the hyperventilating fiancé as he’s preparing to pop the question.   There’s the sigh of a child as her breath fogs up the car window.   There’s the miraculous recovery in the ICU when the patient can breathe off the ventilator.   And, finally, there’s that close encounter at church when the well-meaning parishioner sprays you with a cloud of chronic halitosis. 

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” says Jesus in John 20:22.   Receive.   Don’t try to run.  Not yet.  Don’t try to walk in your own power.  Receive.

And breathe. 

In Philip Yancey’s book, Why Church?, he tells about worshipping with a peculiar man, named Adolphus:

• Adolphus once thanked God for creating Whitney Houston and her magnificent body.

Breathe.

• Adolphus once called down judgment on all the white people in church who caused the mayor of Chicago such stress that he had a heart attack.

Breathe.

• Adolphus prayed for the pastor’s house to be burned to the ground.

Breathe.

• Adolphus boasted about his ability to play the guitar, and when the Music Leader allowed him to stand up front with the band without plugging his instrument into the speaker system Adolphus gyrated like Joe ###### across the platform as folks came forward to receive communion.  (P. 34—36).

Breathe. 

“The church did not give up on Adolphus,” writes Yancey.  “It gave him a second chance, and a third and a fourth.   And what we need to underscore about those multiple chances is that they came at close range.   Those chances came as men, women and children stood in such intimate proximity that they could literally smell what Adolphus had for breakfast, or didn’t have for breakfast.  

“The true missionary dialogue,” explains theologian Lesslie Newbigin,

“…is not initiated by the Church.  In a secondary sense it is initiated by the outsider who is drawn to ask:  What is the secret of this new reality, this life of praise, of justice and of peace?  In the primary sense, however, it is initiated by the presence of the Spirit…” (The Gospel In A Pluralist Society, p. 134). 

So breathe.   If you’re determined to live out a true relationship with Jesus, who is the risen Christ, you and I have to breathe in the Holy Spirit.   And the Holy Spirit, among other activities, will inspire us to do the following:

 “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  

Now, I want to go through this remark very carefully because the price that we pay for misinterpreting or misrepresenting the words of Jesus here is extremely high.  

First, let’s review a similar statement that Jesus makes during his earthly ministry in Matthew 16:19:

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

You see, in both situations, Jesus seemingly wants to share or to bequeath his authority.   Followers of Jesus have authoritative power.   But clearly it’s not the kind of political power that can force people to think what we think or to behave as we behave.   Our power in Christ is declarative and always biased toward grace.   Every once in a while we will be in a position to declare, Hey, you know what?  We are forgiven!   I remember a young woman at Princeton Seminary.   She felt out of place because she smoked cigarettes, used street slang and lost her virginity when she was very young.   So, we’re talking into the night and she says, “I just don’t feel like I have a place.”   And I took a deep breath and replied, “You have a place in the kingdom of God.”  

Of course, what’s scary about this kind of authority is that by the power of the Spirit, we also may “retain sins.”    Pete Scazzero, in his book on the Emotionally Healthy Church describes a troubled man who approaches his friend at the apex of a high bridge.   The man hands his friend one end of a rope and proceeds to tie the other end around his waist.   After tightening the knot, he takes a running leap off the bridge and leaves his friend holding him by the end of the rope.   The troubled man is dangling above this huge chasm and he shouts up to his friend, “You’re responsible!  Whatever you do, don’t let go!”   The friend, of course, feels responsible, but also kind of trapped and manipulated.   He explains to him that he will hold on and provide a counterbalance as the man begins to climb up the rope.    He must take responsibility. 

Now, the intention of this fable is to suggest that the authority we have to “retain sins” resembles the counterbalance provided by that friend on the bridge.   You and I are not in a position to call people out and to publicly humiliate them for their sins.   But we do have authority in Christ to declare, Hey, you are responsible for your own words, your own actions, your own silence and your own inaction.  You are responsible and you bear mutual responsibility for the relationship that we have…

And, you see, close encounters like this are contagious.   Jesus actually intends us to breathe these words in and exhale them out. 

Amen.

I don’t know if you will believe me if I tell you.   I don’t know if I believe it myself.   What we are about to accomplish is enormous.   What the Spirit of Christ Jesus has charged us to say and to do and to embody over the next few years, over the next few generations, is nothing more and nothing less than a cosmic enterprise.  

William Willimon, the one-time chaplain at Duke University, found himself at a dinner party.   Over ######### he met high-stakes corporate executive.   The man asked Willimon what he did for a living, and the ordained Methodist minister told him about training young people in the art and the skill of following Jesus.   Then, after another sip of his martini, came the predictable reply:  “Isn’t that nice?”

“What’s so nice about it,” answered the feisty Pastor Willimon.

“It’s just nice that the church is there for those who need that sort of thing…”

Clearly, you see, the vast majority of people don’t get it.   Clearly, the popular consensus on Christianity in North America is that it’s nice.   It’s nice to believe in God, if you need that sort of thing.   And even if you don’t need much of anything, the idea of God always makes a lovely wedding ceremony or for a comforting funeral service.   Church buildings often serve the public good.   In Ohio, the public health department used our facility to give out flu shots to the community.    Someone called me on the phone:  “Is this the church that has the flu shots?”  

