Center of Power

The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 3:14-21.

I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan so you'd think I would be excited by all the new TV series inspired by him. There is a series about Dr. Watson, taking place during the 3 year period when Holmes was presumed dead. There is a series being developed about Holmes and his daughter, who is not in the original stories. There is a TV movie coming up, about Holmes' younger sister, Enola, who is also not in the original stories. And while I enjoyed the first two Enola Holmes movies, I am not sure about the others. I really hope they do not stray so far from the spirit of the original characters and stories that they end up like the series The Irregulars. That series focused on a group of children fighting supernatural threats while Holmes was depicted as a hopeless drug addict who was actually working against them. Unsurprisingly, it got cancelled. When you tune into a series that is about the world of Sherlock Holmes, you expect it to have the great detective front and center. And, despite his flaws, you expect him to be smart and on the side of good. If it's not about him, why not just invent your own original characters? His absence draws attention to itself.

We have a similar problem in the church today, by which I mean, the minimization of Jesus as the center of our faith. I was dismayed to see that someone made a version of the symbol of my denomination out of words but the names Jesus and the Holy Spirit were a lot smaller and harder to pick out than words like Tradition and Liturgy. It would be like doing a poster about a Sherlock Holmes movie and having words like Detection and Mystery very prominent and Holmes' name and likeness much smaller and confined to the background details so it's easily missed. Why would you diminish the role of the hero?

But other churches and denominations also make Jesus take a backseat to other less essential things. There are churches who pay much more attention to certain distinctive doctrines of theirs or specific practices or particular sins or to contemporary political policies or political leaders than they do to Jesus.

And there are some that, when they do pay attention to Jesus, try to make him over in their own image. They make him into a macho warrior, or a political reformer, or a nice but inoffensive guy. But if Jesus was a warrior, why did he say to Peter, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword!” (Matthew 26:52)? If he was a political reformer, why did he say, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,” (Mark 12:17) or to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” (John 18:36)? If he was such a nice and inoffensive guy why did they bother to crucify him?

The problem is that certain people want to use Jesus as their mascot but don't want him as their master, which is what “Lord” literally means. They want to use him as a symbol; they don't want to deal with him as a real person, with his own ideas of how we should be Christians. Russell Moore of Christianity Today tells of how a pastor was preaching from the Sermon on the Mount. After the service a parishioner came up to him and asked him where he got those liberal talking points. The pastor said he was only quoting Jesus. The parishioner replied that the ideas were too soft and wouldn't work today! We want God to adapt himself to our ideas rather than conforming ourselves to his.

In our passage today, Paul tells the Ephesians of how he prays to God the Father “that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” The heart of Christianity is Christ in us. (Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27) It is Christ in us, through the presence of his Holy Spirit, that changes us and enables us to follow Jesus and become like him.

But the problem is that this takes time and Christians are at different points in the process. So some Christians have decided that the way to make people more godly faster is to take power and make laws that force people to act in what the leaders think is a Christian way. But laws and rules do not change people, or else everyone on US 1 would drive the speed limit and people who do so now wouldn't have to stay in the “slow” lane while other vehicles are attempting to make the jump to light speed.

Paul repeatedly makes this point about the inability of the law to save us in his letter to the Romans. The law is powerless to save us in the same way that an article telling you what a healthy blood pressure is will not actually lower your blood pressure. For that you need to see a doctor. In the same way, as Paul writes, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4) In other words, Jesus does in us what the law is unable to do: empower those who live by his Spirit to act in harmony with God's law.

This is only possible if we allow the Spirit of Christ to live in our hearts through faith. Jesus said it is out of the heart that evil comes. (Mark 7:21-23) So it's our heart, that is, our inner being, that needs to be cleaned up. It's easy to adopt rituals that appear to be godly: going to church, saying prayers, reading the Bible. But if we don't have a change of heart, those things won't magically make us Christians. Jesus said that at the last day “many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:21-23) Why? Because as he said earlier, “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves. You will recognize them by their fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

Fruit, in this sense, means what people produce in their lives. As with plants, good fruit nourishes life. Bad fruit harms life. Wikipedia has a whole page that lists inedible fruits, things that are poisonous to ingest. And Paul lists a lot of the poisonous things that humans without the Spirit of Christ produce: “sexual immorality, impurity, outrageous conduct, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousing and things like these.” (Galatians 5:19-21) These things are destructive. He then lists the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) These are constructive. They make our lives livable and better.

They come from having the Spirit within you. Then you will be “rooted and grounded in love.” As it says in 1 John 4:8, God is love. God is the Father loving the Son who is loving the Father, in the unity of the Spirit. When we obey Jesus' word and trust him, that love between Father and Son enters us and becomes a part of us. (John 14:1, 23)

You don't have to become a good and perfect person first. You simply come to God, confess your sins and trust in his love and forgiveness. (Luke 18:10-14) Trust is the foundation of all relationships. When you trust in the God who is love, revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the seed is planted. And though it doesn't happen overnight, over time you should start to see the fruit of the Spirit beginning to grow in you. (Mark 4:26-29)

When you see the changes in your life, you will get an inkling of “what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” There is public knowledge which you can find in books, in classes, in documentaries, and on reliable websites. And then there is knowledge of a person that surpasses what can be known about them from such things, the kind of knowledge which can only be discovered by getting to know that person well. This is what Paul is talking about. When the Spirit of Christ lives in our hearts we get to know him intimately.

When we were at Dinosaur National Monument, I wanted to get my granddaughter a souvenir. I was thinking of a cute plush dinosaur. But my son suggested a monocular with a laser pointer and a light and a compass. He knew what his daughter would really want.

In the same way, the more you get to know Jesus the more you know what he really wants. He wants us to be the best version of ourselves, the person he created us to be. He wants us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and have self-control. He wants you to use the gifts and abilities he's given you to help and heal others, to build up others in the faith. (1 Corinthians 12:4-7) He wants you to be the light of the world, reflecting the light of his love and truth. (Matthew 5:14-16; John 8:12) When his light fills us, we will “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

But we are not to do this as “Lone Ranger” Christians, riding off by ourselves to try to do these things. Jesus wants us to work together. Just a chapter earlier in Ephesians, Paul says, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows together into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together in the Spirit into a dwelling place of God.” (Ephesians 2:19-22) 1 Peter echoes this, saying, “you yourselves as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5) And when Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you...” every instance of the Greek word for “you” is plural. He is not talking to the individual Christian but to all Christians together.

Later Paul uses a different metaphor: “Now you are the body of Christ and each of you is a member of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27) We are all members of Christ's body, continuing his mission on earth. But by “member” Paul means a part of the body. Different body parts look different and have different functions but they should all work together for the good of the body. Individual Christians have different abilities and functions within the body. We can't all be an eye or a mouth or an ear. But we are all vital to the health of the body.

