The Result

The message below is dedicated to Kelly Kraft, 2011 United States Amateur Golf Champion, and, as always, to the wonderful people of First Presbyterian Church, Denton, Texas!

Text: Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c
Theme: “M10: The Result” (10th in a Series)
11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 28, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

This morning, even as we speak, far away from here in the cooler climate of Wisconsin, a golf match is being played. This is no real surprise. Quite a few people skip out on church and hit the links on Sunday! But the two golfers aren’t weekend warriors. They aren’t playing to decide a friendly wager. They are not vying for a local club championship. Instead, they are teeing it up, over 36 holes, to decide the winner of the 2011 United States Amateur Golf Championship. Some of you know that one of the contestants, Kelly Kraft – a two-time Texas State Amateur champion and winner of the 2011 Trans-Mississippi Tournament (one of the historic amateur contests in the country), is from Denton, Texas and a graduate of Ryan High School. A little closer to home, Kelly Kraft also happens to be the grandson of our own Lou and Louise Kraft.

I don’t know if he has done so, but I wonder if Kelly has ever spoken with our own Gene Finlay. Gene is the niece of the late Harvey Penick, who, arguably, is one of the greatest teachers of golf that the game has ever produced. Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw and U.S. Open champion Tom Kite were two of Mr. Penick’s prize students.

All of these individuals I’ve mentioned – Kelly Kraft, Mr. Penick, Ben Crenshaw, and Tom Kite – love the game of golf. And, regardless of the outcome of today’s match, they have all enjoyed high achievement.

Before I go on, please know that today’s message is not about golf. I only mentioned a few people who play the game to illustrate a point: they love what they do, and they seek to achieve on a high level.

Whether you play or not, my question to you is this: do you love what you do? Given what you do, do you seek to achieve on a high level? It has been said that “What you spend the most of your time doing is what you’re going to get good at.”

Although the outdoor temperatures might not say so, the summer of 2011 is coming to an end. And this morning, I’m presenting to you the final installment in a series of sermons on the mission of the church. For two and a half months of summer Sundays, we’ve pinpointed the mission-oriented passages of the appointed Scripture readings. Together, we’ve highlighted aspects of the mission of God in the world. Sometimes we say that the church of God has a mission and then wonder what exactly it might be. But it’s better to say – and far more accurate to say – that the mission of God has a church, and First Presbyterian Church in Denton is part of it, warts and all. When we, as individuals and as a church, see ourselves as part of God’s mission in the world, the results will speak for themselves.

This morning we look at the result of mission itself, and we take our cue from Psalm 105. The psalmist gets right to the point: “Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done.”

There are two ways to look at this from a mission point of view. First, even when we’ve determined that we’ve completed a task in keeping with God’s purposes, there’s still more to do, more praises to offer, more proclamations to make, more declarations to deliver emphasizing what God has done. The mission of God is its own reward. When we achieve some things big or small, it almost always opens doors to continue to achieve things big or small. The problem comes when we start compartmentalizing our lives and begin to think that the mission of God is just one element among many in our busy, all-important schedules. In some respects, we’ve made an idol of our schedules – and we worship at that altar quite regularly. But mission-minded people know that the mission is not the servant of the schedule. The schedule is the servant of the mission. This is to say that everything we are involved in is oriented to mission. We see our lives oriented to mission. Everything in our lives – including our rest and leisure -- is oriented to mission.

There’s a second way to look at the first verse of this psalm from a mission point of view. The writer says: “Make known among the nations what he has done.” The things God has done are spoken of in the past tense. There is no talk here about what God is doing now or what God may have planned for the future. There is, instead, the encouragement to make known what he has done. For you linguists out there, the verb is not in the active voice. It is in the passive voice – the “divine passive” as it has been called. In other words, when God gets it done, it’s done. When Jesus said, “It is finished” as He hung dying on the cross, it was done. The Easter Sunday angel was almost astonished at the grave visitors. The angel declared: “Why do you look for the dead among the living? He is not here. He has risen – even as He said.” There’s no undoing it. But there is the proclamation of what God has done; that’s the ongoing, active thing.

It’s the ongoing, active thing to proclaim that life has won out over death, that light beat down the darkness, that forgiveness has triumphed over sin, that service won the battle against self-centeredness, that hope has triumphed over despair, that substance is victorious over the meaninglessness and nihilism that seems to pervade our world. All of it has been done in Jesus Christ, and all of it is worthy of our best efforts in every area of our lives.

