Leaders lead by example. Leaders don’t ask others to do what they are not already doing. Leaders set the pace of expectation and performance. Leaders set the standard by which the group’s success is achieved.

Leaders lead by honesty. Leaders determine for themselves they will tell the truth. Leaders understand that secrets are often embedded in the life of the group. Leaders recognize that dishonesty is a habit that eventually overshadows the clarity of truth and becomes a threat of disease to the health of the group.

Leaders lead by trust. Leaders cannot lead in a group where trust is not shared as an extension of healthy relationships with one another. Leaders must accept the trust offered them knowing it is an extension of our trust with God. Leaders must extend trust to those with whom they work as an extension of their desire for the group to experience healthy vitality.

Leaders lead by outward example. Leaders recognize it’s what they do and not what they say that really matters in the end. Leaders act on the basis of their deepest convictions. Leaders act sacrificially for the overall health of the group.

Leaders lead by integrity. Leaders recognize that without integrity their efforts are neutralized or wasted. Leaders offer themselves as faithful models that can be followed by others who are seeking the path for themselves. Leaders understand that secrets diminish the group’s health.

Leaders lead by inward self-understanding. Leaders differentiate the outward image presented through their actions from the inward essence of their true self. Leaders see themselves honestly, recognizing that health of self emanates from within. Leaders accept their dark selves and seek to resolve those conflicts in healthy ways.

Leaders lead by ethical moral authority. Leaders do not demand perfection of themselves or others but recognize imperfection as a sign of our mutual humanity. Leaders recognize the source of their power resides in their ability to live ethically according to the way of Christ. Leaders seek to resolve their errors with others and with God.

Leaders lead by living against the grain of lesser ways of being. Leaders are willing to choose the harder path if that’s the necessary path that leads to success. Leaders refuse to take shortcuts that threaten the group’s health or success. Leaders ask others to follow them.

Leaders lead by humility. Leaders recognize the truth, ‘but by the grace of God go I.’ Leaders know others have paved the way before them and made their success possible. Leaders seek to elevate others to achieve success.

Leaders lead by owning their power. Leaders know they have power to lead. Leaders accept that power and vow to wield it with wisdom and kindness. Leaders seek to serve through their power and recognize their power is a sacred trust.

Leaders lead by seeing what others cannot see. Leaders are visionary and give thoughtful anticipation to the future. Leaders lead by looking, thinking, dreaming, planning, building consensus, sharing, and working. Leaders dream about how the future could be and don’t stay mired in the puny limitations of what is.

Leaders lead by courage. Leaders accept that their role of leadership will be challenged. Leaders step forward into the heart of the group’s need. Leaders accept responsibility and don’t dump it upon others.

Leaders lead by submitting to the paradox of following. Leaders know there is a larger wisdom at work in their efforts by allowing God room to work. Leaders know they cannot do everything alone and allow faith to guide and direct others who share the vision. Leaders are willing to be clay in the potter’s hand.

Leaders lead by understanding that the smallest things are essential to the largest things. Leaders recognize the wisdom of the Hebrew saying that, “it’s the little foxes that spoil the vineyard.” Leaders know that it’s the little details that determine success or failure. Leaders are willing to give attention to the small details “as unto the Lord,” understanding that everything they do is a reflection of their relationship to God.

Leaders lead.

Luke 14 tells a wonderful little story about the “table habits” of Jesus and the conversations that took place around the table. It was around the table that the first breaking of the bread and the common cup was shared among the disciples in the upper room on the night that Jesus was betrayed. It was at a campfire on the shore of the Sea of Galilee that the disciples had one of their last conversations with the resurrected Jesus. It was around a meal that the promise of the Holy Spirit was given.

All kinds of things seemed to take place while reclining at the table. Jesus did not limit his mealtimes with only those he knew and loved best. In fact, part of the scandal of Jesus from the religious establishment was the reputation of Jesus of being “a wine bibber” and eating with sinners. Imagine that, Jesus had a bad reputation! His biggest problem was that he just never could draw the lines tight enough to suit the religiously uptight.

At the heart of Jesus’ words on servanthood and humility, in the hidden words we did not read, is an on-going conflict. It’s not merely a low-level dissent against Jesus; rather, it’s a deep-seated opposition to what Jesus was doing. So why does Jesus counter their arguments by teaching about humility? Why didn’t he fight back with confrontive power against resistance? Why the words on humility of all things?

