It always has bothered me that Jesus’ robe is always whiter than anyone elses.
Jesus was a casual person.
we are told that Jesus spent his entire ministry among common everyday people –
in very casual settings, (remember?)
I remember it was a Friday, about 11:30 – it was before noon –
I was in the car.
I had the radio on and the traffic report came on.
She said, “Traffic is bumper to bumper southbound on the Schukhill expressway from the Valley Forge interchange all the way down to I-95.
And I-95 is bumper to bumper from Chester all the way to the Turnpike.
And traffic is bumper to bumper northbound on the Schuykill Expressway from I-95 all the way to Valley Forge interchange.”
The summer weekend migration had already started – before noon on Friday.
The roads full of people going somewhere – pursuing happy times.
Perhaps you saw the cartoon, when Charlie Brown was going away for a couple of days, Linus says to him, "I guess I won't be seeing you until Monday, Charlie Brown, so have a happy weekend."
To which Charlie Brown replies, "Thank you."
Then, after he ponders for a moment, Charlie asks, "Incidentally, what is happiness?"
It’s summertime in the Delaware Valley.
And the unmistakable signs of summer are being seen all around.
People are out jogging more.
Convertibles go around with the tops down.
All sorts of people with sorts of shapes and sizes exercising their constitutional right to wear shorts.
Golf leagues and softball leagues have started.
For most folks around here, summertime is a more relaxed, casual, and playful time of year.
One thing that is especially characteristic of the days of summer is a more laid-back, informal attitude towards dining, right?
People come to picnics and cookouts, backyard barbecues in a various state of dress – or undress: golf shirts;
wild, loud, plaid Bermuda shorts;
T-shirts with all manner of strange pictures or sayings on the front;
sandals;
flip-flops;
bathing suits;
hair tangled from salt water,
legs covered with sand from the beach,
sweaty from softball games,
whatever.
It seems that casualness got its definition from what we have done around here in the summertime.
For those of you who notice such things, you might of observed in the newsletter that I am embarked on a series of sermons this month that I call What Summertime Teaches Us About Our Faith.
And today the lesson is that Casualness is Good.
Four or five years ago the Session broached the subject of making our summer worship experience somewhat more casual that usual.
I suggested that we needed to spread the word that casual was the order of the day.
No jackets and ties for the men – including the preacher.
And our service and music should reflect a more casual nature as well.
Now, this is not done to turn our noses up on the worship has been done here for the past 85 years,
but we do this to show that really, Jesus was a casual person –
a very casual person.
So casual, in fact, that the proper folks who knew how to look religious and knew how to play the religious game, were always coming down on him for violating some code or another.
Now, you what Jesus looked like, don’t you?
We have seem hundreds of images depicting Jesus in paintings and sculpture and film and whatever.
And, always Jesus is shown in a white robe, right?
And, it always has bothered me that Jesus’ robe is always whiter than anyone else’s.
Why is Jesus’ robe cleaner and brighter and whiter than anyone else’s.
We are told that Jesus spent most of his lifetime in the Judean hill country –
it had to have been hot and windy and dusty and dirty.
I am sure that Jesus got dirty and stinky like everybody else.
And we are told that people did come to him and ask him to clean up his act.
This is not the way ministers are supposed to do, Jesus.
You shouldn’t be associating with those folks,
and you shouldn’t be eating and drinking so much,
and you should observe the appropriate behaviors for Sabbath time.
And, by the way, –
well, you get the idea.
You know, Jesus never taught any upper level religion courses in the local university,
Jesus never wrote a theological text book,
Jesus never lead a seminar on spirituality,
Jesus never preached on satellite television from Yankee Stadium like Billy Graham did a short while back.
In fact, we are told that Jesus spent his entire ministry among common everyday people –
in very casual settings, (remember?):
a wedding party,
in a living room of someone’s house,
on the roadside,
in the field,
on a hilltop,
at a lakefront,
– it doesn’t matter where you turn, this is what you find.
Jesus’ ministry was a very casual ministry –
with many everyday occurrences used as “teaching moments” –
rather than formalized instructional settings.
No one ever accused Jesus of being formal.
And, you I need to remind ourselves that Jesus was very much a casual guy.
This is reflected in all kinds of ways including in how he prayed –
telling us that instead of addressing our prayers to Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, Majestic and all powerful, etc, etc.
we should address our prayers: “Our Father...”
Actually, that is not an accurate translation of the words he use – he used language much more informal than that.
He actually said, we should pray “Dear Daddy, . . .”
Every once and a while we need to remember that much of what we do and expect today, is a construct of our times and our ideas of reference.
So, I think it is good that we openly say that our worship this summer is casual.
Jesus was –
and we should take some clues from that.
Jesus was a casual guy.
He was totally informal in all he ever did.
And, when the Disciples came back from the first mission he sent them on,
and they told him all that they had done and taught,
Jesus said to them:
Now, “COME AWAY BY YOURSELVES TO A LONELY PLACE, AND REST AWHILE.” (6:31)
That’s what Mark said Jesus said!
Take a break now.
Get away for a while.
Rest.
Relax.
Recuperate.
Rejuvenate.
Jesus knew we all need that.
Jesus did.
The Disciples did.
We do, too.
How many times did Jesus say to his disciples, "Let us go off by ourselves to some place where we will be alone and can rest awhile?"
How many times do we read, "So they went away in a boat to a deserted place by themselves?"
Have we ever entertained the notion that perhaps Jesus set the best example for our lives when he went away often to be alone and contemplate on that which was most important?
