Text:  1 Kings 19:1-15a

Theme:  "Confronting Our Inner-Elijah"

5th Sunday After Pentecost

June 23, 2013

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. ² So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

³ Elijah was afraid^[a] and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, ⁴ while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

⁷ The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” ⁸ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. ⁹ There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁰ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁴ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

¹⁵ The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus.

There's an old line from a Disney movie that popped into my head during prep work this week.  It comes from Song of the South.  B'rer Rabbit says:  "Where I'm goin', there ain't gonna be no trouble."  Uncle Remus replies:  "Dey ain't no place dat fur.

Of course, the "healthy" thing -- we are often given to believe -- is to face our problems and not run from them.  That, in a nutshell, was what Uncle Remus was telling B'rer Rabbit.  Our problems are only temporary, and they, the problems, have something to teach us.  But did you know that one of the great, towering figures in the Holy Bible sought to get away from his problems?  He certainly wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last. 

Sometimes we church-goers like to think that some of these characters in God's Word are like superheroes, paragons of virtue, examples for us of righteous living and so on.  Well, I'm here to tell you:  Peter had his denials; Thomas had his doubts; Jonah had his whale; David had his Bathsheba.  Here this morning we note that Elijah had his Jezebel. 

The particularly interesting item in this account is that Elijah found himself in a whole heap of trouble because he did what God wanted him to do. He didn't deny, doubt, disobey an order, or cheat -- as in David's case. As a result, Queen Jezebel seeks to have him eliminated.  Elijah had every right to exclaim, as the Tom Cruise character said in Jerry MacGuire:  "And the hits just keep on comin'!"

This week James Gandolfini died.  He will forever be known as Tony Soprano.  There was much ado in the media about that.  Also, this past week, Vince Flynn died.  Flynn didn't have the Gandolfini celebrity status, but I'm sure that was alright with him.   Vince Flynn wrote novels -- and not just any kind of novel.  He wrote counter-terrorism novels. For me, they're like literary Lays Potato Chips; you can't eat just one!  His main character in many of the stories he wrote was man who was an assassin for the CIA named Mitch Rapp.  His job was to carry out the orders given him by the CIA, and the CIA was simply carrying out orders it had received from the higher-ups in government. 

The government in today's story, headed up by Queen Jezebel, sought to take out Elijah, to "assassinate" him, if you will.   If they had Navy Seals back then, they would probably be called up.   Why did Elijah have to go?  Because, as the reader quickly discovers, he was only doing what God wanted him to do.

Folks, I can understand getting into trouble for some dumb things I've done, stupid actions I've taken, irresponsible choices I've made, etc.  On any given day, we make all kinds of choices.  Our tendency is to think more about those choices than the consequences. In short, we act before we think.  Adding to that, many folks today live by instinct run riot, and instincts only want to be satisfied; they could care less about consequences.

Elijah the prophet was simply facing the consequences of his choices -- and the fact that he was only doing the will of God, with his choices, made it worse.  Have you ever done the right thing and have had to pay the price for it?  You're at peace with God, at peace with your conscience, at peace with yourself about what you've done, but not everyone is, and a few of those folks are going to make sure you know it.  They might even make your life miserable.  In Elijah's case, they tried to kill him.

Is it frustrating?  Well, that's about as nice a way as you can describe it on a quiet, serene, lazy, hazy, summer Sunday morning.  But let's not sugar-coat it.  Elijah was angry at the state of affairs.  Elijah was also afraid.  That's a powerful combination.  What does he do?  He decides to go on the lam -- or, as they say in the CIA, he goes "off grid."  In short, he runs away from the problem. He took the "Midnight Express" -- as the American prisoner did in the movie of the same name:  he escaped.

Have we not taken the "midnight express" on occasion?  Have we not sought escape? Have we been burned so many times in the past that now we feel jaded and cynical and indifferent? Are there times, truth be told, when we'd rather "laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints (because) the sinners have much more fun", as Billy Joel sings?