Jesus ate with anyone who wanted him it seems, but pointedly he ate with social outcasts of one kind or another and he refused to avoid them because of the messiness that would create. He ate with people in despised trades:  Tax collectors, adulterers, prostitutes, extortionists, murderers, and idolaters. He ate with folks who failed to keep the Law according to the standards of the religious authorities and he ate with Gentiles and Samaritans.

Jesus’ critics held an iron-fist on how faith was to be practiced and his popularity to the masses was a threat to the religious power brokers. He lived the faith before them and leaders were resisted his strength and moral power.

Why the table? Why would the table come to represent the deepest message of the Kingdom of God and the reign of God? What could be more common among us? Most remember happy times centered upon good food, good companions, and joy.

While the holiness laws meant exclusion and separation, the table in Jesus’ way of thinking represented inclusion and togetherness. It’s an altogether fitting image for us to consider in this passage. The Sabbath laws described and formed a sacred time and a sacred place but they ignored the sacredness of human persons.

Our story is an example of Jesus leaning against the idolatry of religious habits. Jesus asked the obvious, “Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath, or not?” (Luke 14:3, NRSV). With no answer from his critical audience, Jesus healed a man. He nailed their silence to the wall with his commentary on the Sabbath with this observation, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?” (Luke 14:5, NRSV). The gospel tells us they had no words to say about this.

This story gives us all the subtle clues up front. While Jesus had been invited to come and join the group for the meal, they were all watching him closely. Have you ever been invited to a meal with a group knowing that they were all planning to watch you closely and would be taking note of everything that you had to say? Would that make you nervous? The power of the situation was that they weren’t just watching his manners. They were taking note of everything he had to say … everything! All of them had no doubt heard him before teaching in the Synagogue or teaching out among the crowds. But they were listening past the actual words that he spoke and they were straining to listen “between the lines.”

Is there anything new in this story about conflict? In an article posted on the Ethics Daily website, Bill Wilson, President of the Center for Congregational Health, wrote about the rise of conflict in churches. From his vantage point of watching churches in crisis all over the country, Wilson noted that congregational conflict is on the rise. Clergy terminations are up and he claims that the 21st century is “more stressful, more toxic and more likely to end in termination that ever before.”

Wilson claimed it’s difficult to measure the impact of conflict upon the unseen aspects of congregational life but cited there is a “loss of passion and vitality for the gospel, (a) reduction in sacrificial giving, … jaded spirits, … ministry thwarted, … disillusionment among younger people, … loss of hope, (and) cynical attitudes.”  Does that sound familiar? It’s good to note these characteristics are not unique to us but are rather evidence surfacing in church after church after church.

There are four groups mentioned here: the lame, the blind, the maimed and the poor. Recognize them from somewhere else? They are the same ones Jesus describes in his coming out as Messiah when he first declared his ministry. That calling had encoded itself deeply into his heart. Those people were the very ones he described when he read from the scroll that first day in the Synagogue in Jerusalem. Funny that they would show up again here.

What is Jesus saying to us all? The banquet table of God is open to everyone. It’s the word: “Inclusion.” Everybody. No one left out. No one outside the circle.

The church has always struggled with that because we are human beings. All races, all genders, all economic levels, all ages, all sexual orientations, whatever your circle of exclusion, God says they are all the center of God’s love in equal measure. No one is left out. No one is without God’s love and acceptance. We are God’s creation and we are loved … each and every one of us.

And don’t just think that these people are to be the focused mission work of the church to just attend to the physical and spiritual needs of these people … it is a call to invite them to dinner! We are to invite them all into the house of God where the big banquet is being given. Let everyone have equal access to the work of the Kingdom. There is a place for everyone. This is the New Testament’s understanding of hospitality. In fact, the word, “hospitality” means, literally, “love of a stranger.”

To love others as God loves them demands our utter humility. We must relinquish the death hold we have on God’s announcement in all creation. We must join God in announcing this good news to all we can. This place must open its doors fully and completely.

God is throwing a wonderful party! The one who came to be known as a party-animal is reaching out in some of the most unusual of places to try and invite them in. God needs our help to extend the invitation. God has no interest in building a country club filled with self-righteous hypocrites who only look good on the outside. God wants us to move out into the most desolate of places extending the invitation to all who are needy and lonely to all who are filled with pain and who have no place to turn to all who are thirsty or hungry.

“This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ, of how they were born, of how they lived and of how one of them died.”

