Before We Get to the Upper Room

 

    What is it today? What is my heart doing and why? Heart and lung and unidentified pains. Heart and lung and sudden onset migraines. Dislocated hips. Hospital tests and procedures. I am frail and vulnerable, seeking care.

Unspoken silence.

    Years of pain, howling wind and a house a’ fire. The familiar rhythm of struggle. Something missing – a loss of spark. But the inevitable doubt is tinder for the fire.

Is this the restoration time?

    Yes, but not just yet. It is not for you to know. Between the was and the will be. Between dry bones and breathing wind. I’m on fire or soon will be. Head and heart. Flesh and bone. Spirit and soul all at once.

Unspoken silence.

    
    Come wind. Come fire. Burn, breathe, blow. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Love Leads to Truth

Last Sunday the pastor at the United Methodist church I attend (Pastor Chad) was out of town for the UMC annual conference. He asked me to fill in for him.  I did - but I forgot to post a copy of the sermon here on the old blog.

Love Leads to Truth

As the co-director of the Newton Community Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s play – The Crucible – I have spent the last several weeks, the last couple of months thinking about the Puritans and the Salem witch trials of 1692.  I have also been thinking about the events that inspired Miller to write the play – the red scare, the communist menace, the House Un-American Activities Committee and the outrageous accusations of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  I’ve been thinking about truth and lies – but since we closed last weekend, you’ve missed your chance to see our production of the play, and I’m glad to be done – mostly done thinking about these things.

But before I move on altogether…

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, and the Roman prefect’s question has been alternately described through the centuries as either the sincere question of an earnest seeker of wisdom or (more frequently) as the smug, cynical question of a weary skeptic who has grown tired of competing truth claims.  But the question remains: What is truth?

What is truth and how can we know it? In an age of fact checkers and snopes.com, what is truth?  In a time when our president has made over 10,000 false or misleading statements in his time in office – so far [i]– what is truth and how can we know it? Facts are ignored. Lies are spread.  And the witticism that has been attributed to at least a dozen different individuals seems true – “A lie will go around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

Before leaving his disciples, Jesus said to them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the father, and he will send another companion who will be with your forever. This companion is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can’t receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him because he lives with you and will be with you.” John 14:15 – 17

So we, as followers of Jesus, have this Spirit of Truth to live in us and to be with us forever and yet Christians often seem as blind to the truth as the rest of the world who neither sees nor recognizes that spirit.  In the history of the Church we have multiplied examples of Christians both telling and believing lies and falsehoods of all kinds. Even with the Spirit that will guide us in all truth (John 16:13), the Spirit who is truth (1 John 5:6), we seem as susceptible and prone to untruth as anyone else.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” So how can we recognize and agree upon the truth as Christians, as Methodists, as members of St. Luke UMC?

Lately I’ve been wondering if the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” (Exodus 20: 16) might mean something more than simply, “don’t tell lies.” I recognize of course that the 9^th commandment is specifically about false testimony in a legal setting (Freedman 139) but what if we thought of bearing false witness as that carrying around of lies and falsehoods? What it we thought of it as including those untruths that we are unwilling to release?

It can be difficult to let go of those untruths – particularly when they either flatter or embellish our opinion of ourselves or when it mocks and distorts our enemies. Our pride and our vanity can blind us to the untrue things we believe about ourselves. We are blind to the thousand justifications and excuses that we make for our own shortcomings. And we nurse and rehearse the slanders and mischaracterizations of our enemies. The things we like to believe about them may have begun as slight exaggerations or rhetorical hyperbole for effect, but we go over them again and again, like picking at a sore that just won’t heal, until it becomes infected and inflamed; they become the lies and false witnesses that we bear with us everywhere we go.

What if “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” means that we should release these falsehoods? This would require a rigorous self-examination that we often find too difficult and unpleasant. But can the Spirit of Truth be said to inhabit us now and forever if we are clinging to and embracing those lies and calumnies? Can the spirit of truth guide us into all truth if we are bearing these false testimonies against our neighbors in our hearts?

Today, on this Pentecost Sunday –we celebrate the unity of the early church, gathered together in one accord (Acts 2:1) in the mighty wind and burning fire of the Holy Spirit. And if we want that same unity of the Spirit- the spirit of truth- we must give up our treasured falsehoods.

Before Jesus left his disciples he gave them a promise that another Comforter would come for them – but he prefaced that promise with a condition and a command. “If you love me you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father and he will send you another companion.” But what commandment?  A few sentences before this he said to them, “I give you a new commandment: love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other.” (John 13: 34-35)

Love leads to truth, or it at least opens us up to be able to receive it. If we will love each other – and even love our enemies – we will not want to believe all the horrible, untrue things we’ve been told, and that we tell ourselves. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

“Teach us to utter living words of truth which all may hear
the language all may understand when love speaks loud and clear
till every age and race and clime shall blend their creeds in one
and earth shall form one family by whom thy will is done.”

