Seldom, if ever, do we read an entire book of the Bible in worship. Yet, today, we will read all of Paul’s Letter to Philemon. I have a few good reasons to read all of Philemon.  First, at only 25 verses, Philemon is the shortest of Paul’s letters.  In the original Greek, it’s only 335 words. Second, Paul addresses Philemon to a person rather than a congregation, which makes it unique in all of his letters.

This second reason leads me to a third, which is the real reason I wanted to read the whole thing in worship. This highly personal letter deals with a runaway slave, Onesimus, whom Paul wants Philemon, his master to receive back. The letter lets us see Paul in a different light. In Philemon, he uses a pastoral strategy to speak to a difficult situation. He uses persuasive language and enlists allies to speak to Philemon.

Some people find Philemon less than full in theology, but I find Paul’s message in this little letter very deep. In the first paragraph of his introduction to Philemon in The Message, Eugene H. Peterson plumbs this depth:

• Every movement we make in response to God has a ripple effect, touching family, neighbors, friends, community. Belief in God alters our language. Love of God affects daily relationships. Hope in God enters into our work. Also their opposites—unbelief, indifference, and despair. None of these movements and responses, beliefs and prayers, gestures and searches, can be confined to the soul. They spill out and make history. If they don’t, they are under suspicion of being fantasies at best, hypocrisies at worst.

This little letter let us see our faith at work. In your bulletin today, you received a copy of the Letter to Philemon from The Message: the Bible in Contemporary Language by Eugene Peterson,   along with Peterson’s entire introduction. I would invite you to find this insert and follow along as I read this unusual letter.

1I, Paul, am a prisoner for the sake of Christ, here with my brother Timothy. I write this letter to you, Philemon, my good friend and companion in this work— 2also to our sister Apphia, to Archippus, a real trooper, and to the church that meets in your house. 3God’s best to you! Christ’s blessings on you!

4Every time your name comes up in my prayers, I say, “Oh, thank you, God!” 5I keep hearing of the love and faith you have for the Master Jesus, which brims over to other Christians. 6And I keep praying that this faith we hold in common keeps showing up in the good things we do, and that people recognize Christ in all of it. 7Friend, you have no idea how good your love makes me feel, doubly so when I see your hospitality to fellow believers.

8In line with all this I have a favor to ask of you. As Christ’s ambassador and now a prisoner for him, I wouldn’t hesitate to command this if I thought it necessary, 9but I’d rather make it a personal request.

10While here in jail, I’ve fathered a child, so to speak. And here he is, hand-carrying this letter—Onesimus! 11He was useless to you before; now he’s useful to both of us. 12I’m sending him back to you, but it feels like I’m cutting off my right arm in doing so. 13I wanted in the worst way to keep him here as your stand-in to help out while I’m in jail for the Message. 14But I didn’t want to do anything behind your back, make you do a good deed that you hadn’t willingly agreed to.

15Maybe it’s all for the best that you lost him for a while. You’re getting him back now for good— 16and no mere slave this time, but a true Christian brother! That’s what he was to me—he’ll be even more than that to you.

17So if you still consider me a comrade-in-arms, welcome him back as you would me. 18If he damaged anything or owes you anything, chalk it up to my account. 19This is my personal signature—Paul—and I stand behind it. (I don’t need to remind you, do I, that you owe your very life to me?) 20Do me this big favor, friend. You’ll be doing it for Christ, but it will also do my heart good.

21I know you well enough to know you will. You’ll probably go far beyond what I’ve written. 22And by the way, get a room ready for me. Because of your prayers, I fully expect to be your guest again.

23Epaphras, my cellmate in the cause of Christ, says hello. 24Also my coworkers Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke. 25All the best to you from the Master, Jesus Christ!

The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Now, I have a pet peeve when it comes to Paul. It applies to any part of Scripture really. It comes from my education as an historian. Some young people and many people of a more liberal bent look at something Paul wrote and grumble about what he says or doesn’t say.

Listen: there may be a lot in Paul about which we may grumble, but we cannot assume our contemporary context is the only reference point from which to determine whether he has anything to say to us today. A lot of people complain about what Paul says about women, for instance, without really looking into what happened in Corinth and elsewhere or reading about how Paul considered some women his partners in ministry. Philemon affords another opportunity for people to find fault with Paul. “Why didn’t he denounce slavery as an institution?” they wonder.  While they nitpick about what he doesn’t say, they fail to notice the radical statement he does make, which contains good news for us today, news that could transform both our worship and our workplace.

Of course, we come by our complaint about Paul, because we consider ourselves free and assume slavery no longer exists, at least in the United States of America. Yet, I assure you: Slavery still exists around the world. A recent bestseller, The Girl Who Played with Fire describes the trafficking in human beings, which exists even in a developed country like Sweden. Despite denunciation by some on the right of illegal immigration, we could not survive in this country without the work of folks,  who risk everything to work here. I saw a movie once, a fantasy, A Day without a Mexican. It shows the chaos that would occur in California, if one day all the Mexicans, both legal and illegal, simply vanished. Wealthy parents had to take care of their own children. Restaurant owners had to wash their own dishes. Landowners saw fruit and vegetable crops rot in the fields without Mexicans to pick them.

No, slavery is not gone in our world. We may call it by different names, but it still exists, and please, don’t assume we are free. Something keeps us enslaved, as well. Call it the world; call it Madison Avenue; call it business as usual; whatever you call it, it conspires to make work into     something less than “love made visible,” as Kahlil Gibran wrote. We call it the grind or the rat race, from which few of us are really fully free. It makes us feel as if our only worth is determined by what we do. It does violence to our bodies and spirits and makes us feel as if we’re stuck. It makes relationships into commodities to be exchanged, rather than people to be cherished as precious.