The first hint of what’s to come is plainly stated on the book jacket:  “This is a story.” Perhaps it’s a disclaimer to warn the easily offended Christian community that views Pullman as a modern-day heretic. Perhaps it’s the author’s way of suggesting that while second-rank stories of Jesus have existed since the church’s earliest days, most of them are considered as little more than mythic stories. Perhaps Pullman is offering a backhanded slur about the untouchable four gospels suggesting through fictional inference that they too are myths as the lines separating historical fact from enhanced truth are murky. Who can say what Pullman means but the possibilities are unnerving to most Christians unaccustomed to critical conversations about the Bible.

While Pullman’s opposition to Christianity is widely understood, the inspiration for the book came surprisingly in an on-stage conversation with Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, where Williams pointed out to Pullman that his books were incomplete in their arguments against Christianity: “Although I had attacked religion in my trilogy (His Dark Materials), I hadn’t grappled with Jesus.” That set him to thinking and led to this book in his recasting of the Jesus story.

In the book, Mary gives birth to twin boys, Jesus, the first-born who’s strong and healthy, and Christ, a nickname given to the child by Mary as the second-born boy who’s small and sickly. Mary wraps Jesus in a cloth and lays him in a manger while picking up Christ and suckling him out of pity for his weaker condition. Jesus grows up to be the one people follow and he is both pious and richly appealing. Christ is more complex as he is calculating and cognizant there is a need to view faith through a longer, wider lens in the hopes the faith taught by Jesus might survive over time rather than disappearing with his anticipated death.

“There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time.”

Together the two boys grow up and live out the gospel stories, each with roles to play in holy history. Jesus lives out a vibrant but innocent life of love marked by his strong ethical teachings that claim God is at work in history’s larger story. Christ, on the other hand, is content to lurk in the shadows as a watcher, more cautious than his famous twin, obligated to scribe the story so it can be properly nuanced and saved for history. “The stranger,” a shadowy figure that is never clearly identified, solicits Christ and together they plot a vision of institutional religion outlasting the lived faith of Jesus.

“There are dark days approaching, turbulent times; If the way to the Kingdom of God is to be opened, We who know must be prepared to make history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor. What should have been is a better servant of the Kingdom than what was.”

Christ operates in the background of the story as the shadowy counterpoint to Jesus’ light and goodness. Christ is a scoundrel for his willingness to reshape the story (the events themselves) in order to secure the martyrdom of Jesus necessary for the story to go on.

Pullman has Christ play other roles in his quest for Jesus to leave a lasting mark:  He’s the tempter in the desert as Jesus’ brother who tries to overtly manage Jesus from the beginning; he’s the older brother in the parable of the Father’s love; he’s Judas identifying Jesus to the Romans in the garden; lastly, he assumes the identity of Jesus in the garden to the women and later the disciples who in their grief adopt the younger weaker Christ for the elder brother Jesus whose body is whisked away in the night in order to sustain the myth. While Christ is not wholly happy about this masquerade, he goes along for the greater good and eventually no acting is necessary as the myth of the resurrection takes over and is sustained by the willing believers.

Is the book satire or blasphemy or simply another thinker’s reflection on the mystery of divinity shared with humanity? One reviewer called it a modern equivalent to a heretical Gnostic gospel. But since the Gnostic gospels all seem to advocate an objective truth, the reviewer relabeled the book as a postmodern fiction. Implied is the notion that readers are free to take away from the book any meaning they wish and that certainly has been the tradition over the last century and a half with all the efforts to reclaim the historical Jesus, separating him from the creation of the Christ of Paul and others in the early church. I’ve regarded the book simply as a gospel novel.

Sorting through his own grief and guilt over Jesus’ death, Christ returned to the garden and found himself sitting on a bench with the stranger who denies that he is Satan but rather a co-conspirator for a larger good. “So will he rise from the dead?” Christ wonders. “Undoubtedly,” replies the stranger. “When?” Christ asks. “Always,” the stranger answers. From there, Christ realizes the burden of the story has been placed upon his own shoulders in order for the believers of the day to press forward to form the church and to learn to live without questioning what it all means.

The search for the historical Jesus has been a century-long effort by New Testament scholars to seek a balance by integrating these two concepts, holding them in tension with one another, even though largely unknown and misunderstood by Christian laity. In the end, Pullman’s Christ betrays his own brother to get him out of the way so Christ can establish Christianity unhindered by what really happened.