Believe it or not, there is a condition in which a person can lose his proprioception or sense of where the parts of his body are. If he wants to get out of bed, he can't just swing his legs over the edge of the bed and plant them on the floor without looking to see where they are and making sure they move to where he wants them. And yet in the body of Christ, we see members trying to go rogue and do things without consulting other members of the body, things that might go against what Jesus wants us to do. Sadly, we see in the news examples of people who say they are Christians doing and saying things that go against the Spirit of Christ or even against what Jesus explicitly said not to do.

When, however, we work together as the body of Christ, following the guidance of his Spirit, we can do marvelous things. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the person who trusts in me will also do the works that I do, and that person will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) How is it possible to do greater works than Jesus did? When that person does them in concert with the body of Christ. The church, not one Christian alone, built hospitals and universities and homeless shelters and charities. One person may have gotten the idea but he or she needed other Christians to help with planning and building and organization and staffing. Florence Nightingale revolutionized nursing. But since she was sick in bed much of her life, possibly with ME/CSF, she had to find others who would see that the changes she envisioned were carried out. Even Jesus used his disciples to do things he couldn't, like go to many different towns at once, to heal people and preach the good news. He was able to multiply the effects of what he could do through others. (Mark 6:7; Luke 10:1)

When Christians work together as the body of Christ, listening to and following the Holy Spirit who lives in us, God “by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” If we do not see this, it is because we have displaced Jesus from the center of our inner being, replacing him with something or someone else to which we give greater devotion, or by substituting our own version of Christ, one who always agrees with us and who always makes us feel good. We may have even replaced Jesus with a set of rules which, if we are not filled with the Spirit of Christ, we cannot hope to accomplish.

Kurt Vonnegut said, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!” And if I might add to Vonnegut's observation, nor do people want to post what Jesus called the two greatest commandments: to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbor as we do ourselves. (Mark 12:29-31) Nor do they want to post his commandment to love our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) Probably because positive commandments demand more than commandments that just say, “Don't do this.”

The real Jesus challenged people to change and become better. He did not say that people needed more laws or that leaders needed more power. He said that people needed to love and forgive and heal and help one another, especially those who were destitute, disabled, diseased and despised. He said God blessed those who were aware of their spiritual poverty, who mourned the way things are, who were humble, who hungered and thirsted for justice, who were merciful, who were peacemakers. (Matthew 5:3-9) He said that the way the world did things needed to be changed. That's why he was crucified. Those who were trying to rule the world didn't want to hear that.

We think that strength changes the world. And so it does...but rarely for the better. Dictators are powerful. They don't make things better for people. Weapons are powerful. And they bring millions of people nothing but grief and pain. When we thought the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, we started working on one. When the Nazis were defeated, and we found out they weren't even close to making an atomic weapon, we didn't stop to think if we wanted to unleash that kind of power on the world. We continued. And so did our allies and our enemies. Now we have 12,100 nuclear weapons in the world which all sane people realize we must never use. The effects cannot be confined to our enemies. They would affect the entire world. They could even destroy it.

Jesus' ideas are powerful. But he never raised a sword, never shed the blood of anyone. He was killed by the most powerful empire the world had seen to that point. But it couldn't stop him from returning to life. And it couldn't stop his ideas. If the 2.4 billion people who call themselves Christians actually put Jesus at the center of their inner being and denied themselves, put down their weapons and took up their crosses and followed him—helping and healing and feeding the hungry and preaching the good news of God's love and forgiveness—what they could do would truly be far beyond all that we could ask for or imagine.

Reconciliation and Relationships

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Ephesians 2:11-22.

While contemplating today's passage from Ephesians, I came across a surprising difference between 2 of my favorite science fiction franchises: their attitudes towards enemies. Doctor Who, the longest running sci-fi TV series, premiered the day after President Kennedy was shot. It didn't really become a big hit however until it introduced the iconic Daleks. The Daleks were a warrior race, so mutated by a nuclear war that they ceased to look human and encased themselves in battle armor. They are xenophobia personified, always trying to wipe out or enslave every other race in the universe. They even attacked the Doctor's home world, Gallifrey. The Doctor is loathe to kill any species, even the Daleks, but he has a hard time being a pacifist when facing them and he often maneuvers them into situations where they are wiped out, usually through their own aggressive actions.

In Star Trek, which premiered 3 years after Doctor Who, the main villains were the Klingons, another warrior race. Again the hero, Captain Kirk, has a personal reason to hate them. In one of the films, they kill his son. Yet Kirk, albeit reluctantly, becomes responsible for the admission of the Klingons into the Federation, a kind of Galactic United Nations. And in the second and third Star Trek series, a prominent member of the crew is Worf, a Klingon orphaned and raised by a human couple.

With the Klingons now allies, subsequent Star Trek series have had to create new archenemies, like the Borg and the Cardassians. But each of these eventually becomes an ally, if begrudgingly and out of necessity. Meanwhile, more than 60 years later, the Daleks and their rivals, the Cybermen, remain enemies of the Doctor. I can only think of one alien race, the Zygons, who have come to live, at least somewhat peacefully, with humans because of the Doctor. Whereas in Star Trek, adversaries eventually reconcile.

The theme of reconciliation with one's enemies is at the heart of many of Paul's letters, such as today's. The two adversaries he wrote about were the Jews and the Gentiles (that is, all nations that weren't Jewish). Jesus was a Jew and was revealed by his life, death and resurrection to be the long-awaited Messiah, God's Anointed one. But he was quite different from the popular conception of the Messiah. Instead of a holy warrior king who would liberate the Jews from their oppression under the Gentiles, Jesus came to liberate all people, Jews and Gentiles, from evil and sin. Though the first Christians were all Jews, when Paul preached the gospel in synagogues outside of Judea, the majority of converts turned out to be Gentiles. These were “God fearers,” Gentiles who attended synagogues because they were attracted to a God who was just and moral, unlike the pagan gods, but they did not become converts to Judaism. However, the good news that this God so loved the world that he sent his Son to save all people resonated with many of these Gentiles, who then became Christians.

Problems arose. Jewish Christians felt these Gentiles should become Jews first, getting circumcized and following the Jewish ceremonial laws. But Paul, who had been a zealous Pharisee before encountering Jesus, saw this attitude as a mistake. After all, the first group of Gentile converts, after hearing Peter preach, were given the gift of the Holy Spirit without first submitting to circumcision. (Acts 10:24-48) Another problem was that requiring Gentile Christians to observe all 613 commandments of the Old Covenant diminished what Jesus did on the cross to establish the New Covenant. All who are saved and who become members of God's people, both Jews and Gentiles, do so through Christ's sacrifice. Making the Gentiles retroactively become Jews would be akin to making newly naturalized U.S. citizens become British citizens since that was the national origin of the first citizens of the United States

Remember that the Jews were a barely tolerated minority in the Roman empire. They wouldn't participate in sacrifices to the cult of the emperor as a god. Ever pragmatic, when the Romans realized that monotheism was central to Judaism, and that Jews would rather die than worship any other gods, they secured an agreement that the Jews would pray to their God for the health of the emperor and left it at that. But the Romans never did understand why the Jews couldn't, like Rome's pagan subjects, simply add another place in their pantheon for the emperor. This Gentile attitude towards the Jews went back to the Greek successors of Alexander the Great and is the original source of antisemitism. So you can understand Jewish resentment towards Gentiles and why the first Christians, all Jews, felt the Gentile converts were getting off too easily.

