Our unison reading is found on page 551 of your pew bibles. Psalm 97 says that God reigns. The heavens and the earth rejoice in God. Listen for the word of God as we read it together in Psalm 97.
1 The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!
2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
3 Fire goes before him, and consumes his adversaries on every side.
4 His lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles.
5 The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth.
6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory.
7 All worshipers of images are put to shame, those who make their boast in worthless idols; all gods bow down before him.
8 Zion hears and is glad, and the towns of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments, O God.
9 For you, O LORD, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods.
10 The LORD loves those who hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from the hand of the wicked.
11 Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.
12 Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!
This ends our reading of the psalm. God is about justice and righteousness so God is exalted over all the others. But God is not so powerful that God doesn't care about lowly human beings; God guards and rescues us. Let's listen to the choir.
Our gospel reading is part of Jesus' farewell prayer at the last supper. You may follow along on page 111 in the new testament of your pew Bibles. Listen for the word of God as it is found in John 17:20-26.
20 "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
25 "Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."
This ends our gospel reading. There's a lot going on in this text. Jesus is praying that the world (that would include us) is loved as much as Jesus is loved. God loves us as much as God loves Jesus. Wow.
Jesus is one with God, and he prays that we will be one with each other and with God. If we are at one with each other, then the world will know that God loves us and that God loves the world.
What does that sort of love look like? I have two examples.
Alex Evans is chaplain of the Blacksburg Police Department and also pastor at at the Presbyterian Church there; his wife Ginger is their Christian Education Director. They wrote the national church: “In the recent weeks, we have been overwhelmed with the unimaginable atrocity — and its companions, deep pain and tremendous grief — that arrived in our university, town, and church family in Blacksburg, VA.
We have encountered those common stages that are associated with death: shock, stunning disbelief, anger, heartache, even bargaining. And we have also been challenged to carry on, to find a way forward. We are not “moving on” yet. How can we? We are not back to normal. Is there “normal” after something like this? We know we are forever affected by such pain and tragedy.
In the midst of our heartache and loss, we have been absolutely overwhelmed, too, with a new sense of church.
From the first day, we began receiving emails, notes, calls of care and prayer and support. Through the first week, representatives from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, who literally and figuratively brought the compassion, care, and resources of our denomination to Blacksburg, encouraged us. …
While we have confronted death and loss, while we have grieved and held funerals for college students and professors, while we have prayed for the healing of the wounded, and counseled with dedicated police and their spouses, we have been so well prayed for, cared for, sustained, and blessed by so many others. This has been most heartening and helpful.
We have been embraced and enfolded in love by our sisters and brothers in various parts of the world, with whom we have mission partnerships.
We have been cared for [and] showered with cards and letters, from fellow disciples in Oregon, in Florida, in Arizona, in Maine.” (I sent some e-mails to Blacksburg area churches, and the session send letters, so I think we are the fellow disciples in Oregon that they are talking about.) Isn't this the kind of life and community that Jesus teaches — compassion and prayer, care and support, encouragement and peace?
Our pain and suffering, our laments and longings in Blacksburg have united us with so many around the world and across the ages who have cried out for help from others and from our loving God. We join our cries to those devastated by Katrina, and other hurricanes or disasters. We join our grief to all those in Baghdad who know violence and death so closely. We join our brokenness to all those everywhere who have faced sadness and death so abruptly.
We have a very great church, with an important calling to be Christ's light, hope, peace, and love in the face of all things.
Our new prayer and hope for our church, both locally and globally, is that we could become in all times something of what we have known in recent times. Our prayer and hope is that we could remain always attuned to that which is our core as God's people: trust in Christ's presence and promises which leads us to sincere and compassionate care, and arms around the hurting, and help and healing for the needy, and actions toward a more wholesome, peaceful world. Thank you for being our loving church family especially during these difficult days and may God inspire us to build on that unity and care in our diversity.” 1
The Evans' felt that the church came together to minister to them. That demonstrated God's love.
The other example of demonstrating God's love comes from a book by Anne Lamott. It's called Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith. I am delighted to say the author answered my request to use her story by writing “you have my permission to use the excerpt… and anything else you want to use, forever, into eternity.”
You might think from those words that Anne Lamott is always an extraordinary generous person, but she isn't. She's just like the rest of us. Here's what she writes:
“I've been in charge of Faith Fair for six years, an afternoon in early summer when we rent a colossal inflatable jump house, decorate our church courtyard with balloons and streamers and used car-lot flags, and offer the families of the town lunch, sno-cones, face-painting, crafts. We help them make necklaces and wall hangings from clay. Everything is free, including the raffle tickets, which kids can use to win Frisbees stacked with cool little toys, or videos, or soccer balls. Our choir sings a set of our happier hymns. … It takes a few of us working for weeks to pull it off. I get the equipment, some toys and art supplies; other people handle food, raffle items, music, decorations. … Every year I charge the two big ticket items, the jump house and balloon bouquets, and write checks for rubber balls, jumpropes, and bottles of bubbles.