Yet, remember I said, “Paul makes a radical statement, which contains good news for us today, news that could transform both our worship and our workplace.” Listen to it again, as Peterson puts it in Philemon 15 and 16: “Maybe it’s all for the best that you lost him for a while. You’re getting him back now for good— and no mere slave this time, but a true Christian brother! That’s what he was to me—he’ll be even more than that to you”.

In one long sentence of only thirty-one words in Greek, Paul transforms the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus from one of slave and master to brothers in Christ and servants of the Lord. We hear it, but we don’t realize how radical it was then, to say, as the New Revised Standard Version translates these two verses: “Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”

I read these two verses from the New Revised Standard Version for those last eight words, “both in the flesh and in the Lord.” While I like Peterson, I prefer this translation to his paraphrase, “He’ll be even more than that to you.”  “Both in the flesh and in the Lord” underscores  what Peterson said in the paragraph from the introduction I read, “None of these movements and responses, beliefs and prayers, gestures and searches, can be confined to the soul. They spill out and make history. If they don’t, they are under suspicion of being fantasies at best, hypocrisies at worst.”

Too often, we make the language of faith vague and spiritual, in the worst and least accurate form of that word. Spiritual does not mean merely some division of life, as if you have worship here and the workaday world over there. You cannot keep Sunday from spilling over into Monday, because spiritual comes from the same word as “breath.” When we speak of spiritual, it means that which makes life come alive. When it comes to work, it means that which turns a career into a calling and rescues us from the slavery, which the rat race is. When it comes to worship, it makes every person in this place, more than another member to you and me. One hymn puts it perfectly,
Join hands, disciples of the faith, whate’er your race may be.
All children of the living God are surely kin to me.

Imagine what might happen in our places of work, if we saw each person as a child of God. I can only imagine it would make it more difficult to treat people as mere means to an end, as mere commodities to be exchanged, as mere tools by which we produce profit. I imagine work itself could become what Gibran imagined in The Prophet, when he wrote, “Work is love made visible.” Imagine what might happen in the marketplace, in the public square, if we saw one another as kin and not another kind.

Imagine what might happen in this place, if we lived out the dream of God of this joyful feast of the people of God as a portent of the day when “They will come from east and west, and from north and south,   and sit at table in the kingdom of God.” I can only imagine it would make it easier to see one another as precious in God’s sight. I imagine we would live out the dream God gave Paul in  Galatians 3:27-28, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Imagine what might happen if we looked into each other’s eyes and saw Jesus. Imagine what might happen if we knew each other as sisters and brothers in Christ and servants of our Risen Lord, and really useful instruments of peace and justice in our world for him.

I want to change the next hymn, because as I finished the sermon, “The Servant Song” surfaced in my consciousness. You may find it as Hymn 2222 in Sing the Faith. It starts with these words,
Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you;
Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.
It captures a dream of God I have, an echo of the voice of God I heard in Philemon, the possibility of who we are in Christ.

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

I ran across a sermon on today’s text on the Internet. Chris Glaser preached it at a Covenant Network Conference in 2003. A Christian, an author, a theologian, and a minister, Glaser invited the congregation to stand, if they were willing and able.  If you are willing and able, would you please stand now? If you are not able to stand, you may still take part.

Then, he invited the congregation to experience the world as the woman in Luke’s story does by leaning over 45 degrees. I invite you to bend over about 45 degrees. Soon, you will begin to feel a strain in your back and a burden on your shoulders. You see the world differently, don’t you?  Being bent over limits what you can see.  Glaser comments,  “Stooping, you cannot easily look into the faces of those around you; you can’t be on the same level with anyone; you can’t see the whole church.”

He continues to describe the view of the woman in Luke’s story:

• You cannot easily look toward the horizon  to see a glorious sunrise or sunset. Vistas of God’s wondrous works on earth in daylight and views of God’s awesome stars at night do not come readily. You are stuck in a humble and humbling position. For the ignorant you are the butt of derision and cruel jokes. The intelligentsia of the day sees you as deformed by sin, by a spirit of Satan. You deserve what you get. In the view of many, you are a disabled human being, rather than a human being with a disability.  And yet here you are in a synagogue, worshiping Yahweh anyway, hearing the stories of how God liberated your people from oppression, from being bent by Pharaoh.

Now, before you sit down, I invite you to stand up straight. Lean back a little with your hands on your lower back. I don’t know about you, but it feels a little better, doesn’t it?  The knots in your back become a bit unbound, don’t they? Ah, yes, that’s better! O.K. you may sit down again.

In a way, we just experienced a little of what this woman did when she encountered Jesus. Yet, imagine being bent over, not for a minute or less, but for eighteen years!  Imagine waking up every morning in pain with nothing to take the edge off. Worse, Glaser got it right: People probably made fun of her, assumed she was sinful, and thought of her as disabled. We don’t know anything about how she became bent over. Scholars suggest abuse of one kind or another could cause this condition. Others offer a variety of chronic illnesses. Yet, professor of preaching at San Francisco Theological Seminary,  Jana Childers points out the word is not simply “bent” or “bent over,”  but more like “bent together” or “bent with.”   Luke makes it clear whatever was wrong went deep inside her and not only pulled her body down, but her soul as well.

Some of us did not need Glaser’s exercise to get in touch with what this woman experienced daily, because we or a loved one live it. We know all too well how chronic physical illness not only pulls one’s body down, but pulls down one’s soul as well. We understand how looking at life through the filter of chronic mental illness has the same effect. Maybe, we don’t have a chronic disease of the body or mind, but somewhere in our life, something caused our souls to stoop a bit. Perhaps, someone told us we weren’t good enough. It could be somebody rejected us because of our race, gender, age,  or sexual orientation.   Maybe, we even stoop because we believe in Jesus and people poke fun at our faith.