What Paul says about this division in society is interesting. He says that this was one of the things that Jesus died for: to remove the barriers between people. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” (Ephesians 2:13-16)

But, wait a minute! Didn't Jesus die on the cross for our sins? Yes, two of which are not loving our neighbor and not loving our enemy. (Mark 12:31; Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27) Hatred for those who are different from us is a sin. When Justice Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed to the Supreme Court, an Hispanic acquaintance said that was good because “she looks like us.” That is the least important reason that we should support or oppose anyone for any position. It should be for their competence and conscientiousness.

When we lived in tribes the fastest way to recognize a friend or foe was by appearance—because everyone in our tribe was related. I never thought about the persistence of family resemblance until I went to an extended family reunion and met many distant relatives for the first time who nevertheless looked oddly familiar. If I grew up in a nomadic tribe or even in a small village where I was related to nearly everyone, it would be natural to think of them as normal, and to think of outsiders as odd folks not to be totally trusted, or even to be hated, if that was my tribe's outlook.

Once people started to live in cities, when various peoples mingled and settled, we had to expand our ideas of who was a friend or ally. But even in urban settings, sharing appearance or language or culture still determines who is in our inner circle, doesn't it? And we have seen how in countries where different people have lived together in peace, perhaps for centuries, certain persons can, to gain power, incite folks to attack and kill their ethnically distinct neighbors, such as in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, and Nazi Germany. Even here in the United States we are having trouble remembering that being an American doesn't mean belonging to a certain race or religion or national origin. Unless you are Native American on both sides going back thousands of years, you are the descendent of immigrants, most of whom came here because the United States was founded on an ideology of freedom and equality for all.

The idea that the people of God are made up of folks from different nations and ethnicities is in fact found in the Bible. It's in the Torah (Leviticus 19:34) and in Isaiah (Isaiah 2:2-4) and in the book of Ruth, which shows us that King David was part Moabite. In Jesus' genealogy, we find he was descended from at least 3 women who were Gentiles: Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. (Matthew 1:3, 5) During Jesus' ministry he healed Gentiles. (Matthew 8:5-13; Mark 7:26-30; Luke 8:26-39) And after Pentecost, the deacon Philip is led by God to baptize an Ethiopian official who happens to be a eunuch. This puts him outside the normal criteria for inclusion in God's people for 2 reasons: he's a Gentile and he's a eunuch. (Leviticus 22:34; but see Isaiah 56:3-5) But God does not judge people by appearance but by their heart, as he tells Samuel. (1 Samuel 16:7) And we see the apostles being surprised by the kinds of people God calls to come to Jesus.

Paul came to consider himself the apostle to the Gentiles because, though he would preach in synagogues all over the empire, he saw more converts among the God fearers. (Romans 11:13) He came to understand that God had a different idea for the composition of the body of Christ. This caused friction and so the church leaders, headquartered in Jerusalem, met with Paul and figured out what elements of the law the Gentile converts had to observe. And after some debate, and the testimony of Peter, they wrote this: “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from sexual sins.” (Acts 15:28-29)

Now this was hotly debated throughout the churches Paul founded. (1 Corinthians 8) After all Paul preached that “...by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works so that no one can boast.” But he continues, “For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10) So we are not saved by good works but we are saved by God's grace through faith so that we may do good works. Refraining from the things mentioned by the church council in Jerusalem didn't save you. Rather, they were what someone who was saved would do out of love for God and for their fellow Christians, Jewish and Gentile.

In any relationship there are trade-offs. You have to think of others in the relationship. Marrying means giving up dating other people. Having kids means you can't just go off partying on a whim and leave them to fend for themselves. Belonging to a group means you respect others and don't work against its mission or violate the ethics of the group. You do these things out of affection or love for others in the relationship. If you don't do these things, the relationship will suffer and probably break down.

To be sure, relationships change, but not the essentials, at least not if the relationship is to last. There was a story on NPR about an Iranian couple who came to the US. The father remained very Old World and ruled the family and his wife autocratically. When the wife objected, she was told to shut up. When the kids were grown and married, the mother divorced the father. During this period he discovered and read—don't laugh—Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. In reading this pop psych book, he began to change. In the end, the couple remarried—over the initial objections of their grown daughters! But the man had picked up a skill that researchers say is essential for a marriage to survive: the husband learned to listen to his wife. That change in behavior allowed them to save what was essential: their love for each other embodied in the marriage.

The early church was learning what was essential and what wasn't. Who you were, what you looked like, what race you came from, even what gender you were, were not essential. Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) What is essential is not who you are or were; what is essential is who you trust and follow.

But there were still tensions. If you read Paul's letters you can work out the primary flaws of each group. The Jewish Christians suffered from self-righteousness. They couldn't let go of the old regulations and rules. But the Gentile Christians didn't try to understand, much less respect, the scruples of their Jewish brothers and sisters. They thought that because they weren't saved by their own righteousness, they didn't need to be good. (Romans 6:1-2; 1 Corinthians 6:12) So Paul keeps having to tell them obvious things, like “Don't get drunk at communion” (1 Corinthians 11:20-21), “Don't everyone talk at once during worship” (1 Corinthians 14:29-31), “Don't dress immodestly” (1 Timothy 2:9), “Control yourself sexually” (1 Corinthians 6:18), “Don't gossip or sue each other.” (2 Corinthians 12:20; 1 Corinthians 6:6) In other words, if you believe in Jesus and follow him, act like him!

In our Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah is relaying what God is saying to what he calls the shepherds who are scattering the sheep and destroying the flock. In other words, the bad kings and bad prophets who are dividing the country. This comes after a whole chapter of God denouncing the king of Judah, the descendant of David, for what he has done. He criticizes Shallum, the son of the good king Josiah, this way: “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor.” (Jeremiah 22:13) Of Shallum's father he says, “'He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?' declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 22:16) He tells him, “This is what the Lord says: 'Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.'” (Jeremiah 22:3) He goes on after today's passage to condemn prophets and priests who lie, are wicked and who use their powers unjustly. (Jeremiah 23: 10, 11, 25, 32)

When people are treated unfairly, they look for someone to blame. They find scapegoats in other people and turn against one another. Injustice disrupts unity. As a pope once said, “If you want peace, work for justice.” If people think that everyone is treated fairly and equally, they will settle down and work together.