Statistically, it would appear that the church – or, at least, the Presbyterian part of it – has thrown in the towel. Numbers are down; attendance is down; giving is down. The denomination is beset with strife and controversy. Some, in the shrinking enclaves of Presbyterianism, have rather gloomily asserted that being part of this church is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It is said that the church is stuck in yesterday; it’s too bureaucratic or too political. Or worse, it doesn’t know what it believes anymore. Whenever I hear such flim-flam and gobbledygook, I’m going to start making it a moment for mission. I’m going to tell these folks what a mess I was. I’m going to let them know that our loving God, through the mission and ministry of the Presbyterian Church, picked me up, dusted me off, and reframed my mind and heart and soul. It loved me back into the realization that God wasn’t finished with me yet! And, after a year among you, the great people of First Presbyterian Church in Denton, I’ve never been more excited to be a minister of Word and Sacrament than right now.

Most if not all of you remember Brian Grassley. He was your pastor before yours truly showed up. You might recall that he hurt his leg pretty bad when he began his work here. He was confined, for quite awhile, to a bed and a chair. Well, I “friended” him on Facebook some time ago, and, lo and behold, I come across his “status” on Facebook yesterday. Brian Grassley wrote this: “This morning I completed an Olympic Triathlon here in Boise. I swam a mile in an outdoor lake, biked 25 miles (very hilly) and ran 6.2 miles. Ha! Take that, bilateral quadriceps tendon tears of 2009. I finished second to last, but I finished.”

I started with a golf story, and I can’t help but end with one. On February 2, 1949, a man survived a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus east of Van Horn, Texas. It wasn’t the first terrible moment in his life. As a boy, he watched his father commit suicide. This accident, however, left him with a double-fracture of the pelvis, a fractured collar bone, a left ankle fracture, a chipped rib, and near-fatal blood clots. He was in the hospital for 59 days. If anyone had a set of reasons to throw in the towel, it would be this man. The doctors told him he would never walk again. This man may have heard the doctors while sitting down, but he didn’t take it sitting down. Eighteen months later, this man, Ben Hogan, won the United States Open Golf Championship at Merion. Three years later, in 1953, he won his first and only British Open golf championship. When it was said and done, he signed over all of his winnings from that tournament to his church. And he himself never mentioned that, but others did.

Make known what God has done! God’s mission is its own reward! How wonderful it is for you and me to have our part in it!

Amen.

Text: Romans 12:1-8
Theme: “M10: The Diversity” (10th in a Series)
10th Sunday after Pentecost
August 21, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS


1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

On the last couple of Sundays we’ve had the honor and pleasure of welcoming back members of the military who are part of our family here at First Presbyterian. Last week, MSN.com showed a home video of a soldier who had arrived back in the states after a long deployment overseas. He was met in the backyard by his pet, a Great Dane. This animal – who, on his hind legs, stood taller than the soldier -- remembered him after those many months, was happy to see him, and showered him with love and affection. Hearing just the sound of the soldier’s voice, he raced down the stairs and burst through the back door. He stood on his hind legs, put his paws on the soldier’s shoulders, and gave him the kind of hug that only a huge Great Dane could give.

Join me in entertaining the thought that our God is something like that Great Dane. On Sunday mornings, we come “home”, from our own places of deployment (so to speak), to this place of worship. We’ve fought the battles, big and small, that life has handed us. We’re happy to be with our spiritual family. And it’s as if God hears the sound of our voice and rumbles down the stairs. He remembers us and can’t wait to see us. We’re showered with divine love, unconditional love.

You’ve just heard the beginning verses of Romans chapter twelve. It’s packed with so much good material related to the mission of the church that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Romans twelve is sort of like going to lunch at China Buffet. There’s such a wide variety of things to choose from that you almost have to double-check to see what you’re hungry for.

Basking in the glow of God’s love on this day of rest, what are you hungry for? What is your soul hungry for? I’d venture to say there’s something here for each of us. Thus, we shall entertain a novel idea. We’ll begin at the beginning. “I urge you, brothers and sisters in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.
“Sacrifice” is the word that jumps off the page and bangs into our eardrums. Our first reaction to the word is likely along these lines: whatever form it takes, it’s probably going to hurt. These days we hear lots of talk of sacrifice and even shared sacrifice. Think of the sacrifices parents make to put their children through college. In times of economic hardship, we sacrifice many wants in order to simply meet our needs. And think of soldiers. Many have given the ultimate sacrifice.