Jesus seems to be calling us to observe a summertime of leisure.
Leisure has been defined as whatever restores you to peace while you are doing it.
So, gardening, golf, reading, puzzles, and many other things can restore us to peace as we do them.
A cousin of leisure is the word "paragon."
A paragon means "the second thing that we do in life that keeps the first thing in tune."
So, a leisure thing restores us from a paragon thing.
It was that catholic nun in Calcutta, Mother Teresa, who said:
"There are no big deals anymore,
just small things to be done with great love."
You wouldn’t know this but for centuries the church has divided up the year into seasons –
times of emphasis –
we Presbyterians have been paying more attention to the church seasons the past 40 years or so, and you know some of them:
Advent, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost.
But, the longest season is the one we are in now.
And it is called “Ordinary Time.”
This is the season of “Ordinary Time.”
It is ordinary time that we live and slug it out for the common good while no one is looking.
It is in the middle of ordinary time that God comes with extraordinary moments that make all others bearable, believable, and worthwhile.
A lot of us go through our lives looking for and waiting for that one special event to happen that will clear up a problem or a pain that it carries.
Seldom if ever is there a word or event that heals our pain.
And, often we learn that that pain is healed at a moment when we are not looking.
I have read that in the last century there was a leather-worker who had made a name for himself through the art of creweling leather.
His designs were famous and people coveted his works of art.
One day while sharpening his tools, something went horribly wrong. One of the tools disintegrated and flying pieces of steel hit him in both eyes.
And he was left unable to see.
It took many weeks for him to go back into his workshop.
He felt the tools he would never use again and the leather with images he would never release.
Anger overtook him.
He started stabbing at the leather in rage.
His tears and anger were overdue.
Without knowing it he stabbed a piece of paper.
In time at that same desk he would learn that on the other side of the paper that he stabbed were little bumps.
He learned that he could arrange the bumps in sequence.
It was at that desk that Louie Braille learned to lead thousands of people, including himself, out of darkness into light.
Later he would conclude that while looking at his blindness by a different angle of vision, he was healed.
He was healed when his tragedy was turned into service for others that were blind like himself.
It was in an extraordinary accident that he was blinded.
It was in an ordinary moment in time that he discovered what could lead him and others to new light and life.
This is ordinary time for the church.
This is summertime for us and all who live in this part of the world.
I do think if we didn’t have a summertime, we would have to invent it.
Because, we so need a time when expectations on us are different.
We are judged by different standards.
We take on different behaviors.
It is in the summertime that we hear the message:
It’s OK.
It’s OK to take off your shoes.
It’s OK to goof off a while.
It’s OK to do nothing.
It’s OK to be informal, to be casual.
I am sure that if Jesus showed up today, he would not be dressed in a bleached white robe,
he would probably be wearing a golf shirt –
or a t-shirt, perhaps.
And he would say to us, Right On.
The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard these words during a worship service August 14, 2011.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
All Moments Are Precious
You can’t copyright precious moments.
In fact, our faith tells us that our life is better when we are able to see and to recognize that all our moments are precious.
You don’t have to look very deep to realize that one of the persistent themes of our Bible is that all moments are precious.
The Psalmist thought that all moments are precious.
And we could do nothing less than recognize that our God is present –
our God is with us – in all our moments of time – regardless of the circumstance.
And that makes all moments precious.
I remember when I first started thinking about this topic, I searched for precious moments on the internet.
What I found out was astounding to me.
There is actually a copyright on precious moments.
(I suppose if you should actually experience a precious moment, you would have to pay somebody for the privilege of having one.
I want a dollar for every precious moment you experience.
At the very least, it would get in the way of any of us ever acknowledging that we recognized a precious moment when it happened.)
Actually, for some 40 years or so, Precious Moments has been copyrighted to refer to super-cute drawings of children with big tear-drop eyes in various poses to evoke a feeling of cute togetherness, you know?
(The kind of drawing that is reproduced on the front of our bulletin today.)
Throughout the years these drawings have been produced in a line of dolls that illustrate the theme.
And they even became the theme for a theme park in the Midwest.
But, for me, this is another way important expressions of faith are highjacked of any original intrinsic meaning.
You don’t have to look very deep to realize that one of the persistent themes of our Bible is that all moments are precious.
If I were to ask, I do believe that everyone in this room could come up with a list of a least ten moments in time that you remember and recall as “precious moments”.
Many will identify a birth of a child as a recognized “precious” moment.
And there a lot of experiences that are common to many people that are thought of as “precious” moments.
But, each of us have a few memories of unique moments that made an impact on us – and we just knew them to be precious moments.
I remember last summer, Suzanne’s nephew and his young family came to see us.
They were on their way back home to Montreal after a three week family vacation that included a visit to Florida.
He recounted that after driving all night on the way down there, they arrived in Daytona Beach early in the morning – before sunrise.
He and his wife carried their two sleeping children into the room and placed them on beds,
and as he was unloading some needed baggage from the car he became aware that it was getting lighter fairly rapidly.
And as circumstance would have it, the room to which they were assigned faced the east and sun began to pop up way over the horizon of the sea.
He described it as a sign that said slow down,
this is a precious moment,
this time of your life is sacred time.
A number of stories were shared at Nason Clark’s service, but one that was not told is one that he to me about the time he and a friend went for a bike ride.
I guess this would have been around 1930 or a little thereafter, so there was not too much development – or roads, for that matter – around here.
Well, he told me that he and his friend ended up in a field somewhere over where Lawrence Park now is.