Hmmm, yes it is.   Church may be the place that has the flu shots, but the true living virus which we share goes more like so:

“Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations… Beginning from Jerusalem… You are witnesses of these things…”

Now, I don’t know what you just heard in Luke 24:46, but that sounds to me like an extraordinary and enormous mission.   Where would people like us even make a dent in the colossal task of preaching “in his name to all nations,” or to all ethnic groups?   I’m telling you that I cannot believe that this responsibility is ours.   And, given the prevailing context of our ever-present niceness, how do we communicate to our friends and to our neighbors that they actually need to repent, that they actually need to receive forgiveness?

“Thirty years ago,” writes Annie Dillard

“my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written that he’d had three months to write.  It was due the next day.  We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surround by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.  Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.’”

Now, this is going to sound strange.   But the advice given to Annie Dillard’s father also seems to be the advice given by the resurrected Christ in today’s passage.   No, Jesus isn’t encouraging us to write our own ornithological report for a grade at school.   But, “beginning from Jerusalem… you are witnesses…”   And what does it mean to be witnesses?  

Isn’t it simply to describe what we have seen and heard and touched and felt?    Aren’t witnesses those who have been called or summoned to testify?

A few weeks ago, on the Sunday after Easter, we explored passages in the New Testament which suggest that the first followers of Jesus had been sent home.  They were sent back to Galilee, back to the familiar mountains, molehills, vineyards and villages which Jesus himself knew and loved.   And this, this sending back to the ordinary, this re-entry, is as it should be.  Christ is present in the ordinary.   Even when he’s seems absent and missing from the place we last observed him, Christ is present.   Even when he disappears out of our sight, Christ is present.  Even when all we feel like doing is indulging our appetites and eating broiled fish, Christ is present.   And yet, if Christ is present, he is also past and he is also future.   If he is there when we are desperate and dry, what would it mean if we experienced a fully-loaded blast of his power?

Well, my friends in Christ, this could be Jerusalem for you.   This could be the place where “the promise from on high” hits you right between the eyes…

There’s a well-crafted scene in the film, October Sky, when Homer Hiccum and three of his buddies are trying to develop a small rocket for their school’s science fair.   After a series of mishaps, Homer’s father has told the boys that they may not launch any more of their test rockets on company property.   And, since this coal mining company in Coalville, West Virginia owns the entire town, the aspiring engineers face a dilemma.   Do they walk the twelve miles to Birch County, or do they give up?   Miss Riley, the boys’ teacher, encourages them to try.  Later, she’s diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and when the four build their launch pad outside of town, she can see the rockets soar from her hospital bed.   

Now, Lord knows, I am neither an aspiring engineer, nor a scientist.   I have no intention of igniting any kind of combustible fuel any time in the near future.  But when I read about Jesus telling stories about fields and seeds and pearls and fish of every kind, it seems as if he’s preparing to launch something.   It seems as if he’s mixing some fairly potent words and images and when the right person lights the fuse the good news of God’s Reign is sent.  The message is sent out, out beyond the company owned operation.  It’s sent into valleys and over mountains.  

And the only question, according to Matthew 13:51, is, “Have you understood all this?”  

I heard a different question over ten years ago.  

In Pennsylvania we helped to start a new church with a bank of rented telephones and a reverse directory.   We placed calls to over 14,000 households, and among them I will never forget the Scottish brogue of one agitated gentleman on the other end of the line.  He said, “What’s wrong with the ol’ Kirk?”

Well, after considering the obvious weight gain of William Shatner a.k.a. the Captain of the USS Enterprise, I took a deep breath and stuck to my script.   That script involved the demographic changes in the local area, the postmodern statistics which describe a decline in denominational loyalty and finally the hope of connecting with the many who do not currently participate in any religious institution.   That was the script that I had rehearsed and the one that promptly fell upon deaf ears.   But if I had the chance to respond to that nice gentleman again, I think that I would simply refer him to what Jesus says in verse 52: 

“Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Here, the focus is not upon what’s wrong with the old, but upon the ways in which “the kingdom of heaven,” the Full and Complete Reign of God, is preceded by a volatile mixture of “what is new” and “what is old.”  Jesus is indeed about to launch something, something utterly unique and terribly mysterious, something at the limits of all human experience.   The ekklesia, or the church, however, involves those men, women and children who have been called out in preparation for this coming kingdom. 

Every scribe.   In the first century, as you know, scribes are often lumped into the same genetic pool with lawyers and Pharisees.   They have a bad reputation for misinterpreting the Law of Moses and the Prophets.   And yet, in this passage, Jesus refers to “every scribe who has been trained,” every story-teller who anticipates not being able to tell the whole story, every script-writer who cannot quite express what happens in the final episode.  Every scribe who yearns and aches for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household. 