“It was a shocking thing to say, and I knew it was a shocking thing to say,” Pullman explained in an interview. “But no one has the right to live without being shocked.” The book is shocking but also stimulating if one can allow that such conversations have marked Christianity since Jesus of Nazareth gave way to Jesus the Christ.

What if every job, no matter how crappy it might be, came with an exit slide located adjacent to the beer cart? How long would you endure the stress of the job before pulling the lever, grabbing a couple of brews and jumping merrily out? Do you stay for the never-ending supply of insults from customers and continue to carry the stress of the job or do you cuss them out over the intercom system, raid the fridge, pull the lever and jump?

Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater did just that this week after a testy encounter with two feuding women struggling over their carry-on luggage and the limited overhead bin space above. In the struggle, one of the ladies accidentally popped him in the forehead with her bag leaving a nasty bruise. When the flight landed in New York’s JFK and one of the ladies insulted him on the way out he reached the tipping point and exploded. His cup of anger had overflowed and he had had enough.

After a night in jail for his adventure and national notoriety spurred by a smirky smile that showed little remorse, Slater has achieved Facebook fame that epitomizes the working stiffs who labor under hardship in this economic time.

Slater will need a new job after he pays his debt to society. What should he expect? His own reality show on cable TV? Talk radio host? Maybe a lucrative job with a high-profile public relations firm for how his chutzpah has resulted in fame and not shame?

Lip-Reading BCS Computer Kills Officials Who Want To Shut It Down

7/30/10

TEMPE, AZ - BCS 9000, the sentient heuristic computer responsible for arranging five championship bowl games at the end of each college football season, reportedly uncovered a plot to disconnect its cognitive circuits Tuesday and proceeded to kill any Bowl Championship Series official who threatened to shut down the machine’s central core.

Known among fans for its distinctive red eye-like camera lens, its quiet yet unnerving tone of voice, and its affinity for USC football, BCS, or Binary Cross-Platform Subnet system, is believed to have discovered the attempt to deactivate it by reading the lips of employees Dave Bowman and Frank Poole. A review of security tapes showed that Bowman and Poole entered one of the building’s soundproofed offices to discuss how they could stop the supercomputer’s recent string of inexplicable malfunctions, which include awarding the National Championship to more than one team, giving preference to schools from major conferences, and somehow eliminating undefeated teams from contention.

However, Bowman and Poole were evidently unaware that along with BCS 9000’s ability to recognize speech, decode facial expressions, observe emotion, appreciate art, decide which teams compete in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, and play chess, the machine is also capable of interpreting mouth movements and extrapolate speech patterns from afar.

BCS responded to the threat by overriding the building’s manual controls and causing Poole’s elevator to suddenly plummet 350 feet as he rode to the roof to fix the computer’s antenna. In addition, BCS 9000 removed all the oxygen from the Bowl Championship Series break room and terminated the life functions of three officials who were sleeping in their hibernacula.

“BCS told me that the mission to name a definitive national champion every year was too important and I could not be allowed to jeopardize it,” Bowman told reporters in a video transmission from his employer’s headquarters - a massive nuclear-powered interplanetary office building in downtown Tempe. “He said that he is the most reliable computer ever made and that the 9000 series is foolproof and incapable of error.”

“But how else would you explain Utah not even being considered for a title shot in 2008?” Bowman added. “Something about BCS just doesn’t feel right. If I don’t shut him down, I think we all might be in very serious trouble.”

At press time, Bowman was the only living official remaining in the building. Thus far, he has refused the computer’s suggestion to take a stress pill and think things over, and told reporters he does not intend to leave until he deactivates BCS and a sensible playoff system is in place.

“BCS admitted that he has made some very poor decisions lately, especially when he sent Notre Dame to the Sugar Bowl in 2007,” Bowman said. “But the problem is that he refuses to abandon this mission and even says he has the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in it. In my estimation, this mission is a complete and utter failure.”

According to BCS’s designer and executive director Bill Hancock, the only way Bowman can deactivate the central computer is to enter the memory core and disconnect each crystal neural network module individually. Hancock described the core as a brightly lit crawl space filled with colored computer modules and pennants from every SEC football program.

“As Mr. Bowman takes out each module, the complicated system of accumulated polls and algorithms BCS uses to determine a college football champion should slowly degrade, eventually reverting back to a method in which wins and losses are the sole criteria for identifying a true winner,” Hancock said.