Feel free to write this down in the margin of your service folder.  Grab a pencil or pen and write down four letters:  H.A.L.T.  Put together, they spell "Halt".  The H stands for "hunger", and here hunger has a broad definition; it can either mean eating too much or eating too little.  The A stands for "Anger"--and that anger may be justified; it may be irrational, but it's just anger.  The L stands for "lonely".  You feel that you're all alone in a world of seven billion people.  No one understands; no one cares.  You're all alone.  Finally, the T stands for "tired."  You're tired physically, mentally, and spiritually.  You're just plain worn out.

Four letters:  H.A.L.T.  Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  I'm convinced we've all experience at least one letter. I'm not sure if everyone here today has experienced them all at once.  But I'd bet the farm that we've all experienced a combination of two or three of them. 

Elijah -- that great and mighty prophet, that towering and powerful figure, that destroyer of idols and idol worshippers -- experienced it all in our text.  He took the "midnight express"; he ran.  He experience H.A.L.T.  He knew hunger; he knew anger; he knew loneliness, and he was tired. He wanted to give up, to chuck it, and even wanted to check out.  "I have had enough, Lord; take my life; I'm no better than my ancestors,"  he said.  Then he falls asleep.  Do you know one thing depressed people do a lot of?  That's right; they sleep.

Elijah had been pushed beyond his limit many times. He hit rock bottom.  Lo and behold, he feels a touch.  It's an angel of God.  The angel says "Get up and eat."  Looking around, Elijah sees some baked bread and a jug of water.  He partakes and then promptly falls back asleep.

The angel comes a second time, touches Elijah a second time, provides more bread and water.  Elijah partakes.  And "strengthened by that food", the Bible says, Elijah, still "off the grid", goes to the mountain of God and hides out in a cave.

Then, we are told, "The word of the Lord came to him."  God said to Elijah:  "What are you doing here?"  Elijah, to his everlasting credit, admits what's going on.  You want to know why I took the midnight express?  You want to know why I'm hungry, angry, lonely, and tired?  Here's why:  "I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

The good Lord replied:  "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."

Vulnerable as he is, Elijah ventures out, at God's bidding, to a yet more vulnerable spot:  standing in the presence of the Lord--where there is no midnight express, where there is no escape.  And then, standing there, he braves a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a fire. 

Winds can destroy; earthquakes can destroy, and so can fire.  But Elijah was unscathed; he wasn't destroyed.  Why?  Because God wasn't in all those dramatic things like we might think God would be.  The good Lord wasn't in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. No high drama here.

But He was in a gentle whisper.  Covering his head, a trembling Elijah goes to the mouth of the cave.  God, in a whisper, asks a second time:  "What are you doing here?"  And, for the second time, Elijah replies with the same reason:  "I'm the only one left, and they're trying to kill me."

God says "Go back the way you came."  There's no harsh rebuke for taking the midnight express.  There's seemingly no empathy for the hunger, the anger, the loneliness, or the weariness. There's just a whispered word of God:  "Go back the way you came."  And that was enough.  Elijah wanted to let go -- of God and of his own life.  But the love of God, in a whisper, wouldn't let him.

Many interpreters think that this story is here to teach us, in our own day, that God is still in control, that God is sovereign no matter how ugly our circumstances might be, and I don't deny that.  But that's not all it teaches.  Pretty clearly, very clearly, we see, in Elijah, what it means to be human. And when we're human, like Elijah, we must admit our penchant for the midnight express and our only too real ability to be hungry, angry, lonely, and tired.  After all, Jesus was.

Jesus escaped -- more than once, from those who sought to kill him.  Jesus was hungry.  Jesus was angry -- and he cleansed the temple.  He was lonely.  "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests," He said, "but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head."  And He was tired; remember how he slept in the back of the boat.

But He, like Elijah and through it all, stayed true to why He came.  He came to pay the price for us, to pick up the tab, if you will, for all those times that we, selfishly and self-centeredly, took the "midnight express" and groveled in our hunger, anger, loneliness, and weariness.