The master of a household.   This person, of course, has at his or her disposal a fantastic assortment of gifts—jewelry, utensils, food, furniture and treasure!   And the master of a household would probably like nothing more than to sit inside the walls of his household and to bask and to luxuriate in the glory of that treasure.   But, if that’s you and that’s me, Jesus compels us to finish the sentence.    

Every scribe who has been trained in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household WHO BRINGS OUT OF HIS TREASURE WHAT IS NEW AND WHAT IS OLD.  

Friends in Christ, Latah Valley Presbyterian Church is comprised of both new and old treasure.  And it’s your treasure.  It is the treasure that Christ has trained us to bring out of the household.  Already, you see, our precious fragments reflect the radiance of God’s Resurrected Son.  Already we shine with prayers, with passion, with purpose.  

And it is WITH YOU, and not WITHOUT YOU, that we make our brightest witness to future generations.  It is WITH YOU that we cross the threshold.  

It is WITH YOU that we launch.  And it is WITH YOU that we soar.

Amen.

View Scene 8 of Pirates of the Caribbean

Read Luke 24:36–43

Somewhere in Connecticut, along a lonely stretch of rural highway, is the Bee & Thistle Inn.   Sheryl and I stayed there for a weekend years ago.   And among the highlights of that restful trip and that special place has to be the absolute best clam chowder of my earthly existence.   I remember the fragrance of the soup as the server whisked it around my left shoulder.   I remember the perfect texture of the creamy broth.   I remember the salty brine of the mollusks themselves and the succulent slivers of supple potato, white onion, celery, bacon.  And I remember how these ingredients mingled and danced upon the taste buds of my tongue and slid effortlessly past my palate.  I’m telling you, each rich spoonful of that chowder constituted a spiritual experience.   In fact, after gorging myself on a second bowl, I felt as if I were having a heart attack.   And, of course, if I had suffered such a trauma at the age of twenty-three presumably my bodiless spirit wouldn’t be able to enjoy clam chowder ever again.  That would be the shame of it.

Food is good.   Food happens to be among the many great pleasures that human beings might savor.   And yet, where did we get the idea that all the great food and all the great pleasures of this life are meant only for this life?   Didn’t Jesus famously say that if we seek first “his kingdom and righteousness” that “all these things—including food and drink and clothing and families and friends—will be yours as well (Matthew 6:33; Luke 18:30)?  

You see, I think it’s very curious that after Genesis, chapter one, describes the creation of God (including every fruit of every tree) as “good” and after Acts, chapter ten, permits Peter to “get up, kill and eat” all of these previously forbidden animals, that we don’t look for God in the menu of joys and pleasure which we’ve been given.  

Let me clarify.   We tend to think of food nutritionally.  We tend to focus our attention on the ways that people may eat what’s best and to not abuse their bodies.   Or, if we become religious, we tend to think of the food that we might share with the homeless and the poor.   And, of course, each of these perspectives is appropriate and even faithful.  But let’s consider for a moment the mystery of the resurrected Jesus as he asks for and receives “a piece of broiled fish.”  Why does Luke 24:42 provide us with that kind of detail?   And why, in John 21:13, does Jesus return the favor and prepare broiled fillets for his disciples?

Believe me when I say that I have tried and I have tried to overly-spiritualize this story.  I have tried to imagine some sort of analogy for the seafood.   But another way of interpreting this passage is to suggest that the resurrected Son of God likes the taste of the fish in his native Galilee.   That is, given the choice between the blue plate special and the catch of the day, Jesus will go for the fish every time.   And that possible interpretation says something about the things that we may enjoy.

In his book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman offers this interesting observation. 

He writes: 

“An inordinate number of cereal commercials are based on the premise that a given cereal is so delicious that a fictional creature would want to steal it…  The most obvious is the Trix Rabbit, a tragic figure whose doomed existence is not unlike that of Sisyphus.  Since the cereal’s inception, the rabbit—often marginalized as ‘silly’—has never been allowed to enjoy even one bowl of his favorite foodstuff, and the explanation for this embargo smacks of both age discrimination and racism (we are to accept that Trix is reserved exclusively ‘for kids’).”  (p. 123)

Now, what intrigues me about this paragraph is the legendary rabbit’s focus on enjoying his favorite cereal, which ironically the animators drawn him to do, but which he will never be allowed to do.

And I guess, Klosterman’s commentary might hit home in our study of the broiled fish in Luke 24.  Is this something that specially meant for Jesus, and not for us?   Are we doomed to always want what we cannot have?

In the scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Barbosa would clearly like to appreciate the taste of an apple.  Unfortunately, because he’s been cursed by the gods of the Aztec gold, the buccaneer can’t really generate the saliva to really enjoy it.  He can’t taste.  He can’t feel.  He can’t suffer pain.  

By way of contrast, the risen Christ can taste.  He can feel.  And, although he no longer experiences pain and death, he’s gone through them.  In everything that has been thrown at Jesus by the world, by human history and by the evil one, there is a perfect demonstration of radical openness.    And with that same openness he eats. 

Jesus is no Stoic.  As I understand it, stoics try to detach themselves from the things of this world.   They detach and become indifferent so that whether things go well or not so well, the stoic rides even keel, never quite bottoming out but never quite peaking or becoming excited about anything.     