Just as Captain Kirk could not at one point envision a Federation that included the Klingons, we cannot seem to envision a country that includes both conservatives and liberals. And we act as if our adversaries are genocidal monsters like the Daleks, rather than people who believe, as the Declaration of Independence says, that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And this hostility has infected and divided Christians who are supposed to be following the same Jesus Christ as Lord. In my ordination vows, I affirmed, as all priests must, that I believe “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary for salvation...” Are the things causing divisions in the church necessary for salvation? How can they be, since the Bible doesn't mention Republicans or Democrats? How can it be, seeing that most Christians around the world do not belong to either of these parties? What is necessary to salvation is trusting in the good news of God's love and grace as seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his Son and our Lord and Savior. To require anything else is as much a heresy as believing Christians have to be circumcized in order to be saved.

Paul tells us that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17-20) We are to be “ambassadors for Christ.” But, sadly, we still face the same obstacles Paul did. Pride, self-righteousness, lack of respect for others, not listening, unloving and ungodly behavior still divide us. We can't be bothered to make sacrifices to be in the church whose founder said, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23; compare to Luke 14:27) We must deny ourselves the idea that our differences are more important than reconciliation, that who we are or how things were are more important than being the body of Christ, that hateful speech and selfish actions are more important than the love that Jesus said was how the world would recognize us as his disciples. (John 13:35)

Let those who have ears, hear!

First preached on July 19, 2009. It has been updated and revised. 

The Big Picture

The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 1:3-14.

On our recent trip to the northwest, my son, my daughter and I got along great. Except for one thing. They like to use Google maps for navigation whereas I like Waze. Each has advantages the other doesn't, though these are becoming less obvious since Google bought Waze in 2013 for $1.3 billion. Which to my mind shows how much that they considered Waze to be the superior app. Regardless, I also bought along the latest Rand-McNally road atlas. And everytime we entered a national park, I picked up a map of the park. Why? Because while the navigation apps are fine for taking you to a destination, your view is just the road you're on and about 1000 yards ahead, and maybe a few hundred feet on either side. What you don't get is the big picture. You don't see the whole trip at once nor any of the other features around you. You don't see how everything connects.

One of the great things about this trip was seeing something you can't see in Florida: mountains! We saw dun-colored mountains dotted with scrub like in the old Western movies. We saw green mountains covered with tall pine trees all the way up to the summit. We saw raw black and grey stone mountains, some with snow-capped peaks. We drove up the switchback roads that took us up the mountains so that the person on the right side of the car could look down and see the sheer drop of thousands of feet. It was scary! At overlooks we got out and gazed at awesome vistas with rivers in the valleys, or sometimes lakes, and blue mountains rising into the clouds on the other side. We saw waterfalls and we scattered my mom's ashes just above one. The view from the mountains was breathtaking. You could see the whole landscape.

In our reading from Ephesians, the apostle Paul gives us a magnificent overview of what God is doing for us. Some scholars say that the passage doesn't sound like Paul. True, it doesn't sound like one of his typical closely reasoned rabbinic arguments such as we see in Romans. But given the nature of what Paul is saying and how he is saying it, it is not surprising. In the original Greek this passage is one long compound sentence. Most translations break it up into shorter sentences to make it more easily read and understood. But there is a poetic, cascading quality to it. And Paul could get poetic at times, as in 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter on Christian love. So to make sure we don't miss a single feature of this scenic drive through God's purpose for us, we are going to stop after each leg of the journey and take in the view.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing found in the heavenly places...” Notice that the word “bless” in some form appears 3 times in this opening. That's our theme: all the ways that God blesses us.

First, says Paul, God chose us. That's amazing. Out of all the humans on the planet, God chooses us. Moreover, he chose us “before the foundation of the world.” So he also picked us out of all the humans in history. Now this bothers some people. If God chooses people even before they exist, before, in fact, anyone existed, isn't that blatant favoritism? No. Because unlike humans, God doesn't choose on the basis of beauty or brains or even perfect behavior. (1 Samuel 16:7) Just look at the people the Bible tells us God did choose: Abraham, a coward when it comes to defending his wife's honor (Genesis 12:10-20); Jacob, a man who cons his brother out of his birthright and his father out of his brother's blessing (Genesis 25:29-34; 27:1-38); Joseph, a rather egotistical and undiplomatic boy (Genesis 37:5-11); Moses, a hothead who hates public speaking (Exodus 2:11-12; 4:10-16); David, a womanizer who uses his power ro eliminate his lover's husband (2 Samuel 11 and 12); and Peter, an impulsive and sometimes fickle follower (Matthew 26:31-75).

So why did God choose them? First of all, we are all sinners, so it's not like he had a group of perfect people to choose from. And secondly, it's because they ultimately say “Yes” to God and do his will. Remember Jesus' parable of the 2 brothers asked by their father to do their chores. One says, “Yes,” but doesn't follow that up with any action. The other says, “No,” but reconsiders and obeys his father. (Matthew 21:28-32) “Reconsider” is actually a possible translation for the Greek word used for “repent.” God doesn't choose the perfect; he picks those humble enough that they are willing to reconsider that they might be wrong and therefore change the direction of their lives.

But if God chooses us before time, isn't that predestination? Yes, and many people are bothered by how arbitrary that seems. Yet we do not have any incidents where God chooses someone who does not fulfill his function. It's like the all-knowing God knows whom to choose! And indeed in his letter to the Romans Paul says, “Because whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son...” (Romans 8:29) While some theologians see it differently, the most fair interpretation is that God chooses those whom he knows beforehand will respond to his grace. Any other interpretation makes the preaching of the gospel unnecessary since such folks would inevitably be saved anyway (Romans 10:14) and it makes any response that we make to the gospel, such as repentance and faith, mere puppetry on God's part. If we don't have some scintilla of free will, then we are not responsible for the evil we do.

Those who disagree think that God is somehow diminished if he is not in control of everything, including our response. Nothing, they say, can limit God or make him do anything. Except that God can. He can deliberately limit himself to allow us a space in which to exercise some free will. This is like a parent allowing a small child the chance to do something for himself at times, though the parent could do it better. But the child will never grow up if he is not allowed to choose his own clothes, or do his own homework. God is not a helicopter parent, hovering over us, removing all obstacles from our path. After my accident, the physical therapists helped me relearn to walk but they did not move my legs for me. Otherwise I would never be able to walk on my own.

Nor does God's knowing beforehand what we will do determine what we will do. If I can predict quite accurately how my grandchild will react if I give her a gift that is her heart's desire, it's not strictly accurate to say I am causing her to jump up and down and squeal. My knowledge of what she will do is based on what I know about her. My knowing doesn't force her to do it, nor does my acting on that knowledge. She could calmly say, “Thank you, grandfather.” But she won't because of who she is, not because of what I know her to be. God's knowing how we will respond to his love and grace doesn't mean he is forcing us to respond that way. He just knows us so well he knows how we will act.

But all of this is really beside the point that Paul is making. He is praising God for the blessing of having chosen us. He doesn't intend us to get into a philosophical debate but to join him in being thankful. Our blessing is secure because it is God who chooses us.