The apostle speaks of a living sacrifice. It seems almost like a contradiction in terms. But it’s not. Sacrifice, understood by St. Paul, is a personal and even communal dedication and consecration to the mission of God. It is an offering of the whole self – and not just the part of the self that finds itself in the church pew or in a committee meeting, diaconate meeting, or session meeting.

Our reading goes on: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Conformity to this world is a powerful process that we all get caught up in. A wise professor of mine once declared that “…the world seeks to domesticate us to its ways.” Conformity to the world finds people thinking that they are little more than lumps of human play dough that the world is going to roll into a ball, flatten out, and take the cookie-cutter to.

You’re not play dough, our text seems to be saying. You have a mind of your own. Instead of conforming to the world like everyone and their sister is doing, renew your mind. Open it. Don’t close it. Use it to discern – to wrestle with and figure out – what the will of God is in any situation. God’s will is good and acceptable and perfect. The world might not think so, but so what. We don’t conform to the world.

Next, we read the following: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” I like this last phrase: “the measure of faith that God has assigned.” God assigns faith! This runs counter to the prevailing wisdom that faith is little more than agreement, or assent, or answering an altar call. Agreement, assent, or answering an altar call puts the onus of responsibility on us.

This whole idea, while popular, is completely foreign to the New Testament. Here’s what the New Testament says: “For by grace are you saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It is not of works – lest anyone should boast.”

Boasting is what someone does when, using the words of our text, someone thinks of himself or herself “more highly” than one “ought to think.” This goes to the first item on the list of what history has recorded as the “Seven Deadly Sins”: pride. Yes, there is sloth and lust and greed and gluttony. They’re all very commonplace. (It makes you wonder why they called them deadly, but that’s a subject for another time.) But towering above them all is pride. Pride is a dicey subject. Isn’t there such a thing as “justifiable pride”? Can we not take pride in accomplishments that we’ve worked hard to achieve? Someone thinks, “Well, okay. God doesn’t want me to be proud, so I’ll work hard at being humble.” Sometime later, the person is ready to boast to the world: “Look how humble I am!” It kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Speaking of boasting, there’s this obscure yet wonderful little passage tucked into the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. It goes like this: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.” A New Testament scholar of record tells of a Jewish friend. The friend told him the two things that every good Jew believes: 1) there is a God; and 2) it is not me.
Our text continues: ”Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Every now and then, in the confines of professional sports, we hear of athletes who become what are called “free agents.” In other words, they are not contractually connected to another organization, team, or person. They’re basically out there on their own. This, sadly, is the position many take -- some of them professing Christians -- when it comes to the church. They think, “I sort of like the church; it has done some good things; it has its place in the world. It teaches important values. I even occasionally benefit from some of its services. But I’m going to keep myself at a distance from it. I don’t like the idea of being tied down. I don’t want to be connected.”

But what if your hand could speak, and it said: “You know, I don’t want to be connected to this wrist; I want to go off and do my own thing.” What if your foot said, “Come to think of it, I don’t want to be attached to this ankle.” What if your bicep or your tricep said, “You know, I don’t want to be linked up to these tendons anymore; it’s so confining.” You get the idea.

I want you to know something about my nose. I don’t think I’ve ever shared this. Never once has my nose ever indicated that it doesn’t like my foot. Likewise, it has never really said that it likes my foot either. My nose simply does what it is supposed to do. My foot does the same. They get along just fine. They work together.

Folks, we are all united in the body of Christ. We are connected with one another. This text is reminding us that each of us, as a member, has a function – like the parts of a body have functions.

More than that, there is a great diversity of function. We don’t all do the same thing; we don’t all serve in the same way. The Fellowship
Committee doesn’t have the same function as the Worship Committee. Do you get the idea? We have diverse functions and diverse gifts for the mission, but we’re not disconnected. We’re in this together. We are the body of Christ who was crucified for our sins and raised again for our justification.

Some may indeed look at the state of the church and world and ask “Why?” But others – not thinking too highly of themselves, aware of the gifts they possess, and connected to the body of Christ – renew their minds. They look at the mission of the church and ask “Why not?”

Amen.

The Persistence

Text: Matthew 15:21-28
Theme: “M9: The Persistence” (9th in a Series)
9th Sunday after Pentecost
August 14, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

The billboard – large, lighted, and on a busy central Indiana highway – featured a quotation from someone. It said, in big block letters, “I love Jesus”. Directly below the “I love Jesus”, in smaller but still readable letters, was this: “It’s His people I can’t stand.” The billboard was for a new congregation that had sprung up, and it invited passersby to check out “a new church with new people.”