Likewise, Jesus is no Buddha.   Buddhists believe that desire is the cause of all unhappiness.   Therefore, when we want something—even something good—we tend to grab for it.   And when we grab for it we tend to live in fear of losing it.

On the other hand, with the risen Christ, we receive the possibility of redemption, and that redemption, includes our bodies (Romans as well as all the human appetites and aptitudes that God has given us.  Everything that we enjoy—everyone that we cherish—every special food, every special drink, every special gift—all of it now in Christ has the possibility of being refined and renewed.

Raymond Carver wrote a short story about a little boy, who had been knocked down by a car in traffic.  He got back up and went to school, but later died.   The day that he died had also been his birthday and earlier the boy’s mother had ordered a special cake which she had planned on picking up at the bakery after work.   Anyway, as you might imagine, the mother and the father of this only child had been utterly devastated.   They sat in the waiting room, totally numb.

And when they returned home to their empty house, they couldn’t seem to shed one tear.   The phone rang and the man on the other end of the line spoke with a heavy Italian accent.  He said, “Did you forget Scotty?”   The mother dropped the receiver to the floor.   Her husband hung up the phone.  But the man called back.   The mother and the father then took turns shouting curses and angry threats about calling the police.  But then, they realized who it had been. 

The caller, it turned out, had been the baker of their child’s cake.  He’d been calling about the order and wanted to let them know that specially ordered food item had been ready for some time.   That realization, however, only fueled their bitterness even more.   With a vengeance the father of the dead boy grabbed the keys to their car and they drove to the bakery even faster and more recklessly than they had driven to the hospital.   They barged into the store and were immediately overwhelmed with the delicious smells of pastries and pies and there on the counter was the cake.   “My son’s dead!” shouted the mother, sobbing suddenly.   “My son’s dead,” she repeated, stumbling into her husband who held her up.   And just then, a strange expression came over the baker’s face.   He softened and brightened and expressed how sad he was for them.  Then, he tried to speak again and stopped himself.   He invited the couple to sit down and to rest at one of the tables in the back room.   And retrieving some freshly baked rolls from the oven, he fed them.   He fed them soft, warm, delicious bread and they ate it.   Amen.

Watch Scene 20 of The Prestige

Read Luke 24:13–35

There’s a moment in every magic trick when we think we know.   There’s an instant in the middle of the theatrical production—what magicians refer to, in three acts, as the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige—when certain, savvy members of the audience think that they’ve spied something.   It could be a trap door in the flooring of the stage, a thin wire that hangs from the rafters… Whatever that ordinary thing is—every illusionist from Houdini to David Copperfield makes his living by concealing that thing, or at least by preventing us from seeing that secret thing or at the very least, by skillfully disguising the technique by which the entertainer does what he or she does.  

In other words, magic is nothing more and nothing less than adroit, masterfully choreographed, deception.   And if we think that we’re onto the inner workings of a magic trick, guess what?   The magic is over, and you might as well save your money and skip the performance.

Well, believe it or not, I’m wondering this morning if the vast majority of folks in North America don’t have the same posture toward faith in the risen Christ.   I’m wondering if a large percentage of people think they’ve seen something, something that drains all the magic out of church…

I had an “Aha!” moment like that when the congregation I attended with my mother invited me to confirm my baptism.   I’m not saying that this church made people disappear or that its pastor pulled rabbits out of his hat.   But in late May of 1978, my older sister and her husband had asked me to go with them to Disney World.   The trip unfortunately would coincide with the Sunday which had been scheduled for confirmation. 

So, with the minimal application of the right parental pressure, we moved confirmation up a few weeks, made the caravan trip from Pennsylvania to Florida and convened at Cinderella’s Castle in Magic Kingdom just in time.   Looking back now, that easy maneuvering, that rearrangement of commitments, spoke volumes to me about whose magic had already been figured out and whose hadn’t.   Alice, a fellow ninth grader told me how she envied my trip and how I would miss all those days of school.   And then, just as we entered the sanctuary to answer the traditional questions which are posed to confirmation graduates, she mentioned envying one more thing.   What Alice told me that she envied had been my faith in Jesus; she said that she was just being confirmed because her mother would “die” if she didn’t go through with it.   Alice whispered that atheism actually made more sense to her and that her baptism, as an infant, and her participation in this aspect of worship had all been part of the show.  

You see, everyone (I think) has a moment, a moment when we’re tired of pretending, a moment when we’ve seen the man, working the levers behind the curtain or seen the strings attached to the angel’s halo.   Everyone has a moment when the magic goes out of the room.   But what if I were to tell you that Luke 24:31 is not, and cannot be, one of those?   And what if we were to learn together how the “vanishing” of Jesus “out of their sight” is really something more than magic?!!!

Let me explain the difference.   Magic, as it’s popularly conceived, has pure entertainment value.   People pay good money to see magic because they don’t know and they don’t want to know how a trick happens to be pulled off.   Another more ancient understanding of magic, however, involves the manipulation and control of things, powers and persons so that we get what we want.   Now, in the Harry Potter genre of stories, there are good witches and bad witches.   Good witches want good things.   Bad witch want bad things.   Yet, both kinds of witches cast spells and wave their wands because they themselves want to re-arrange the fundamental elements of the Universe.  