And he chooses us “to be holy and blameless before him in love.” “Holy” doesn't mean “self-righteous” but rather “set apart” for a purpose. The Greek word for “blameless” is more literally “without blemish.” It is the word used of an animal fit to be an offering to God. God chose us to become holy and blameless for his purpose. And his purpose is a loving one.

In addition, God has “predestined us to adoption through Jesus Christ.” God chose us to become adopted members of his family, another blessing. Adoption means a real change in status. When Caesar Augustus adopted his wife's son by a previous marriage, Tiberius became his full heir and his successor as emperor. Adoption makes one a full-fledged member of God's family. God adopts us as his children through Jesus Christ, his uniquely begotten Son who made this possible. There is nothing precarious or second class about our position as members of God's family.

God did this “in accordance with the good pleasure of his will.” Some variation of this phrase appears 4 times in our reading. N.T. Wright translates it this way: “That's how he wanted it and that's what gave him delight.” Some think of God as remote. But this says he granted us membership in his family, not out of necessity or out of any feeling of obligation, but because it delighted him. God wanted to raise us to the status of full members of his family and it pleased him to do so. This is grace, God's undeserved and unreserved goodness towards us.

“In him we have redemption through his blood...” Our adoption did have a price. “Redemption” literally means being bought back. In Biblical times, people sometimes got so deep in debt that they would sell themselves into slavery to pay it off. If this unfortunate person had a wealthy and willing relative, he might be redeemed or bought back from slavery and made free again. It meant paying off what the person owed. And that could be pricey. In our case, the price of our freedom was the blood of the Beloved.

This brings us to “the forgiveness of our trespasses,” or sins. There really isn't any other way to deal with sins. You can't undo them. You can't untell the lie, unwreck the car, unabuse the child, or unkill the victim. These things can only be forgiven. And since everything comes from God, ultimately the person we sin against in every instance is him. The human being we harmed was his person, made in his image. And as we say in the Lord's Prayer, if we expect God to forgive us for our sins, we must also forgive those who sin against us.

“With all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will...” Our next blessing is that God has not left us in the dark but he has let us know his plan, “the mystery of his will.” What is the answer to this mystery of life? It is that God intends to unify and to bring to maturity all of creation in Jesus Christ. Just as we suspect, things are not what they should be. Left to themselves all things fall apart. That's true of us as well. But God's plan is to put us back together and to put everything right, in and through his Son. The world is not like a ship going down and God's plan is not to simply rescue his people from the ship and take them to heaven. Instead the world is like a mansion he has given us which we have neglected and even vandalized. God plans to do an extreme makeover and he is recruiting us, the vandals, to work with him in repairing and restoring it. Jesus is the blueprint. In him we see how we, the body of Christ, can work together, each of us using our God-given gifts, to stop the damage, repair it and make it good as new. (Ephesians 2:19-22) In the fullness of time, God intends us to live in it, the new heavens and new earth, with him. (Revelation 21:3)

That's our inheritance. As children of God, all that is his is ours. (Revelation 21:7) This world, restored through Christ, is to be ours. It is the inheritance of the meek, those who are humble before God, not of the arrogant as it seems to be today. (Matthew 5:5) We are those who “set our hope on Christ.” We have heard the gospel, the good news, and “believed in him.” Note that our belief is not in a system or a party or a nation or an idea, but in a person, and not in a pastor or a secular leader, but Jesus alone. And so God has marked us “with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” This image of sealing that Paul uses comes from the practice of marking anything sent out—a bag, a package, a jar—with the seal of its owner. His signet ring was pressed into hot wax, leaving an impression with his image, name and titles. It signified ownership and, if unbroken, it guaranteed security. God has sealed us, put his stamp on us, with his Spirit. And his Spirit is also “the pledge of our inheritance,” both a foretaste of it and a down payment.

This is a much neglected teaching in the church today. We have a very poor idea of the importance and work of the Spirit. When we come to God, we are not joining a club. We are not free agents choosing to affiliate with God. It is more like entering rehab or boot camp. What we are doing is as much internal as external. Remaking creation means being remade ourselves by God's Spirit within us.

In the classic film The Lilies of the Field, Sidney Poitier plays an ex-G.I. named Homer Smith. He's a handyman whose car breaks down in the desert in Arizona. There he encounters a group of East German nuns, who escaped communism and are setting up a mission for Mexican Americans. Smith is hired to do small jobs but eventually is convinced to build them a chapel. It's not easy because both Smith and the Mother Superior are strong-willed. But during the building of the chapel, both are changed. So, too, are we changed during our work together to restore God's creation. But it is not left to chance, nor do we do this in our own strength. It is the work of the Spirit. The Spirit guides us to be the change we are endeavoring to make in this world. And this change, seen in the development of the fruit of the Spirit, is our foretaste of the world to come. (Galatians 5:22-23)

That's the big picture, a glimpse from the mountain top of what God is doing and how he is blessing us. God chooses us for his purposes, buying us out of slavery to our sins, adopting us as his children, revealing his plan to transform everything through Jesus Christ into what it is meant to become and giving us his Spirit as a foretaste of our inheritance.

And the place of churches and communities of Christ in God's plan are not places in which to escape this world but instead, supply stations, where we come to receive what we need for our part in God's plan. To take a metaphor from my daughter's former career as a long distance truck driver, a church is like a spiritual truck stop. It is a place to pause and get refreshment, to get clean, to get some rest, to get nourishment and to get fueled up. It is not the end of the journey. Its purpose is to give you what you need for the next leg of your journey with Jesus. And everyone in the church is involved in that. Truckers bring what they have and know and share it with each other: “This is a good route,” “Here is a good supplier,” “This is a reliable contact,” “Here's a helpful trick I've picked up in my work,” “Sure, I'll pass on your message,” “I'll keep you in mind as I travel.” And we are to do the same for each other. The more we bring to our gathering and the more we share, the more we come away with.

In a while it will be time for us gathered here to head back out into the world. It will be time to take what we have received here and apply it to whatever tasks God has set before us. We can't stay in the church service forever. But in the meantime there is plenty to savor. Soon we will join God for a cup to drink and some bread to eat, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come. We will need to get cleaned up through confession and forgiveness. And we will recite a classic statement of the big picture.

It's a big world out there and a big task we have before us. But never forget: we have been blessed with a big God and he is with us every step of the way, right here, in our hearts and in our minds and in our lives.

First preached on July 12, 2009. It has been updated and revised.

What We Need

We used to think that the earth was the center of the universe. The planets and even the sun were thought to orbit the earth. Contrary to popular belief, this idea did not come from the Bible but from ancient Greek philosophers like Ptolemy and Aristotle. Things didn't change until 1543 when Copernicus, a Catholic priest, proposed a heliocentric or sun-centered arrangement of our solar system. And Galileo confirmed it by telescope in 1610. So we are no longer at the center of the universe in science's consideration. Or are we?