Yes, many of us are a little bent, yet I believe, like the woman in Luke’s story, we come to church looking to be unbound. We come to church, wanting to become whole. We come to church, wanting to be made free.  Here and there, now and then, we hear Jesus speak to us. Do you know what he says?  “Howard, Diane, Amanda, Alex, Kevin, Nancy, David, you’re free!”  He lays hands on us, so that we may we stand straight and tall and give God the glory.

Now, I wish the story stopped right there, but there’s another scene. You remember it, don’t you? The leader of the synagogue sees what happens.Not wanting to confront Jesus publicly, he rebukes the woman in front of God and everyone,  saying, as Peterson puts it in The Message, “Six days have been defined as work days.  Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath.”

Isn’t that the way it remains today?  People pursue Sabbath as a gracious time to rest, to heal, and to remember we are free. Yet, sometimes, we religious types make it into a time when rules must be obeyed, wounds remain open and raw to the touch, and we know more of bondage than of freedom. Trust me, if someone received a healing here today in church found themselves released from a life of pain, began to testify, and sing something other than what was scripted, some of us might sound a lot like the leader of the synagogue, citing the Directory of Worship, or simply saying, “Now, now, none of that praise stuff, here, please!  After all, we are Presbyterians!”

We are Presbyterians, many of us, and like many of our sisters and brothers in our denomination  and in other mainline churches,  we’ve forgotten why God gave us the Sabbath. God did not give us this day to punish us. God did not give us this day to ruin our sleep. God definitely did not give us this day to obey rules, to remain wounded, or to stay in shackles. God gave us the Sabbath to remind us we are creatures, not Creator.  In Exodus, God commands the Sabbath,  because not even God worked every day without a rest,  when God made all there is.   God gave us the Sabbath also to remind us we are free.  In Deuteronomy, God commands the Sabbath, so that we never forget we were once slaves in Egypt, but no more!  Now, we are free!

As Lord of the Sabbath, as giver of all liberty and lover of every soul, Jesus answers all our attempts to make this day into a set of rules, a place of pain, and a prison cell.  He reminds the leader of the synagogue and us, if we will unbind an animal and give it water, so healing and freedom should flow in praise to God on this day of light and gladness.  If you came here today, seeking to be healed from what ails you, looking to be freed from what binds you, stand up straight and start praising God!  Jesus announces you are free and his hand rests upon you.  He takes away whatever weighs you down, whatever lays you low.

Yet, if you’re still not sure whether such speech is decent and in order, well, I assure you it is and I invite you to receive the freedom our Lord offers to all, who will open their hands and hearts to him. Amen.

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

On Friday night at Triennium, the Reverend Graham Baird suggested there are two kinds of folk: Those who play it safe and those who take risks.An article on the Presbyterian News Service described these two types:

• “Play it Safers” don’t hang out with unpopular kids, choose profitable careers, and marry people who will make them look good. “Risk-takers” hang out with those on the margins, choose careers that inspire them, and marry those they love.

Baird believes, “All the people who followed Jesus were great risk takers.”

Baird warned the youth: The world will try to get them to play it safe. He  encouraged the youth to resist peer pressure and risk themselves for Christ. He prayed the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) would “become a risk-taking denomination.”  He went to say, “These risks don’t need to come in our theology or in our doctrine, but in our lives. The reason we should risk is because Jesus risked for us. It is the risk worth taking.”

Right after he reached this point in the sermon, I received a text message from Drew Ludwig, Pastor at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. He wondered, “Are Presbyterians risk-takers?” Being a good Presbyterian, I wanted to point out to him the ban on texting during worship. Yet, I thought better of it and answered, “Yes, we are when we are our true to our tradition!”

Now, it may surprise you to hear Presbyterians are risk-takers. Yet, I’ll stand by my statement to Drew. The Confession of 1967 issues a clarion call to reconciliation in society. It states boldly that the search for peace “requires that the nations pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to national security, to reduce areas of strife and to broaden international understanding.”  Our Book of Order echoes this language, “The Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life,     sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.” From the very beginning, we have been at our best as a church,  when we took risks in pursuit of the mission Christ gives us.

Yet, I know how far we fall from our best in our day.  Wrapped up in concerns about declining membership and money, it’s easy for us to settle for least common denominator Christianity, in which we worry more about the bottom line than we do about “the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  We become “play it safers.”  We pursue the popular people or, at least, those who look a lot like us. We encourage our children to choose profitable careers, rather than pursue a calling in which they offer themselves in service. We keep up appearances in our marriages and our family, rather than asking what it means to have a Christian home.  We don’t take risks, because deep down, we are afraid, or at least anxious about what lies ahead of us.

Just before our passage today, Jesus teaches about anxiety. He concludes this teaching with Luke 12:32-34. Listen to how Peterson puts it in The Message:

• “Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself. Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.”

Where do we want to be, when all is said and done? I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be in heaven. At the end, I’d like to find my way home, wouldn’t you? Yet, if we want to make it there, we have to begin living into the kingdom of heaven on earth. We need to take risks to realize this world and all it offers,   while wonderful at times, is not all there is, not by a long shot.

When I read this passage back in the spring, I heard drums in my head. They were the drums of an African-American Spiritual, arranged by André Thomas. They sound like the tell tale heart of hope until the choir sings the refrain:
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning,
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning,
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning,
The time is drawing nigh.

The spiritual sings the truth Jesus says in Luke 12:35-38. Listen to these verses again as Peterson puts them in The Message:

• “Keep your shirts on; keep the lights on! Be like house servants waiting for their master to come back from his honeymoon, awake and ready to open the door when he arrives and knocks. Lucky the servants whom the master finds on watch! He’ll put on an apron, sit them at the table, and serve them a meal, sharing his wedding feast with them. It doesn’t matter what time of the night he arrives; they’re awake—and so blessed!”