By contrast, faith in the resurrected Christ differs from ways of Harry Potter and Houdini in this way:   as soon as we recognize the fullness of Jesus and his ultimate claim upon the world—in that very mysterious moment—he’s gone!    Then you saw him and now you don’t.   In fact, based on the Luke 24 encounter, I would argue that any person who claims to be experiencing Jesus right now—that person—is really only just now able to articulate and to emote what had been experienced seconds, minutes, months, years and decades ago.  

Douglas Coupland tells about a busload of special needs children who had pulled to the side of a California highway.   They were there, observing a blue heron in the distance as it scavenged for fish.

Anyway, as Coupland also decided to rest at the edge of these wetlands, another kind of bird—a raptor, some kind of hawk or falcon—also began perform as if on cue.   The mentally handicapped teenagers were totally enthralled, utterly mesmerized, until suddenly the hawkish animal swooped incredibly close.   Coupland describes fiddling with his camera at the time and then, without warning, these sharp talons reach down and rip into the author’s scalp.   His head is bleeding drops of blood when almost immediately the entire crowd of spectators comes to hug him.   The assorted Downs Syndrome and retarded adolescents groan awkward words of compassion and sympathy while one petite girl dabs his had with a tissue.   

Now, I’m telling you about this moment because Coupland says that during it, he didn’t know what to think or what to feel.   It was only afterwards in the car, during the rest of his drive, that he began to appreciate the magic.  

Then you saw him and now you don’t.   And perhaps when we don’t see Jesus—perhaps in those retrospective moments—the Spirit of Christ helps us to interpret rightly and magically what it is and who it is we are seeing. 

Robert C. Roberts, in his book, Spiritual Emotions, defines our feelings as neither arbitrary, nor irrelevant to our rational thought process.  He says they are “concern-based construals.”

So, for example, when we hear that Cleopas and the other disciple stand still, “looking sad,” in verse 17, it’s clear that they have construed Jesus of Nazareth as a person who has suffered terrible things in Jerusalem, but that they also construe the “Messiah” as someone who does not suffer and does not die.   These travelers construe things, events and persons in this sad way because they are busy trying to fit Jesus into their individual and collective life stories.   And notice how when “Jesus himself” draws near he permits them to feel this way and then proceeds to pick and to claw and to scrape at the false and incomplete way they construe things.   He nudges them with questions, with conversations, with Bible Study, with appearing to be going further and finally with the breaking of the bread.   He engages in all of these ordinary practices, but nothing seems magical until he’s “vanished out of their sight.”

I mentioned last week how Latah Valley was going to launch this new and illustrious ministry.   I called Mission Muffin, and it consists of folks like us visiting the House of Charity on Thursday morning and giving away freshly baked, homemade chocolate chip, blueberry and banana nut muffins.   Well, a few days ago, I did just that and if you want to know what it was like, you just have to schedule some time and do it yourself.   You see, in months past I had gone into the chapel and started singing, or I had read the Bible and asked a bunch of questions.   But something nagged at my spirit and I think I found out what it was.   The homeless people outside that enclosed chapel don’t believe in the magic of the resurrected Christ.   They imagine him to be another means of mind control or a way that we might have to keep the rowdy vagrants in line.   But I now know that Jesus show up at the House of Charity.  Suddenly I recognized him as the stubbly bearded guy in the army boots.   And just as soon as I saw him, he smiled and vanished.  

And the man at the table told me he’s allergic to banana nut.  

Amen.   

Read Luke 24:12

Watch Forrest Gump, Scene 16

Going home is not very glamorous.   Going home after a day at work, for example, may remind us of all the chores we have to do, or all the bills we have to pay.  Going home after a trip overseas may be nice, but then there’s that carton of sour milk that we left in the refrigerator.  Going home after a night in the hospital may help with the insurance coverage, but what happens when we buzz for the nurse and she doesn’t come.  Going home is not very glamorous, and if we ask the famous author, Thomas Wolfe, he will tell us that it’s impossible.   The old neighborhood has changed and so have we.   The diner has been torn down and replaced with a CVS pharmacy.   The church on the corner has been converted into a condominium.   The folks have moved to Daytona Beach.   The kids have moved to Bellingham.   Going home is not very glamorous…which is why I think that Luke 24:12 winds up missing in most of the ancient manuscripts that we have of the gospel.

Let me repeat that.   In my New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible and in many other translations of Luke’s gospel, verse twelve has become a footnote or an asterisk that directs us to the bottom of the page, where we can read that mostly all of the ancient manuscripts do not include the part about Peter running to the empty tomb, or the part about Peter returning home.   Mostly all will describe how the breathless women of Easter morning found the eleven disciples and proceeded to tell them about the angelic announcement.  But then, we read about the followers of the now dead Messiah ridiculing that story as “an idle tale.”   And what do we typically do after we read the gossip in The National Inquirer ?  