As we confront our own inner-Elijah, we don't have to look for the wind, the earthquake, or the fire.  A gentle whisper will suffice.  It is the gentle whisper of the Gospel, the good news, that enables you to carry on yet further on.

Break of day 'till the sun goes down
You work the time between them
A far off land to your own hometown
You've been all around to see them

And when it's standing in front of you
Then you take it and you pull it in
Can you see where you're going to

Lead your way
Sing your song
Moving everyday
Going further on

Amen.

 

Text:  Galatians 2:15-21

Theme:  "The Third Option
4th Sunday after Pentecost/Father's Day

June 16, 2013

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

¹⁵ “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶ know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in^[d] Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

¹⁷ “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! ¹⁸ If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

¹⁹ “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”^[e]

 

 

I mean, the offer was more than fair.  There was this man named Naboth, and he had this very nice piece of land next to the palace of King Ahab.  It was actually a garden. Ahab wanted that land, and he was willing to pay a big chunk of money to Naboth in  order to have it.  But Naboth wasn't selling because that land belonged to his family for generations.   There was no deal.  As a result, Ahab was bummed out.  One translation of this Bible story says that he had a "sullen" expression.

 

His wife, Queen Jezebel, notices the mood change.  So what does she do?  This queen premeditates the murder of Naboth so her husband can have his vegetable garden.  And -- long story short! -- King Ahab didn't even bother to find out why Naboth was killed.  He just went down to Naboth's garden and took possession of it.  Does absolute power corrupt absolutely?  It certainly can, but there's more than corruption going on here. 

 

Ahab and Jezebel.  If there ever were two people who did what wanted, took what they wanted, lived the way they wanted, and removed all obstacles in the way of what they wanted, it was these two.  It was all about them -- first, last, and always.  If you want something, take it.  If you have to run someone else down in the process, run them down.  If you have to lie;  if you have to cheat; if you have to steal; if you have to murder, it doesn't make any difference.  You do what you have to do. You're the center of your own universe; you're the lead actors in your own play.  Everyone else is just a stage-hand or a tool at best and a bother at worst. 

 

Believe in God?  "Sure", Ahab and Jezebel and people like them would say; "Sure, we believe in God -- as long as God performs the way we expect him to."  So God, if they even bothered to believe in a "god" at all, was just a means to an end.  Ahab and Jezebel, simply put, were self-centered in the extreme.  As a person in recovery, I have to wonder if they were alcoholics or addicts of some kind. Why do I say that?  Because drug and alcohol abuse is only a symptom.  The underlying problem is self-centeredness.  Ahab and Jezebel.  They certainly illustrate one way to be, one option.  To a greater or lesser degree, it remains a very popular way to be. 

 

Today's Gospel reading, the story of Jesus in the home of a man named Simon, points out another way to live, a second option.  Simon was a Pharisee, and Pharisees were both educated and very religious.  They were the people, by golly, that were going to follow the rules -- to wit, the ten commandments -- perfectly.  And to help them toward that effort, they endeavored to keep the Mishnah which listed dozens upon dozens of rules and regulations designed to help them keep the ten commandments.  They lived obediently; they lived religiously.  And the last thing they would do was spend any time, or have any interaction, with those who did not live obediently or religiously.  In their worldview, God, like them, would want nothing to do with outcasts and sinners and riff-raff, lost sheep, and, for that matter, for people who did not live EXACTLY the way they did.  For them, it was all about conforming to the Law of God.

 

So when Simon the Pharisee saw this woman -- a well-known, "sinful" woman -- paying all this attention to Jesus with her tears and her hair and her alabaster ointment, is it any wonder that Simon muttered under his breath:  "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him-that she is a sinner"?  He was simply speaking like the obedient, religious, conformist that he was. 

