"Soul Restoration." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

"Soul Restoration"

Psalm 23

         I used to think the texts for Good Shepherd Sunday should be a fairly “easy” ones for the sermon.  After all, we have the 23^rd Psalm.  I memorized it as a child, and have recited it countless times, and sung it.  

            But then I started noticing how often violence and tragedy have struck during Eastertide, in the time around Good Shepherd Sunday.  When the most recent school shooting happened in Colorado, I realized it was near the 20^th anniversary of the Columbine massacre.  How many mass shootings have happened since then?

            There have been bombings… and children killed and injured by gun violence—too many to be reported beyond the local news.

            In our nation and around the world, people suffer from the violence of extreme poverty.  

            I believe that God is weeping at our tragedies… at the mess humans have made of creation through violence.”[1]   

            So much loss.   So much suffering.   So many lives forever changed by wounds-- both physical and emotional.  Sometimes it feels overwhelming, and we might want to throw up our hands in despair.  But we never stop hoping for something different. 

            At times like these, or when we face the illness of a child or a dear old friend… or the doctor gives us a scary diagnosis…  we can turn to the witness of faith we find in the scriptures.  The 23^rd Psalm has been called one of the psalms of trust, in which those who are praying proclaim their confidence in God’s goodness—despite the very real difficulties they are experiencing. 

            “The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want. “I trust in God to provide what I need.

            “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

            The Psalmist doesn’t deny the reality of evil, nor its capacity to wreak devastation.  But he has adopted a resolute stance in the face of real threat: “No fear.”   Not because the police and FBI are on the scene.  Not because our military has tools to exact vengeance so that perpetrators can’t hurt anyone again.   No.  Because “God is with me.” 

            This is the core claim of our faith:  that there is one God, the God of love, and that we can place our trust in God to be with us, always.   That doesn’t mean that we will never have to face danger or hardship or sorrow.  But it does mean that we will not be alone in it, and that we will be given the strength to get through.

           

            “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  You anoint my head with oil.  My cup overflows.”

            If our first impulse in the face of terror is fear, the second impulse for a lot of people is vengeance.   Just as the Psalmist doesn’t deny the reality of evil, neither does he ignore the reality that there are people in the world who mean him harm.  But in the Psalm, the impulse to vengeance is short-circuited by the deep awareness of grace, which re-directs the energy that would have been drained to exact retribution—and channels it to gratitude and joyful thanksgiving. 

            Our Christian faith point us toward an alternative worldview that shuns reactive violence and opens up possibilities for personal and social transformation--even for enemies. 

           

            We are Easter people—people of the Resurrection.   In the face of violence and death, we hear our sacred texts speaking defiantly, calling us to fearlessness in the valley of the shadow of death… and revealing a vision of a God who will wipe away the tears of those who have gone through great tribulation. 

            In the Acts passage, we hear the story of a little church in Joppa, near the Mediterranean Sea.  In this church, one of the disciples, a woman named Tabitha (or, in Greek, Dorcas) has become sick and died. 

            It may seem hard to relate the death of Tabitha to the violent deaths of April and May in our time.   But, as Margaret Aymer Oget points out,[2]  Tabitha lived in a Roman-occupied world in which wealth and the control of goods were in the hands of the 2 percent, a world in which poverty, malnutrition, and illness were deadly.  Women like Tabitha would have had a life expectancy of fewer than 40 years.  So, her death was also an act of violence, in the sense that poverty caused by injustice is violent. 

            In the face of Tabitha’s death, the little church in Joppa took action.   The widows gathered, weeping and telling her story.  They tended to Tabitha’s body, and they sent for Simon Peter. 

            Tabitha—the beloved and fruitful disciple, is raised up by Simon Peter and restored to her friends.   Of course, news spreads quickly, and many people come to believe because of what happened. 

            Meanwhile, Simon Peter stays in the house of Simon the tanner, a man whose vocation of working with the bodies of animals would have made him unclean.  But apparently, he was not unclean in the eyes of Simon Peter, disciple of the Risen Lord, because God was doing a new thing and breaking down the dividing walls.

            The Easter story back then and now is a story of new life, new possibilities, boundaries being broken down, and transformation. 