In a not-so-subtle way, this billboard suggested that the reader might be attending an old church with old people, and that he or she would be better off going to a new church with new people. The implication is that you’ll like the people at the new church so much better than all the folks at the old church who are probably people you can’t stand.

Here in this church or any church for that matter, we may not particularly care for Joe or Jane or Bob or Betty sitting a few pews over. Yet, here in the quiet and comfortable confines of Sunday worship, we all claim to love Jesus.

Today’s Gospel, unfortunately, might throw a monkey wrench into all this pious talk about loving Jesus. In fact, if all that we had was this text then Jesus might become just another person that rubs us the wrong way and might be even numbered among the people we don’t like to be around for very long – the people we can’t stand, quite frankly. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus sounds positively sinister in this reading.

If you take what Jesus said to the Canaanite woman in today’s reading at only face value, then you can’t help but conclude that Jesus Christ is a racist and a bigot by today’s standards. You might even argue, quite plausibly, that Jesus engaged in hate speech.

Speaking of people who could rub others the wrong way, the Canaanite woman would certainly qualify in Jesus’ day. First of all, she was a Canaanite and not a Hebrew. She wasn’t part of the chosen race. There’s strike one. Secondly, she was a woman. When Jesus was on this earth, the society of which He was a part of was patriarchal; it was male-dominated. Simply put, women were sort of second-class citizens. Strike two. Third, this woman had a daughter with a serious problem. The daughter suffered terribly from demon possession. Strike three. To sum things up, this woman was the kind of individual that you would avoid like the plague.

Now our Lord, who we all claim to love, did just that. The woman had a “Come to Jesus” moment. She didn’t whisper something in His ear. Instead, she cried out: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.” Jesus, we are told, didn’t say a word. There was no empathy, no compassion, no sympathy, no “Oh, ma’am, I’m so sorry.” He didn’t shake her hand. In fact, His demeanor almost suggested “talk to the hand; I have nothing to say to you.”

Strike three! This woman is out. But now, as if to add insult to injury, Jesus adds a strike four! If I were this woman with all these cards stacked against me, with my gender and race and family problems now known to all, I don’t know what I would have done. Rejection by Jesus would constitute the last straw. I could easily see myself storming off in a fit of rage peppered with very bad language.

But there was something about this woman! She didn’t storm off in a fit of rage accentuated with vile language or something appropriate like that. No, she persisted; she kept at it; she would not be denied; the squeaky wheel would get the grease. She gave an earful of her problems to the disciples of Jesus. And then they turn around and start whining to Jesus Himself. It says they urged him with “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” – in other words: “She’s not my problem; she’s not a Hebrew; she’s not one of us.” Do you understand how racist and bigoted that sounds to modern ears? In this day when “inclusiveness” is what it’s all about, Jesus is being exclusive. He seems to exclude her.

Now she did manage to get Jesus to talk about her with his disciples, but it ends up that she’s now excluded by the entire group of Jesus and His disciples. If anything, she would understand the language of the popular song by Daniel Powter:

Cause you had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don't know
You tell me don't lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride.

I doubt this woman could even work at a smile. But again, something made her persist.

Now she kneels Jesus’ feet. That was the posture of reverence, worship. She said, “Lord, help me.”

Finally, Jesus, who we all claim to love, says something to her: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” If we could think of a reason to get whopping mad at Jesus, who we claim to love, then this would be it.
“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”

I have a hunch that when we get to heaven there’s going to be a long line of people coming forward to Jesus to get some questions answered. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be pushing and shoving to get to the head of the line because I’m an impatient person to begin with. But most of all, I have some serious questions that I need answers to. One question I have to ask Jesus is this: “Jesus, were you smiling when you said what you said to that Canaanite woman? Did you really mean what you said, or were you giving her an opportunity to show how really brilliant her faith in you was?” I don’t know, but I have a hunch what the answer might be.
What I do know is what the woman said in reply: “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

As we’ve observed, it took a great deal of persistence. But in the end, the woman caught Jesus in His own words. And Jesus just loves that! He says: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” St. Matthew reports that “…her daughter was healed from that very hour.”

My friends, one of the huge needs of the church today is the kind of faith this Canaanite woman embodies. The mission of the church, of which we are all a part, would do well to carefully consider how persistent that faith was.