Jesus calls us to something more than anxiety about what will happen next. He calls us to anticipation of what will occur when he returns. He calls us to awareness any moment may be the moment. He reminds us the veil that separates this world from the next may be paper thin and the only way to be ready for the end is to live ready for it. It’s like the first verse of the old spiritual says,
Children, don’t get weary,
Children, don’t get weary,
Children, don’t get weary,
‘Til your work is done.
It reminds us of Luke 12: 39-40, which Peterson renders,

• “You know that if the house owner had known what night the burglar was coming, he wouldn’t have stayed out late and left the place unlocked. So don’t you be slovenly and careless. Just when you don’t expect him, the Son of Man will show up.”

It may seem a little weird, but one of my favorite prayers in the Book of Common Worship may be the Prayer of Confession for Advent. My favorite sentence in that prayer says, “We confess that we have not expected your kingdom, for we live casual lives, ignoring your promised judgment.” “For we live casual lives…”  I cannot think of a more accurate description of Christ’s church today, of our denomination, and of this congregation. We live casual lives, unaware that we are kingdom bound, ignorant that God will judge us and may be judging us even now. Here and now, we need to take risks and not play it safe.

In her book, Journey to the Heart, Melody Beattie issues a gentle call for living into the kingdom, here and now:

• Respect life. All of it. The world moves so fast, it’s so easy to forget to respect all that lives, all that is. We get so harried, so hurried, we take life for granted. Take time to remember that all life is sacred. All that is part of creation is a creation, and the same life force moves through us all. With all its trials, tests, worries, heartaches, and sometimes heartbreaks, life is a gift.
• A few short years on this planet, then we are gone. Do not spend it worrying about all that has gone wrong. You will miss the lesson. You will miss the gift, the gift of life.

It’s like the old spiritual says,
Christian journey soon be over,
Christian journey soon be over,
Christian journey soon be over,
The time is drawing nigh.
So, “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning,
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning,
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning,
The time is drawing nigh.”

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

Before we hear the Second Reading,  I want to reread the last verse of the First Reading, “No, the word is very near to you;  it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”  Moses speaks these words near the end of his life.  Throughout Deuteronomy, he reviews all God has done for Israel and reminds them of the faithful response God expects. He invites them in the rest of chapter thirty to make a simple choice between life and death.  He encourages them to choose life.

Yet, ever since Moses delivered God’s commandments from Sinai, we’ve tried to determine what exactly the Lord meant and to find the loopholes wherever we can. In our Second Reading, a lawyer, really a biblical scholar comes to Jesus, wanting to know how to inherit eternal life. Jesus answers by asking him a question, which the man answers well. Yet, it doesn’t satisfy him, so he asks another question. I will read from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, because most of us know this passage well, maybe even too well.  I hope Peterson’s paraphrase will breathe new life into this old, old story.

Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”

He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

“Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

“A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’

“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.

Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”

While he described himself variously as a freethinker, a humanist, a Unitarian/Universalist, an agnostic, even an atheist, the late American writer, Kurt Vonnegut grasped what lies at the core of what our faith teaches.  A young man from Pittsburgh asked him, “Please tell me it will be okay!” Vonnegut answered, “Welcome to earth, young man! It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goldarn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind.”  Of course, Vonnegut used another word with which I didn’t feel at ease. However, I think he’s right about the only one rule thing:  “You’ve got to be kind.”

When I graduated from Princeton, one of my preaching heroes, Frederick Buechner told a story about another great American writer, Henry James. When he said goodbye once to his young nephew Billy,     he said something the boy always remembered: “There are three things that are important in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.”

Now, I know what you wonder, because I wondered the same thing, when I read Vonnegut’s advice and remembered James’s counsel.  When must one be kind? What constitutes kindness? Where does one practice kindness? Maybe, most importantly, who ought to receive my kindness?

Like the religion scholar in Jesus’ story, we know all the answers or, at least, we think we do! Yet, we want to see when Jesus would practice kindness, what he thinks it is, where he believes we should be kind, and of course, most importantly, who deserves our kindness. Like the religion scholar, we could rattle off the greatest commandment, which combines a verse from Deuteronomy and a verse from Leviticus to create a perfect summary of everything God taught Israel during their wilderness wanderings. When you think about it, it’s what all of us learned in Sunday School, isn’t it? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” It might take a little coaching, but most of us could get it out.  Moses was right: “No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”

Yet, why do we continue to look for the loopholes? Why do we complicate what appears to be as clear as the nose on our face? Why do we ask the question, which only reveals how closed our hearts are to the word, how silent we can be when we should speak, how far we are from really, fully knowing what God really, truly said? “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Listen, I don’t feel much like retelling the parable of the Good Samaritan. You don’t need me to tell you what it says, because again, it’s pretty clear: Two very religious people walk by. Perhaps, the priest feared touching a dead body for fear of contamination, but I think it was an excuse. In all likelihood, the Levite feared that it might be a trap, but it doesn’t really matter. Both of them, good religious folk, did nothing to help their neighbor. The word was very near to them, screaming out from the nearly lifeless body, saying, “Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.” And they closed their ears and their hearts and kept on walking.

You don’t need me to tell you about the Samaritans, how much Jews hated them and how mutual the feeling was. Yet, what we need to grasp is that the Samaritan got the essential tenet of Christianity, in fact, a core belief of Judaism, Islam, and many other religions:  “You’ve got to be kind.” Even those who will have nothing to do with organized religion, believe this article of faith at some level.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it too. How can we afford to be kind in a world where so many cruel things occur? How can we consider showing kindness to people who hurt us? Aren’t you being naïve? Well, no, I’m not being naïve. Your questions are not for me to answer.  You may address them to the same person to whom I addressed the same questions as I wrote this sermon. I’ll tell you the same thing he told me. “No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. You can hear it in the cries of the man on the road. You can see it in the kindness shown by one whose only belief might be the basic faith of all humankind. My Father placed it deep within your hearts. It’s on the tip of your tongue. You know the truth. I know it’s hard, because it broke me, but trust me, it’s the only way to live a fully human life.     You’ve got to be kind…be kind… be kind…be kind…”

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

Begin Your Celebration of Independence Day in Worship

Join us on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

July 4, 2010

For A Service Filled with Patriotic Songs and Prayers for our Nation

Pastor Boswell will preach on Hebrew 11:8-16, “A Bettter Country”

The 28th President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson was the last of eight presidents from Virginia. I learned that fact in Virginia History, which was required in Seventh Grade when I grew up in that state. Later, I learned Wilson grew up in a Presbyterian manse. His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson served as pastor in Staunton, Virginia.