And when he and his friend came upon this field of spectacular wildflowers, they became aware of swarms of butterflies – butterflies by the millions fluttering over the field.
Describing it still takes his breath away – as it did on that day so long ago.
Truly a precious moment.
No, you can’t copyright precious moments.
In fact, our faith tells us that our life is better when we are able to see and to recognize that all our moments are precious.
The call of God is to be present at each moment as it arrives.
Psalm 90 informs us that God is uniquely able to experience a "telescoping" of time –
that for God a thousand years are like a day,
but even more intriguing, that a day is as rich and meaningful as a thousand years.
Quite literally every moment matters eternally – which means that this present moment counts forever.
One of the great human obsessions of the modern age is to make time jump through more hoops –
to force time to be more productive.
That's why so many of us are suckers for the next generation of computers, date books, blackberries, and smart phones.
ESPN has endeavored to fit more than one hour of sports highlights into a one-hour show.
That's why NFL kickoffs that are returned for a touchdown (without doubt one of the most dramatic moments in football) are now being replayed as if the fast-forward button is stuck.
Instead of presenting the play at normal speed, which consumes all of twelve or fourteen seconds, the action is frequently speeded up –
now consuming just six or seven seconds –
so viewers can quickly move on to see another highlight,
and then another, and then another.
First-time visitors to London frequently conclude that they may have only one chance to explore such an historic city.
Therefore they sign on for one of those everything-included-hurry-up-and-keep-moving tours.
"Now here's The Tower of London, there's Big Ben, and just over your right shoulder is Buckingham Palace."
You know the drill.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Stand over there and let me get your picture in front of the lions at Trafalgar Square.
Wow, there sure are a lot of pigeons.
Hey, look at the time. We gotta go.
That is all too often an out-of-towner's only exposure to the city of London.
Experienced Londoners know that years are required simply to begin to comprehend what this place has meant to human history.
A tourist cannot possibly appreciate that perspective in a four-hour sweep across town.
With all of our hearts, we must resist the temptation to become tourists in our own lives.
"I'd like to take the four-hour highlight tour of parenting, please."
"Come on, kids, it's time to do third grade.
Stand right there and let me get your picture.
Okay, on to the next stage in your life."
We must refuse to buy tickets for the quick walk-through of the Museum of Religious Experiences.
God calls us not to rush through the time that has been given to us,
but to be fully alive to God and to each other –
actually to become residents within these moments we've been provided.
Why?
Because, every one of these moments counts forever.
So, we need to embrace God’s perspective on time.
And, we need to embrace God's shape to time.
You see, there is a God-ordained shape to human life.
This shape is what gives our lives a meaningful rhythm.
Mornings and evenings, mornings and evenings – it's like a tide.
When we rebel against that rhythm, there are consequences.
What time is it any more?
The nightly news on television reports of an event that happened in Asia this morning.
But, that wasn’t actually this morning – or yesterday morning – but they are reporting on something that happened tomorrow morning!
The boundaries and shape of daily life are rapidly becoming blurred.
One can now shop on-line any hour of the day.
Maybe you’ve seen that television commercial where a group of stunned consumers are standing in the middle of the night outside a conventional store at a mall.
No lights are on.
The customers are puzzled:
"It's closed. Man, that is so weird."
We are taught to expect that everything should be available every hour of every day.
What season is it any more?
We no longer have to wait for summer to get strawberries and watermelons.
We can find ripe peaches year-round.
Contemporary culture clearly wants to remove the boundaries customarily imposed by the more classic shapes and rhythms of time.
In an act that is flagrantly counter-cultural, the guides of certain spiritual retreats demand that weekend participants give up their watches.
Giving up one's watch is tantamount to giving up control, isn’t it? –
which is precisely the act of faith God asks of us moment by moment when it comes to time.
we walk by faith, not by sight
Our call is to trust God and to pay attention to three important rhythms connected to our experience of time.
The God-given shape of time, first, invites us to stop every day for rest.
A key component of the management of time requires us to get the sleep our bodies need.
For some of us (who seemingly have taxi meters for brains and are always counting the cost of every squandered minute) the very idea that we sleep away one third of our lives seems like an incalculable waste.
But we are told that it is during those sleeping hours that our bodies carry out something like eighty percent of the biological processes required to maintain basic health.
At many junctures, God's Word challenges us to commit a portion of each day to the experience of simply being in the presence of God.
The goal of that quiet time is not to be productive. We are simply called to be.
The shape of time that God has provided, second, also invites us to the notion of the Sabbath.
You know the drill: God worked for six days at the beginning of creation – then God rested.
For us to devote one day out of seven to do no work is to be like God.
God doesn't suggest a Sabbath.
It is mandated as one of the original Ten Commandments.
Our Sabbath doesn't have to be on Sunday nor even on a weekend.
But one-seventh of our time during each week should be reserved to pray and to play.
God's design for time also invites us, third, to take a complete break – more often than most of us do.
In Old Testament times there were prescribed festivals for God's people.
Whole families were compelled to walk all the way to Jerusalem three times each year.
These became annual opportunities to enjoy life and to enjoy each other.
Essentially these festivals amounted to divinely ordained vacations.
To believe that we should not take a break each year –
to assert, or to act, as if whatever it is that we do
is far too important to slow down –
is to take ourselves far too seriously
and to violate the rhythm and shape of time as God has provided it.
As the fractured proverb puts it,
Better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
Now, here’s the thing:
This moment may seem like an ordinary moment, but it is the gift of an extraordinary God.