            When our world is rocked by tragedy and violence and death and loss, there is great power in those who won’t let the story of a beloved one die, like the parents of the victims of Sandy Hook who have resolved to work as long as it takes for effective gun control laws… and the young survivors of the massacre at Marjorie Stoneman High School in Florida… or  the mother of Philando Castile, who has been giving money to pay off lunch debts of poor students to honoring her son, who was a caring lunch room supervisor before he was shot three years ago by a police officer.  

There is great power in those who weep with God over violence to humanity and creation    and open themselves to work with God for peace… reconciliation… and justice. 

            Unlike the little church in Joppa, we can’t summon an apostle with the power to raise the dead.  But we can still follow the example of the early church.  We can tend to the bodies and to the wounded people… we can tell the truth about the fatal toll of guns, bombs, poverty, and disease. 

            When we refuse to be silent in the face of injustice and poverty and violence and terrorism and bigotry, we break death’s ability to have the last word. 

            When we trust in the Shepherd God of love and mercy, we can live confidently.  God gives us what we need… and restores our souls… and guides us in paths of righteousness for God’s name’s sake. 

            We don’t need to be afraid, because the God of goodness and love is with us, as we work to restore the soul of our communities and the world. 

            Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! 

            Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

May 12, 2019

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[2] Margaret Aymer, “Acts 9:36-43: Why I Pray That April Tragedies Bring May Justice,” in Huffington Post, April 17, 2013.

"Do We Love Jesus?" A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on the Third Sunday of Easter.

"Feed My Sheep." Photo taken at the Primacy of Peter site, in Galilee, by Fran Hayes 

"Do We Love Jesus?"

John 21:1-19; Acts 9:1-20

We’re now two weeks past Easter Sunday.  But for a lot of folk, Easter already seems long ago and far away.   For some, great joy and hope have given way to the routine of daily life:  family responsibilities…health issues…work concerns.  In the midst of it all, what does the Resurrection mean?  What difference does it make?  Has it changed anything?

            In the last chapter of John, we hear how, after the Resurrection, the disciples’ lives don’t seem to have changed.  They have seen the risen Jesus.  But they’ve gone back to the same old thing they used to do.  They’ve gone fishing. 

            The disciples had given up everything to follow Jesus.  But he’d been crucified and buried.  They’re grieving… frustrated… confused. 

            True, they knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  But what did that mean?  What difference did it make? 

            So, they go back to something familiar—what they’d been doing before Jesus came into their lives.  They go fishing.  They fish all night.  But they don’t catch anything. 

            Yet, as the disciples return to the way things used to be, the risen Jesus seeks them out once again.  At dawn, they see a stranger on the shoreline, but they don’t recognize him. But Jesus knows them. This “stranger” calls to them with a term of endearment, “children.”

Jesus comes to them in their ordinary lives, and he blesses them.  He calls out to them, “You don’t have any fish, do you?”

            No.

            Then he tells them how to fish: “Cast your net on the right side of the boat, and you’ll find some.”

            The catch is so enormous that they can’t haul it in. There are fish of all kinds. The symbolic significance of the number—one hundred fifty-three—is lost on modern readers. But the meaning of the story is not: there are fish of all kinds. This is an abundance that is inclusive and diverse.

            This story reprises themes in several other traditional stories about the disciples: the work of the disciples as fishermen…the radical call for them to become fishers of people… and the reminder that Jesus told the disciples that “apart from me you can do nothing.”[1]

            John recognizes Jesus, and says, “It’s the Lord!”  Then Peter leaps into the water and swims toward Jesus.  Jesus knows how deeply Simon Peter needs to be forgiven for the three times he denied his relationship with Jesus on that awful night before Jesus was crucified.  Jesus says, three times: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” 

            Peter responds with an affirmation of his love, saying, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”  Three times.  “Tend my sheep.”  “Feed my sheep.”

            Instead of praising his declarations, Jesus tells Peter that one day he will stretch out his hands    and someone will take him where he does not wish to go.   Feeding lambs and tending sheep can cost us—even cost us our lives.  It is work that will link our lives to pain and suffering.  It will lead us many places we don’t want to go.  If we love Jesus, our relationship with him will change us.

            On this third Sunday in Eastertide, the lectionary gives us two stories of transformation. The stories we heard are about two great saints of the church, Peter and Paul.  In the book of Acts, we encounter Saul, who was introduced in chapter 7, as the young man who was present when the angry mob stoned Stephen to death.  Luke tells us that Saul took care of their coats for them, that he approved of their killing Stephen, and that he was ravaging the church by entering house after house, dragging off both men and women believers, and imprisoning them.[2]

            In the story we heard today from Acts, Saul is “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”  He has gone to the high priest and gotten letters of authorization to the synagogues of Damascus, so he can look for followers of the Way and bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.