So, it comes as no surprise to find a prayer by Wilson in our Book of Common Worship. “A Prayer for our Nation” begins in a very Presbyterian way. It acknowledges God’s sovereignty,  “Almighty God, ruler of all the peoples of the earth.”  It continues with a confession, “Forgive, we pray, our shortcomings as a nation.” Then, it prays for America’s leaders and her people, “Give wisdom to our counselors and steadfastness to our people.”   It concludes by taking the long view, “And bring us at last to the fair city of peace, whose foundations are mercy, justice, and goodwill, and whose builder and maker you are.”

Wilson was not the first of our nation’s leaders to take “the long view.”  In hot and humid Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, Thomas Jefferson took the long view when he wrote,  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Most of the signers took the long view, as they promised, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Another hot and humid summer, in 1963, in Washington, D.C. the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took the long view as he looked out from the Lincoln Memorial. He shared a dream, “deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  You’ve heard his word, punctuated by the chorus, “I have a dream…”  And remember, o remember well, how Dr. King ended,

• With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning—“my country ’tis of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride; from every mountain side, let freedom ring”—and if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Yet, Dr. King had another dream, a vision. Shortly before his death in 1968, he preached at Mason Temple in Memphis. Somehow, he knew what lay ahead and he said, “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.” When Thomas Jefferson penned his famous words and the signers of the Declaration of Independence, it was far from certain whether they would succeed. I read a book by David McCullough, 1776, which suggest things went from bad to worse through that famous year.

In the musical 1776, General George Washington never appears on stage, but he sends reports to the Continental Congress, which leads one member to say, “Och, the man would depress a hyena.”   One of my favorite scenes in the musical begins with Mr. Thompson, the clerk of the meeting, reading one of these letters. He sings,
“I have been in anticipation of receiving a reply
In response to my last fifteen dispatches.
Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody care?
It moves John Adams, played by William Daniels in the original stage production and the movie, to sing,
“Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?
I see fireworks, I see the pageant and pomp and parade,
I hear the bells ringing out, I hear the cannons roar,
I see Americans – all Americans, free, forever more.

Nowadays, it’s easy to wonder, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”   We live in a time when the dreams of people like Jefferson, Adams, and King seem deferred and long since exploded. We see the worst of what comes from the lack of commitment to a common vision of what America may be as we listen to the endless debate in Washington, on the airwaves, over the internet, which seem to celebrate the individual’s rights, rather than the public good. Yet, as citizens and as Christians, we cannot surrender the dream of those who’ve gone before us. We cannot submit to the cynicism so many seem to have. We cannot succumb to the incivility in which so many participate under the guise of practicing freedom of speech.

In the movie, National Treasure, treasure hunter, Benjamin Gates and his sidekick, Riley Poole stand before the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. Gates says, “Of all the ideas that became the United States there’s a line here that stands at the heart of all the others.”  He reads from the faded, fragile document that forms the framework of our freedom, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Then, he says with some sadness, “People don’t talk that way anymore.”

Perhaps, people don’t talk that way anymore. Maybe, many people in our country prefer sound bites and slogans. It could be some accept cynicism and incivility as part of our national life. Yet, you and I cannot join them, because we come from a long line of people who took the long view, like Woodrow Wilson. In his prayer, did you hear an echo of what we read in Hebrews 11:10? Remember how the author said of Abraham, “For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”  As Christians, you and I follow in the footsteps of forebears who died in faith, but did not make it to the Promised Land. Yet, they saw it from afar and welcomed it.  Like them, we live as “strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.” As Christians, we follow them and “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”  We live in hope that that God will not be ashamed to be called our God and we will enter a city God prepares for them.

As citizens, we need to talk in this way. As we journey towards Wilson’s “fair city of peace, whose foundations are mercy, justice, and goodwill,” we need to work to make this “a better country” as we pray that God’s kingdom will come on earth as in heaven. We need to hold our nation to the vision of all who took the long view and never gave up hope. We need to live, as one of our chief ends proclaims, as “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”  As we come to this table today, let us commit ourselves anew to make America become a place where all may come and sit at the welcome table!

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

As I said last Sunday, my Dad grew up in the rural South, North Carolina, to be precise, during the Thirties and Forties. When Dad was only a child, his father died. After a while, his mother moved to Washington, D.C. to find work. Along with his sisters and brothers, he went to live on his grandparents’ farm, which I visited a few times on our way to Myrtle Beach as a child.

My dad and his brothers and sisters worked the farm and, as I found out, their grandfather hired them out to surrounding farms. In those days, when you plowed a field, you didn’t use a tractor.  Instead, you used a mule, or a team of mules. Now, mules may be among the most ornery creatures ever made.  A cross between a horse and a donkey, they are stupid and mean. To plow a straight furrow with a mule took strength of body to hold on to the plow, strength of will to steer the mule, and strength of mind to maintain focus on a point in the distance.

To the third would-be follower who came to him, Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Those words reminded me what my father learned from plowing fields with mules.  These lessons might teach us about how to follow Christ without being distracted from our destiny in him.

We learn the first lesson about how to live our lives as disciples in Luke 9:51, “When the days drew near for (Jesus) to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Luke frames everything from here until Jesus enters Jerusalem as a journey. While Jesus makes stops along the way, he remains focused on Jerusalem and what will happen there. He keeps the cross and the empty tomb before him every step of the way.