In 1973, at a symposium commemorating the 500^th birthday of Copernicus, theoretical physicist Brandon Carter coined the term “anthropic principle” to refer to the fact that many of the features of our universe, such as its age, the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, and others, are precisely those needed to allow life to develop. If their values were greater or less than they are, life could not exist anywhere. And this fact makes some scientists, especially atheistic ones, uncomfortable because it looks as if our universe is, if not designed, then at least fine-tuned to promote the development of life. To avoid that, they have proposed that there are multiple universes with different conditions in them and this just happens to be the one which permits life to exist. Other scientists point out that there is no evidence of these alternate universes (Sorry, MCU) and that this is just an excuse not to contemplate the implications of a universe that is apparently built around life.

Our sermon suggestion question is “Did we create God just to make ourselves feel better and explain away the mysteries?” In other words, is God, as an acquaintance of mine puts it, just an imaginary friend for adults?

It's an appealing way to explain away a God you don't wish to exist. Desiring that there is a God doesn't make it true, anymore than desiring ice cream means that when you open your freezer, you'll find it packed with Ben and Jerry's. But as the anthropic principle shows, that while it may not grant our desires, reality does conform to our needs. C.S. Lewis pointed out that, for instance, our appetite for food is strong evidence that food does exist, if not in your fridge then somewhere in the world. Your body really does need it.

And not all of our needs are physical. Love and affection are real needs for human beings. You may have heard of the horrific findings of a study of Romanian orphanages. Even when all of their physical needs were taken care of, children who did not receive love and attention from the overworked staff often died. Those who survived were mentally damaged. The question is not, then, do we desire God but do we need God?

How do we define needs? One element is that a need is natural whereas a desire can be created. We need food to live but we only desire Doritos or Dr. Pepper or blooming onions because media, marketing, and even our peers brainwash us into thinking we must have them. So is there any evidence that belief in God comes from within people or is it urged upon us from without?

As it turns out, a study by Oxford researchers shows that children naturally believe that there is a God who designed the world. This is true even in cultures, such as the Japanese, in which kids are not indoctrinated with religious beliefs. The evidence is so overwhelming that the senior researcher, anthropologist Dr. Justin Barrett, said of children, “If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves, I think they would believe in God.” This is not proof that God exists but certainly it is evidence that God is not an unnatural concept inflicted on us by others for either well-intentioned or nefarious reasons. In fact, comedian Julia Sweeney, an atheist, was dismayed to find that her daughter believed in God, though not raised to do so. Studies show it is hard to convince kids otherwise, at least until they get to be 12.

And every day the evidence mounts that our brains, if not hardwired for belief in God, are at least God-friendly in the same sense that the universe is life-friendly. While there has been a lot of attention to the growing group of “nones,” people who do not have a religious affiliation, the vast majority are neither atheists or agnostics. 70% of people who say they don't have a religion believe in God. This should not surprise anyone. If you are a believer, then you would expect belief in God to be a sort of default setting. If you are a non-believer, then everything must be explained without resorting to the supernatural and that means the widespread belief in God has to arise naturally.

Still like the anthropic principle, the implications of the naturalness of belief in God discomforts atheists. They would much prefer that the explanation for belief in God be that it is an aberration or a socially transmitted delusion. Because, according to them, the effects of religious belief are overwhelmingly negative. But is that true?

A study by the Paris School of Economics and the European Center for Social Welfare Policy and Research shows that religious people are more content and cope better with life's shocks, such as the death of a loved one or the loss of a job. After more than a decade of studying the relationship between religious belief and health, University of Miami researcher Michael McCullough says that, by a wide margin, religious people do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages, and are generally happier than nonbelievers. They have better self-control and are less likely to break the law, have sex outside marriage, do drugs or abuse alcohol. Obviously there are exceptions but these positive effects are true of the majority of people who believe in God.

Ok, so believing in God can make your life better, but is that the same as a need? Remember the unloved Romanian orphans? Not all died, but those who lived had serious psychological impairments. So one could argue that God is a need in the same sense that love is, or that certain vitamins are. You won't necessarily die if you don't get enough Vitamin D but your life will be less healthy and probably not as long. Certainly a lot of the behaviors that religious people tend to avoid, like drinking or breaking the law, will, if indulged in, lead to a less healthy and probably shortened life.

But we are talking about social behaviors here. Does belief in God have actual physical benefits? McCollough has found a positive correlation between church attendance (the only objective way for scientists to measure religiosity) and lower incidence of blood pressure and of heart disease, the number one cause of death in this country. A study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior shows religious people have a lower mortality rate from digestive and respiratory cancer. Believers spend less time in hospitals and recover faster. Levels of interleukin-6, which indicate immune response, are elevated in conditions such as AIDS, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and other diseases. A 6-year study of more than 1700 older adults found that those who regularly attend religious services tend to have lower interleukin-6 levels, which might explain the overall better health and better recovery rates of believers.

Can not believing kill you? It can make you more likely to kill yourself. Suicide rates are much lower among actively religious people, a fact attributed to stronger moral objections to suicide and lower levels of aggression. Believers also have significantly lower degrees of hopelessness, which is described in a 1998 study as “the most critical psychological variable predictive of suicidal ideation and behavior.” In fact, according to the World Health Organization, “Of the top ten nations with the highest male suicide rates, all but one (Sri Lanka) are strongly irreligious nations with high levels of atheism...of the bottom ten nations with the lowest male suicide rates, all are highly religious nations with statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism.” (In the US the suicide rate among males is 4 times higher than among females. It is the second most common cause of death for men under the age of 45.) Of course, many irreligious nations have legalized suicide and assisted suicide. It is also interesting to note that Sri Lanka, the one religious country among the top ten countries with a high male suicide rate, was also the site of a recently resolved but decades-long civil war, in which the Tamal Tigers, atheistic Marxists, pioneered the technique of suicide bombing! That may have influenced that country's data on male suicides.

So there are personal benefits to believing in God. But does that personal belief translate into social good? Again Michael McCollough, by having folks remember past wrongs while monitoring their anger and stress through their heart rate, blood pressure and perspiration, found that religious people are less vengeful and more forgiving. And throughout the history of the world, hospitals, schools, orphanages, and charities have been primarily founded by religious organizations. This creates a culture in which these things come to be considered so important that eventually they are adopted and supported by governments and social entities. In fact, historian Tom Holland has shown that the values we take for granted—compassion for the unfortunate, helping the disadvantaged, caring for the sick, rooting for the underdog—are all due to the influence of Christianity upon our culture. They were not the norm before the spread of belief in Jesus, the God who is love. Studies have shown that religion is the key factor in building civilizations, because it binds large numbers of strangers with beliefs, behaviors and a sense of belonging that otherwise would not exist outside of a family or tribe.

Sociologist Rodney Stark argued that science arose in the Christian West due to a belief in a single rational God who created human beings in his image. This meant humans could understand the mind of God through exploring his creation. Other great civilizations like China, though they had a head start on the West in the sciences, did not continue to build on them because they believed in multiple gods who often warred with one another or who had control of only certain aspects of creation.

