The Birth of New Life

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year BLeave a comment

PentecostSunday_wide_tActs 2:1-21 NRSV

Here are just a few things my mother taught me…

 My Mother taught me about ANTICIPATION…

“You just wait until your father gets home.”

My Mother taught me about RECEIVING….

“When we get home, you’re going to get it!”

My Mother taught me to MEET A CHALLENGE…

“Answer me when I talk to you! And don’t talk back to me!”

My Mother taught me LOGIC…

“If you fall out off that swing and break your neck, you’re not going to the store with me.

My Mother taught me HUMOR…

“When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”

My Mother taught me about GENETICS…

“You’re just like your father.”

My Mother taught me about my ROOTS…

“Shut that door!  Do you think you were raised in a barn!”

And last but certainly not least, my Mother taught me about JUSTICE…

“One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!

And, of course, all of our mothers taught us something even more important—something about this wonderful gift we call “life.” There is absolutely nothing any of us ever did to earn or deserve this most precious gift. But here we are!—Inexplicable gifts from God, birthed through our mothers.

Pentecost is often referred to as the day the God gave birth to the Church—the day when the outpouring of God’s energy through the Holy Spirit swept down like wind and fire and touched every one who had gathered for the Jewish festival. New Testament professor Beverly Gaventa writes that the essential message of Pentecost is:  “Sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life!”

And this new life came in dramatic, indescribable fashion. Gaventa writes: “It is as if not even the most lavish use of human language is capable of capturing the experiences of the day.” She writes: “All of the stops on the literary organ are employed: a heavenly sound like rushing wind, descending fire, and patterns of transformed speech.” That’s because there are just no words to describe this sudden, unmerited, irresistible gift of new life!

Brooks and Jenny and Chase, Pentecost is like holding precious little Andrew White in your arms: feeling his soft skin pressed up against yours, smelling his sweet head, listening to his precious sounds. There are just no words in any language to describe it.

If only we, living today in the 21st century, could have been there on that day. Think of what First Christian Church could be, rather would be, if we could have been present on the Day of Pentecost. Think of impact we would have in eastern North Carolina and in our world if you and I received this indescribable gift of the outpouring of God’s energy. Think of all we could accomplish together for the honor and glory of God.

But we were not there, were we? Unfortunately, we were born nearly 2000 years too late. The Day of Pentecost was just a one-day, one-time event in human history, and we missed it all! God simply does not work that way in our world anymore!

Well, I don’t believe that, and I have this sense that you don’t either.

Theology Professor, Robert Wall, points out that the Pentecost experience of God’s Spirit occurred not only once, but is repeated several times in Acts. The images and language of Pentecost, Walls says, “are routinely recalled to interpret subsequent outpourings of God’s Spirit as the constant testimony to God’s continuing faithfulness.”

In the eighth chapter of the book of Acts, we read that after Peter and John laid their hands on the people of Samaria, they received the Holy Spirit.” They received sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life.

In the tenth chapter of Acts we read that while Peter was still preaching, “the Holy Spirit came on all who had heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were all astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.”

Again, in the eleventh chapter Peter says, “As I began to speak the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us in the beginning.”

In the nineteenth chapter of Acts, after Paul baptizes twelve people in Ephesus, we read:  “After Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”

Throughout Acts we learn that Pentecost, the gift of sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life is not a one-day, one-time event in human history. The gift of Pentecost is an experience which is repeated and repeated often in our world. And it is still being repeated today.

The good news is that we have experienced the possibilities of Pentecost, the promise of the birth of new life, on numerous occasions. We have all experienced those special occasions where we were showered with the inexplicable gift of new life, sudden, unmerited, and irresistible. We have all experienced new beginnings, fresh starts and second chances.

The exhilarating discovery that a new baby is on the way.  The miraculous birth of that baby. The dedication of that baby in a worship service. The excitement of a new job.  The anticipation of a new school. The possibilities of a new marriage.  The promise of new friendships. Yes, we have all experienced the grand possibilities which come with new beginnings, fresh starts and second chances.

And it is not only in the special events of life that we experience these possibilities. I believe when we consider that all of life is a gift of God’s grace, there is no event which is so ordinary that the Spirit of God is not present in it. Frederick Buechner writes that God’s Spirit can be found in the most common of places, “always hiddenly, always leaving room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly.” Because all of life is a gift of God’s grace, inexplicable new life can be experienced everywhere!  Buechner writes that it can be found “Taking your children to school, and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend.  Trying to do a decent day’s work.  Hearing the rain patter against the window.”

Yes, the possibilities of Pentecost are everywhere, but I believe it is most real right here in this place we call church.

On this day as we dedicate Andrew to God, our thoughts are turned towards family—our parents, grandparents, our children and grandchildren. We cannot begin to count the number of times we’ve experienced the gush of new life within the context of family.

However, sometimes I think we need to be reminded that Jesus’ concept of family was often much broader than ours. One day while he was teaching, someone interrupted him and said, “Your mother and brother are waiting for you outside.”  Jesus turned, and pointed to the crowd and said, “Here are my brothers, here are my mothers.  Here is my family.”

Yes, I believe that here, in this place, with our family of faith, the power of Pentecost is most real—as we worship and fellowship together, but also as we serve and reach out together.

I do not believe it is a coincidence that in Acts we read that the gift of the Holy Spirit often came after Peter or Paul laid their hands on others. I believe one of the best ways to usher in the possibilities of Pentecost is by reaching out and personally touching others.

God’s energy is released and sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life comes when graciously serve a meal to someone hungry, when we tenderly caress the forehead of someone in the nursing home, when we gently hold someone’s hand in the hospital, and when we empathetically embrace someone in the funeral home.

Pentecost comes when we, the body of Christ, lay our hands, which, by the way, are the hands of Christ, on all who are in need. Pentecost comes, when we seek out someone who has wronged us offering a handshake of forgiveness or a hug of mercy, offering the grace of friendship. Pentecost comes when we reach out and hold the hand of an outsider.

Pentecost—sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life comes. New beginnings, fresh starts, and second chances can come to us in the ordinariness of life, and most specifically, through the many opportunities we have as the body of Christ to offer personal touches of grace to one another.

And the really good news is that this sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life comes to all of us with faith in Christ when our lives on this earth are complete.

Peter, in his sermon, recalls the words of the prophet Joel. He recalls the signs Joel says are a prelude to disaster—blood, fire, darkness and smoky mist. However, the death and destruction prophesied by Joel is transformed on Peter’s tongue into a declaration of new life.  For Joel, these signs of the outpouring of God’s Spirit are a prelude to disaster. For Peter, with faith in the risen Christ, these signs of God’s energy released are a prelude to the redemption of humankind.

When each of us comes face to face with our own deaths, God, with the power of Pentecost, redeems our deaths and replaces our deaths with sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life.

Pentecost—this is our hope.  And this is our purpose.  May First Christian Church, who may not have been present on that day nearly 2000 years ago, but has, in so many ways, experienced this power of Pentecost nonetheless, work together to share this gift of new life with this community and with our world. May we share it with our words, but also through the laying on of our hands, so that sudden, unmerited, irresistible new life may rain down from heaven like wind and fire and touch everyone!