This moment counts – forever.
If we were asked the question,
"Do you want to do something today that will be eternally significant?"
our tendency is to sigh, "You know, my day is so full. I really don't have time."
To that Paul thunders in 2 Corinthians:
"See, now is the acceptable time;
see, now is the day of salvation!"
Perhaps we are waiting for the crush of time to pass.
Then we will turn our attention fully to spiritual questions –
you know, when we're not so busy.
Perhaps we are waiting for the right circumstances to arrive,
or for a hardship to vanish.
We're waiting for more money or more education
or more insight or more data.
First let's have the baby,
or wait for the children to get into school,
or wait until summer vacation,
or wait until the nest is empty.
Then we'll have time.
Paul couldn't agree less.
In his second letter to the Corinthians there isn't the faintest evidence that a hardship-free life is just over the horizon.
It will never be the "right time" to act.
Therefore God calls us to act now.
The wise heart is the one that grasps that this moment has become a world-changing moment when we let it fully belong to God.
"As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain."
Will we capture the richness of this moment through an act of spiritual submission –
or do we miss this opportunity altogether?
This day you and I don't need to flip coins or draw straws to know what is on God's heart.
God calls us to receive grace –
to embrace God's perspective and shape of time. We aren't called to wait for the next moment.
This day is filled with precious moments.
This very moment is precious.
This moment belongs to God.
That's why it counts forever.
To God’s eyes,
and through faith’s eyes,
every moment is precious.
May you see and know this day as being filled with precious moments –
as tomorrow will be,
and the day after that,
and the day after that.
When we see them,
when we recognize them,
our lives are richer,
and we are closer to living as though the kingdom of God is near.
Amen.
The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard these words during a worship service August 7, 2011.
In fact, our faith tells us that our life is better when we are able to see and to recognize that all our moments are precious.
You don’t have to look very deep to realize that one of the persistent themes of our Bible is that all moments are precious.
The Psalmist thought that all moments are precious.
And we could do nothing less than recognize that our God is present –
our God is with us – in all our moments of time – regardless of the circumstance.
And that makes all moments precious.
I remember when I first started thinking about this topic, I searched for precious moments on the internet.
What I found out was astounding to me.
There is actually a copyright on precious moments.
(I suppose if you should actually experience a precious moment, you would have to pay somebody for the privilege of having one.
I want a dollar for every precious moment you experience.
At the very least, it would get in the way of any of us ever acknowledging that we recognized a precious moment when it happened.)
Actually, for some 40 years or so, Precious Moments has been copyrighted to refer to super-cute drawings of children with big tear-drop eyes in various poses to evoke a feeling of cute togetherness, you know?
(The kind of drawing that is reproduced on the front of our bulletin today.)
Throughout the years these drawings have been produced in a line of dolls that illustrate the theme.
And they even became the theme for a theme park in the Midwest.
But, for me, this is another way important expressions of faith are highjacked of any original intrinsic meaning.
You don’t have to look very deep to realize that one of the persistent themes of our Bible is that all moments are precious.
If I were to ask, I do believe that everyone in this room could come up with a list of a least ten moments in time that you remember and recall as “precious moments”.
Many will identify a birth of a child as a recognized “precious” moment.
And there a lot of experiences that are common to many people that are thought of as “precious” moments.
But, each of us have a few memories of unique moments that made an impact on us – and we just knew them to be precious moments.
I remember last summer, Suzanne’s nephew and his young family came to see us.
They were on their way back home to Montreal after a three week family vacation that included a visit to Florida.
He recounted that after driving all night on the way down there, they arrived in Daytona Beach early in the morning – before sunrise.
He and his wife carried their two sleeping children into the room and placed them on beds,
and as he was unloading some needed baggage from the car he became aware that it was getting lighter fairly rapidly.
And as circumstance would have it, the room to which they were assigned faced the east and sun began to pop up way over the horizon of the sea.
He described it as a sign that said slow down,
this is a precious moment,
this time of your life is sacred time.
A number of stories were shared at Nason Clark’s service, but one that was not told is one that he to me about the time he and a friend went for a bike ride.
I guess this would have been around 1930 or a little thereafter, so there was not too much development – or roads, for that matter – around here.
Well, he told me that he and his friend ended up in a field somewhere over where Lawrence Park now is.
And when he and his friend came upon this field of spectacular wildflowers, they became aware of swarms of butterflies – butterflies by the millions fluttering over the field.
Describing it still takes his breath away – as it did on that day so long ago.
Truly a precious moment.
No, you can’t copyright precious moments.
In fact, our faith tells us that our life is better when we are able to see and to recognize that all our moments are precious.
The call of God is to be present at each moment as it arrives.
Psalm 90 informs us that God is uniquely able to experience a "telescoping" of time –
that for God a thousand years are like a day,
but even more intriguing, that a day is as rich and meaningful as a thousand years.
Quite literally every moment matters eternally – which means that this present moment counts forever.
One of the great human obsessions of the modern age is to make time jump through more hoops –
to force time to be more productive.
That's why so many of us are suckers for the next generation of computers, date books, blackberries, and smart phones.
ESPN has endeavored to fit more than one hour of sports highlights into a one-hour show.
That's why NFL kickoffs that are returned for a touchdown (without doubt one of the most dramatic moments in football) are now being replayed as if the fast-forward button is stuck.
Instead of presenting the play at normal speed, which consumes all of twelve or fourteen seconds, the action is frequently speeded up –
now consuming just six or seven seconds –
so viewers can quickly move on to see another highlight,
and then another, and then another.