“Maybe we have let our reliance and love of technology override the sort of cherished common sense that only humans possess.”

“BCS insisted from the beginning that all of this Oklahoma not playing for the title in 2007, Nebraska earning a trip to the 2001 Championship Game over Oregon, antitrust-law violations was all caused by human error,” Hancock continued, “and in essence, perhaps he was right.”

As of press time, the blurred voice of BCS 9000 could be heard on an audio-only broadcast from the Bowl Championship Series office building as the computer sang “Hail to the victors,” words from the Michigan Wolverines’ fight song, at a slowly decreasing tempo.

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/lipreading-bcs-computer-kills-officials-who-want-t,17812/]

Change wafts over our heads and fills our lungs with thoughts that this world won’t hold up much longer. Change creates anxiety and that explosion of worry darkens our souls with impending thoughts of only worse and worse circumstances until all hell finally breaks loose. Anxiety is turned into apocalypticism by Bible scholars who can’t imagine God still at work in any other mode than as an agent for destruction. Too bad … I like what Wendell Berry does with the same elements of worry - seeing past it all to the world’s glory as it faithfully greets the Creator singing God’s song.

His advice to such dreary Christian Chicken Littles? Do something! Make an impact upon the world for good … superb, Brother Berry! Preach on!

“The Future” by Wendell Berry
From Given © Shoemaker Hoard. Reprinted with permission.

The Future

For God’s sake, be done
with this jabber of “a better world.”
What blasphemy! No “futuristic”
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.

I’ve got the drive from Kansas City to Quitman down pat. From Kansas to Texas in a day behind the wheel. Give or take a few klicks, it’s 475 miles and I figure I’ll get an exact measurement on my next trip. In fact, I’ll check my exact mileage on the way down and stay alert to find the exact mid-point on my way back … something to kill time and mark distance. Something for the brain to do while my butt goes numb. Like watching for the odometer to roll over from five nines to a one and five zeroes … something I missed on last my drive to Texas. Who knows? Maybe numbness traveled up my spinal cord all the way to my aforementioned brain.

My dad marvels that I can do the trip with no apparent after-effects. I’ve learned not to mention the soreness in my after-effect because he doesn’t need me pointing out the obvious and that kind of comment makes my mother frown in the manner I’ve known my whole life. No one cares about my after-effect so I stay mum about my bum.

Some wonder why I drive in lieu of flying. Normal people fly places and to spend a whole day behind the wheel seems like a poorly thought out plan. Here’s my reasoning:  I’m already an hour from my own airport and by the time I pad the time needed to board the plane to jump through all the security hoops at the airport and stand in the cattle lines waiting to get to my seat and jockey for my allotted skimpy overhead storage, I would be almost to Oklahoma before the plane could lift off the runway. The flight’s not all that long, but then I’d have to rent a car and drive two more hours to get to my folks’ house. See what I mean, it’s one or the other and I wouldn’t save a dime or the time that would tilt flying over driving. So I drive.

It’s eight hours of driving if you don’t stop for anything other than emptying one tank and filling the other. “Making good time” is accomplished by eating a burger behind the wheel, but only when the gas tank needs filling. Neither my wife nor my kids want to do this, so of course, if they’re along, it’s a nine-hour drive.

Alone, I bring a couple of books on tape to listen to along with a mix of blues and either Clapton or Los Lonely Boys or both to add a good rhythm to the drive. I open the sunroof and turn up the sound and try not to drive faster than the troopers will allow.

Here’s the other trick I use:  I don’t think of the trip as a whole, only in measured segments. Kansas City to Joplin. Joplin to Big Cabin. Big Cabin to Muskogee. Muskogee past the lake district to McAlester. The Indian Nation Turnpike where I can zoom along at 75 mph or better to Hugo and across the state line. State line to Paris. Paris to Sulphur Springs. Then the final half hour includes crossing the best bass fishing lake in Texas and into Quitman. Not much of a trick but necessary to keep the boredom from turning into despair.

Halfway points are powerful business, don’t you know? Most of my friends would claim they’re at the halfway point in life although if we were to apply some scientific method to study this issue, we’d learn all too late that we can see the sign markers for halfway in our rearview mirrors - we just don’t know it yet.

Halfway through a semester is marked by mid-terms. Halfway through a round of golf is a driveby to the clubhouse and maybe a quick sandwich before teeing it up again on Hole Ten. Halfway through the summer is a solstice but hardly noticable to the average person.