A Pastoral Prayer for Mother’s Day

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

mothersdayprayerNote: The words of this pastoral prayer are adapted from a letter written by Amy Young to pastors.

Gracious God, Father and Mother of us all,

During this time, with our hearts and minds turned toward motherhood, we give you thanks for all those in our lives who possess the soul of a mother.

We give you thanks and celebrate with those in our community who have given birth this year, and we give thanks and anticipate with those in our community who are expecting a child.

We give thanks and pray for all mothers who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains and wearied bodies. And we pray for and mourn with those who have lost a child, for those who have experienced loss through accidents, sickness, DNCs, miscarriage, failed adoptions Or an unjust system. We pray for mothers who feel like their children are lost to drugs or other addictions.

We pray for and walk beside those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears and disappointment. Forgive us when we say foolish things for we certainly do not mean to make this harder than it is.

We give you thanks for those who are foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms – for this world so desperately needs them, perhaps more now than ever.

We give you thanks for and celebrate with mothers who have warm and close relationships with their children. And we pray for and sit with those mothers who have disappointment, heartache and distance with their children.

We pray for and grieve with all children who lost their mothers this year. And we pray for and acknowledge the experience of children everywhere who have experienced abuse at the hands of their mothers.

We pray for those who are single, yet long to be married and mothering their own children. We mourn that life has not turned out the way they have longed for it to be.

We pray for those who step-parent and walk with them on complex paths. And we pray for and grieve with all those who envisioned lavishing love on grandchildren, yet that dream is not to be.

We pray for, grieve with and rejoice alongside all those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year.

We pray for those who placed children up for adoption. We ask you to bless them for their selflessness and comfort them as they hold that child in their heart.

O God, on this Mother’s Day, we pray that you help us to walk with all mothers, for mothering is not for the faint of heart, and on this day, we have real warriors in our midst.

Being a Friend of Jesus

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn EasterLeave a comment

friends

John 15:9-17 NRSV

Our text this morning contains some of the greatest words Jesus ever said to anyone:  “I do not call you servants any longer. . . I have called you friends.”  The disciples are invited by the risen Christ to know their Lord in a new light; they are invited to see their Jesus as a friend.  The question that I want us to ask this morning is this: “What does being a friend of Jesus truly mean?”

First of all, we learn from this text that being a friend of Jesus means to be chosen. Jesus said to his disciples, “You did not choose me, I chose you.”  This is very different from our definition of friendship, is it not?  For we are accustomed to choosing our friends. For us to be friends with another there’s usually got to be some sense of mutual attraction. My daughter Sara is going to Charlotte this afternoon to meet a girl who may be her college roommate this fall. They met on facebook and have scheduled a meeting today to see if they would both like to choose one another to be friends. However, Jesus had a much different understanding of friendship. It is Jesus who chooses us. We do not choose Jesus.

This understanding of friendship was also completely foreign to Jesus’ disciples. In Jesus’ day, it was customary for Jewish students studying the Torah, the Mosaic Law, to seek out a rabbi whose teaching they wanted to emulate. The choice was theirs. But Jesus reverses the order. The choice is his. Jesus chooses his followers.

That Jesus chooses us to be his friends prevents us from possessing a consumerist attitude toward the practice of this friendship. As disciples, we are not in a position to dictate when and where we will act like friends of Jesus. For example, we cannot choose to be Jesus’ friend on Sunday and treat him as a stranger the other days of the week. We cannot choose to act like he is our friend in front of some people, while acting like we have never heard of him in front of others. Furthermore, we are not in a position to pick and choose to accept and follow some of his teachings, while completely ignoring those teachings that we find offensive.

Secondly, we learn from this text that being a friend of Jesus means to keep his commandment to love others as he loves us.  Again, this too is very different from our understanding of friendship and love.  Most of us would probably tend to agree that the word “command” and the word “love” simply do not fit in the same sentence. We would say that love is not something that can be commanded.  For many of us, genuine love, we would say, must be spontaneous and come from within and not without.  We simply do not associate friendship or love with the word “command.”

The reason that “love” and “command” seem at odds is because we so often misuse and overuse the word “love.”  We have reduced the meaning of the word “love” to a mere feeling.  Jesus is talking about agape here.  This Greek word for love does not represent a “feeling.”  Nor is it a synonym for “like.”  To love is to be for another, to act for another, even at cost to oneself. The supreme act of love is the giving of one’s life for the other.

But for many of us, love is simply a feeling.  Love is an emotion. And we would say that no one can command feeling. We can not even command our own. But Jesus is not talking about feeling here. Jesus is talking about action. Jesus is talking about giving one’s self for another.

This is why the preacher never asks the groom and the bride in the wedding ceremony if they love one another. Think about it. You have never heard a preacher ask, “Do you love each other?” The preacher always asks, “Will you love one another?”  “Do you promise to love each other?”  True love is a verb. True love is action. True love is not a feeling. This misunderstanding of the definition of love is why many marriages end in divorce. A spouse wakes up one day and discovers that they have lost that loving feeling, so they move out.

Being a friend of Jesus means keeping his commandment to love others as he loves us. Unlike a feeling, love can be commanded. This means that we are to be there for others, to act for others, to be there with others, to laugh with others and to cry with others. Being a friend of Jesus means that we are willing to give of ourselves completely for others. Police officers, firefighters and others who put their lives on the line for us every day are our friends. The men and women of our armed forces who we remember in a couple of weeks on Memorial Day were our friends. Being a friend of Jesus means to sacrifice.

And thirdly, being a friend of Jesus means to know what is going on. Followers of Jesus become friends of Jesus when they know what he is doing. Jesus said, “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” What distinguishes servants from friends is that friends have been let in on the plans.

I once heard story of a family that was getting ready to move to another state. The parents did not want to upset their four year-old son who had made many friends at his preschool and in their neighborhood, so they kept putting off telling him about the move. When the movers came, the little boy was upstairs in taking nap, so the parents instructed them to pack up every room in the house except for their son’s room. They would finally tell him about the move when he awoke.

While the parents were outside taking some things to their car, the poor little thing awoke to find that every room in the house was empty except for his! The parents came back in and found him sitting on the floor in the empty family room crying like a baby. Realizing that it was probably a bad idea to wait until the last minute to let their son in on the plans, they finally told him that they were moving to another state, but assured him that he would quickly make new friends in their new town.

The little boy stopped crying. His face lit up with a big smile. And he said, “What a relief, I thought everyone was moving except for me!”

As friends, we do not like to be left out of the plans do we? As friends, we want to know what is going on. We want to be included in the plans. Jesus lets his disciples in on the plans. They are not kept in the dark about what is happening and what is going to happen.

Being a friend of Jesus means knowing God and God’s plans for us.  Do you remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah? “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me, I will hear you. When you search me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord….”

