The Narrow Gate

Welcome to the continuation of my blog, post-seminary. Ministry and evangelism have brought me back home to Chattanooga. I welcome your company on my journey.

The original blog, Down In Mississippi, shared stories from 2008 and 2009 of the hope and determination of people in the face of disaster wrought by the hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, of work done primarily by volunteers from churches across America and with financial support of many aid agencies and private donations and the Church. My Mississippi posts really ended with the post of August 16, 2009. Much work, especially for the neediest, remained undone after the denominational church pulled out. Such is the nature of institutions. The world still needs your hands for a hand up. I commend to you my seven stories, Down in Mississippi I -VII, at the bottom of this page and the blog posts. They describe an experience of grace.



Friday, November 10, 2017

Day 1791 – Orphans in person, not in heart



A sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, November 5, 2017, Spring City, TN.
The Revised Common Lectionary offers Micah 3:5-12, a passage that castigates the priesthood as he discussed the coming day of the Lord in addition to the passages in Matthew and 1 Thessalonians. It is worth reading that passage in Micah, and the similar passage in Isaiah 1:10- 17, before you read Matthew 23:1-12 that captures the essence of the message in Isaiah and Micah. Things haven’t changed much since the time of Isaiah.
Jesus takes the priests to task for being more concerned with their status among the community, the financial benefits from operating the temple, placing heavy financial burdens on their parishioners by demanding more offering, and pointing out their sins but ignoring their own. Their focus is inward, self-centered.
Does it sound familiar? Aren’t these favorite tactics of many modern-day media preachers, and for that matter, politicians - to get you all worked up so you give them money or their vote but in the end, they just line their pockets with your money?
Jesus says, you only have one spiritual instructor, one real preacher, and for that matter, only one father, and that is the father in Heaven. God loves you and puts even the loneliest orphan in the seat of honor. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, an important part of Reformed belief is that conscience is the supreme authority to understand scripture, not a pastor like me, or your own. We may offer insight into the original language of the scripture and our own ideas of interpretation but in the end the most valuable “theology” is the theology you work out on your own.
Another essential point of Reformed Christian belief to decide what behavior scripture advocates is that God is with us in the Holy Spirit. God was with humanity in person, after all God created everything, but God and humanity became alienated and separated by sin. Jesus was among us walking the Earth in the act of reconciliation with God, but he now is in heaven at the right hand of God and absent in person. Now, we have the Holy Spirit as our advocate - our defender and our teacher. The Holy Spirit is the path to understand God’s call for living for us. When we say righteousness is written in our hearts, we are recalling the passage in Leviticus that Jade read last week, “You shall be holy because I am holy.” That means God is calling us to hold God in our heart. But it is more than that. I think of the Holy Spirit as our being present in God’s heart.  If God says, “You shall be holy because I am holy,” it must mean we are in God’s heart. Think about it.
Paul shared this idea to the Thessalonians. Paul reminds them of his care and affection for them. He laments that he is prevented from returning to them no matter how hard he tries. He says, “Satan blocks him.” Perhaps he is in jail, or he is facing other hostile difficulties, but he tells them that he holds them dearly in his heart. He expresses his happiness over their joy and their persistence in proclaiming the good news even though their neighbors and fellow Jewish congregants harass them and do everything they can to stop their proclamation of the Word. They accepted the gospel not as human words but as God’s, their teacher’s word.
Listen to Paul’s words. In this case the Pew bible (New International Version) has a more accurate Greek translation of some language than the New Revised Standard Version I often use. The NRSV says “As for us, brothers and sisters, when, for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you” But the pew bible translates the Greek to say, “But brothers (and sisters) when we were torn away from you for a short time” which is more accurate description of his violent separation by the mobs from the Thessalonians.  But the NIV continues with the less dramatic “in person, not in thought”), while the NRSV uses the more accurate, or elegant, image “separated from you—in person, not in heart,” to describe this emotional but not spiritual separation.
You can see the reason some translators use “orphan” but I think the alternative translation does a better job of describing the emotional pain of a forceful separation as “when we were torn away from you…”
Paul had to send a message sent under hardship that he surely would have rather shared directly from his mouth, were possible to stand before them. He is doing what he would have done had he been there in person!
I think it might be worthwhile to imagine Paul’s lament in the way it might have been received by the Thessalonians. “I regret that I am forced to send my praise and love for you by letter and not by voice. Brothers (and sisters) it grieves us that we were torn away from you after so short time after we first met, but you know we were torn away only in person not in our heart. We want so desperately to see you face to face rather than send this letter, oh so dearly, we wanted to come to you so much—certainly I can speak for myself, Paul, that I wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. Do you know for whom we have a great hope, you know for whom we have a great joy to brag victoriously to our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? Yes, you are our glory and joy!