All the cards were stacked against her, but she was not to be deterred. Her faith would stop at nothing to link need with the help and resources that only God can give. Throwing in the towel was never an option.

We may have our opinions about churches, about their oldness or newness. We may have our opinions about church people – about whether we like them or can’t stand them. All of that is irrelevant. The church that takes its cue from the faith of the Canaanite woman is the church that persists in mission, and it will not be denied. God grant that we be that kind of church this day and every day.

Amen.

The Twist

Text: Romans 10:5-15
Theme: “M7: The Twist” (8th in a Series)
8th Sunday after Pentecost
August 7, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

5 Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.”[a] 6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’”[b] (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’”[c] (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,”[d] that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: 9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11 As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”[e] 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”[f] 14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”[g]

Headquartered in Cupertino, California, one business firm that is going gangbusters in our beleaguered economy is the Apple Computer Company. The iPod, the iPhone, and now the iPad have sprung forth from the technological wizards employed there. According to the last earnings report, some have said that the firm has more money than the United States, and it led at least one pundit to suggest that we start calling our country “iAmerica”.

Apple’s Chief Executive Officer, Steve Jobs, has generated nothing short of a cult-like admiration and adulation amid our country’s business elite. Even his physical health is front-page news. In January of this year, Steve Jobs announced that he was taking his second, health-related leave of absence from the company. In 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and in 2009 he was given a liver transplant. Meanwhile, the company continued to develop its second-generation iPad and everyone simply assumed that other company executives would be on-hand to publicly announce the new product, when it was completed, at company headquarters.

The month of March arrived. To the shock of nearly everyone concerned, guess who showed up when the Apple Computer Company introduced the second-generation iPad to the world? That’s right! Steve Jobs walked out on stage to a tumultuous ovation. According to CNN, John Jackson, a CCS Insight Analyst, was beside himself: “That he even came out on stage will go down in history as a big deal. It’s a significant gesture.”

This little incident illustrates quite graphically where many people are at – Christians and non-Christians alike – when it comes to Jesus Christ. He lived on earth over two thousand years ago. He died a horrific death. The report was that He rose from the dead. He said a lot of nice things, offered up wholesome teachings, told some neat stories, shocked many people, comforted as many people if not more, healed people of their afflictions, laid down a way of life that people strive to imitate.

But now He’s gone. He, like Steve Jobs, has taken an “extended leave of absence”. People admire Him, respect Him, even worship Him. Yet, as we confess nearly every Sunday in the Creeds, He is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He’s somewhere in heaven. And that’s all well and good, many people think. “God’s in His heaven; all’s right with the world,” it is said. But you and I know that not all is right with the world. Down here where the rubber hits the road, in the real world and not in some spiritual or religious never-never land, Christ is apparently on an extended leave. Still, we take comfort in all the wonderful things Christ did. We draw solace from the sovereignty of God. But, you have to admit, it can all sound like a lot of wishful thinking – especially in a world where the Dow Jones drops over five hundred points in a day and the country, adding insult to injury, loses over a trillion dollars in private wealth; the unemployment rate is painfully high; a rocket-propelled grenade brings down a Chinook helicopter carrying U.S. Navy Seals.

From a mission point of view, an absent Jesus, a Jesus seemingly on extended leave, is a hard sell, my friends.

All that being said, I’m here today to share some very, very good news. The selection you just heard from the New Testament Book of Romans untwists the twisted thinking that suggests that our Lord is AWOL. The world out there – both figuratively and literally – can “tie us up in knots.” But this piece of literature, inspired by God and delivered by the apostle Paul, unties the knots, lets us go, and enables us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a Lord who is closer to us than our own skin.

Hear these words: “The righteousness that is by faith says: ‘Do not say in your heart “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) ‘or “Who will descend into the deep?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Unshackled, untied, and untwisted from this notion that God is absent, we look forward now to the remainder of today’s worship. All of it – including a baptism, a reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant, an ordination, and the Holy Supper -- simply illustrates the point: Our Lord is with us – right here and right now.

Amen.

Amen.

The Pain

Text: Romans 9:1-5
Theme: “M7: The Pain”
7th Sunday after Pentecost
July 31, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

1 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised. Amen.