Being a friend of Jesus means finding God. Being a friend of Jesus means knowing that Jesus was God incarnate—God who loved us so much that he came to earth and became one of us—God who became our friend and laid down his life for us on a cross. Being a friend of Jesus means knowing that the same God who resurrected Jesus abides with us today, resurrecting our sorrow into joy, our despair into hope, and our death into life. Being a friend of Jesus means knowing that there is nothing on this earth or in all of creation which will ever separate us from the love of God we know through Jesus Christ our Lord. Being a friend of Jesus means always knowing that God is here with us working all things together for the good.

Students are in their last weeks of the school year. One of the things I loved doing during these weeks was passing my yearbook around and having my friends to sign it. I don’t know if you still do this today or not, but when I was going to school, nearly all of my friends signed my year book, AFA, a friend always.

Being a friend of Jesus means that God has signed our hearts, AFA, a friend always, and forever. It means that he will never forget us, never forsake us, always stay beside us, now and forevermore.

Love One Another

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn EasterLeave a comment

we do love

1 John 4:7-21 NRSV

It the fifth Sunday of Easter, and like the very first disciples, we have gathered together on the first day of the week to be with our family of faith. There are certainly a lot of other places we could be this morning. But here we are. We are here, together as a community of faith because like the very first disciples we have seen the risen Lord.

Somewhere along the way, probably during some of our weakest moments, those moments of pain and despair, those moments of great anxiety and fear, when we needed him the most, the risen Christ inexplicably came into our lives, stood in our presence and filled us with a peace that is simply beyond all human understanding.

So here we are, gathered together on this first day of the week, assembled in this place as believers. We’re here because we believe in Easter. We believe in the wonderful good news that Christ is alive and, even more than that, he is alive for us.

Now the question is: what are we supposed to do with this Easter Faith that we have?  How are we to live as Easter people?

There is no more direct answer to this important question than the one found in the little book we call 1 John.

When I was in seminary, I had to take two semesters of Biblical Greek and at least one semester of Hebrew. In my first year of Greek, the first book of the New Testament that the professor had us to translate was 1 John. Why?  Because in all the New Testament, the Greek in 1 John is the most simple and direct.  There are no complex, convoluted arguments, no long clauses or other linguistic difficulties that make the translation of some of the other New Testament books a nightmare. 1 John is simple and to the point. In fact, I can sum up the entire book in basically three words: “Love One Another.”

Three of the most simplistic, but at the same time, three of the most difficult words ever put together in one command.  Yet, this is how God expects believers in the risen Christ to respond to Easter.

Love one another. It is difficult because the “one another” we are supposed to love is not just our close friends and family, but also those who have misused and mistreated us. We are commanded to love one another, all people, including our enemies.

Every time I read or hear this command, I immediately think of that list that most of us carry, at least in our minds: that list of people who have wronged us.

Of course, none of you here in Farmville are on my list. I think of that long time member of my church in Winston-Salem who wanted me to fail so badly as pastor of the church that he actually wanted the church to fail. Although he gave very generously when the offering plate came around every Sunday, he never gave one dime to our church’s budget. He earmarked all of his money to go to the Baptist Children’s Homes.

I have in me to forgive someone who wanted to hurt me, but to hurt the church?

Then there was that lady in that same church who not only liked to run me into the ground in her conversations with others in the church, but she also seemed to enjoy taking about my family.  She told one group of ladies in the church that my son Carson, who was two years-old at the time, was one of the unhappiest children she had ever seen, implying that somehow Lori and I had made him that way by being bad parents.  “I wonder what really goes on in that home,” she said.  Because, “When I keep the nursery, he never smiles.”

It is one thing to talk about me, and it is another thing all together to talk about my children—a two year old, for goodness sake! I am pretty sure there was a very good reason that Carson never smiled around that woman. Carson wasn’t unhappy. Carson simply had good instincts.

Although we have this clear, direct commandment through the scriptures to “love one another” sometimes I think (or maybe hope) that God must have meant something else. I think: “God must not know some of these ‘one anothers’ that I know!”

I can better conceive of God saying something like: “You know, in this fallen and fragmented world of sinners, let us somehow learn to live with each other.” Now that’s a commandment that makes good sense! “Despite your differences, learn to live with each other.”

I think I would prefer God saying something like: “Respect one another” or “be kind to one another.” “Be courteous.” “Play nice.” Yeah, I like that. Sounds reasonable enough.

What about, “Be tolerant?” I really like that commandment. “I don’t have to like him, but I guess I can somehow tolerate him. I guess I can in someway put up with her.”

How about, “Let bygones be bygones”? That’s another good one. “We’ve got to move on and get over it. Get over them. Forget about them and the things they have done to hurt us. It’s simply not healthy to hold onto resentments or grudges forever.” Although it is sometimes easier said than done, I think I can live with that commandment.

But the scriptures say considerably more than all of the things I may want them to say. “Love one another.” And here in 1 John, it is a direct command. It’s not an option.

Love one another. I met Lori 29 years ago this month, and it was love at first sight. Twenty-nine years. That’s a lot of years. That’s a long time.  And I know, so before she says it aloud from the choir loft, I’ll say it for her—it’s been even longer for Lori.

When you really love another, you have this wonderful capacity to always see the best that is in that another. I know Lori does that with me, or she wouldn’t be with me today. When I do all those things that I do to annoy her, sometimes hurt her, she summons the strength to look past it all. And in so doing, my weaknesses, my quirks, and all of my shortcomings grow small, while my virtues, the few that I have, grow large. That’s love.

Love necessitates that no matter what the other has done to hurt us, we somehow focus on the positives. Love compels us to look for mitigating circumstances, to devise strategies whereby we earnestly attempt to see the other in the very best light.

If another hurts us, or if another is behaving badly, throwing stones at us or the police, love compels us to ask ourselves questions like, “I wonder what was going on in his or her life that made him or her feel the need to act out like this?” or “I have certain ways about me that antagonize others. I wonder how I antagonized him?” or “I have gotten a lot of good breaks in my life. I wonder what bad breaks she got that her to view me in this way?”

But once we give up on love, all moral bets are off. We become free to dehumanize, even demonize our enemies. They are no longer persons, no longer human. They are pigs, aliens, trash, thugs, rag heads and abominations. And are called other names that are too vile to repeat from this pulpit.

There’s an old saying, that in war, we actually kill our enemies twice. First we kill any shred of humanity in them, and then we kill them with bullets. The two go together.

But First John tells us to love one another. This means that when we or society is wronged, all moral bets are never off.  In fact, according to this ethic, it is precisely when we are used spitefully or wrongfully that the true moral test begins. Elsewhere, the scriptures note that if we love only those who show love to us, what is that?

I believe one of the reasons it is so easy for us to write people off, to write love off, is because we have been taught the false gospel of evangelicalism.

The evangelical gospel says: “All people are sinful, and because of that, God has condemned everyone to hell for all of eternity…unless we repent and accept Jesus. Then, and only then, God will love us and let us go to heaven.” It is primarily a gospel of fear; not love. And as John says, fear has nothing to do with love, but has to do with “punishment.”