We go home of course.   We go home, hoping to high heaven that no one from the old neighborhood will recognize who we are, or wonder what we’ve been up to for the past three years.   We go home with this bizarre rumor about an empty tomb ringing in our ears and with our sorry tunic tucked between our legs.   Walker Percy refers to this phenomenon as “re-entry,” and it involves the ways in which people experience something powerfully transcendent, but then have to settle back into life at 4 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.   Re-entry is a conundrum, sort of like realizing that the Holy Bible has been compiled from a bunch of old parchments which have been copied and re-copied over centuries by scribes and by monks and that every once in a while one of them made a mistake.  The fear of re-entry is why most people get drunk, tell lies, take drugs, steal cars, commit suicide, pick up prostitutes, join a cult or become infatuated with movie stars.   We simply don’t want to come down.

And yet, if Luke 24:12 informs us that Peter ran—that upon hearing the rumors of resurrection he ran and then stooped and looked in and saw the linen cloth that had once wrapped Jesus’ body—where are we supposed to go?   Let me simply say that I have no doubt that your life and my life have been riddled with what the Bible calls Kairos Moments—that is, moment of great fullness.  There are those intense and beautifully sublime epiphanies.   But the reason I think we believe Easter and the risen Christ are all the chronological times through which Peter and others had to endure.   Peter goes home, and Christ is either risen or he’s not.  And, if he’s risen, that’s the truth whether we’re high or whether we’re low.    

During the Los Angeles race riots of the early nineties, Reginald Denny drives his tractor-trailer through the wrong part of town.   There had been looting and violence and the roads are clogged with angry mobs.   And in the middle of it all, Denny is dragged from the cab of his truck and beaten.   Then, while the cameras from the news-helicopters are running, there’s this image of an African American teenager picking up a brick and throwing it at the white man’s head.   Reginald Denny is severely injured and eventually taken to the hospital where he re-covers.   Ordinary hours, weeks and months go by.  Finally, during a broadcast from the Denny home, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a reporter gets an exclusive interview and the victim is peppered with inflammatory questions.  But when he replies with words of forgiveness because of his hope in Christ the face of the reporter goes blank.  “Obviously, Mr. Denny still suffers from the effects of brain damage,” says the man with the microphone.   And yet, is that all the news to be heard at four o’clock in the afternoon?

You see, what I’d like to highlight this morning and this entire month of April is the way Luke 24:12 allows us to go home without the hype.   Think about this.   If Peter is the paragon of all Christian patriarchs—if he is the rock or the quintessential disciples upon which Christ will build the church—why do we not hear about him again until verse 34?  In between we have this amazing story, known as the Road to Emmaus.   And when Cleopas and the other unknown disciple race all the way back to Jerusalem, the report they hear goes like so:  “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon.”   But we’re never told about that moment.

In fact, there is no recorded or written-down, detailed account of the resurrected Jesus as he talks and walks with Peter.   Not in Luke 24.  Not in Matthew 28.  Not in Mark 16.  In fact, in John 21, we finally have this dialogue between Jesus and Peter.  But guess where that encounter takes place?   It’s by the Sea of Tiberius, or the Sea of Galilee, near Peter’s home.   So, we might as well face it:   Peter goes home.  Peter has gone home.   And before home, he’s simply running on empty.

Leaders in the tradition of Christ Jesus do that sometimes.  Churches also do that.   We run on empty.   We run without the hype or the hoopla and then we practice re-entry.   We go home.

A few years ago I went home with this Nez Perce native who also had been baptized as a Christian.   His name was Adrian Moody and when I stayed at his home he gave me smoked salmon to eat and invited me into his sweat lodge.   Then, Adrian told me stories, stories about Coyote who is this mythic trickster, who eventually figured about a way to subvert the power of the monster.   And I heard these stories and I told Adrian that Coyote is like the risen Jesus.  The risen Jesus tricks the monster.  He was dead, but now he lives and everything he said and did now resonates with all of creation.  I had this discussion with Adrian and then he took me to the Henry Spaulding Museum, to this place where Nez Perce culture had originally clashed with the missionaries.   And, after we honored those missionaries, Adrian led me out back of that museum, by the dumpster. 

An old tree grew by that dumpster and in the knot of that tree I noticed these rusted old shackles.   Adrian put his hands in those shackles and he declared, “This is how they converted us.  This is how they forced us to give up our native dress and our native language.”

“That’s not the gospel,” I replied.  “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

“I know,” said Adrian, smirking a little.  “But this is our home.”

Now, I’m relating this memory to you because I feel a little bit like Adrian today.  This is our home.   Home is the place where we can tell and can hear uncomfortable truths.  Home is the place where our opinion and our viewpoint matter more than anywhere else in the world.  Home is the place we go when we’ve been depleted and running on empty for a long, long time.   And home is the place where the risen Christ will come for us.  And it’s not always glamorous, but it’s true.