Think about the power of these words. Has anyone ever said something like this to you?
I remember some advice my Dad gave my brother and me years ago. His Dad died when he was three years old and his mother remarried.  My dad was very close to his step-dad who was an electrician and traveled to where he could find the jobs. My dad told us something about his stepfather that obviously touched him deeply and shaped his own ideas.
He told us why he always made a point of being sure we knew he loved us, not only by the way he treated us, but by telling us in word on almost every occasion he could.  My dad said his stepdad was close to him and treated him well, but he never remembered his stepdad saying he loved him, or heard his stepdad brag about him, not even when he went into the army in WWII. Much later I decided part of the reason was that men of my dad’s and granddad’s generation and place generally were not very open about their feelings. I have always felt my Dad made an effort most men of his time did not make. He told my brother and I that not hearing “I love you” from his dad convinced him to be certain that we would always be sure we knew we were loved in his heart.
This is the special message Paul shares with the Thessalonians. His words show his great strength of character and faith, and his admiration for the faith and love of the Thessalonians. Paul’s true feelings are a deeply intimate expression of care.  How many of you would blush to hear someone talk about you that way?  
Paul also seems to have a good feel for the fact that sometimes we do things that reflect what we feel without knowing it.  This is why he was so happy over the faith of the Thessalonians, they persisted in faith and proclamation in the face of attack by their fellow citizens without even thinking about it.
You may remember that I explained last week, Paul constantly encourages his congregations to find examples of good behavior in his actions and to adopt them to shape the way they interact with each other and with the community. What greater way to proclaim the heartfelt love and compassion of the Good News than by showing what is in your heart?
So, I invite you to think about Paul’s affection, that he so loved the Thessalonians that they were in his heart even though he had been physically torn from them by the disturbances in Thessalonica, and to ask, “What is our perspective on this passage today?”
On one hand, I know by human nature that there is a lot of estrangement or separation between family members and friends. People say something, or post something on Facebook that hurts someone else’s feelings, sometimes unintended, at other times, we just don’t think out beforehand the consequence of what we say very well.  Some of us hear something second-hand and conclude it is a problem, though it might not be true.  We have members of the congregation who are estranged or separated from the rest of us and this is a harmful situation.  
I know that it is easy to get so involved in our day-to-day worries that we do not stay in tune with people around us.  It isn’t necessarily that people are mean or insensitive, they just let everything distract them so that they miss, or forget, the good things others have or are doing in our congregation.
There are all sorts of “theology” and teaching about good and bad behavior in Paul’s writing, but when Paul is boiled down to his essence, this is the message he gives us. The God News is all about holding and treasuring others in our heart.  It is unbelievably difficult, I think impossible, to truly hold someone dear in your heart and hold a grudge or stay angry with them. Paul knows Christian fellowship depends upon that.
In my own life, my Dad’s story about his stepdad often comes back as a really powerful lesson. His story goes to my heart. I didn’t always realize how important regularly expressing one’s love for another can be until my two boys, now grown young adults, came along. Just like our own young people here, they are precious to me in my heart. I try so hard to be sure my boys get the message I love them, even today, though they are not near enough to hug right now. They are in my heart. Our young people are in my heart because they are part of this congregation and its call to ministry (and, of course, so are the rest of you!).
The question before us as a congregation is not just how we care for the community, with our Helping Hands Food Pantry, with our Halloween biblical enactments, with our Gift of Giving pre-Advent program, but how we care for each other.  What is important is how we brag on their spiritual gifts, how a congregant always seem to be here to help, how our congregation shows up at almost every congregational event with their children or grandchildren, and how much we love them as fellow Christians.
I think the things that bothers me the most with regard to my sons are the times I got mad at them for something, or so engrossed in my job I might have overlooked them. I worried then that I would not be there when they might have had an important question, and I worry today that I might have missed some of the times when I should have been there. So, I never stop telling them I love them, and hopefully act like it.
There were two sets of generations involved in my story, my dad and granddad’s with my brother and me, and my sons with my dad and me. Because of that lesson, I plan to be sure always that our young people here in our congregation know that they are in my heart and encourage you, young and old, to do the same. We will always encourage them to remember this for their own sake and for the sake of the people they will touch with their lives.
Paul challenges us to keep our fellow members of this congregation in our hearts and brag on them, especially the ones we have crossed swords. Be sure you do your best to imitate Paul and glorify God. People will notice and remember your love, even decades of years later.

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