Consequently, it is easy for us to demonize and dehumanize one another, call another a “thug.” After all, if another is behaving badly, it probably just means they are going to hell anyway!

However the gospel of Jesus Christ is completely different. The gospel of Christ says: “All people are sinful, and because of that, God loves us even more, and God will go to great lengths to reveal that love, even to death on a cross…to get us to see that love, get that love, accept that love, share that love, so that we will not be doomed for all of eternity living apart from that love.” Unlike the evangelical gospel, the gospel of Christ is all about love.

We love one another because the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the good news of Easter, demands that we love one another.

Because when the risen Christ showed up, when he came to us offering us a peace that is beyond all understanding, we suddenly realized that we were enemies of God. We realized that when this one came and said things as audacious as “love your enemies,” “pray for those who persecute you,” “if another slaps you in the face, turn the other cheek and let them slap you on the other side,” go the extra mile, “give another the shirt off your back,” “forgive another as many seventy times seven times,” “blessed are the poor,” and “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” “visit the prisoner,” “welcome the outcast,” and “love one another as I have love you,” we betrayed him, and we crucified him. When the risen Christ came to us, we suddenly realized when this one preached love, lived love, shared love and commanded love, unconditional and unmerited, we were so offended by it, we killed him. And yet, God in Christ still came back to us in the resurrection and loved us even more. Even when we did nothing to deserve life, God in Christ, love incarnate, love himself, laid down his life for us to give us life, abundant and eternal.

God not only puts up with us, respects us, and tolerates us, but God comes to us, calls us by name and embraces us. God looks past our flaws, our failures, and believes in the very best that about us and calls that best that is within all of us to come out.

God loves us and therefore commands us to love one another. “If I have loved you, then you should love others.”

Why the Risen Christ Ate a Piece of Fish

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn EasterLeave a comment

fish1

Luke 24:36-53 NRSV

I often wonder what people mean when they say they are “spiritual.”  I hear people say: “I am not religious, but I am a very ‘spiritual’ person.”  “I don’t attend church, but I am quite ‘spiritual.’”

As a Christian, I sometimes find this odd as not even the risen Christ seemed to be all that spiritual. In fact, as our scripture lesson points out, the gospel writes, especially Luke, seem to go almost out of their way to point out the very physical, not spiritual, nature of the risen Lord.

Luke points out that Jesus asked the disciples to touch him and see that he had flesh and bones; not some spirit or ghost.  Jesus showed his disciples his hands and his feet which were scarred from his crucifixion. And then to still prove that he was there in the flesh and not in some spiritual form, he asked the disciples for something to eat. Then they give him a a piece of broiled fish that he eats in their presence.

The question that I want us to ask together this morning is: What is Luke trying to tell us by giving us this unusual and somewhat strange presentation of Jesus to the disciples? Why does the risen Christ eat broiled fish?

I have heard some preachers say that Luke was giving us a clue of what heaven is going to be like and what we will be like when we, like Jesus, are resurrected.

When I was growing up, my home church had a week of revival every August.  We had services Sunday Night through Friday night and we would always conclude the revival with a fish fry on Saturday.  Six long nights: 30 minutes of singing, one hour of preaching, and then thirty more minutes of altar call. I remember that these annual revival services used to scare me to death. The guest preachers would come into town and preach that heaven or hell was right around the corner and we better get ready. Although I’d never feared going to hell, as a nine, ten, eleven year old, going to heaven was not a place I wanted to visit anytime soon.

I used to hate going to revivals. On top of being frightening, it was hot, had to dress up, wear a tie, for six long nights, two hours a night. The only thing that got me through the week, and I suspect a few others, was the big, delicious fish fry that awaited us on Saturday.

Every year, without exception, preachers would come and scare me with their heaven-or-hell-is-right-around-the-corner sermons.  However, I remember that one preacher preached a particular sermon that made me feel a lot better about going to heaven. It was Friday night, and bless his heart, he was trying to connect the revival service with the fish fry that everyone was looking forward to the next day. He said that one of the most appropriate things we can do at the end of these services is to have a fish fry. He said, “After all, most all of Jesus disciples were fishermen. It also seems like Jesus himself liked to fish. And when we all get to heaven at the resurrection, we are all going to sit down with Jesus and eat fish, because after he was resurrected, Jesus ate some fish with his disciples.”

I wanted to shout, “Amen!”  Because that preacher answered one of those tough theological questions that no one could answer for me, a question that was more important than where did God come from and who was Cain’s wife: “Are we going to be able to eat in heaven?”  For all of us who live to eat instead of eat to live, this was good news. The answer is yes. We are going to be able to eat fish. For someone who loves seafood, it took the fear of dying right away.

I love this idea; however, I believe Luke is trying to tell us something more. I believe the fact that Luke tells us that Jesus offered his physical body for examination and eats fish in the disciples’ presence, tell us something very important about who the risen Christ is and who we are called to be as Christians.

First of all, Luke wants us to know that the risen Christ is in fact the same Jesus who died. The Christ the disciples saw was the same Jesus who suffered and died a horrible, degrading death on a cross. We need to get this for the risen Christ’s identification with the suffering Jesus is critical, not just for sound theology, but for defining the nature of the Christian life and who we are to be as Christians.

If the risen Christ the disciples now follow is not the same as the Jesus who suffered and died, then the Christian life takes on forms of spirituality that are without suffering for others, without a cross, without any concern for the suffering of this world. If the risen Christ is not the Jesus who died, then our eyes would be focused only on heavenly matters and not on the problems of this world.

Even Paul, who makes few references to the historical Jesus, insisted in his letters on joining crucifixion with resurrection. Paul always proclaimed “Christ crucified.”  The risen Lord that we worship has nail scars in his hands and on his feet. Thus, Luke points out that Jesus said, “See my hands and my feet.” The empty tomb is directly tied to the cross. The wonderful message of Easter is forever joined to the suffering of Good Friday.  To follow the risen Christ is to follow the one who bore the cross.

Ok, preacher, I get that, but what does that really mean to us and how should that affect the way we should live as Christians?  Here it goes:

I think it is perfectly fine and healthy to think and dream about going to Heaven one day.  It is fine to have the hope that someday, somehow, some way there’s not going to be anything more to fear or dread. It is wonderful to know a time is coming when there is going to be no more crying, no more pain, and no more death. It is great to sing those great hymns of faith, the ones we sang during our six night revival services, such as “When We All Get To Heaven,”  “In the Sweet Bye and Bye we Shall Meet On that Beautiful Shore,” “When the Roll is Called up Yonder,” and “Shall We Gather at the River,” but if Heaven is the only place our hearts are, if going to Heaven is the only reason we are Christians, then we have missed the whole point of who Jesus Christ is and who we are called to be as Christians.

As Christians, our eyes are to always be focused on the suffering of this world. Our Lord is not only the one who is exalted and glorified, but our Lord is the one who was rejected, suffered and died.

When we look at the frail bodies of the hungry, we are looking at the frail body of Jesus.

When we see the parched lips of the thirsty, we see the parched lips of Jesus.

When we walk by the homeless beggar on the street, we walk by Jesus.