            Now, Saul was well-educated and devout.  He was someone who had his faith and values all figured out.  His mission in life was to stamp out the movement of those who followed the risen Jesus on the Way.  Saul was very certain that he was right—and they were wrong.

            So far in Acts, Saul is described almost entirely in terms of his certainty and his violence.   It is this violence that Jesus addresses when he speaks out of the heavenly light, saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

            By identifying himself as the one whom Saul is persecuting, Jesus identifies with the believers in their suffering, and he makes Saul’s violence a central issue of his conversion.

            The voice of the risen Christ intrudes and devastates Saul’s self-confident journey.  He opens his eyes, but he can’t see.  He has to be led around by the hand, and he doesn’t eat or drink for three days.   Saul, who knows so much about religion, who could quote chapter and verse of the scriptures, is rendered helpless by the blinding light on the road to Damascus.  He needs to be led by the hand, healed, and instructed by the very ones he’d planned to round up and bind and drag back to Jerusalem to face the religious authorities.

            What happens to Saul on the road to Damascus becomes a transformative moment.  When Paul encountered the risen Christ, he was blinded by the brightness of the light of Christ and transformed-- from a man committed to aggression and persecution of those who were different, those who challenged what he believed— to one who was lost and struggling.  In the process of his conversion, Paul learns that the agenda he set for himself was futile, and that God’s plan is the only plan that matters. 

            Peter’s encounter with the Risen Christ helped to transform him from someone who was afraid to admit he even knew Jesus—into an apostle who was empowered to jump out of his familiar boat into waters that were over his head     and walk bravely into the world with resurrection power and hope. 

            In this third resurrection appearance, we hear Peter getting a new chance, as he experiences Jesus’ resurrection power in a quiet way over breakfast.

           The Risen Christ appears to the disciples, makes them breakfast, and then dialogues with Peter on the nature of discipleship. Loving Jesus leads to feeding God’s sheep, providing for their physical and spiritual hungers.

            Those who encounter Christ are called to reach out to the world sharing good news for body, mind, and spirit.

In an ordinary place and meal, the disciples receive a kind of re-commissioning.  They are reminded who they are and what they were called to be and do. 

            Easter is about living out our identity and calling as if we truly believe that Jesus has overcome sin and death.  It’s about living as if we trust in his gift of abundant, eternal life.    It means following Jesus, embodying Jesus’ love. It means being with Jesus as we gather together to hear the good news… and in the places we are led to serve.

            “Do you love me?”  Jesus asks us. Then, feed my lambs.

            Jesus calls his disciples to follow him.  Yet, we know all too well that the compelling call of human need often feels like it is taking us to places we don’t want to go.  Our ability and willingness to go there will be a testimony to the clarity and passion of our Christian discipleship.  Our ability and willingness to follow Jesus is a sign of how we are being transformed.

            The first disciples huddled behind locked doors, or went back to their old familiar routines.  They struggled with fear about how Jesus calls his followers to go places where they don’t want to go.

            When I get impatient with myself for my lack of courage, or my reluctance to go some of the places Jesus might call me to go in his name, I find comfort and hope in the conviction that God isn’t finished with me yet.  God isn’t finished with any of us yet.

            We have Christ’s promise that he will not leave us alone.  He will be with us, to help and to guide us…to provide for our needs…and to comfort and care for us.   The One who commands us to embody his love and light in the world   promises us that we will be given the power we need through the Holy Spirit.

           Again and again, Jesus asks us, “Do you love me?”   This is no cheap grace Christ offers us.  Again and again, Jesus calls us: “Follow me.”

            Do you love me?  Jesus asks.

            Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep.

            Just as Jesus met with his first disciples at dawn on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus comes to us.  Jesus keeps coming to us to teach us and to lead us to places where we’d never have thought to go.  

            The gospel reminds us that God can make a way where there is no way, bringing abundance where there is scarcity, and joy where there has been sorrow.  Jesus’ resurrection gives us the promise of life after death, and the assurance of God’s healing and restoration in this life.