Nothing went wrong this year at Faith Fair. None of the children got hurt on the jump house, none of the old people fainted in the heat, the PA system worked fine, the choir turnout was big. The pastor, who usually gets to be chairperson of the sno-cone ministry, got to hang out in the shade, talking to everyone who came by, and the teenage face painters adorned every child.
At three in the afternoon, we sent people home, and the jump-house guy came and deflated [it.] The grown-ups stayed to clean, trudging around with aching feet and hefty bags.
Late that night I e-mailed my bill to people on the fair committee. In early sobriety I heard that if you have an idea after ten p.m. it is probably not a good idea—and this was before e-mail. Still, I am always under budget, so even though my mind was a birdhouse of exhaustion, stressed from overstimulation that day, I sent out my bill.
At around eleven, I heard from one woman on the committee that everything looked fine. Then, at eleven-fifteen, I heard from another woman, who said that a man on the committee was sorry, but there was a new accounting system. This year we needed receipts, Visa bill, canceled checks.
A small voice inside me said, “Let this go until tomorrow.” But the arrogant wounded part was astounded. It said, ‘Excuuuuse me?' I was exhausted, and it may just be that ‘system' is not my favorite word, especially when a man is trying to get me to conform to his, even when he is a good man and a casual church friend. In any case, I stared at the second e-mail like someone needing the Heimlich maneuver. Then I sat around glowering.
This reaction makes no sense at all to me. … I love my church family more than life, and most of me knew that things would sort themselves out. …
Except—in my defense—I come by my money nuttiness honestly. My parents had terrible problems with money; they never had enough. … I have worked for twenty years on getting over some of my fear and shame about money and where has it gotten me?…If God has all the power and I've bravely shined so many flashlights into these dark corners, why doesn't God let me get well?
I reread the second e-mail. And then I ratted the man out: I e-mailed everyone on the committee, and included a copy to our pastor, so she could see how unjustly I was being treated, how I was being hassled. I wrote, ‘ Clearly, I do not have what it takes to be a Presbyterian, ‘ which meant to be an anal-retentive petty bureaucrat. And, I added, ‘I simply cannot spend one more second on this matter.' Then I hit Send.
I felt powerful and righteous, for several minutes. Then I felt like hell. I was a snitch. Why had I sent that e-mail?
….I could not go back. I needed a cooling off period. But something in me cried out: Annie! Stop! Church is where your recovery began, a year before you got sober. This is about how weird your parents were about money, how your father withheld money from your mother, and how desperately you loved him. The guy at church is an innocent bystander. This is not your stuff. It's your mom's and dad's. The man didn't know your parents. How can he even be involved?
Finally I thought of one true thing, which is that sometimes I act just as juvenile as I ever did, but as I get older, I do it for shorter periods of time. I find my way back to the path sooner, where there is always one last resort: get a glass of water and call a friend.
I got some water and called a friend who always stays up late.
She was sound asleep.
But after I woke her, she insisted I tell her what was going on. I spilled it all out.…She laughed gently at the bad parts and said ‘Oh, hon,' like a sweet waitress in a…coffee shop.
She did not say much, but let me get my guck into the air…. And as I told her my bleak and embarrassing story, it felt like dirty clothes. I'd been trying to wash and dry it inside myself, in my embarrassed mind, which doesn't really make much sense, laundry wise. When you hang things outside, they get air, warmth, light, and you see that even with the stains and frayed collar, the garment has kept you covered and warm for a long time.
Then my friend spoke. She said that when she'd gotten sober, she saw that even though you get the monkey off your back, the circus never really leaves town. ‘Make yourself a nice snack,' she told me.
I made oatmeal with applesauce.
…I wrote back to everyone on the committee, plus the pastor, and said, I am sorry, ignore my earlier e-mail. Please forgive me. I wrote ‘ I know you already do.' This made me feel like crying, because I was so grateful…. By the next morning, before I left for church, everyone had e-mailed me back. The man wrote: 'We are here with only love for you Annie.' 2
In our psalm, we read that God rescues us from the hand of the wicked. I know that the psalmist was speaking of political and social enemies, but I think we can interpret it very personally. God rescues us from our own wicked hands. In God, Anne found the courage to apologize. The church members, also in God, reflected God's love and generosity. They rescued her by telling her they forgave her. We in this church can give and receive generosity as well, celebrating that Christ may be in us, at least some of the time.
1 Evans, Rev. Alex W. and Ginger Taylor Evans “A new sense of church: Blacksburg leaders reflect on PC(USA) response to Va. Tech tragedy” reprinted for PCUSA News , May 15, 2007 with permission of The Presbyterian Outlook.
2 Lamott, Anne, Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith, New York:Riverhead Books, 2007, p. 246-253. I quote from her book gratefully and will keep her e-mail to me forever. I regret having to edit the story in the interest of time; those of you who read her whole chapter or her whole book will be blessed by it. |
First Presbyterian Church