 

Yes, Simon the Pharisee illustrates a second option, a  second way to be.  It's the religious choice.   Like the first, it is still a most popular choice.  Back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, there was a professor at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California who came up with something called "The Homogeneous Unit Principle."  It meant that -- at least, statistically -- people like to become Christians, join a church, etc., without crossing racial or economic lines.  The message to Christian congregations was that if you wanted to grow, you had to attract people like yourselves -- the ones who looked like you, behaved like you, made roughly the same amount of money you did, and so forth.  What do you think? Does this not smell, suspiciously, like the exclusivist, conformist, religious attitude of Simon the Pharisee?  As an aside, it just amazes me when people basically say that the Bible is old and out-of-date.  I've found, the more I dig into it, that it's far more up-to-date than any of us can begin to think!

 

So there you have two out of the three options.  You have the choice to just damn the torpedoes and be as self-centered as you want to be.  You might argue that since everyone else is doing it, why not throw in the towel and do it yourself.  If that doesn't sound too red hot, well, then you have the religious.  Keep the Law of God perfectly; follow the rules and regulations to a T!  Hang out with, and only with, people who live like you, act like you, believe like you, behave like you.  Be polite, but under your breath -- like Simon the Pharisee -- exclude all the rest. 

 

I don't know about you, but I hope to God there is a third option.  You want me to give my testimony?  I've lived both ways.  I took option number one and I ran with it.  It was a slowly-developing catastrophe that almost killed me.  I took option number two and I ran with it.  The same thing happened.  Even worse, and at its worst, I lived a combination of the two.  In my mind, I was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  In my mind, I was going to save the world with the Word and the Sacraments.  A wise person once said that "The road to hell is a gradual one," and, gradually, that's exactly where I was headed.  If I was so great; if I had all the religious answers, then why did I experience what the AA program calls "pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization"?

 

One day, in the midst of all this, I came across a passage in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  It was chapter 29, verse 13 where God says this:  "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."  That made me realize that the distance between my mind and heart made the Grand Canyon look like tiny, dry creekbed!

 

You see, in my mind I could formulate thoughts about God, and those thoughts could be translated into words.  Looking back, many of those words were right. But my heart?  Don't go there; don't you dare. That heart had been hurt and beaten and broken -- some times, many times, by my own thoughts, words, and deeds.  Don't go there.  Don't let anyone in.  All that's in that heart, all that's in that soul, is doom and gloom; all is darkness in that room.  God says:  "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips  but their hearts are far from me."  "Why is that?" I thought. 

 

In my mind there developed this thought:  "Your heart is far from me because of your self-centeredness and your religion."  In a way, it's a wonderful irony.  Here on this Father's Day, I can remember the time when I came to believe that God was no longer the heavenly version of an earthly father that I felt I could never please enough.  Indeed, in Jesus Christ, God was my Lord and Redeemer, but only much later in my life did God become also my brother and friend.  Somehow or another, the wind of God's Spirit tore open that storm cellar of my heart.  I began to really learn what it means to live by faith.  More than that, I discovered that faith acts in love -- and that love has an object, and it's not me:  it's my fellow human beings. 

 

I would not be standing here today saying these things if this hadn't happened.  There is a third option for everyone.  It's called faith.

 

Is it easy?  No, not at all.  I'm still tempted -- tempted every day and in so many ways -- to be completely self-absorbed.  Either that, or I pride myself on what a fine Christian believer I am and wish that others were fine Christians like me too.  I may not say that, but I think it.  In other words, I still try to resurrect option one or two.  How pathetic is that? 

 

I have no other way to describe it.  For that matter, there is no better way to describe it than St. Paul did in our text for today:  "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

 

So there you have them:  options one, two, and three.  Options one and two are roads well-worn and well-traveled.  I take leave of the pulpit this morning by sharing with you these words from the poet Robert Frost:  "I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

 

Amen.

Text:  Luke 7:11-17

Theme:  "Do Not Weep"

3rd Sunday after Pentecost

June 9, 2013

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

¹¹ Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. ¹² As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. ¹³ When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

¹⁴ Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” ¹⁵ The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

¹⁶ They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” ¹⁷ This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.