Now, I’ve never plowed a field, but I understand that in order to make straight furrows, one has to focus on a point of reference and never lose sight of it.  As followers of Jesus, he is that point of reference for us. In Philippians 3: 12-14, Paul admits he has not yet reached the goal. Yet, he affirms:
I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul’s words remind me of an African-American Spiritual, “Eyes on the Prize.” One verse says:
I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won’t take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
Yet, all of us know how difficult it is to keep our eyes on the prize. Our hand keeps slipping of that gospel plow. We find it hard to hold on. Here’s where we can learn a lot from plowing a field with a mule!

The first lesson is: “Never get mad at the mule!” No matter how ornery a mule is, you gain absolutely nothing by getting angry at it, because it is, well, ornery! Remember what I said, mules are mean and stupid! They define dumb animal! The only thing likely to happen if you kick a mule is the mule will kick back. From what I gather, mules kick much harder than we do.

Sometimes, we encounter people who are like mules.  You know, they’re just plain ornery, like the ones Jesus’ advance team encounter in that  Samaritan village.  A lot of painful history passed between Samaritans and Jews. They hated each other, so no wonder when the villagers rejected Jesus, James and John offered to give them the first century equivalent of a shock and awe campaign.  These sons of thunder suggest in The Message:  “Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?” Instead, Jesus rebukes them and keeps on moving.

We need to remember while Jesus commanded people to come after him, he never coerced them. He invited men and women to follow him, but he never insisted they do. Instead, throughout his ministry, Jesus practiced what some call “detaching with love” from those who rejected him. He remained free to follow God’s call, to keep his face set toward Jerusalem, and left them free to follow their choice and experience its consequences.

I wish contemporary followers of Jesus could learn this from the Master.  We gain nothing by giving people a hard time for rejecting the good news.  It grieves me when I hear voices raised in anger to announce the good news by saying how our nation is in trouble, because we’ve rejected our Christian principles.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to speak the truth in love?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on compassion for others rather than condemnation? Remember: Never get mad at the mule!

Plowing a field with a mule teaches us another important listen about discipleship. We should not take it lightly, like the first would-be follower who comes to Jesus, breathless, saying, “I will follow you wherever you go.”   Jesus reminds him of the costs of following him. While the New Revised Standard Version may sound more familiar, The Message startles us into awareness, saying, “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.” Remember I said plowing a field takes “strength of body to hold on to the plow, strength of will to steer the mule, and strength of mind to maintain focus on a point in the distance.” To follow Jesus requires similar strength.  He reminds us it takes everything we have when he says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

On Tuesday night, I spoke with Elizabeth, an old friend from my Doctor of Ministry group at San Francisco.  I told her about our recent Natural Church Development Survey and our limiting factor of Passionate Spirituality. Now, Elizabeth taught spirituality at the Southern Campus of San Francisco and she is a spiritual director. I listen when she speaks about spirituality. She said the problem is many people don’t understand how difficult it really is to live spiritual lives. I agree, because we live in a time when convenience comes before commitment in congregations, when people seek quick fixes, rather than long term healing.

One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors may be A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene H. Peterson. He takes the title from an unlikely source, the atheist Frederick Nietzche, who wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’…  is that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” Jesus knows following him requires such surrender for the long haul. Just as a field takes hours, even days of hard work to plow, life in Christ cannot be fruitful, if it’s only a passing fad.

The third lesson about plowing a field with a mule is keep moving forward. You can’t keep going over the same ground again. You have to leave the past behind you. Jesus comes across a person along the way and he invites him to follow him. Well, the man says, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Now, it appears to be a reasonable request. In that society, the duty to the dead was considered sacred. Yet, Jesus answers in a way that seems less than compassionate, maybe even a little cruel.

Yet, in The Message, Peterson pulls out the meaning in what Jesus said, “First things first. Your business is life, not death. And life is urgent: Announce God’s kingdom!”  For many of us, we forget to keep first things first. We focus more on death than life. We keep going over past hurts until the pain prevents us from any forward movement.  We put off Jesus’ call, because we still have guilt over what we did. No place do we find more truth in Peterson’s paraphrase than in the church of Jesus Christ. We forget how urgent life is; we forget our business is life, not death. We fail to recall our first chief end:  “the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.” Unless things change, they will list the cause of death for this church and others like it as “Forgot to live!”

I’ve already suggested the final lesson we can learn about following Christ from plowing a field with a mule near the beginning of this sermon. Remember I said, “in order to make straight furrows,     one has to focus on a point of reference and never lose sight of it.” When one plows, one ought never look back, because one will lose sight of the point of reference. The same lesson applies when running a race. Many runners, riders, and drivers lose and even crash, when they pause to check what’s behind them.

The last would-be follower of Jesus is like the first, eager to follow him, except he has other things on his mind. Peterson really captures what we would say, if Jesus called us today, “I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.”  We have so many things we have to look after, so many people depending on us, Lord, really we’d love to follow you, but we have to take care of them, then we’ll get back to you. Yet, we know how Jesus answers in the New Revised Standard Version, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Peterson puts it in plain language, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”

“Seize the day!” Carpe diem! The only time when we can follow Jesus is now. The only place to which he leads us is the kingdom of God. Listen, I know life happens. Sometimes, we can feel exhausted by the strength it takes to hold on to the plow, the strength it takes to steer the mule, and the strength it takes to focus on a point in the distance.  So, let me suggest something. Let’s let go of the reins of our lives and let Jesus steer. Let’s seek God’s strength to help us hold on. You and I, all we have to do is to keep our hands on the gospel plow. Let’s take nothing for our journey now. Keep our eyes on the prize, hold on!