Last Tuesday night, our family sat around a campfire at the Latah Valley property.   Philip had wanted to spend the night there with his friend, Ben.   Sheryl showed up with Ian, our dog, Pearl and another dog who belonged to our friends, the Kuuskevere’s.   Anyway, we all were roasting marshmallows and making s’mores when out of the woods bounds this enormous moose.   It walked within thirty feet of us and then started chewing on a tree behind the garage.   And I’ll tell you what that wild animal did for me that night.  It filled the emptiness.  Amen.    

Isaiah 40:6–11; Matthew 28:16–20

The options include climbing, biking, skiing, yodeling, singing with Julie Andrews, picking wild flowers, bird-watching, Elk-hunting, searching for Big Foot, erecting a satellite dish, clearing a forest or finally enjoying the scenery.   If you have ever wondered about the purpose of a mountain, and what practical use we might assign to a rise in elevation, these dangling participles, these recreational activities, may suffice.   And yet, for those of us who imagine the meaning of a mountain differently, to those who refuse to cave in to the user-friendly fascination of our society, there is another possibility that I’d like to explore with you today, and it’s a possible meaning that may be of the same fabric with the season of Easter. 

Annie Dillard talks about the frozen tundra of the north pole, and how (prior to Global Warming) a group of people tried to plow through the ice in a ship.   On board the vessel they had all the trappings of European civilization, fine china, wine goblets, dainty linens, ornate furniture.   Unfortunately, when the ship could go no further, the passengers and crew set out on foot and dragged all their stuff with them.   Eventually everyone and everything froze and the people, not sensible of conditions, died, clutching and grabbing and trying to hold on…  Now, I’m relating this experience today because I’d like us to consider the spiritual conditions of the mission we have in and through the risen Christ.   And the prime symbol of that condition is a mountain.  The only question is, which mountain?

  Is it a mountain upon which we slip and slide and no one gets hurt and everybody enjoys the view?   Yes, that could be part of it.    

But, from the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek New Testament there are no apologizes for the rugged and unfriendly terrain upon which God’s salvation story unfolds.  First and foremost, there is Mount Sinai, upon which Moses receives the Decalogue, or the Ten Words.   Mount Sinai is neither the Promised Land, nor a comfortable vacation destination.   Mount Sinai is a brooding place, a locale of smoke and fire from which the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob demands accountability from a people that he might just as well carve out of rock.  

I remember the nervous moment when my history teacher called me out.   Mr. Parrish (which we pronounced Mr. Perish) sported a pointy beard and glaring set of bifocals.   He looked like the devil incarnate.  During class he seemed to enjoy putting his students on the spot, demanding answers to severe questions that seemed very much beyond us.   Anyway, one day, I discovered the difference between Mr. Parrish and the other history teachers in my high school.  My friend Paul used to forge the name of Mr. Puddy, who had tenure and was close to retirement.   He used to scribble the name of his teacher on a library pass and that pass would allow Paul to go to the library rather than study hall.   Well, I reasoned that Mr. Parrish wouldn’t mind if I scribbled his name.  So, without thinking, I did it.

I did it, and the next thing I knew, the devil confronted me before homeroom.   He said, “You misused my name.  You wrote my name without asking me to write it myself.  And now, Scott, I have to re-evaluate who you are…”   Mr. Parrish, as I remember him, was like my Mount Sinai.   I’d glad that I met him when I did, but I couldn’t live very long in that glare.

Second on the list of possible mountains, there is Mount Zion.   Mount Zion refers to one of the five peaks upon which the city of Jerusalem has been built.   Originally, Jerusalem had been a fortress and the severity of the rock formations made it seem like the most perfect and permanent place, maybe even God’s own footstool.   Israel claimed (and still claims) Mount Zion to be the sign and seal of God’s favor.   The only problem with this claim, as we seen, is that Mount Zion has been perpetually under siege, conquered and re-conquered—with the effect that the people who worship and serve from this mountain are prone to becoming extremely defensive.

“What ever happened to Christmas?”  The man, whose family had purchased and maintained the church’s organ, wanted us to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem in November.   I explained that we wanted to wait for Christmas.   He didn’t understand the idea of waiting, and indicated that if we didn’t start playing Christmas carols earlier in the season he would take his family’s money to Mount Zion United Methodist church down the street.

 But, finally, we have the mountains of Galilee, a place once called The District of the Nations by the prophet Isaiah.   The geological features in this region include the mountain upon which Jesus preached the legendary Sermon on the Mount and the mountain upon which he had been transfigured.   Mark’s gospel also refers to Jesus as retreating to and praying on a mountain side…Moreover, when the risen Christ scans the horizon for a launching pad from which he might send out his bedraggled disciples, he finds one here.  Here in Galilee.   Here in Galilee, the Crucified and Risen Savior finds a sending mountain.  And again, what we’re driving at are the true spiritual conditions in and through which we make the journey that God intends us.   And again, as I look around at the institutional church, I have to wonder whether or not most people have set up shop in the shadow of the wrong mountain. The risen Christ, you see, directs us to Galilee.   He doesn’t want us to be always cowering in the presence of Mr. Parrish or Mr. Perish.   Nor does he want us to be overly defensive, always protecting what we imagine that we can’t live without.   Instead, he arranges to meet the bedraggled disciples—all twelve minus one—on a sending mountain in Galilee.  And if you think that Galilee is too far away, let me suggest that a sending mountain can happen almost anywhere, even in a valley.     