When we meet people who are disabled, physically, mentally, and socially, we meet Jesus.

When we encounter minorities who have been oppressed for their religion, for what country they’re from, for their sexuality, or for the color of their skin, we encounter Jesus.

When we visit the sick in hospitals, the forgotten in prisons, the elderly in nursing homes, the widows and widowers who sit all alone day after day, we visit Jesus.

When we reach out with grace and forgive and love even those who have committed unspeakable sins against us, we reach out to Jesus.

When we make the church a place of grace for all people, especially for those who have been marginalized or demonized by society, culture and bad religion, then we make a place of grace for Jesus. When we do it for the least of these our brothers and our sisters, we do it for Jesus.

And there’s more, much more…

Since we know that the risen Christ we serve is a Christ who knows suffering, who knows what it is like to be a human being, and experience the evils of this world, when we find ourselves overwhelmed by the suffering and pain of this world, we can have faith that Christ is there suffering with us and feeling our pain. And giving us hope and understanding and grace as only a loving God who knows suffering can give.

When we are overwhelmed by grief and loneliness, Christ is there.

When we reach the ends of our ropes and feel that we can not take it anymore, Christ is there.

When we hear words from our doctor’s like:  heart disease, cancer, diabetes, pneumonia, Alzheimer’s, inoperable, and terminal, Christ is there.

When human mistakes seek destroy relationships with the ones we love, Christ is there.

When it seems there is nothing holding together our marriages, Christ is there.

And when we are faced with the knowledge of our own imminent deaths, and feel abandoned, even by God, when we want to cry out with a loud voice, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Christ is there.

This is why Luke places so much emphasis on Jesus’ physical nature. This is the reason the risen Christ ate a piece of broiled fish with his disciples. Although it is a good thought, Luke does not write this to tell us that when we all get to heaven we will all get to stuff our faces with seafood. He is telling us a more important message: a message that the disciples got and gave their physical lives proclaiming.

This is why every disciple, except for John, who experienced the risen Christ were killed for preaching “Christ Crucified.”  John died for his preaching all alone on the island of Patmos in prison after writing the book of Revelation.

May each of us, like the disciples, hear Luke’s message this morning. And may each of us, like the disciples, give our physical lives, our bodies, broken, our life, outpoured, proclaiming with our words and by our deeds, “Christ Crucified.”

Our God Rides a Donkey

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn LentLeave a comment

donkeyjesusJohn 12:12-15 NRSV

A few moments ago we prayed for a variety of people who all have one thing in common.  They are suffering.  Some are suffering with cancer.  Others heart disease.  Some are trying their best to recover from strokes. Others are recovering from injuries from an accident or a fall.  Others are experiencing the grief over losing a loved one to death.

And of course the question that people of faith ask is why?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

As a Christian pastor, I have often said that the question that one should ask is not “why me?”   But “why not me.”  We are human beings, and the reality is, that human beings suffer.  Human beings get cancer, have heart disease and strokes and get into accidents.

“Why me?”  No, the better question is, since I am a human being, “Why not me?’

Hear me clearly say this: When bad things happen, God is not punishing us, God is not trying to get anyone’s attention, wake anyone up, and God is not trying to teach us something.  In this fragmented world, bad things simply happen.

I hate it when people misquote the Bible by saying that “the Good Lord doesn’t put any more on us that we can bear.”  As if the Lord looks at people like Joyce Letchworth and says: She has buried two sons, had heart bypass and a valve replacement surgery, still, I think she could bear breaking a hip.

God does not put anything on us.  We suffer because we are fragile, immortal human beings and that’s it. And God does not “take,” “pluck,” or “call home” anyone from this life.  We die because we are human.

However, I believe the question that most of us really want answered is not so much, “Why me?”, but “Why isn’t God doing something about it?”  Why doesn’t God do something to prevent or relieve the suffering? We understand that God doesn’t cause suffering, but, why on earth, doesn’t God do something about it?  That’s what I don’t understand.

Well, one easy answer is that suffering is for our own good. A long time ago, Irenaeus of Lyons, a second century bishop, wrote on the educational value of suffering.

Why doesn’t God end our suffering?  Well, through our encounters with pain, we grow and develop. The infant who touches a hot stove learns a valuable lesson.  What if human beings never experienced want, deprivation, terrible heat or unbearable cold? Would human culture have developed among other creatures? No, said Irenaeus. Suffering is thus a great teacher, a wonderful prod for advancement in human development.

Even the book of Hebrews says that Jesus learned obedience through his suffering.

Now, I realize that this is somewhat true. The keyword here is “somewhat.” My aching bones tell me that a person in my shape should not try to run a marathon. But what about those whose bones lie in the mass graves in Iraq or Syria? What about the bones of the five year old boy found in a septic tank in Virginia? What lesson is there for that grieving community?

Some pain is helpful, but not all pain. The truth is that there is far too much useless, pointless pain in this broken and fallen world to speak to positively of the educational potential of suffering. What on earth is a child who falls victim to an internet child molester to learn?

Which brings us back to our main question: Why doesn’t God do something about the pain of this world?  Why doesn’t God intervene and do something?

One philosopher once said, “Either God is good, but ineffective and unconcerned, in which case he is not good for us, or, considering the unrelieved, unjustified pain in this world, God is evil.”  There is just too much unrelieved, unaddressed pain in this world to have God any other way.

Another response is that God is very good, but God is simply inactive. This seems to be the conventional modern resolution of the matter. Rabbi Harold Kushner has said that God only had six days to complete the world, and unfortunately, some things were left unfinished. God is not a personal errand boy. Stuff happens. And God? Well, God is simply uninvolved.

This is the modern, deist God of our founding fathers. Deism is the belief that God set up the world then went on a permanent vacation. Deism rescues us from the dilemma of having to make excuses for God’s lack of engagement with us and our suffering. God doesn’t heal, save, rescue or reach in, not because God is unconcerned and unloving, but rather because God is simply uninvolved.

Deism tended to be the faith of most of the modern world because, in order to get the modern world going, the first thing we needed to do was to remove God from the world so that we could be free to run things as we want. Belief in this God who is empathetic but not meddlesome, having gotten God safely filed away as some vague spiritual feeling, we were free to give ourselves more fully to a more effective god—the nation, the economy, or whatever. The bloody 20th century, the perhaps even bloodier beginning of the 21st century, is the result.

But then, despite ourselves—God, all of a sudden, surprises us. God comes. And God acts. A life gets uplifted. Someone comes away healed, whole. A life is changed, a future rearranged.  On her death bed, after suffering more than I have seen anyone suffer, Alawoise Flanagan miraculously smiles, her eyes ablaze with hope. And members of the Flanagan family miraculously experience a peace and strength that surpasses all understanding. Just when we thought God had taken some cosmic vacation, God shows up and we experience life, abundant and eternal.

This is Palm Sunday. It is the Sunday that God showed up on the streets of Jerusalem riding a donkey. It isn’t that God is unconcerned, uninvolved, and uninterested in us, it is that the way God comes to us is not the way we want or expect God to come.