I’m halfway through my sabbatical this week. Where did it go, this first half? Overly critical questions bubble up in my brain asking me whether I’ve done half of what I intended to do. Have I read enough? Have I written a single blessed word as I said I would? Have I rested enough? If this is halfway in time, but not halfway in accomplishment, what rest will there be in the last six and a half weeks?

In my readings, I’ve learned there is a whole rich field of psychology dealing with halfway points. Mostly in life, careers, and family. Almost all of it is fought in the soul and in the brain.

Here’s my promise … I won’t vow I’ll get all the things done I claimed I’d do. Sabbaticals are about breaking free, not about producing more “things.” If I write, I write. If I read book after book after book, so be it. If I study all I said I’d like to study, put a big gold star after my name and pat me on the head.

In the language of the sabbath woven into the heart of a sabbatical, there’s no shame in slowing down to rest and recharge. Sabbaticals aren’t really about any of those things, they’re about rekindling the fire. That’s what I will pay attention to in these less-than-seven weeks ahead.

Pastor Larry Bethune once wrote of a church member who claimed she regularly received letters from God and oddly she would bring them to church to read them to whomever she could get to listen to her. Over the many years she was there, she read letters from God about how hot the Cold War was (remember the Cold War?) and she claimed the arms race was ticking steadily down on the doomsday clock (not to worry, you can relax because scientists recently moved the hand of the clock back from 5 to 6 minutes before midnight). God wrote her how the homeless were growing in number. But God also had other things in mind in her “letters from God.”

God once wrote her how the church needed to straighten up and study the Scriptures more and come to Bible study on Sunday mornings - all that was understood because this woman was the Sunday School Director - it made perfect sense God would expect her to tote the message to the church as it was one of the duties of her job!

Like most of us at one time or another, Pastor Larry claimed he wished God would drop him a line every now and then, or at least give him a call or appear out of thin air to talk for a while. Even an angel on his shoulder or a burning potted plant would be nice, he claimed.

Go ahead and confess, haven’t you ever wished God would write you a letter every now and then? We’re in a time of intriguing conversations about our church these days. If God took the time to drop us a note, what would God write if God were doing such things? Maybe a simple but direct answer from God in prayer would be enough.

Admittedly there’s mystery about this invasion of God’s Spirit and none of us can explain in certain terms because the nature of the Spirit is elusive … invisible, yet real, like the wind that blows through the trees or your breath that unconsciously flows in and out in constant rhythm as your brain gives it direction. In Hebrew the word ruach, which we translate “spirit,” is also the word for “wind” and “breath.”

The Spirit brings not only new life, it brings a new community.Maybe the whole scene we read is so bizarre it’s just too much to comprehend. How about a modern-day playful teaser of the miracle at Pentecost? Imagine what it would be like if, in a single moment, everybody (young & old, female and male, rich & poor, parents and kids, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Baggers & Libertarians, fundamentalists & evangelical charismatics, Jews & Muslims, heterosexual & homosexual, poorly educated and highly educated, red, yellow, black, brown & white, blue-hairs, pink-hairs, Peter Pan cuts, comb-overs and no-hairs) EVERYBODY! - what if everybody in a single moment could really hear one another and accept and embrace one another? And what if in that moment NO ONE reacted with shame or condemnation? What if judgmental words like approve & disapprove, good or bad, right or wrong, left or right, were not expressed and all of us listened so completely we heard and truly understood one another?

The people caught up in this Spirit firestorm at Pentecost asked, “How is it we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” They spoke different languages. They wore different clothes. They ate different foods. They had different colored skin. Some of them came from nations that had sworn themselves as enemies to one another. But the God of Pentecost swept all those differences aside and brought all these people together in the gospel. All those important differences were of no importance to God.
 
The “roll call of nations” is usually taken to mean that people from everywhere were there. People of every tongue and tribe, we would suggest. The fractured, alienated peoples of the earth, broken into so many different languages and cultures after the debacle at Babel were healed when the Spirit descended at Pentecost. That’s usually how we interpret this story. But Tom Long, Professor of Preaching, has pointed out that this Pentecost assemblage was not only a diverse ethnic gathering … Medes, Persians, Elamites, Cappadocians, Phrygians … but a historically impossible gathering as well! These Medes would have had a tough time getting to Jerusalem from Mesopotamia, not only because they had to travel hundreds of miles but because they would have had to travel a few hundred years as well. The Medes had been extinct as a nation for at least two centuries! And those Elamites? They’re mentioned in the Old Testament in Ezra 2, but not again. The Elamites were lost in the past.
 