First-time visitors to London frequently conclude that they may have only one chance to explore such an historic city.
Therefore they sign on for one of those everything-included-hurry-up-and-keep-moving tours.
"Now here's The Tower of London, there's Big Ben, and just over your right shoulder is Buckingham Palace."
You know the drill.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
Stand over there and let me get your picture in front of the lions at Trafalgar Square.
Wow, there sure are a lot of pigeons.
Hey, look at the time. We gotta go.
That is all too often an out-of-towner's only exposure to the city of London.
Experienced Londoners know that years are required simply to begin to comprehend what this place has meant to human history.
A tourist cannot possibly appreciate that perspective in a four-hour sweep across town.
With all of our hearts, we must resist the temptation to become tourists in our own lives.
"I'd like to take the four-hour highlight tour of parenting, please."
"Come on, kids, it's time to do third grade.
Stand right there and let me get your picture.
Okay, on to the next stage in your life."
We must refuse to buy tickets for the quick walk-through of the Museum of Religious Experiences.
God calls us not to rush through the time that has been given to us,
but to be fully alive to God and to each other –
actually to become residents within these moments we've been provided.
Why?
Because, every one of these moments counts forever.
So, we need to embrace God’s perspective on time.
And, we need to embrace God's shape to time.
You see, there is a God-ordained shape to human life.
This shape is what gives our lives a meaningful rhythm.
Mornings and evenings, mornings and evenings – it's like a tide.
When we rebel against that rhythm, there are consequences.
What time is it any more?
The nightly news on television reports of an event that happened in Asia this morning.
But, that wasn’t actually this morning – or yesterday morning – but they are reporting on something that happened tomorrow morning!
The boundaries and shape of daily life are rapidly becoming blurred.
One can now shop on-line any hour of the day.
Maybe you’ve seen that television commercial where a group of stunned consumers are standing in the middle of the night outside a conventional store at a mall.
No lights are on.
The customers are puzzled:
"It's closed. Man, that is so weird."
We are taught to expect that everything should be available every hour of every day.
What season is it any more?
We no longer have to wait for summer to get strawberries and watermelons.
We can find ripe peaches year-round.
Contemporary culture clearly wants to remove the boundaries customarily imposed by the more classic shapes and rhythms of time.
In an act that is flagrantly counter-cultural, the guides of certain spiritual retreats demand that weekend participants give up their watches.
Giving up one's watch is tantamount to giving up control, isn’t it? –
which is precisely the act of faith God asks of us moment by moment when it comes to time.
we walk by faith, not by sight
Our call is to trust God and to pay attention to three important rhythms connected to our experience of time.
The God-given shape of time, first, invites us to stop every day for rest.
A key component of the management of time requires us to get the sleep our bodies need.
For some of us (who seemingly have taxi meters for brains and are always counting the cost of every squandered minute) the very idea that we sleep away one third of our lives seems like an incalculable waste.
But we are told that it is during those sleeping hours that our bodies carry out something like eighty percent of the biological processes required to maintain basic health.
At many junctures, God's Word challenges us to commit a portion of each day to the experience of simply being in the presence of God.
The goal of that quiet time is not to be productive. We are simply called to be.
The shape of time that God has provided, second, also invites us to the notion of the Sabbath.
You know the drill: God worked for six days at the beginning of creation – then God rested.
For us to devote one day out of seven to do no work is to be like God.
God doesn't suggest a Sabbath.
It is mandated as one of the original Ten Commandments.
Our Sabbath doesn't have to be on Sunday nor even on a weekend.
But one-seventh of our time during each week should be reserved to pray and to play.
God's design for time also invites us, third, to take a complete break – more often than most of us do.
In Old Testament times there were prescribed festivals for God's people.
Whole families were compelled to walk all the way to Jerusalem three times each year.
These became annual opportunities to enjoy life and to enjoy each other.
Essentially these festivals amounted to divinely ordained vacations.
To believe that we should not take a break each year –
to assert, or to act, as if whatever it is that we do
is far too important to slow down –
is to take ourselves far too seriously
and to violate the rhythm and shape of time as God has provided it.
As the fractured proverb puts it,
Better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
Now, here’s the thing:
This moment may seem like an ordinary moment, but it is the gift of an extraordinary God.
This moment counts – forever.
If we were asked the question,
"Do you want to do something today that will be eternally significant?"
our tendency is to sigh, "You know, my day is so full. I really don't have time."
To that Paul thunders in 2 Corinthians:
"See, now is the acceptable time;
see, now is the day of salvation!"
Perhaps we are waiting for the crush of time to pass.
Then we will turn our attention fully to spiritual questions –
you know, when we're not so busy.
Perhaps we are waiting for the right circumstances to arrive,
or for a hardship to vanish.
We're waiting for more money or more education
or more insight or more data.
First let's have the baby,
or wait for the children to get into school,
or wait until summer vacation,
or wait until the nest is empty.
Then we'll have time.
Paul couldn't agree less.
In his second letter to the Corinthians there isn't the faintest evidence that a hardship-free life is just over the horizon.
It will never be the "right time" to act.
Therefore God calls us to act now.
The wise heart is the one that grasps that this moment has become a world-changing moment when we let it fully belong to God.
"As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain."
Will we capture the richness of this moment through an act of spiritual submission –
or do we miss this opportunity altogether?
This day you and I don't need to flip coins or draw straws to know what is on God's heart.