William Willimon writes: We wanted Jesus to come in to town on a warhorse, and Jesus rode in on a donkey. We wanted Jesus to go up to the statehouse and fix the political problem, and Jesus went to the temple to pray. We wanted Jesus to get organized, mobilize his forces, get the revolution going, and set things right, and Jesus gathered with his friends in an upper room, broke bread, and drank wine.  We wanted Jesus to go head-to-head with the powers-that-be, and Jesus just hung there, on Friday, from noon until three, with hardly a word.

It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t do anything; it was that Jesus didn’t do the thing that we wanted. It wasn’t that Jesus did not come and intervene; it was that Jesus came riding a donkey.

God emptied God’s self, poured God’s self out, became one of us, bore our sins and our sufferings, even to death, death on cross. God came to us—not in a way that we wanted—but in a way that is all we truly need for life—abundant and eternal.

When my friend, Tony Cartledge’s, eleven year-old little girl died in his arms after their car was struck by a drunk driver, Tony said that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was there. No, God didn’t go after the drunk driver with a vengeance and reverse the evil that had happened, but there God was nonetheless: Holding that little girl with him; feeling Tony’s pain; shedding divine tears; promising hope and peace. God was undeniably present. And “miraculously,” said Tony, “that presence was enough.”  “That presence was all that I needed.”

There are people on our prayer list, and others for whom we prayed today who I pray will somehow, some way, be able to say: “It may not have been what I wanted—but God’s humble, loving, suffering, self-giving, life-changing, healing, hopeful presence, is all that I will ever need—for now and forevermore.  Amen.”

Our King Wears a Crown of Thorns

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn LentLeave a comment

6187141-crown-of-thorns-hung-around-the-easter-crossMany people will not worship in a church this Holy Week because someone in the church, without thinking, offered them an easy answer in the face of evil. “God does not make mistakes,” they said. “God is in control. God knows what God is doing,” they said.

The reason I believe people are tempted to give up on God in the face of evil is because, contrary to what their good-intended church friends say, they are unaware that God does not reign from some heavenly throne in some blissful castle, but from an old rugged cross, on a hill outside of Jerusalem, between sinners like you and me. I believe people become despairing and cynical about God, because they fail to understand that our God does not rule like the rulers of this world.

The rulers of this world rule with violence and coercion and force. Earthly rulers rule with an iron fist: militarily and legislatively and with executive orders. The kings of the world rule with raw power: controlling, dominating, taking, and imposing.

But Christ is a King who rules through suffering, self-giving, self-expending, sacrificial love. Christ the King rules, not from a distance at the capital city, not from the halls of power and prestige, but in little, insignificant, out-of-the-way places like Bethlehem and Nazareth, and Enid and Waukomis..

Christ the King doesn’t rule with an iron fist, but with outstretched arms. Christ the King doesn’t cause human suffering from a far, but is right here beside us sharing in our suffering.

God’s power is not a power that takes, but is a power that gives.

God’s power is not a power that rules, but is a power that serves.

God’s power is not a power that imposes, but is a power that loves.

God’s power is not a power that dominates, but a power that dies.

This, says the late theologian Arthur McGill, is the reason that it is “no accident that Jesus undertakes his mission to the poor and to the weak and not to the strong, to the dying and not to those full of life. For with these vessels of need God most decisively vindicates his peculiar kind of power, [a] power of service whereby the poor are fed, the sinful are forgiven, the weak are strengthened, and the dying are made alive.”

Christ the King did not take our first child. The day our baby died, God cried with us in that hospital room.

God did not cause the tumor. The day the doctor said the word “cancer” was a day of anguish for God as it was for us.

God did not create the layoff.

The day you were told that your job was ending, God stayed up with you and worried with you all night long.

And God did not take your loved one.  When they died, something inside of God died too.

What we all need to learn are very different definitions of “king,” “rule,” “reign” and “power”—very different because they define the ways of the only true and living God rather than defining our false gods and their ways.

So when life gets us down, we need to remember the great truth of Holy Week—Christ is the King. And this King is reigning, suffering, sacrificing and giving all that God has to give from the cross.

God does not make mistakes. God knows what God is doing. God is in control. But God’s throne is not made of silver and gold. God’s throne is made of wood and nails. God wears not a crown of jewels but a crown of thorns.

Phrases Churches Must Stop Saying

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Farmville EnterpriseLeave a comment

Excerpt from Spring Cleaning of Our Mouths for The Farmville Enterprise

wash+mouthBecause words have tremendous power, there are many words that I believe churches need to stop saying.

We’ve never done it that way before and You are in my seat?

When these words are spoken at church, they almost always mean that “new ideas, new ways of thinking, new approaches to ministry, and new people are not welcome here.” These words espouse a “This-is-my-church-my-house philosophy. And any words espousing that this is our house and not God’s house have the power to kill a church.

The Bible clearly says…

Whenever I hear this expression, I get a little nervous. People who use this expression are usually thinking: “There is only one interpretation of the Bible, and it is mine!”

Love the sinner and hate the sin.

These words infer that we can somehow separate the sin from the sinner; however, sin is so much a part of our DNA, so much a part of who we are in this fragmented world, that it simply cannot be avoided. And when we think that we have reached some sort of spiritual pinnacle that we can somehow avoid sin, we contradict who Jesus calls us to be by becoming arrogant, proud, snooty and judgmental. And we drive people away from the church in droves.

If you died today, do you know where you would spend eternity?

When we infer that we should follow Jesus only to selfishly receive some award instead of punishment, then we miss the whole point of who Jesus is and who he calls us to be. Jesus calls us not to save our lives, but to lose our lives. Jesus calls us to live a self-giving, self-expending life rooted in radical selflessness. Jesus never said: “Follow me and go to heaven.” He said: “Follow me and carry a cross.”

And then there are the classics:

God has God’s reasons or God doesn’t make mistakes or God will not put any more on us than we can bear or It’s God’s will and we will just have to accept it.

These words have caused countless people to leave the faith. There is no telling how many people have reached the conclusion: “If God is the one who caused my baby to die, if God is the reason behind my divorce, if God created my loved one to suffer, if God put all of these financial hardships on me, then I would be better off living in Hell for all of eternity than with a God like that.”

I believe too many churches have tried to teach the Christian faith while avoiding the pain and suffering of However, when we move too casually through the season of Lent to get to Easter, when we move too quickly through Holy Week, and sometimes even overlook Good Friday, we miss what may be the most important tenet of the Christian faith: Our God is a God who suffers. God is not seated on a throne far removed from the creation, pressing buttons, pulling levers, causing human misery, but our God is here in the midst of human pain, suffering with us. So, in a way, our God is still on the cross today. Our God is a God who grieves, agonizes, and bleeds. Our God is never working against us, but always working for us, creating and recreating, resurrecting, painfully doing all that God can do to wring whatever good can be wrung out of life’s most difficult moments.