So is God a need? Belief in God is natural; it spontaneously arises in children; it is present in virtually every culture; and it is in complete harmony with the way our brains are set up. Belief in God is good for both the physical and mental health of the individual and it is beneficial to society at large. But what about the idea that religion mostly causes negative effects on society, like wars? Researcher Michael White, who catalogued the 100 biggest atrocities in history, has found that only 10% of wars were caused by religion. 90% of wars had nonreligious causes. And let us not forget that the officially atheistic nations of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China killed 100 times more people in just one century than did so-called “Christians” in 20 centuries. Because the greater violence we see in atheistic societies might be due to the fact that when you remove God as the supreme authority, you create a power vacuum. In steps the next highest authority, the State. And no State ever said, “love your enemies.”

It certainly looks like God is a need for healthy individuals and healthy societies. But does that mean God exists? I mean, maybe we created God to fill that need. If so, this would make it the only need ever to arise without a reality to fill it. It would be like having a stomach in a world without food. If it's a need, going without a way to fill that need is harmful. The answer to a need needs to exist. You need shelter; shelter exists. You need sleep; sleep exists. You need love; love exists. You need God but God doesn't? How could that possibly be?

It's even nonsense from an evolutionary point of view. According to Darwin, things change in order to better adapt to an environment. This means that an animal that lives in a tree evolves feet or paws or claws that conform better to the reality of tree trunks and branches. To create a sense of a God who isn't there means to evolve in response to an unreality. It would be like an animal that lives in the desert evolving fins or gills.

Ah, but could God be a mistaken answer to a need for something else? But what would that be? What else encompasses all the needs that God fills? God gives us meaning. God gives us a moral code. God forgives our sins, God gives us love. God gives us someone to pray to. God gives us someone to emulate. God gives us lots to think about. God gives us much to sing about. God gives us a promise of justice. God gives us a reason to hope. God pushes us to expand our ideas of what we can do, of who is a member of our family, of how we are to respond to injustice and to the needs of others. There is no one thing that does all that. People have tried to substitute other things for God—the state, the family, other groups, friendship, romance, art, entertainment, sports, celebrity worship, other cultural phenomena—but none is adequate. Trying to use them in place of God is like pica—the compulsion to eat dirt or other inedible substances, displayed by some pregnant women, in response to a lack of certain necessary minerals in their diet. Nobody prefers dirt to a good diet, the thing you really need.

There is no substitute for God and no getting around the fact that we need him. This is not to say that people don't try to recreate God in an image more to their liking. People try to eliminate his more fearsome aspects to make him more cuddly, thereby declawing his moral force. Others try to eliminate his unconditional love for all his creatures in order to make him more partisan. Some elevate a charismatic human leader, like Hitler or a cult leader, to godlike status, only to see him fall when his hubris makes him go too far. Some reduce God to an abstract concept that underlies the universe but which will not interfere with how we choose to live our lives. Some reduce him to a hanging judge and others to an abusive father and still others to an ineffectual but well-meaning grandfather. But the real God defies being pigeonholed.

When Moses asked his name, God replied, “I am who I am.” Which doesn't tell us a lot. It's almost as if God were saying, “I exist and that's all you need to know for now.” In Jesus Christ, we get a clearer picture of the God who made us and loves us and redeemed us. But we still don't know everything about him. We never will. A God who is totally comprehensible to the human mind is not the God who made everything. And that speaks to other needs he fills—the needs for wonder and for curiosity and to ponder and to explore. We need them as we need God. And we need to remember how much more there is to life, the universe and everything than simply what we see.

First preached on July 5, 2009. It has been updated.

Button and String

It was a rainy Sunday morning and the little girl was stuck at Grandma's house. Grandma didn't have cable or streaming or a DVD player and she didn't have video games. And she wouldn't let the girl use her Grandma's phone. If you told her you were bored, she'd say, “Go read a book.” Grandma had lots of books but they didn't have pictures, so the girl wasn't interested. And worst of all, Grandma made her go to church.

She hated church. People read stories that she didn't understand and they ate this bread that didn't taste like anything and drank this wine that was bitter. So that morning Grandma got her up early and made her breakfast—the breakfast was good; in fact, eating was the best thing about visiting Grandma. She made the girl get dressed—she had made her take a bath the night before; that was one of the worst things about visiting Grandma—and she fussed over the girl's hair. Then Grandma went to get dressed. And there being nothing good on the few channels Grandma's TV got, the girl went into Grandma's bedroom.

Grandma was in her bathroom with the door closed. The girl heard the hissing sound of a spray can and got a whiff of that stuff she sprayed on her hair. The girl was glad the door was closed because that stuff made it so you couldn't breathe. The girl sat at the little desk that Grandma called a vanity and started going through the drawers. That's how she found the jewelry box. In it were rings and necklaces and earrings. Some were made of silver, some of gold; some were plain and some ornamented; some contained stones: opals, amethysts, blue-fired diamonds. Within the jewelry box, she found a smaller box, covered with velvet. She popped it open to find an old button with a small loop of string through it. She looked for a ring or something else of value but there was nothing more in the tiny box. Just then Grandma came out of the bathroom.

Puzzled, the girl held up her discovery and said, “Grandma, what's this?”

The woman turned and looked at the button and string in the girl's hand and said, “Where did you find that?”

“In your jewelry box,” the girl said, a bit sheepishly. “It was in a little box.”

The Grandmother took the button with the string and a look crossed her face that the girl couldn't read. The woman sat on the side of the bed and stared at the button. There was a long silence that the girl sensed she must not interrupt. Finally her grandmother spoke.

“A long time ago, when I was a girl, my friends from work and I went to a dance. There was a war going on then and there were soldiers there. Boys, really, not much older than ourselves. My friends and I stood around talking about the young men in their uniforms and giggling. There was one boy who...I don't know...I just liked the look of him. I saw him but I wasn't sure if he saw me. I wanted to talk to him but I didn't know how. He went up to the refreshments table so I hurried over there, trying to look like I wasn't hurrying. There was a double line and I got into the one next to him. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what. I hoped he'd say something or look at me and smile or even sneeze so I could say, “God bless you.” Or anything. But he seemed preoccupied and looked straight ahead. We got to the head of the line and I knew it was now or never but I still didn't know what to say. Then he reached for a cup of punch and I saw it.

“'You're going to lose that button,' I said.

“'Huh?' he said. He looked down his uniform shirt and then at me.

“'On your cuff,' I said, pointing. 'The button's coming loose.'

“”He lifted his wrist to look, careful not to spill his punch. 'Oh, yeah. Thanks,' he said.

“'I could sew it on for you,' I said.