Today, in this time and place, as long ago, Jesus does many signs in the presence of his disciples.   We have the witness of the gospel, which was written “so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God…and that through believing, we may have life in his name.”

Jesus meets us where we work, where we despair, or where we question or doubt. Whether we’re still feeling “up” from Easter or feeling let down, Jesus keeps coming to us.

            Jesus meets us in in our friends or in strangers.  He challenges us with a task to do—caring for his people.  He gives us work that truly satisfies us, and invites us to make him more and more the center of our lives.  One way or another, Jesus comes back and calls us to himself and to his new life. 

            Do you love me?  Then feed my sheep. Tend my lambs.

            As individuals and as a congregation, we often fall short of being the loving, compassionate, generous, welcoming people God created us to be.  We don’t always follow through.  Sometimes we even fall away for a while and go back to whatever felt familiar before we recognized the Risen Christ. 

            But Jesus doesn’t give up on us.  After each time we fail…or forget… or are overcome by our fears, Jesus comes to us again and invites us to try again, providing encouragement and nourishment, and calls us to put our love into action, caring for the world God loves.  If you love me, show it through your actions.   “Feed my sheep.”

Jesus comes to us today, this morning, inviting us to start again Easter-fresh, saying, “Follow me.”

            Thanks be to God!  Alleluia!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

May 5, 2019

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[1] John 15:5

[2] Acts 7:58-8:1

"Waiting for the Power". A sermon preached at Littlefield Presbyterian Church on May 17, 2015. Texts: Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-53

In churches that follow the liturgical calendar, we’re coming to the end of Eastertide, the season when we focus on celebrating the Resurrection.  The third major festival of the Christian year-- the celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost--  comes next Sunday.   Before we get to Pentecost, we celebrate the Ascension, and we hear the part of the story that Luke/Acts places between Easter and Pentecost. 

            One part of the story is that Jesus has ascended to glory with God.  The glory of the risen and ascended Christ is good news--  something to celebrate.

            But the other themes in the story invite us to look at the Ascension from a very human perspective,   the disciples’ point of view, which is where we stand.    When Jesus was carried up into heaven,   when the cloud took him out of their sight, the reality they were facing was that Jesus had vanished.

            As one of my colleagues suggests, there’s an awkward gap in the story at this point.^[1]  She compares it to the intermission in a play, between the two acts of the salvation drama.  In both Luke and Acts, the curtain falls on Jesus’ earthly life, as the Risen Christ leaves his disciples and is carried up out of their sight.  Up until now, Jesus has been the chief actor in the drama.  From his birth to his death to his resurrection appearances, it’s Jesus who keeps the story moving.  And now he’s gone--  offstage once and for all. 

            The curtain has fallen.  Now what?  Is the drama over?  By no means.  It’s simply intermission. 

            Now what are Jesus’ followers supposed to do?       It would have been hard not to feel anxious and impatient—just as it can be for us.

            “Lord,”  the disciples ask Jesus,  “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”   We need to know what the plan is.  We want certainty.  We want to know now.    

            Hear what Jesus says:  “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”    It is not for us to know all the details of the big plan.

            But we have Christ’s promises:  “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit...  You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

            Luke tells us that the disciples worshipped the risen and ascended Christ.  They returned to Jerusalem with great joy,   and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

            In the verses following the passage we read in Acts, Luke tells how the disciples returned to Jerusalem and went to the upper room where they were staying, where they and certain women were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.  On the day of Pentecost, disciples were gathered together in one place when the power of the Holy Spirit came upon them from on high. 

            I don’t have to remind you that this is a hard time, a time of transition and struggle for the church of Jesus Christ, throughout North America,  and for this congregation at Littlefield.  It’s hard to be so demographically challenged here, in the city,  here in east Dearborn.  It’s hard to see so many beloved friends getting older and less active, more frail.    It’s hard not to worry about how we’ll have enough people to do whatever we need to do.  It’s hard not to worry about the future of the congregation, in terms of our finances.   How will we support the mission?

            We need to be honest about our fears and anxieties.  We need to grieve the losses.   But we also need to be devoted to praying together...and to blessing God with joy...and waiting for power from on high.

            If it feels like we’re in an intermission in the carrying out of God’s plan of salvation, then we need to practice waiting for God.  If the time you’re living in seems like an intermission in God’s plan for your life,    if Jesus has vanished from your sight,   and the Holy Spirit’s power is only a distant promise--  then it’s our job to wait.  Not just to be idle, or to kill time, but to wait as disciples are called to wait-- with trust and hope.  With eagerness and expectancy for the beginning of the next act. 