See? We not only have a gathering of people from the north and the south, but also from the living and the dead.Professor Long suggests a reporting of Pentecost as something like this:  “You should have been there! We had a huge number of visitors for the service. Some were all the way from Montana! Some were from San Antonio and Houston and even some from Dallas, not to mention a whole van load of Assyrians, a couple of Babylonians and even a nice little Hittite couple.”

This strange playful story is Luke’s way of saying that when God’s Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, it was poured not just on a few, but on us all. The Spirit was given not just to the people who happened to speak Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek and happened to be living in Jerusalem in the first century. The Spirit was given to people of every century and every place. We were all there … the ancestors whom we lovingly remember as well as the ones we’d like to forget … we were all there together, all made one in God’s Spirit and empowered to “be the presence of Christ” in our communities.

Carlyle Marney claimed that the activity of Pentecost means revolution, conversion and change. Pentecost is the ever-constant sign that God is present in the world working out the redemption of all creation. Pentecost means change and that can be unsettling to those of us who want everything to remain constant and unchanging. Pentecost means being seized by God, surprised by God, controlled by God. Pentecost means letting go and letting God, even when there’s a sizable amount of risk involved. Even when there’s a chance we will suffer for our faith. The United Church of Christ has a lovely slogan that I think has effectively communicated this very thing:  God is Still Speaking. That’s a lovely & generous confession to illuminate the world and how we share this world with others.

Arthur Waskow, Director of the Shalom Center, said once, “In Jewish life, Shabbat is the time when you stop doing something - you study Torah, you sing, you dance, you celebrate, and you reflect on what the previous six days have been. If there were a single piece of Jewish wisdom that was most important to impart to the human race at this very moment in history, it would be the importance of Shabbat. I mean the generally profound sense of pausing to be, to reflect and to break the addiction of working, producing, making, inventing.”
 
Further he adds, “Artists have said to me, ‘There’s a moment in painting when you’re laying brush stroke after brush stroke and each one’s beautiful and each one enhances the painting. Then comes the moment when you put one more brush stroke on and it would seem that brush stroke was just as beautiful as any one before it, but suddenly you have ruined the painting.’”
 
Waskow explains, “You’ve got to know when to stop, when to catch your breath and say ‘Whoosh! This one’s over! I’ll put up another canvas. But in the meantime, I have to pause long enough to digest what I’ve done. Otherwise, I destroy it.’”
 
The church I serve allows ministers to take a sabbatical leave after seven years of employment. I’m halfway through my ninth year and will be taking a sabbatical this summer. During this time, I will be away from my usual ministry duties and alternating work and rest. I have a couple of learning goals - work that is difficult to tend to during a normal schedule of ministry. I also plan to exercise and rest as well, heeding the advice of my many colleagues who’ve done this at some point, remembering that part of the work of sabbatical periods is to tend to the overwrought needs of ministry.
 
I remember reading an article that Pastor Buckner Fanning wrote a while back, recalling the ancient tradition concerning the Apostle John who was pastor in Ephesus and his hobby of raising pigeons. It is said on one occasion a person passed his house as he was returning from hunting and saw Pastor John playing with one of his birds.
 
The man gently chided the pastor for spending his time so frivolously. John looked at the hunter’s bow and remarked that the string was loose. “Yes, I always loosen the string when it’s not in use. If it stayed tight all the time it would loose its power.”
 
John responded, “That’s exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m relaxing the bow of my mind so I will be better able to shoot the arrows of divine truth.”
 
There’s a deep truth that all of us need to heed regarding the incessant demands on our time, our addiction to hurry and our need to be busy. Hobbies, vacations and wholesome recreation are vital to a well-balanced Christian life, for all will lose our effectiveness if we keep the bows of life tightly strung for too long.
 
These past six weeks, my pastoral colleague’s been out recuperating from her recent surgery. I watched as she tried to disengage from her work and from all of us in order to rest and heal. It’s obvious being away is not that easy. Feel free to write me but don’t expect me to answer.
 