“'Okay,' he said. And he smiled. So we went to some chairs and I pulled a little sewing kit out of my purse and as I sewed the button back on, we talked. We talked about the music and our favorite songs and we talked about our favorite movies and we talked about our favorite books. And when I finished sewing the button onto his sleeve, I buttoned the cuff. And he turned his hand over to look at it and at the same time he took my hand. I don't know if he noticed it but I noticed it. We continued to talk and hold hands. And when the dance was over, we walked and talked into the night.

“We passed a bank and I looked up and saw this big clock. It was after midnight. And I said, 'Oh, my God! My father will kill me! He'll never let me see you again.'

“He suddenly looked alarmed and said, 'I must see you again. Because tomorrow at 0700 hours, I gotta be back on base. I'm shipping out at 0900!'

“I started to cry because I realized I really might not ever see him again. He put his arm around me and comforted me and calmed me down and then we talked some more. We made a decision and he walked me home. Luckily, my parents were asleep.”

The grandmother stopped and looked at her granddaughter. Was she setting a bad example when it came to obeying her parents? But what she had done, she had done. She took a deep breath and resumed her story.

“The next morning, we met very early and we talked about what we wanted to do all that day. It was a big decision and we were both trying to look at it in the light of a new day. Finally, just before it closed, we went to the clerk's office and got our license. And then he said, 'Come with me.' We turned and went back the way we came. He was looking all around and muttering to himself and then he saw what he was looking for. We went up to the door of this house and started knocking. I stood next to him, wondering what he was doing and I looked to the window to see if anyone was coming and I saw what he had seen earlier: a sign that said, 'Notary Public.'”

“What's that?” the girl said.

“It's a person who witnesses things,” said the grandmother. “And eventually we heard someone coming down some stairs inside the house. And suddenly, knowing the notary would probably be angry at being disturbed at dinner time, I looked down and bent over and picked up the evening paper from his welcome mat. A man came to the door, and there we were, standing on his porch, holding out his newspaper to him. We told him why we were there and he was very reluctant to help us. There was no waiting period in our state, but still we had just met 24 hours ago. But we found out that the notary was once in the same branch of the service as my boyfriend—well, fiance—and when he heard how he was shipping out the next morning, he was sympathetic. He thought a while and then he and his wife and his son, who was home from college, witnessed us getting married. Only when we got to the part about the ring, we stopped. Even though we had talked about doing this all day, we had forgotten to get a ring.

“My groom was going through his pockets and I went through my purse. We couldn't find anything. And then, seeing the evening paper on the table, my soon-to-be husband pulled out his pocket knife and cut the string off of the newspaper. He started to tie a loop and then he stopped, took his knife and cut off the button I had sewn on his cuff. He threaded the string through it, tied it, cut off the excess and slipped it on my finger. And, repeating after the notary, he said, 'I give you this ring as a symbol of my vow, and with all that I am and all that I have, I honor you.' Then he added, 'And I promise before God, I will see you again.' And we kissed.”

There was a long pause, Then, quietly, not wanting to break the spell, the little girl said, “And then what?”

The grandmother came out of her reverie and her face colored a little. “We found a place to stay that night and in the morning, we ate breakfast, our last meal together. We walked to the base, we kissed and cried and I went home and...well, the rest of it wasn't very pleasant. My parents were very angry and the notary had sent off the paperwork so I didn't have anything to show them that night or for several weeks.

“And then I never heard from my husband. I followed the war news and I met the postman everyday, looking for a letter from him but it never came. And then I had your mother.”

The little girl's eyes grew round.

“The war lasted a long time. And I got no word from him. So I held onto the words he spoke when he gave me this ring. It was a sign of our vows and his promise. So I hung onto it. People made fun of me for wearing this.” She looked at the old button and frayed string. “And my parents didn't believe in him or his promise. They thought he had fed me a fairy tale. At times, it did feel like a fairy tale. I didn't even have a picture of him. There were times when I would start to forget what he looked like. But I knew he loved me and I knew what he said and I knew that he meant it. So I clung to his promise.

“Then the war was over and I waited some more. And one day a man knocked at the door. He was in a uniform, but he was very thin and I didn't recognize him. And he told me that he was a friend of my husband. They had been in the same outfit. They were captured by the enemy shortly after they had gone into the field. They were held as prisoners of war. And they were tortured.

“I became aware that I had grasped the button with my right hand as I listened to this and was twisting it until the string was cutting into my finger. So I made myself stop. I didn't want to break the string.

“The soldier told me how, at night, as they lay in their cells, my husband had spoken to him about me. After the war, the prisoners were released and this man, as soon as he got to the states, looked me up. It was hard because he had no address, just the town. But now he was here to tell me that my husband...”The woman faltered. Her eyes filled. The little girl held her breath. “My husband was in the hospital on the other side of the country.

“Well, of course, I cried and I hugged the soldier. And my mother cried and made him a big meal. And my father went to the phone and that night I flew out to see my husband for the first time since the day we got married.

“He had been very sick when the prisoners were liberated. He had wounds that hadn't been properly treated and a high fever. They said he couldn't even think or talk straight when they got him into the military hospital.They thought he would die. So as soon as his friend was released, he went to find me.

“When I got there, my husband was very thin and pale. But when he saw me, his face lit up and we kissed and cried. I told him about your mother and showed him her pictures and we kissed and cried some more. He saw the button and string around my finger and said, 'Have you worn that the whole time?' And I said I did. And I stayed until the nurse made me leave.

“The next day I went to see the chaplain and we had a proper wedding, as I had promised my father. The doctors and the nurses and the patients all put in some money and got me this ring,” said the grandmother, indicating the gold band on her left hand. “But I saved the button and string because when he was gone, this was the sign of your grandfather's word and promise. And this is what got me through his absence.”

The grandmother handed the worn button on the frayed string back to the little girl, who stared at it intently and then reverently put it in the little velvet box, snapped it shut and put it in the jewelry box, a treasure among baubles.

It was not only the way the girl saw the button and string that changed. Her grandmother, too, seemed transformed and the granddaughter thought that maybe she could see the young girl in the story in the face of the old woman. The pictures in the hall seemed sharper and brighter as she passed them, especially the fat baby that had been her mother and the skinny young soldier who had been her grandfather.

The rain had stopped and the world was dripping with new meanings. Everything and every person they saw seemed to have a hidden story and the little girl longed to hear them. Even at church where she heard again of the story of Jesus' last supper with his friends before he went off to die for them. She listened again to how he held up bread and said, “This is my body...do this in remembrance of me.” And he held up the cup of wine and said, “This is my blood...do this in remembrance of me. I will not drink the fruit of the vine until that day I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.” And a realization hit her. She looked at her grandma excitedly. “It's a promise!” she whispered. The grandmother smiled back at her.

And then the people all said, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” And at the words a shiver went up her spine.

And when she went up to the altar with her grandmother, the priest handed her the pale disk and said, “The body of Christ.” She looked at it intently. It looked the same. She ate it. It tasted the same. But she felt different. Because for her the word had become flesh.

First preached on July 20, 2003. It has been updated.