God calls us to receive grace –
to embrace God's perspective and shape of time. We aren't called to wait for the next moment.
This day is filled with precious moments.
This very moment is precious.
This moment belongs to God.
That's why it counts forever.
To God’s eyes,
and through faith’s eyes,
every moment is precious.
May you see and know this day as being filled with precious moments –
as tomorrow will be,
and the day after that,
and the day after that.
When we see them,
when we recognize them,
our lives are richer,
and we are closer to living as though the kingdom of God is near.
Amen.
The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard these words during a worship service August 7, 2011.
Friday, August 19, 2011
This Summer Enjoy God's Gifts
God enjoyed the world and all that was in it.
And the message is, we are to enjoy it too.
Enjoyment in what we do is God’s intention.
Well, I think we can say it is official now:
It’s summertime in Drexel Hill.
Traditionally, around here, summer is seen as “break time” – a break from the ordinary activities that fill our days during the ordinary times between September and May.
As with most things, there are historical reasons for our Summer behavior.
As the days of summer crept in on the gathering of men in Philadelphia one year, John Adams wrote home to his wife in Mass:
The heat is unbearable,
the bugs overwhelming,
the humidity overbearing, we are hoping to finish our business soon so we can get out of town before the sickness season begins.
It seems that from the beginning of things around here, folks saw summertime as break time –
normal activity stopped,
normal routines changed,
folks got out of town if they could –
they may not have gone to the shore or the mountains, but they went to Willow Grove, they went to Germantown,
they went to Montgomery County,
the went to Brandywine,
and they went wherever.
The Well-to-do built summer homes in Radnor and Lower Merion.
Summertime called for change.
Even rugs and window treatments were changed.
So, its always been that way, I suppose.
And today, in addition to the heat and humidity,
a myriad of messages bombard us from all sides that make it so easy for us to exile god from our summer.
The whole world around us seems to exile God from all everyday interests anyway.
More and more we tend to consign God to “church” and the Sabbath.
As often as not, we church-folks feed into this cultural phenomenon and perpetuate the nearly universal understanding that God is interested in religion –
and our real lives and our summertime are something other than that.
Most folks seem to treat religious faith as an option – or accessory –
something to take or to leave.
And this makes it easy for us to follow the culture’s summertime dictum of “break time”.
For us, break time trumps church time, doesn’t it?:
The pastor goes on vacation,
we turn on the air-conditioning,
we encourage appropriate casual dress,
and we design the form of our service to be more informal in manner.
Precisely because of all of the messages to the contrary,
it is important for us to be reminded that our sacred writings remind us that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to gather and a time to throw away.
There is a time to work and a time to play.
That passage in Ecclesiastes concludes, “moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
All of our life and the world around us are God-given.
We are even told that God smiled at what was created and pronounced it all good.
God enjoyed the world and all that was in it.
And the message is, we are to enjoy it too.
Enjoyment in what we do is God’s intention.
If there’s one thing that is immediately obvious from the Ecclesiastes passage, with its sing-song contrasting statements, it is that healthy life requires a balance.
Today’s gospel reading makes a similar point in a different way.
Jesus says “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ....”
He calls his hearers to step back from the purely obligatory matters of life
and ponder God’s care for birds of the air and flowers of the field as a way to move beyond the worry that marks so much of life.
He advises against being preoccupied with the utilitarian side of life.
But more than anything else, put God's work first and then take pleasure in the day that is at hand.
Several years ago, author John Updike wrote about the game of golf, saying that there is
“a goodness in the experience of golf that may well be ... a place where something breaks into our workaday world and bothers us for evermore with the hints it gives.”
John Updike was suggesting that there is an intrinsic value to play.
Now we would not say that play is by itself sufficient for the meaning of life —
or for doing God’s will —
but in balance with other things, it is very important.
Studies have repeatedly shown that people who have done well and been happy in life usually have worked hard at their jobs,
tended their relationships diligently
and had passion for some leisure activity.
And this is no less true for Christians.
I know a pastor who has written several books.
This pastor is also a long-distance cyclist.
He has written books about Jesus,
and he has written books about bicycling.
In one of the books about bicycling, he tells of someone asking him if he had had any “spiritual” experiences while cycling.
He writes:
Bicycling, especially of the long-distance kind, gives me a natural high that is more than a physical sensation.
I’d go as far as to say it nourishes some inner part of me.
.... for spirituality — in the sense that I recognize that there is that which is greater than I am — is an integral part of my makeup.
And I am grateful to my Creator for the opportunity to pedal the byways of this good earth.
Another pastor I know hits the golf course as many mornings as possible by 5 a.m., before he goes to the church.
In his book, called Golf in the Real Kingdom, Robert Kopp says, “All I know is that something spiritual happens when I’m on the course.
I lose my polemic edge.
I become irenic.
I feel close to God.
Indeed I talk to God when I play, and not just about the last missed putt.”
He doesn’t recommend golfing as a substitute for church attendance,
but he does mean that leisure activities feed his spirit.
We tend to think of our summertime activities as “Leisure” activities.
“Leisure” comes from the Latin word licere from which we also get “license.”
The root meaning of both words is “to be permitted.”
When you are at leisure, you “permit” yourself to do things you can’t do at other times –
when you are laboring, which is compulsory activity.
You see, leisure is not idle time but free activity.
In leisure, we do what we like, but in labor we do what we must.
In labor, we meet the demands of others,
in leisure we scratch the inner itches within ourselves.
For some of us, leisure means loafing, and there is a place for that.
For others of us, leisure means hard work, but at something we want to do, you know?