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

The pastor who did my father’s memorial service asked my family and me for things we would remember about Dad. Among other things, I said I can’t listen to Johnny Cash sing and not think of my dad. When we went through pictures, we found one of Dad, all dressed in black! I always thought they looked a little alike. They were about the same age and shared a hard, rural upbringing. I remember watching The Johnny Cash Show with my dad.

Another thing they shared was addiction. Johnny went through rehab more than once. My father nearly died due to alcoholism when I was a junior in college. On American Recordings, Cash included “The Beast in Me,” a song by friend and former son-in-law, singer-songwriter, Nick Lowe. Lowe wrote “The Beast in Me” with Johnny Cash in mind. It captures the conflict Cash knew, a fight my father faced, a struggle with which I wrestle, in different ways.

“The Beast in Me” begins,

The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars.
Restless by day, and by night, rants and rages at the stars.
God help the beast in me.

The beast in me has had to learn to live with pain,
And how to shelter from the rain,
And in the twinkling of an eye might have to be restrained.
God help the beast in me.

This song serves as an image of what many endure who suffer from addiction, as Cash and my father did; from depression and co-dependency, as I do; and from emotional distress and mental illness. Many of us understand all too well these words from Paul in Romans chapter 7, verse 15, “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”  Some of us sense all too well what Paul means when he writes in verse 24, “Wretched (one) that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  Yet, even amid the dying, we still cry, “God help the beast in me!” and hope to proclaim, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

“The Beast in Me” paints a portrait of the Gerasene demoniac before Jesus came ashore on the other side of the sea. Scholars disagree about the exact location, but all of them agree it was in Gentile territory, outside of the ordinary. When I went to Jordan in 2001, I saw some of the land of the Gerasenes. Its nearly lunar landscape made it easy to imagine the demoniac’s life before Jesus came. No longer fit to live among the living, he dwells in the land of the dead, running around the tombs, naked. Sometimes, for public safety, the residents place him in shackles, but these “frail and fragile bars” are no match for his restless mind. He breaks them and runs to the wilderness, where he rants and rages at the stars.

Most of us may have problems with the notion of demon possession. Some suggest the Gerasene demoniac was bipolar. They imagine with the right medication, with the right treatment, and a little self-control, this poor man could be right as rain.  Yet, we need to accept mental illness and addiction still carry a stigma in our society, even within the church. Many of the homeless who wander the streets of our cities, from whom we walk away when we meet them on the sidewalk, suffer from a chronic mental illness or addiction.  In our society, we still do not show those who suffer mental illness or addiction the same compassion we show toward those with physical ailments. Even insurance companies do not cover behavioral health at the same levels as they do physical health. We seem to think since it’s all in their heads, it’s not real or that they aren’t strong, like we are.

We may not know it, but we meet people like the Gerasene demoniac every day. They may even sit next to us in these pews. Some quietly suffer. They endure the pain and the added burden of shame we place on them. Others demonstrate their pain in inappropriate ways. We either ignore them or send them packing when they disrupt our calm. Yet, like the villagers, we fear them, but even more we may fear what happens when they become better. When they become whole, we begin to sense how much we need them to be broken. They let us not look at the beasts in us.

I nearly left out the bridge and last verse of “The Beast in Me,” because I believed they didn’t work with the passage, until I realized how they speak to our lack of awareness of or honesty about our own struggles. Yet, now, I see now how well they fit,
Sometimes it tries to kid me that it’s just a teddy bear
And even somehow manages to vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware

Of the beast in me that everybody knows;
They’ve seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear if it’s New York or New Year.
God help the beast in me.
The beast in me.

Sometimes, we call ourselves to confession with these words from 1 John 1:8-9, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  Other times, we use these words, “We cannot come before God unless we are first honest with ourselves about who we are, about the mistakes we make, and about how well or poorly we care for others.” We like to kid ourselves our sins aren’t so serious. We like to pretend we know who we are. We like to excuse our mistakes and explain away our lack of compassion. Yet, in those moments, we must be aware the beast lies within every son of Adam, within each daughter of Eve. Though we were born to bear our Father’s likeness, we mar the resemblance. Though Jesus died on the cross and rose from the tomb to save us, we think it only offers us a ticket to heaven, rather than a way to live lives of wholeness here on earth. Though we received the anointing of the Spirit at our baptism, we fail to listen to the still, small voice that leads us to fullness of life.

We may kid ourselves, but Jesus doesn’t take the many voices that seek our souls so lightly.  As soon as he sees the Gerasene demoniac, he commands the unclean spirit to come out of him. When the man cries out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” and begs him to stop due to the torment he feels, Jesus continues, asking, “What is your name?”  He answers, “Legion.”  So we grasp what it means: A legion was a division in the Roman Army, composed of three to four thousand soldiers! Yet, Jesus sends this occupying army of demons into the herd of swine, who run into the depths of the sea, which Jesus already silenced as the disciples and he crossed. Only then does the man appear, restored and fully clothed.

Over the last several years, I’ve wanted to preach on this passage, because it speaks to me of my own struggles with depression and co-dependency. Sometimes, I ignore them, thinking they’re just a teddy bear, but I know they are “The Beast in Me.”  They keep me from living in joy and peace. Yet, beyond my own struggles, I wanted to preach on this passage, because I know many of you share similar struggles. Some of you speak to me directly about them. Yet, mostly, I see them reflected in your eyes and hear them echoed in your words.  Nowadays, many of us listen to Legion, many conflicting voices at work, through the media, in our families, from our friends, who tell us who we are and what we ought to do.

I want to make sure to share the good news in every sermon and I fear I’ve spent too much time on its opposite so far.  Yet, if this passage tells me anything, it suggests how sometimes good news and bad news sound a lot alike. All of us contend with “The Beast in Me.”  All of us have issues that we would rather not address in our lives.  All of us carry around some kind of pain. Yet, Jesus addresses us with authority, invites us to name the demons, and offers to take away, or, at least, lessen the pain. He alone can help “the beast in me,” but only if we place ourselves at his feet, not kidding ourselves about our control, being brutally honest about where we fall short.  He will receive us and he will restore us. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.