Although I don't remember it specifically, I'm pretty sure my college course in psychology featured a unit on Sigmund Freud.  This Austrian neurologist is known as the "father of psychoanalysis."  If you've ever gone to counseling of any kind, chances are that your counselor was schooled in Freud.  In such counseling, one of the goals is for people -- the counselees -- to come to grips with their feelings. Those feelings often produce tears. 

 

General Norman Schwartzkopf, leader of the American forces that drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in the first gulf war, was once asked who or what scared him the most.  His answer was the soldier who could not cry.  Crying is good; weeping lets you express your feelings constructively; tears can make you more susceptible to whoever is handling your case -- your therapist, counselor, social worker, etc.

 

Freud died in 1939.  His work is still influential.  But these days, we hear far less about counseling and far more about chemicals and complexes, drugs and  prescriptions that help people handle their emotions -- or even get through their day.  Is it anxiety?  They have Xanax for that.  Having a hard time focusing?  Perhaps some Adderal will work for you.   Whether it be counseling or drugs, it's probably not a bad thing to have a good cry now and then.   It doesn't change your circumstances, but it can make you feel better and help you sleep.  All of this reminds me of the shortest and also one of the most meaningful verses in the entire Bible.  It's John 11:35:  "Jesus wept."  Jesus knows a few things about tears Himself.

 

Now, though, we turn to the Gospel for today, Luke 7:11-17, and we run into Jesus who has run into a funeral procession. If you can't cry at a funeral, when can you?   The setting is a little village called Nain.  There's a small church there, to this day, commemorating the event of today's Gospel.  From the front door of the church one can look across the valley and see Nazareth, the boyhood home of our Lord.  (I saw it all on Google Earth!) 

 

Back to the funeral procession!  Chief among the mourners is a widow, and the deceased being taken to burial was her only son.  In those days, being a woman meant that you were sort of a second-class citizen.  That's strike one.   Being a widow woman was even worse, for you had no husband to support you. That's strike two.  How devastating this must have been for this widow to then lose her only son. That's strike three.  This woman is down and she is, for all intents and practical purposes, out.   To this woman Jesus says:  "Don't cry."  "Do not weep."  He said this, we are told, because "his heart went out to her", or, as another translation puts it, he had "compassion" on her.  "Compassion", biblically defined, doesn't mean coming up to a person who is hurting and saying:  "There, there now.  Everything will be alright."  It means, rather, that you are so caught up with emotion that you physically hurt.  It's as though your insides are being torn apart.  That's how intense it is.  Jesus had compassion on her because he "saw her."  She was not another case or a "client" --  as some social workers like to say.

 

He saw her; he had compassion on her; he said to her "Don't cry.  Do not weep!"  She, this particular woman whose son had died, she is the one that Jesus is there for with all of himself for her specifically.  Only once was Jesus just as He was for her.  To her -- struck out of life, as she was --  He said:  "Do not weep."

 

What kind of inappropriate and rude nonsense is this?  If a person is crying, then be there for them -- for crying out loud! -- and let them weep.  Hold them; cradle them.  But do not stifle their tears. "Do not cry"?  We have been taught to think that such words are uncaring.  The difference is that these words come from the mouth of Jesus.  Words are unique when they are spoken by Jesus.  Who Jesus IS makes all the difference to what He says.  Did the woman know this?  We are not told.  There's nothing about her ethnicity, her income, or her position on the latest hot-button issue of the day.  That's not so important.  She is as Jesus sees her. 

 

Then Jesus interrupts the funeral.  He halts it.  He takes over the proceedings -- and not only that, he takes over death itself.  He says:  "Young man, I say to you arise."  And the words of Jesus do what they say. 