Something that we enjoy doing.
And leisure has a creativity of its own.
Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done while a person was at leisure, and often it was never paid for in cash.
Few of us would call doing dishes a leisure activity,
but for some who labor hard at their primary task,
routine chores that busy the hands and part of the mind elsewhere,
relieve the pressure of work,
let the mind run leisurely and allow the subconscious to ruminate,
often with serendipitous results.
Agatha Christie, no slouch when it came to brainstorms, said she got her best ideas for her mysteries while doing the dishes.
There is one other biblical concept that applies to all of this as well, and that is the original idea of the Sabbath.
God created the world in six days, Genesis tells us, but on the seventh day God rested.
Now, for sure, God didn’t rest on the seventh day because God doesn’t get tired.
He likely stopped working just to enjoy what had been made.
Likewise, when observing the Sabbath became one of the Ten Commandments, the idea wasn’t that the people of Israel would just spend every minute of the Sabbath in worship.
In fact, in the Old Testament, worship, which centered around sacrifices, was a daily event.
The temple operated all the time.
But, The Sabbath was first and foremost a time for rest.
In the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land, the people of Israel learned this in as simple a thing as gathering manna each day for food.
God told them to gather it daily except for on the Sabbath.
Whatever was gathered the previous day would be enough to carry them over.
On the Sabbath, they should rest — have some leisure — from their labors.
Part of the idea was that people at leisure can open their minds to God.
For sure, even in summertime much of each day evaporates into work, doesn’t it?
shopping has to be done,
meals fixed,
bills paid,
the house kept tidy,
the yard needs to be cared for,
and we need to preparing for tomorrow’s onslaught. For many of us, leisure never has a chance –
even in the summertime.
And so, for most of us, even in the summertime, finding time for God is even harder than it is during ordinary time.
But, you know, we really can’t relegate God to certain “times.”
Christians really don’t find time for God.
We find God is in all our time.
If we are truly “in Christ,” then Christ’s Spirit fills us at every moment of our day.
In everything we do, we serve God.
Christians don’t take “time off” from being Christians.
We are as much in God’s time on a July day on vacation, as we are in church on Easter Sunday.
From this biblical perspective, it is clear that sometimes we do have to take care of ourselves so that we can then continue to do God’s work with renewed energy and improved vision.
But allowing our engines to idle for a while is different from completely shutting down all our systems.
If we are seeing all time as God’s time, we should be prepared to be surprised by God even when we are at rest.
Because, the main point of our faith is that God does not take break from being concerned for you – even in summertime.
You are invited,
you are encouraged,
you are urged,
to keep alert this summer –
keep open to the presence of God in the world around you – wherever you are,
wherever you go,
whatever you do.
Start the day every single day with the mantra:
This is a day the Lord has made.
Rejoice and be glad you get to experience it.
Every day is a new day.
Every day is a gift of God.
The world around you is a gift of God.
The people around you are gifts of God.
This summer, enjoy God’s gifts.
Let sunshine, and music, and springtime and gladness be in your soul –
this day and every day throughout this summer.
Amen.
And the message is, we are to enjoy it too.
Enjoyment in what we do is God’s intention.
Well, I think we can say it is official now:
It’s summertime in Drexel Hill.
Traditionally, around here, summer is seen as “break time” – a break from the ordinary activities that fill our days during the ordinary times between September and May.
As with most things, there are historical reasons for our Summer behavior.
As the days of summer crept in on the gathering of men in Philadelphia one year, John Adams wrote home to his wife in Mass:
The heat is unbearable,
the bugs overwhelming,
the humidity overbearing, we are hoping to finish our business soon so we can get out of town before the sickness season begins.
It seems that from the beginning of things around here, folks saw summertime as break time –
normal activity stopped,
normal routines changed,
folks got out of town if they could –
they may not have gone to the shore or the mountains, but they went to Willow Grove, they went to Germantown,
they went to Montgomery County,
the went to Brandywine,
and they went wherever.
The Well-to-do built summer homes in Radnor and Lower Merion.
Summertime called for change.
Even rugs and window treatments were changed.
So, its always been that way, I suppose.
And today, in addition to the heat and humidity,
a myriad of messages bombard us from all sides that make it so easy for us to exile god from our summer.
The whole world around us seems to exile God from all everyday interests anyway.
More and more we tend to consign God to “church” and the Sabbath.
As often as not, we church-folks feed into this cultural phenomenon and perpetuate the nearly universal understanding that God is interested in religion –
and our real lives and our summertime are something other than that.
Most folks seem to treat religious faith as an option – or accessory –
something to take or to leave.
And this makes it easy for us to follow the culture’s summertime dictum of “break time”.
For us, break time trumps church time, doesn’t it?:
The pastor goes on vacation,
we turn on the air-conditioning,
we encourage appropriate casual dress,
and we design the form of our service to be more informal in manner.
Precisely because of all of the messages to the contrary,
it is important for us to be reminded that our sacred writings remind us that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to gather and a time to throw away.
There is a time to work and a time to play.
That passage in Ecclesiastes concludes, “moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
All of our life and the world around us are God-given.
We are even told that God smiled at what was created and pronounced it all good.
God enjoyed the world and all that was in it.
And the message is, we are to enjoy it too.
Enjoyment in what we do is God’s intention.
If there’s one thing that is immediately obvious from the Ecclesiastes passage, with its sing-song contrasting statements, it is that healthy life requires a balance.
Today’s gospel reading makes a similar point in a different way.
Jesus says “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ....”