O Spirit of the Living God, Thou Light and Fire Divine- by Henry Hallam Tweed

Freedman, David Noel.  The Nine Commandments: Uncovering the Hidden Pattern of Crime and Punishment in the Hebrew Bible. Doubleday. New York, NY. 2000.

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[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/29/president-trump-has-made-more-than-false-or-misleading-claims/?noredirect=on

Crazy, Bloody Pentecost Sunday

Yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, was a crazy day for our little church – maybe not as crazy as that first Pentecost Sunday with the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and the dancing tongues of fire, and people breaking out with speeches in an astounding variety of languages, but crazy enough for us.

To begin, my wife was out of town, leaving me and our two teenage children to cover the things she usually does on a Sunday morning. This is not a hardship, but I’m not much of a morning person; getting myself up and dressed on time is sometimes a challenge. Even so, we managed to do pretty well. We were all awake and dressed on time, the dog was walked and fed, we stopped to pick up a friend on our way to the church building, the lights were turned on, the doors were unlocked,  the coffee was brewed (thanks be to God), and Sunday School classes were all started on time. I started to think that I might be able to put this day in the win column.

But that’s when things went wild.  One of our church friends, Paul, had a sudden and surprising bloody nose, like someone had turned on the blood faucet, it was pouring out of him. We quickly decided that he should go to the emergency room; a bloody nose may not seem like much, but Paul is 92 years old and it was a LOT of blood.

I helped Paul into my vehicle, difficult to do since he had one hand clenched to his nose with a towel trying to stem the flow of blood.  I asked one of the other church members if he felt comfortable taking care of things while I was gone, and told him that if he needed anything he could count on my kids.

Paul’s nose stopped bleeding after about 40 minutes – during the time that we waited for an ER doctor to become available. There didn’t appear to be any specific cause for the bleeding and, after another waiting for another half hour to see if it would start bleeding again (it didn’t) the doctor said Paul was good to leave.

By the time we arrived back at the church building, the morning service was already concluded; they’d not had much in the way of a sermon, but they’d read all the scripture and prayed and sung the hymns – though they had to pick a couple of different ones since they weren’t familiar with two that were in the program. “We hope that’s okay…”

Of course it was. And Paul was okay. It was just a crazy Pentecost Sunday.

A Blessing for Pentecost Sunday

Come vociferous wind,
come rushing into us;
bring burning tongues
of sacred flame
that we might speak
the holy name.

May we burn-and burn bright.May we speak-and speak true.

May God’s spirit, holy and just

fill you, fill me, fill us
with the power to do what is right,
move us to motion,
and carry us up in the divine wind
that makes all things new.

And, as we have gathered here,
united in one Lord and one Savior,
may we go out now, scattered to our separate ways,
let us go in one Spirit,
united in the language of love.

Biblical Limericks: Flatulence is Funny 2

Pentecost day came with flames and noise;
if you’d like a display ask young boys -
but you might be chagrined,
they’re likely to break wind
and light their farts on fire. Stupid boys.

Acts 2: 1 - 4

Flatulence is Funny 1

Biblical Limericks: When Did the Spirit Come?

Luke says the Spirit came at Pent’cost,
though his telling can’t fully exhaust
the gospel mystery
for in John’s history
it was Easter day, but that’s oft lost.

John 20: 22 / Acts 2: 1 - 2

The Day of the Lord

Scattered from the tower
in the midst of the city that we conspired to build,
splintered and fragmented
by languages we could not and would not share,
we lived our separate lives
anxiously watching for that terrible day
when the sun would turn black
and the sky would dissolve.

But regathered now
in the midst of the city in that dark upper room
when the fires of God burned over our heads
and the noise of a wind echoed all around;
together we realize that
the great and awful day that we feared
is a day to make us whole,
to make us well, to make us one.

Acts 2: 1 – 21

Pentecost Worship Ideas and Bonus Free Background Image

This is something that I've done off and on for Pentecost Sundays in the past several years.  I tape red, yellow, and orange (this year orange, yellow, and pink) streamers to a fan.  Thus you have both the sound of the rushing wind and the tongues of fire.




























And - BONUS - here is an additional free background image for use in Powerpoint (or similar presentation program) for Pentecost.  You're free to download it and to use it in your own projects at home, work, school, or church.  I only ask that you share it freely and that you tell others that you found it here.

More of St. Jude, Patron of Hopeless Cases

On Friday I shared a photo I took a little figurine of St. Jude that I keep in my office.

Here is one more that I took.  In this one you can see some more of the traditional elements of St. Jude's iconography.  The tongue of fire above his head represents his presence in the upper room on the day of Pentecost   He carries in one hand a wooden club (representing the manner of his martyrdom) and in the other he carries a medallion with a picture of Jesus' face on it.

He is the patron Saint of lost and hopeless causes.  And in an unrelated  note (I hope) he is also the patron saint of the Chicago police department.