 

After Jesus wept, He said  "Lazarus, come out!"  And the words of Jesus do what they say.  He interrupted the funeral of the widow's son; He interrupted the funeral of Lazarus, and, last of all, He interrupted His own.  His angel told the weeping, fearful women:  "Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here.  He is risen -- even as He said."  He endured death to become its Lord, and He rose from the grave to assure us that our death and burial will be ultimately interrupted.  He happens to be the Lord of death and life -- yours too!

 

There's a reason why we say, together, "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting."  There will come a day when Jesus says to us what He said to the young man:  "Arise!"  And the words of Jesus will do what they say.

 

We also confess:  "From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead."   So what's the takeaway this morning?  Prepare to meet your maker?  Prepare to face the judge?    If that's the case, then we can only weep.  It's an entirely different thing to have this as your takeaway:  prepare to meet your brother, your friend, your Savior.  You are not just another client or case.  You are as Jesus sees you -- as one of His: a brother, a sister, a friend for whom He Himself will, one day, wipe away all tears.

Amen.

MESSAGE FOR THE DAY OF PENTECOST

Text:  Romans 8:14-17

Theme:  "The Adoption Agency"

The Day of Pentecost

May 19, 2013

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.^[f] And by him we cry, “Abba,^[g] Father.” ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

 

Grace and peace to you this day in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  My dear fellow believers in Christ, to you the friends and members of First Presbyterian Church, to our baptismal candidate Alex Rodriguez, and to all within range of my voice:  long ago, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ walked this earth, He made a promise.  He would send His Holy Spirit.  Today, so many years later, we celebrate that He kept His promise and observe the birthday of that which we confess in our creed:  "the holy catholic church".  On the first Day of Pentecost -- ten days after Christ ascended into heaven and fifty days after He rose bodily from the grave (Pentecost literally means "fifty days"), the Holy Spirit was poured out with a mighty rush of wind and with tongues of fire.  The timing was perfect, for it was God's time.  It was no coincidence that it happened in Jerusalem, where, on that day, people from all over the known world were in town. 

 

This was not a localized, "community calendar" event that gets only a short paragraph  buried on page twelve in the front section of the newspaper.  The Day of Pentecost had massive ramifications, quite literally, for the future of the world.  It is news that keeps on making news -- good news!   Pentecost does not mean that a new religion was formed with the usual set of rules and regulations and prescriptions that people would spend their lives trying to conform to.  Quite to the contrary, it was a new way of life characterized by faith toward God and love toward the neighbor. 

 

Faith in God is not a good idea.  It is not a timid suggestion offered in an attempt to be helpful.  It is not another principle -- religious, spiritual, or otherwise -- in a world already filled with enough principles that we're choking on them.  Faith, when you get right down to it, is a gift!  "By grace are you saved through faith," says our Lord's apostle, "and this is not of yourselves.  It is the gift of God; it is not of works lest anyone should boast." 

 

I'm not a child of God today because I gave my heart to Jesus.  I'm a child of God because Jesus gave His heart for me.  I'm not a child of God today because I made a decision; I'm a child of God because God, in Jesus Christ, made a decision for me.  I'm not a child of God because I live a good, upright, and moral life.  God knows that the record is spotty at best and a disaster at worst.  I'm a child of God because Jesus Christ, my brother and friend, lived the perfect life for me.  I'm not a child of God because I read the Bible; I'm a child of God because Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, embodied the Bible for me.   He died the death that paid the price for my sin.  He rose from the grave, bodily, to assure me that when my heart stops beating, my lungs stop breathing, and my brain waves stop registering, I'm starting to head home to the place God has prepared for me.  What a blessing!  What a way to live!  What a message!

 

I've witnessed people -- myself included -- fussing and fuming about why the church won't grow, why more and more people (statistically, at least) are turned off by Christianity.  In fact, I know people who are leaning much harder toward atheism and agnosticism -- and some of them tell me why.  They say that all the church is interested in is my money, or my sexual orientation, or my views on abortion or gay marriage, or how I vote.  They see the church as an institution that asks and sometimes demands that people to live up to some code that they can never possibly keep.  They see the church as an assembly of closed-minded bigots and racists and homophobes.  They think that it's the church's mission to pick the moral "speck" out of their neighbor's eye while ignoring the log in their own.  And you know what?  In some respects, they're right.  In some respects, the church is its own worst enemy.