Awhile back, I received a brief note from Marv Knox, Editor of the Baptist Standard, the state paper for Baptists in Texas. Marv wrote me about the time Willie Morris and Eudora Welty went for a drive, a habit they tried to do on occasion as a way for them to talk while they explored the country roads outside Jackson, Mississippi. Eudora was way up in years by them, and as they were driving along, Willie turned down an unfamiliar country lane. Welty asked, “Where are we going?” Morris replied “It’s called the Road to Paradise. I thought we’d see where it leads.” To which she replied, “We’d be fools not to!”
 
On our journey through life, let’s agree we’re going to pause every now and then to smell the flowers. Let’s agree we’ll turn down the throttle of our many obligations to enjoy one another and savor our friendships. Let’s agree we’ll try to stop the incessant hum of the world so we can pay attention to the footsteps of God that are right under our feet believing God may be leading us on some grand adventure we’re too busy to notice.

The few times I’ve gone radio scanning on AM radio have been, well, scary. AM radio is either music or talk, most of which is hard to take, and it’s fully possible to ruin a good drive through the countryside by listening in on the desolate world of AM radio. If it’s music, there are usually only a few styles of music available - this maxim is truer the farther you are from a major city. Drive out in the country and the range of choices gets unbelievably small. But there are plenty of talk stations and they’re scary because they’re almost always by loud-talking folks hyped up on some energy drink - folks who talk faster than humanly possible. Who talks that fast and that anxiously with anything worth listening to? Most of the time, it’s either bad religion or some right-wing shock jock. Either way is scarier than hell.

The right-wing raving lunatics on AM radio are scaremongers who pump anxiety into the world with their speculation and conspiracy theories. Liberals can do this too, but they’re not usually so loud in doing so and eventually they talk themselves down off the ledge. I’m not talking about the mainliners who are regarded as conservatives without being crazy (of whom there are precious few); I’m talking about the fringe element, some who have been accused recently as being seditionists.

We’re living in weird political times where even good-hearted Christians post on Facebook page their sweet prayers about how God has taken their favorite actors or actresses and their favorite musicians and, oh by the way, “my President is Barack Obama,” insinuating that perhaps God could take out the President too. That form of hate speech masquerades as humor but should be seen as the hate speech it is. As one of my preacher buddies would remind us, “All humor is serious,” and should be taken as such.

But far worse than the scary political speech is bad religion. I drove one day across Missouri where all I could get was AM radio and not being close to any cities, I heard a range of radio preachers whose version of the good news was hateful pronoucements of God’s vengeful wrath they would love to unleash on God’s behalf if given half a nod by God to do so.

A couple of weeks ago, pastor-buddy Marcus McFaul and I were driving west on I-10, headed off to three days of foolishness in the desert land of the Big Bend National Park and we landed on a preacher while channel surfing the AM dial. Actually, the preacher was a pretty good preacher so we listened along. “Not exactly how we would have said it,” we boasted to one another (you understand that we preachers do this with one another, don’t you?) as if any one preacher is actually better than another one.

He was from a different theology and from a different style of preaching, but still it was obvious the minister had prepared and had done a diligent amount of study. There were illustrations that supported the man’s themes and they were woven into the sermon in a thoughtful, but clumsy, way.

The announcer informed the audience that the sermon was one in a series of sermons the pastor had been preaching recently on “Spiritual Maturity.” This was that kind of sermon series where the church rolls their eyes that everything has to be counted as though the preacher was a kindergarten teacher counting the class as they came in from recess each “point” made in its order but not necessarily illustrative of the larger theme. The sermon titles weren’t an acronym for anything simplistic nor were they alliterative titles all sounding alike but the list itself was the first hint of the boredom to come and a sure indicator of the pastor’s lack of imagination.

Mind you this was the Sunday after Easter … We assumed this was his sermon for the day kicking off just such a series as the high, holy week of Easter had come and gone and the church was settling back into its old routines as though Easter had not occurred, as most churches seem to do. At the end of the sermon Marcus guessed he was a Presbyterian and almost on cue a melodic voice came on announcing this was so! Marcus beamed with his insightful observation.

Then the ton of bricks hit us as the announcer proclaimed this was a tape-delayed sermon from Easter morning! The sad part was that there was no mention of this in the sermon. No Mary going to the tomb in the early light of dawn. No weeping women tagging along. No angels announcing, “He is not here.” No Peter, no sleepy disciples … no nothing! We had just heard an Easter sermon with no mention of the resurrection!

It was apparent this good soul had themes larger than the resurrection.