Spring Cleaning Our Mouths

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent, Sermons Year B2 Comments

wash+mouthJohn 2:13-22 NRSV

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Jesus showed up one Sunday morning in church? Would he politely take an order of service from a deacon and quietly find a place in the pews? Would he stand for the call to worship, sing from the hymnal and say the Lord’s Prayer? Would he eat the bread and drink from the cup? Would he put money in the plate when it was passed? Would he earnestly and respectively listen to the sermon, without any reply or retort?

Or would he have something to say? Would anything here anger him or incite him to take some sort of action? Would he take a look at how we were doing church and want to do a little spring cleaning? Would he take a whip and drive any of us out? Would he turn over table or two? Would he come up here to the pulpit and take my sermon notes and tear them to shreds?

Because that is kinda what he did when he visited the Temple in Jerusalem before the Passover. You might say that he did a little spring cleaning. Most scholars point out that it wasn’t so much that the people were exchanging money or selling in the Temple that burned Jesus up, but it was the manner in which they were doing it. The common practice was to charge oppressive amounts of interest, taxes and fees to exchange currency. And when selling cattle, sheep and doves for Passover, it was a common practice to take advantage of and rip off the poor. Just like today, those who can afford the least, often have to pay the most.

So what angered Jesus is how the religious establishment was preying on and hurting others. And this this text is asking: “Is there anything that the church does today that hurts other people?” “What is it about church today that needs a good spring cleaning?”

I try to talk to people every week who never attended church, or who no longer attend church. And when I ask them why they are not a part of church, they often tell me that they have been deeply hurt by the church. “How?” I ask. “By words,” they say.

The truth is: words have tremendous power. The Epistle of James says it well:

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so (James 3).

Nathan Parrish, a pastor friend of mine in Winston-Salem said that a mother in his church shared with him her outrage one Sunday after church. She said that during the week, her ten year-old boy came home from football practice and told her that the coach had the audacity to say that “he hit like a girl.” My friend Nathan responded: “The message starts early doesn’t it?”

She asked: “What do you mean?”

Nathan said: “Our children learn it while they are young, don’t they? That females are the weaker sex and need to be kept in their place.”

Laura Johnson, the pastor of Broad Street Christian Church in New Bern, has said that as a female pastor people give her qualified compliments all the time: “Laura, that was a great sermon…for a woman.” “Laura, you are a good pastor, for a girl.”

The message starts early, and it is pervasive. And it is prevalent in many churches. Through patriarchal language, the exclusive use of male pronouns to refer to God, men are touted as being somehow closer to God than women. Thus, in many churches, only men can be the leaders, and women are pushed to a more subservient place. The men belong in the church boardroom; whereas the women belong in the church kitchen.

Words indeed have great power and can cause tremendous harm. So, if Jesus was coming to our church do a little spring cleaning, he would perhaps start with our mouths. So what words in our church vocabulary do you think Jesus would want to drive out with a whip? What words or church expressions would be among the first to be cleaned out? What about:

We’ve never done it that way before, or worse, You are in my seat?

When these words are spoken at church, they almost always mean “new ideas, new ways of thinking, new approaches to ministry, and new people are not welcome here.” These words espouse a “This-is-my-church-my-house philosophy. It is what the gospel writer meant when he said: “then the disciples remembered what was written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” And any words espousing that this is our house and not God’s house have the power to kill a church. There was a great book written nearly thirty years ago that many churches who are closing their doors for good today failed to read. It was called The Seven Last Words of the Church: We’ve Never Done It that Way Before.”

The Bible clearly says…

As I said this past Wednesday night, whenever I hear this expression, I get a little nervous. You may have heard that there are many elected officials and TV evangelists in our country who would like to transform the United States into a Theocracy. That means that they would like to take the laws of God found in the Bible and make them the laws of the land. That is how they want to bring God’s kingdom to earth. While a theocracy may sound good to many Christians at first, it really all depends on who Theo is, doesn’t it? Who gets to pick and interpret the laws that they want others to obey? Whenever people talk about enforcing or legislating biblical morality, they are almost always thinking: “There is only one interpretation of the Bible, and it is mine!” However their interpretation may be the polar opposite of your interpretation that you try to discern through the words and works of Jesus.

ve the sinner and hate the sin.

 A couple of weeks ago I said that these words infer that we can somehow separate the sin from the sinner; however, sin is so much a part of our DNA, so much a part of who we are in this fragmented world, that it simply cannot be avoided. And when we think that we have reached some sort of spiritual pinnacle that we can somehow avoid sin, we contradict who Jesus calls us to be by becoming arrogant, proud, snooty and judgmental. And we drive people away from the church in droves.  We say: “But I don’t do the things that so-in-so does!” That might be good; however, we just need to understand that just because we don’t, we are not any less of a sinner than so-in-so.”

If you died today, do you know where you would spend eternity?

I believe in heaven and hell, but the truth is that when we infer that following Jesus should only be done for purely selfish reasons, to receive some award instead of punishment, then we miss the whole point of who Jesus is and who he calls us to be. Jesus calls us not to save our lives, but to lose our lives. Jesus calls us to live a  self-giving, self-expending life rooted in radical selflessness. Jesus never said, “Follow me and go to heaven.” He said, “follow me and carry a cross.”

And then there are the classics:

God has God’s reasons.

God does not make mistakes.

God will not put any more on us than we can bear.

It’s God’s will and we will just have to accept it.

These words have probably caused more people to leave the church, and leave God, than any others. There is no telling how many people have reached the conclusion: “If God is the one who caused my baby to die, if God is the reason behind my divorce, if God created my loved one to suffer, if God put all of these financial hardships on me, then I would be better off living in Hell for all of eternity than with a God like that.”

I believe many Protestant churches, in an attempt to distance themselves from Catholicism, have tried to teach the faith while avoiding the pain and suffering of Jesus. We look at the crucifix and say, “My Lord is not on the cross! He is living today in heaven! However, when we move too casually through the season of Lent, too quickly through Holy Week, and even skip Good Friday to get to Easter, we miss what may be the most important tenet of the Christian faith: that our God is a God who suffers. God is not seated on a throne far removed from the creation, pressing buttons, pulling levers, causing human misery, but our God is here in the midst of human pain, suffering with us, alongside us. So, in a way, our God is still on the cross today. As long as there is human life, our God is still emptying God’s self, pouring God’s self out. Our God is a God who grieves, agonizes, and bleeds. Our God is never working against us, but always for us, creating and recreating, resurrecting, doing all that God can do to wring whatever good can be wrung out of life’s most difficult moments.

It is almost Passover. And once again, Jesus is visiting the Temple. Jesus is coming, and he’s cleaning house. He is taking a whip and driving out all that we do, and maybe more importantly, all that we say in the name of God that harms others.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly.

Choosing Our Pain

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year B1 Comment

Mark 8:34-38 NRSV

This past week, I invited someone to visit our church. They responded that they had been wounded so badly by people in the church in the past, that they were much better off staying at home on Sunday mornings. Their words and the snow that had just fallen reminded me of an old song by Simon and Garfunkle:

A winter’s day in deep and dark December

I am alone, gazing from my window to the street below

On a freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow,

I am a rock, I am an island.