In the interest of ministerial openness, transparency, and full disclosure, the following announcement is made: I have a booboo; I have an ouchy. Have you ever had one of your fingers – more specifically, your fingertip and fingernail bed – caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place? Most of you probably have had the experience, and, believe me, it is not a pleasant experience, and I hope that the memory of the aforementioned experience isn’t all that you take out of this sermon this morning!

At any rate, it hurt when it happened. Fortunately, my dear wife was on hand to apply ice at precisely the right time to bring down any possible swelling. Yet, it looks as though the healing process will take awhile. In short, a new fingernail may have to grow in. When I press it a bit, it still hurts, but I’m convinced that, having had a similar booboo before, the pain will disappear over time.

Contrast this sort of located, physical pain to another kind of pain I’m about to describe. On my way in to church this morning, at about 6:30 AM, I got a call from Presbyterian Hospital. (It’s my week to serve as on-call/after-hours chaplain, so I wasn’t surprised at getting the call.) A patient was dying. I entered the room on a quiet corridor and introduced myself to people I’d never met at one of the worst moments in their lives. Yes, the patient was sick but family members had hoped their loved one would return home from the hospital. That wasn’t to be the case. The pain the family experienced on account of this news – the pain of impending separation -- was a mixture of confusion, anger, and grief. Offering these emotions to God, I prayed that a special measure of divine compassion and love be given to these people in a time of immense pain.

I suppose there are some who think that there’s only one thing to do with pain – in whatever variety it comes in: relieve it. And hey, I see the point. I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to pain. But sometimes pain -- physical, mental, emotional, spiritual -- lingers. What then?

Singer/song-writer Mac McAnally envisions a time when there won’t be pain anymore. In a song entitled “Blame it On New Orleans” he writes: “There will come a day, I’d like to think, when War’s a song and a hurricane’s only a drink.”

But Mac McAnally knows, as do we all, that such a day isn’t here yet. There are wars; there are hurricanes. Painful realities remain that pester and poke and nip and nag and chip away at the fabric of our country, the health of our bodies, and the periphery of our souls.

Even some well-meaning churches, inadvertently I hope, respond to the reality of pain by offering an hour of spiritual escapism each week. Church becomes, for all intents and purposes, a kind of religious “happy hour”. I’ve never forgotten the story of the minister who stood up one Sunday morning, at the beginning of a worship service, and, with his Pepsodent smile, said: “Let’s all give each other a happy hug in the name of Jesus.” What the minister didn’t know, however, was that one his parishioners sitting in the back pew had just learned that her husband had only six months to live. Do you think she was in the mood for a happy, choreographed hug with a Pepsodent smile to boot?

I’m not suggesting that churches should be all about doom and gloom at all. I am, however, calling upon the church to be honest. The apostle Paul certainly was in our text for today.

Last week, we heard him declare, in one of the most powerful and joy-producing sections of Holy Scripture, that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “I am convinced,” he wrote, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, no any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s powerful stuff, and, dare I say, it makes us feel good.

But, oh, what a difference a week makes. As he ended chapter eight on such a high note, he swings into chapter nine – the next set of verses – and completely switches gear. He writes: “I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit – I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.”

This comes from a man who was 100% convinced that nothing could separate him from the love of God. But this does not mean, as he makes abundantly clear, that there is not going to be some great sorrow and, indeed, unceasing anguish in life. And Paul has the nerve, the guts, the moxie, and the spiritual inspiration to explain it. Some of his own people – those from his own Jewish religious and ethnic background – did not receive, believe, and live the truth that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and Savior of the world. It pained him to realize that not everyone would respond to the Gospel as he had. He was so pumped up, so stoked, so on fire for the love of Jesus Christ that he could not understand why others wouldn’t have the same reaction. It tore his soul to shreds. They were among his people. He went so far as to say, “I wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race.” In short, his joy in knowing Jesus Christ was immense, powerful, and impressive. But his sorrow, his anguish, and his pain were also part of the mix and not to be discounted. He made no bones about it.

Folks, that is gut-level honesty; this is as real as it gets. This is not doom and gloom and “Oh, poor pitiful me.” But neither is it cotton candy, pie-in-the-sky, Pepsodent smile spirituality. This is reality expressed vividly by the apostle Paul.

This acknowledgment of sheer joy in God that is coupled and linked with the acknowledgement of sorrow, pain, and anguish, gives to the church – and, therefore, to the church’s mission – a priceless gift: 20/20 vision! It gives clarity to faith, purpose to life, grounding in reality, and a readiness to meet anything and everything that comes our way. It gives our mission its force!

Amen.