In the June Crossroads, I wrote about a question people have about worship. Often they ask me, “What’s Ordinary Time?”  I explained how it simply refers to those weeks in the church year that do not fall in Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. Yet, I added how “during Ordinary Time, we discover… Jesus makes the everyday anything but ordinary by his presence.”

According to psychologist, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, we live our ordinary lives from a set of beliefs about how the world works. We believe bad things will not happen.  We expect events will make sense. We assume all events will fall into neat categories of good and bad. We may argue we know how life is not fair, how tragedy doesn’t make sense. Yet, when the world comes crashing down around us, nearly all of us ask, “How could this happen? Or why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?”  Tragedy turns our ordinary lives upside down. It pushes us beyond our everyday understanding.

We do not need to know anything about the status of widows in Jesus’ time to feel our way into the scene we encounter in Luke 7:11-17.  We grasp how at this moment, for this one woman, the worst possible thing happens, nothing about it makes sense, and the death of her son, her only son casts aside every neat category. In Jesus’ time, widows were pushed to the margins of society. Yet, this woman found herself pushed even further. With the death of her son, her only son, everything she had would revert to her husband’s family. She had nowhere to turn, except to the kindnesses of strangers.

She finds herself at the gate of the village of Nain, inconsolable in grief. You see, even today, people in the Middle East do not keep mourning the sterile, silent affair we do in the West. They mourn loudly, with many tears. The scene Luke depicts could be seen repeated in villages and towns from Gaza to the Golan Heights, from Tel Aviv to Amman. The whole village joins in grieving and nothing can stop the tears.

Except, on this day, the kindness of a stranger stop the tears. His first words to the weeping widow are “Do not weep!” Of course, we know who this stranger is and where he’s been. He’s just been in Capernaum, where he healed the centurion’s slave, and celebrated this Gentile’s faith as unlike anything he’d ever seen. The slave was nearly dead, when the centurion told Jesus, “But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

Yet, here at an ordinary funeral in Nain, Jesus sees the widow’s grief. He knows her world crashes down around her and her life and her livelihood lies dead beneath the burial cloth. For the first time, Luke calls Jesus the Lord, as if to signal what’s about to happen. Yet, it’s love that gives the Lord power over death itself. Really something more than love compels him; it’s compassion. Jesus feels her loss deep down, in his gut. He crosses the ordinary barrier between men and women to speak to her. He breaks another barrier when he touches the bier, risking ritual corruption,     so that he might bring resurrection. He speaks to the young man, addresses him as a person, saying, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”  When he rises, he returns him to his mother, restoring her son, her life, her world to her.

I don’t need to tell you how we experience moments like the widow. Maybe, we may not face the absolute destitution she did, but we need to know there are places on this planet where women in her situation would. Yet, we know how sad it is to bury a parent, a sibling, even a spouse, but to bury a child is tragic. My experience as a pastor proves Ronnie Janoff-Bulmann’s theory, because when children precede their parents in death, it dashes the way we think the natural order of life works.

Yet, we know other tragedies that defy our ordinary way of looking at life.  A man sacrifices everything for his wife and children, only to find out how she’s chosen another. A woman works for a company for decades, only to discover her pension’s gone. A family realizes a dream and buys a home, only to have it wrecked in the mortgage crisis. A nation watches as an oil spill threatens to destroy a region barely recovering from one of the worst hurricanes in history, only to learn how fragile a thing is life. I didn’t really need to tell you the story again, because we live it everyday. It’s the tragic reality that confounds our core beliefs and makes us wonder,    “Where in the world is God in the midst of all of it?”

We can find the answer to our question in the question itself. God is in the midst of all of it, if we opened our eyes and our hearts to those moments that are anything but ordinary, when we hear Jesus say, “Do not weep!” when we feel Jesus’ touch, when we answer his command and rise! This story of the widow of Nain is unusual for a couple of reasons. First, only Luke tells it and he tells it beautifully. It’s really a masterpiece! It points back to the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. It points ahead to when Jesus himself, a son, an only son will die, and be raised by the command of his Father. It reminds us of a central theme in his Gospel, Jesus’ love of the oppressed and marginalized as a sign of God’s kingdom.

Yet, I find one thing most unusual. We’d miss it, if we weren’t looking for it. Almost every other miracle includes a request. The centurion asks Jesus to heal his slave. Jesus’ mother asks him to do something about the lack of wine. The blind, the lame, the leper, everyone asks Jesus to do something, even if he has to ask them first, What do you want me to do for you?”     even if they only manage to ask, “Lord, have mercy!”

Yet, here, the widow makes no request, shows no faith. We can’t even say for certain whether she knew who Jesus was. She doesn’t ask, because she doesn’t know anything can happen. Instead, Jesus sees her need and out of compassion, from sheer grace, he raises her son from the dead and returns him to her.

Things that are anything but ordinary happen around us and to us all the time. Maybe, we don’t ask for them to happen, but they happen anyway. We may not recognize them as miracles, but that is what they are. It’s a miracle when the tears finally stop and we begin to heal. It’s a miracle when the man finds the strength to forgive her, maybe not for her sake, but for his. It’s a miracle when the woman receives help from others to rebuild her life. It’s a miracle when the family finds a way to make a new home. It will be a miracle when the marshes of Louisiana return to life, one day, if we work and pray.

Yet, the greatest miracle may be when we see Jesus for who he really is. With those villagers in Nain, we may be afraid at first to realize it, but we will come to glorify God for he is a great prophet, even more he is our Savior and Lord, the only Son of the Most High. In him, God looks favorably upon us and visits us in the losses of our lives, restoring us to life and wholeness.

©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.