A sending mountain has these crucial characteristics:

 1.     A sending mountain is less traveled and un-hyped by religious slogans and branding.   Travel it anyway.   Travel it even though the roads may be bad.   

2.     Just as Galilee is the hometown region of Jesus and the original fishermen-followers of Jesus, there may be aspects of your life and my life which have some kind of local flavor.  Don’t be afraid to emphasize things about your history which are peculiar to you, peculiar hurts, peculiar joys and interests. 

3.     A sending mountain overlooks Samaria, and its trails lead to places and to people who do not share our world view.   Similarly, it might be good for us to find that place where we can converse with folks who do not necessarily share our world view, with men, women and children who might ask us questions and challenge what we believe, and who also may be curious about the good news that in Christ we are forgiven and promised new life. 

4.     Galilee is comprised of gritty, messy stuff.   There are seeds, weeds, fish, nets, logs, specks, yokes, oxen—all the material things that help us stay grounded in the world.   Is there a place in your life like that?  Are there things that keep you situated and not always so cerebral or esoteric?    

You may assume that it’s all about life.   And you’d be right.  You may assume that when Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20 describe the empty tomb or the raising of Jesus from the dead that this amazing and emotionally charged story is all about life.  You may assume that, and then not devote another ounce of energy to the thought.  You would then be correct in equating resurrection and life, but you wouldn’t even begin to comprehend the depth of shock and awe that those disciples felt on this day.    

The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, once wrote this simple confession:

“Had I simply understood that life had no meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that was my lot.  But I could not satisfy myself with that.  Had I been like a man living in a wood from which there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road”  (A Confession, p. 22).

You see, the Bible understands life to have a meaning, and that’s the shock of it.   It has meaning and purpose beyond biology and genetics, beyond psychology and economics.  Life has meaning which transcends its own end, and that meaning for the Christian involves Jesus of Nazareth.   It involves the way he came, calling into question the way things are.  It involves the way he taught about the one lost sheep.  It involves the way he healed the outsider.   And finally, it involves his humility and his death upon the cross.   Life has meaning.   And the only question that remains is what people like us are supposed to do with that meaning.   Are we supposed to simply believe it and go to heaven when we die?   Or, is there some meaning thing to do here and now?

“On this mountain,” says Isaiah 25,

“the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food, filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”

That sounds like a cool party, doesn’t it?   And maybe for the vast majority of people that’s a picture of the good life.  Who isn’t up for a shindig like that?   But verse six is very clear to point out that, as far as the Lord of hosts is concerned, the party will be “for all peoples.”  And to be honest with you, that’s kind of shock too.   More shocking than the fine wine that will be served or the food filled with marrow that will be consumed, is the notion that this feast is for everybody.

When I was a student at Penn State we had this memorable gathering of friends.  Not everyone was invited.  Just a few.   Just a select group of us had been drinking beer and playing poker.  But when Harry showed up with his sandwich from Subway, my roommate, Mike, and I looked at each other and knew what we had to do.   Harry had placed his hoagie down at the table, between us.  He then went into the kitchen to get a drink.  Upon his return, the sandwich vanished.   With a smirk he scanned the room.   Although we smelled like onions and salami, Mike and I shrugged our shoulders.   Well, when Harry had time to study our smug and self-satisfied faces, he went back into the kitchen, grabbed the fire extinguisher and proceeded to spray the entire party with a heavy shroud of white foam.   We chased him from the apartment and threw snowballs as he ran down the street.  

And, here’s the thing that sticks in my mind.   The last sentence that I remember somebody shouting as this exile ran from our party went like so: “You’re dead, Harry!   You’re dead!”   Ah, the good ol’ days… And I’m relating to you this bawdy reminiscence because, of all the pageants, parades, banquets and festive gatherings that I’ve hosted and to which I’ve been invited, that inebriated phrase still echoes.  It still haunts me:   “You’re dead.”  

Why?  Is that where every exclusive, members-only celebration is headed?   Is it really true that some of us will enjoy a great abundance while others will barely survive on table scraps—and then that’s it?  Are some just blessed with health, wealth and happiness while others get by on proscription medication—and then it’s over? 

Denise Levertov writes about a smartly dressed woman she observed at the cemetery, “a woman hurrying towards another grave/ hands outstretched, stumbling/ in her haste; who then/ fell at the stone she made for/ and lay sprawled upon it, sobbing, sobbing and crying out to it…”  

In a poem, called, Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford writes about the carcass of a deer he found by the side of Wilson River road:  “her side was still warm; her fawn lay there waiting,/ alive, still, never to be born.”  Then after thinking hard “for us all,” the poet pushes her over the edge into the river.

And you see, something in me (something in us, I think) wants to agree.   We want to admit the edge of death, that point beyond which we won’t be able to think or to feel anything, that point beyond which Harry doesn’t matter.  He’s dead.   And yet, just when we assume that we know what life’s all about…

“And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever (Isaiah 25:7).