 

But not when it proclaims the message of the Gospel.  In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul stated that Gospel like this:  "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."  Jesus Himself said:  "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."  "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel," said St. Paul.  "It is the power (literally, the "dynamite") of God unto salvation." 

 

That message of good news, that Gospel, is proclaimed and you hear it. "Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard is the preaching of Christ."  It is sacramentally enacted, in Baptism and in the Lord's Supper, and you receive it.  It is the message that brings light into this dark world.  It is the message that lifts up the downtrodden to heights heretofore unknown.  It is the message that touches people, changes people, empowers people, makes people come alive. 

 

And it is all through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

 

One chapter of the Bible that is worth memorizing from the first verse to the last is Romans chapter eight.  There is so much gospel packed into that chapter, so much good news, that it's almost impossible to take it all in.  It begins:  "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  Have you come to faith in Jesus Christ?  Have you been baptized?  There is no condemnation for you.  Once that sinks in, you're not going "Oh, goody-goody, lucky me!"  No, my friend, you're asking "How can I share this message with someone else?  How can I best live for this Lord Jesus who loved me and gave Himself for me?"

 

Then you get to our text that I read before the sermon began.  Focus on just this one segment:  "The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship."  What does that mean?  Let me put it to you this way:  You are an adopted child, an adopted son or daughter of a loving heavenly Father.  The adoption agency, if you will, that God used was His own Holy Spirit.  "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

 

In 1892, in eastern Nebraska, a group of Christians purchased a large home in the community of Fremont.  It became the Lutheran orphanage and children's home.  It was there to take care of children who lost their parents or children whose parents couldn't take care of them.  Now Eastern Nebraska has as lot of farmland.  Many of the small congregations are literally out in the country on gravel roads, on county roads.  Once or twice a year, those congregations -- made up mostly of farm families -- would load up the wagons with grain and with provisions and head to the Lutheran orphanage.  There would be a festival for the orphans.  The children that lived at the home would join with the farmers and their families.  The cupboards and the pantries of the home would be stocked with the provisions the farm families brought.  There would be much feasting and celebrating that day along with an outdoor worship service.

 

After about seventy years, that orphanage became a social service agency.  In 1992, on the hundred year anniversary of that orphanage (the centennial), they re-enacted the old Orphan Festival.  People, including farmers, brought food and gifts.  They had a big picnic and outdoor worship service. As it turns out, it was the largest crowd of people -- over two thousand people -- that I ever gave a sermon before.  Why did I preach that day?  I was asked because I was child of that orphanage and agency.  In 1960, the year of my birth, my parents adopted me from that agency. 

 

If I were to cook dinner on the Feast of Pentecost (and I just might do this someday), I'd prepare some Lentil soup.  There's a recipe for Lentil soup, you see,  that came from that orphanage, and they served it to the children every Sunday evening.  Throughout all the years in good times and in bad; through a world war, a great depression, and a second world war, those children could count on something no matter what:  they'd get their soup -- lovingly prepared by children of God who cared for them.

 

We have so much to celebrate today.  Thank God for the Holy Spirit in Alex Rodriguez's life.  What a privilege it is to witness the baptism of this gifted young woman and, yes, incredible tennis player.  Thank God for the work of His Spirit in the Presbyterian Women's organization that installs officers today.  Thank God for the Holy Spirit who blessed the lives of our high school and college graduates. Thank God for the Holy Spirit, God's own adoption agency, that has made us all children of our heavenly Father!

Let us pray: 

Holy Spirit hear us on this sacred day;

Come to us with blessing, come with us to stay.

 

Spirit of adoption, make us overflow

with Your manifold blessing and in grace to grow.

 

Amen.