            Do we believe that God can work miracles?   Do we believe God can use us to transform the world?   Do we believe that we can do all things, through Christ, who strengthens us?               How many of us want to believe these things?        

            I believe God has the power to work miracles, and that God wants to use us to transform people’s lives.  But it is not in God’s nature to coerce us.  We have choices.           

            In the great drama of God’s salvation story, you and I can choose to fill our intermission time with enjoying our friends and refreshments, until the time-filling activities become the most important things.  We can even choose to leave the theater altogether, and go off to try to find another story to give meaning to our lives. 

            But there is no other story that will fill the God-shaped hole in our lives.  God is the One who can give deep meaning to our lives, and gives it in God’s own time, when we are ready, in God’s eyes,  to carry out the mission God has planned for us.   If we believe this, then we need to live through our intermission times as the first disciples lived through theirs.

            When nothing much seemed to be happening, and they couldn’t see where the future would lead them, they remained focused on the drama of God’s salvation story, and worshipped God with great joy.  They were centered in God’s gracious, powerful promises as they  worshipped joyfully.

            In his book, God’s Politics, Jim Wallis talks about “The Critical Choice:  Hope Versus Cynicism.” 

            Wallis says that one of the big struggles of our times is the fundamental choice between cynicism and hope.  The prophets always begin in judgment, in a social critique of the status quo, but they end in hope—that these realities can and will be changed.  This choice between cynicism and hope is ultimately a spiritual choice—one that can have enormous political consequences.  Wallis argues for a better religion--  a prophetic faith—the religion of Jesus and the prophets.

            According to Wallis, the difference between the cynics and the saints is the presence, power, and possibility of hope.  And that is indeed a spiritual and religious issue.  More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even a religious choice. 

            I agree with Jim Wallis when he says that hope is not a feeling.  It is a decision.  And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels—what your most basic convictions about the world and what the future holds--  all based on your faith.

            We can choose hope, not as a naive wish--  but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world.            I believe this hope is grounded in faith…and nurtured in our worship life.

            The Civil Rights movement in the United States grew out of the African-American church… and then others joined in—people who chose to hope.  

            During the days of Apartheid in South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say, “We are prisoners of hope.”   

I know I’ve shared this story with you before, but it’s powerful.  

            During Apartheid,  the South African Security Police broke into the Cathedral of St. George’s during Tutu’s sermon at an ecumenical service.  Tutu  stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of the cathedral, wielding writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever he said   and thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances.

            They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before   and kept them in jail for several days to make a statement and a point:  religious leaders who take on leadership roles in the struggle against apartheid will be treated like any other opponents of the Pretoria regime.

            After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze, Tutu acknowledged their power, saying, “You are powerful,  very powerful.”  But then he reminded them that he served a higher power greater than their political authority:  “I serve a God who cannot be mocked!”

            Then in an extraordinary challenge to political tyranny, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!”  He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. 

            The congregation’s response was electric.  The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power.  The heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral greatly outnumbered the band of worshipers.  Yet the congregation was moved—empowered—to literally leap to their feet, shouting the praises of God.  They began dancing.  They danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid, who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshipers.  Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.

           

            Some time later, a few days before Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as President of South Africa, Wallis remembers wondering, “Who would have ever believed?    And that’s just the point, he says.  We have to believe.

           

            I know…   I know…   We’re just a little church.  We’re so demographically challenged.  So many of the members are older.   Everybody is so busy…   and so on….

            And yet, we are called.  Christ has given us a Great Commission:   You shall be my witnesses.

            We have Christ’s promise:  You will receive power…

             

            Like the first disciples, we have the promises of God to cling to, even in times of sorrow and anxiety.   These promises are ours, even at times when it seems that Christ has vanished.^[2]  

            So let us cling to God’s promises and rejoice in them.  Let us be ready for the curtain to go up on the Salvation story.  Because in God, there will be a second act.

            Amen!

     

       

Rev. Fran Hayes

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan 48126

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^[1]Marjorie A. Menaul, in The Abingdom Women’s Preaching Annual, Series 3, Year B (Abingdon, 2002), p. 119

^[2]I am grateful to Marjorie Menaul for this phrase, which really resonated with me.