I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty that none may penetrate.

I have no need of friendship.

Friendship causes pain.

It’s laughing, it’s loving I disdain.

I am a rock, I am an island

Don’t talk to me about love;

Well, I’ve heard that word before.

It is sleeping in my memory.

I won’t disturb this slumber of feelings that have died.

If I had never loved, I never would have cried.

I am a rock, I am an island.

I have my books and poetry to protect me.

I am shielded in my armor, hiding in my room, safe within my womb.

I touch no one, and no one touches me.

I am a rock, I am an island,

And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.

How many of us have been tempted by the brokenness of human relationships, hurt so badly by love, that were tempted to withdraw unto ourselves becoming rocks or islands?

We give our love to another—a spouse, a relative, maybe a friend, perhaps even the church. We empty ourselves. We pour out ourselves.  We make ourselves vulnerable as we give ourselves completely to that person, to that family or to that community.  And what do we get in return? We get disappointed. We get betrayed. We get stabbed in the back. We get manipulated. We get used and abused.

Sometimes the pain is so profound and so intense that we are tempted to withdraw. We say: “If loving others is only going to bring heartache and heartbreak, I will never love again! I will never open myself up, empty myself, pour myself out to another!

“If being her friend is going to hurt this much, I’ll go it alone. “If loving him is going to bring this pain, I’ll be a rock.” “If joining a church and getting involved in the life of the church is going to bring this much misery, then on Sunday mornings, I’ll be an island! And I will never feel pain and grief again!  For ‘a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.’”

Perhaps we’ve all said it, or at least felt it. For who can deny the reality that when we do open ourselves up and love another as God has created us to love, we indeed open ourselves up to the enormous likelihood of grief and pain.

However, the question I would like to pose this morning is this: “Is the likelihood of grief and pain any less enormous when we choose to stay home, go it alone? Is it really true that “rocks do not hurt and islands do not cry?” The truth is that if we love, we cannot avoid grief. But can we truly avoid grief by avoiding love? As human beings, is it possible for us to avoid pain by going it alone, by living life outside of community?”

A Buddhist Monk would argue that the one element in life that is unavoidable in this world is pain. One of the four noble truths of Buddhism is that suffering is a basis for reality. Pain is in inescapable. I believe there is an element of truth here. If we love we will suffer. But if we go it alone we will also suffer. Whatever path we choose, pain is always inevitable.

Jesus himself said, “In the world, we will have tribulation.”

But here’s the good news: We have been given the grace to choose our pain.

We can choose to love as Christ taught us to love, choose to be in community and experience the pain of grief. Or, we can choose to become rocks or islands and experience the pain of loneliness. But what every human being needs to do at some point or another is to choose their pain. We can choose the pain that comes from emptying and pouring out ourselves, denying ourselves, loving and forgiving others, living in community or we can choose the greater pain that comes from being alone.

Let’s consider for a moment the pain of loneliness, the pain of living a total self-centered life.

In the beginning, God called everything in creation good. But when God looked around and saw that Adam was alone, God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner.”  John Milton once wrote: “Loneliness was the first thing the eyes of God called ‘not good.’”[1]

The truth is that we were created for relationships. We were created to be with one another and to love one another. Without other human beings, we cannot be truly human.

Commenting on this passage from Genesis, John Claypool once said, “A man by himself is not a man; that is, he could never have become one, nor having become one, remain one, without…other humans.”[2] And although the path of love will lead to the enormous likelihood of pain, any other path we choose will lead to even greater pain.

The pain of loneliness and isolation is so much greater that C.S. Lewis likened it to Hell itself. He once said that the thought of “being alone forever was more fearful than a thousand burning hells.” And such existence is the logical end of not loving, of leading a totally self-centered life. [3]

T. S. Elliot once wrote these words about self-centeredness and loneliness:

There was a door And I could not open it. I could not touch the handle. Why could I not walk out of my prison? What is Hell? Hell is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.[4]

I believe this is partly what Jesus meant when he said: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life, for my sake, for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Loving others as we are created to love others is painful. Being a part of a church can be painful; however, not loving, becoming a rock or an island is “as painful as a thousand burning Hells.”

When I was a pastor in Winston-Salem, our church advertised in our community that we were going to have “a mission blitz.” We were going to take an entire Saturday, split up in teams and to go out into the community to work in people’s yards and homes. We had several people respond to our advertising by contacting the church days before the blitz to request yard work and light housework.

There was an elderly man we will call Mr. Jones who contacted us stating that his gutters needed to be cleaned and his yard needed to be raked. That Saturday afternoon I arrived at his house with three other adults and four teenagers to do the requested work.

Before we could get started, Mr. Jones met us in the front yard. He immediately welcomed us with left over Halloween candy explaining that since the light on his front porch was burned out, not a single trick-or-treater had visited his house this year.

As we sat on his front porch eating fun-size candy bars, Mr. Jones began to share his sad and rather long story with us. He said that since his wife died twenty years ago he had been living all alone in his house. He then shared with us that although he and his wife had desired a family, they were never able to have any children. Having been injured in World War Two, he never had a job, but he somehow managed to make ends meet with his disability checks. When we finally were able to get away from his stories and hospitality, we got the ladders and the rakes out of the truck and went to work on his gutters and yard.

I had not been on my ladder for more than fifteen minutes when Mr. Jones came out of the back door carrying a tray of cups of hot chocolate for all of us. He said, “Y’all better come and get this before it gets cold.”

We stopped our work and visited again with Mr. Jones for another half hour or so. This time he asked us a lot of questions, especially the teenagers. He wanted to know what grade they were in, what their favorite subjects were, what they wanted to do when they grew up, and whether or not they had a girlfriend or boyfriend.

When we finally got away from him again, we began to see something that we had not seen earlier. There was really not that much work to do. He only had one tree in his yard. The gutters had very few leaves in them. They were not impeding the flow of water. And the leaves that were on the ground were being blown by the wind from his yard into a field behind his house.

It then occurred to me, that Mr. Jones did not need any work. Mr. Jones needed us. Mr. Jones needed someone in the world to acknowledge that he was alive. Mr. Jones needed what he was created to need. Mr. Jones needed others to love him. And Mr. Jones needed to love others.

Yes, loving others will inevitably bring us enormous pain. But the pain will not be any less enormous if we become rocks or islands. In fact, the pain of isolation and loneliness may be as enormous as “a thousand burning hells.”

We can choose to love or not to love.  But we cannot choose pain or no pain. Therefore, in this world we must choose our pain. My prayer is that each of us will recommit to choosing the pain that comes with giving, with emptying ourselves, and pouring out ourselves to others.

And may we go out into our community and find the Mr. Jones’ of the world, male and female, young and old, and love them, and allow them to love us.

[1]This quote of John Milton was borrowed from a sermon entitled “When You Are Lonely” by Dr. William Powell Tuck to Hampton Baptist Church in Hampton, Virginia on July 20, 2003

[2]John Claypool, “Choose Your Pain”

 [3]Ibid

 [4]William P. Tuck, “When You Are Lonely”