He calls his hearers to step back from the purely obligatory matters of life
and ponder God’s care for birds of the air and flowers of the field as a way to move beyond the worry that marks so much of life.
He advises against being preoccupied with the utilitarian side of life.
But more than anything else, put God's work first and then take pleasure in the day that is at hand.
Several years ago, author John Updike wrote about the game of golf, saying that there is
“a goodness in the experience of golf that may well be ... a place where something breaks into our workaday world and bothers us for evermore with the hints it gives.”
John Updike was suggesting that there is an intrinsic value to play.
Now we would not say that play is by itself sufficient for the meaning of life —
or for doing God’s will —
but in balance with other things, it is very important.
Studies have repeatedly shown that people who have done well and been happy in life usually have worked hard at their jobs,
tended their relationships diligently
and had passion for some leisure activity.
And this is no less true for Christians.
I know a pastor who has written several books.
This pastor is also a long-distance cyclist.
He has written books about Jesus,
and he has written books about bicycling.
In one of the books about bicycling, he tells of someone asking him if he had had any “spiritual” experiences while cycling.
He writes:
Bicycling, especially of the long-distance kind, gives me a natural high that is more than a physical sensation.
I’d go as far as to say it nourishes some inner part of me.
.... for spirituality — in the sense that I recognize that there is that which is greater than I am — is an integral part of my makeup.
And I am grateful to my Creator for the opportunity to pedal the byways of this good earth.
Another pastor I know hits the golf course as many mornings as possible by 5 a.m., before he goes to the church.
In his book, called Golf in the Real Kingdom, Robert Kopp says, “All I know is that something spiritual happens when I’m on the course.
I lose my polemic edge.
I become irenic.
I feel close to God.
Indeed I talk to God when I play, and not just about the last missed putt.”
He doesn’t recommend golfing as a substitute for church attendance,
but he does mean that leisure activities feed his spirit.
We tend to think of our summertime activities as “Leisure” activities.
“Leisure” comes from the Latin word licere from which we also get “license.”
The root meaning of both words is “to be permitted.”
When you are at leisure, you “permit” yourself to do things you can’t do at other times –
when you are laboring, which is compulsory activity.
You see, leisure is not idle time but free activity.
In leisure, we do what we like, but in labor we do what we must.
In labor, we meet the demands of others,
in leisure we scratch the inner itches within ourselves.
For some of us, leisure means loafing, and there is a place for that.
For others of us, leisure means hard work, but at something we want to do, you know?
Something that we enjoy doing.
And leisure has a creativity of its own.
Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done while a person was at leisure, and often it was never paid for in cash.
Few of us would call doing dishes a leisure activity,
but for some who labor hard at their primary task,
routine chores that busy the hands and part of the mind elsewhere,
relieve the pressure of work,
let the mind run leisurely and allow the subconscious to ruminate,
often with serendipitous results.
Agatha Christie, no slouch when it came to brainstorms, said she got her best ideas for her mysteries while doing the dishes.
There is one other biblical concept that applies to all of this as well, and that is the original idea of the Sabbath.
God created the world in six days, Genesis tells us, but on the seventh day God rested.
Now, for sure, God didn’t rest on the seventh day because God doesn’t get tired.
He likely stopped working just to enjoy what had been made.
Likewise, when observing the Sabbath became one of the Ten Commandments, the idea wasn’t that the people of Israel would just spend every minute of the Sabbath in worship.
In fact, in the Old Testament, worship, which centered around sacrifices, was a daily event.
The temple operated all the time.
But, The Sabbath was first and foremost a time for rest.
In the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land, the people of Israel learned this in as simple a thing as gathering manna each day for food.
God told them to gather it daily except for on the Sabbath.
Whatever was gathered the previous day would be enough to carry them over.
On the Sabbath, they should rest — have some leisure — from their labors.
Part of the idea was that people at leisure can open their minds to God.
For sure, even in summertime much of each day evaporates into work, doesn’t it?
shopping has to be done,
meals fixed,
bills paid,
the house kept tidy,
the yard needs to be cared for,
and we need to preparing for tomorrow’s onslaught. For many of us, leisure never has a chance –
even in the summertime.
And so, for most of us, even in the summertime, finding time for God is even harder than it is during ordinary time.
But, you know, we really can’t relegate God to certain “times.”
Christians really don’t find time for God.
We find God is in all our time.
If we are truly “in Christ,” then Christ’s Spirit fills us at every moment of our day.
In everything we do, we serve God.
Christians don’t take “time off” from being Christians.
We are as much in God’s time on a July day on vacation, as we are in church on Easter Sunday.
From this biblical perspective, it is clear that sometimes we do have to take care of ourselves so that we can then continue to do God’s work with renewed energy and improved vision.
But allowing our engines to idle for a while is different from completely shutting down all our systems.
If we are seeing all time as God’s time, we should be prepared to be surprised by God even when we are at rest.
Because, the main point of our faith is that God does not take break from being concerned for you – even in summertime.
You are invited,
you are encouraged,
you are urged,
to keep alert this summer –
keep open to the presence of God in the world around you – wherever you are,
wherever you go,
whatever you do.
Start the day every single day with the mantra:
This is a day the Lord has made.
Rejoice and be glad you get to experience it.
Every day is a new day.
Every day is a gift of God.
The world around you is a gift of God.
The people around you are gifts of God.
This summer, enjoy God’s gifts.
Let sunshine, and music, and springtime and gladness be in your soul –
this day and every day throughout this summer.
Amen.
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