Come, eat of my bread
  and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Lay aside immaturity, and live,
  and walk in the way of insight

Lady Wisdom has labored to build a house. She has prepared a rich banquet and invites everyone to come and eat. She invites the already wise, the powerful and the rich, as well as the simple, the poor and those lacking wisdom. This banquet of meat and wine and this all-inclusive invitation should be familiar to you. We are made in God’s image and here we have the essence of the invitation – to gain the wisdom of God by sitting down with lady Wisdom for a meal.

If we look at the end of the book of Proverbs, we will see the opposite. Like Wisdom, Folly also competes for followers. Both Wisdom and Folly call out to people with the same words. Like Wisdom, Folly also prepares a banquet. Wisdom serves meat and wine – things not usually consumed by common people. In contrast, Folly offers only bread and water. The verses make it clear that the meal offered by Folly is death itself.

Almost a thousand years later, Paul tells his flock in Ephesus (in modern day Turkey) to “be careful how you live… as wise people, making the most of time because the days are evil.”

Last week I posed an important question that practically demands follow up. What are the evils of our day that we may be called to confront? Let me name two.

First up: Nuclear weapons. I am the nephew of one of the Manhattan Project physicists. I not only learned a great deal of science from my uncle, but I learned the inner story of the anguish of a faithful Christian who was partly responsible for incinerating a half million civilians in a matter of seconds.

Most of us simply cannot comprehend how forty pounds of plutonium surrounded by some special water could turn Tulsa into a crater; or on a smaller scale, how another radioisotope smaller than a grain of sand, when mixed in a drink could kill a person and contaminate everyone at the bar. Yes there are peaceful uses of nuclear physics in energy and healthcare, but our political solutions to contain this lurking evil are inadequate as you will see next.

The New York Times reports that two weeks ago, 82 year old Roman Catholic Sister Megan Rice with two male accomplices broke into the inner sanctum of the Oak Ridge Nuclear Reservation in Tennessee. They made it through all the levels of security, past big signs stating that “lethal force” would be used. They made it into the control room of the highly enriched uranium facility where weapons grade uranium is processed. They managed to splash bull’s blood on the controls and hung banners outside the facility before being arrested.

If this can happen in the most secure facility in the United States, how secure do you think the forty thousand nuclear devices held by the former Soviet Union are today? Some of these devices can fit in a small suitcase and be carried by hand. Others are the size of a soda machine.

I do not share this with you as an alarmist. We all know too well that politicians will not spend the time or money on an issue until the public insists on it. In this case, the stakes are way too high for us to wait for the next disaster before we take action.

My second candidate for modern evil is the scourge of drug abuse. Right now there are several babies in Oklahoma who are in comas because they ate their parents’ marijuana. We have young teenagers who have positive drug screens for four or five controlled substances. When asked about their home life, they respond matter-of-factly about the different drugs their parents take. We have school systems that have no good alternatives for the difficult to manage students. Nowadays, the school district simply “sends” such kids to on-line schools where the bored and unsupervised adolescent eventually turns to drug abuse.

Sister Megan Rice literally risked bullets and lethal force to make her protest against nuclear weapons. While we may not be in a geographic position to do much rid the planet of nuclear weapons, drug abuse and its cousin, lack of education, are all around us. I bet you cannot find a single city block in Muskogee where there is no instance of drug abuse or lack of education.

The city is beginning to notice our new buildings, but what kind of new heart are we giving to the city? What new needs can we address? How will the people out there recognize our renewed hearts in here?

Could we take the Mother Teresa approach? Could we take the kids who have been rejected in their education? Where lacking no other alternatives, the courts send them to “on-line schools”? In most cases the kids lack the role models and discipline to complete their studies on-line. Eventually, most of them will turn to crime and drug abuse. Can we obtain grants and volunteers so that we can take on the kids who are rejected everywhere else?

If we could turn around just one kid in five, I guarantee you the community would take notice. Such work is the bread of Christ that lives forever. Such work is the work of Christ himself.

Psalm 34 tells us to “Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” We have ALL the ingredients needed to turn some of our city’s rejects into productive members of society. The only thing that stands in the way is the question: “For Christ’s sake, how much of yourselves are you willing to risk?”

The word is out on Grace Episcopal Church. We have died and gone out of business. Bulldozers are tearing down the building and the parking lots are full of rubble. If you don’t believe me, then talk to the woman (not a member) who lives in the western part of Muskogee, the spouse of a prominent citizen, who was told these words by a neighbor who saw bulldozers tearing the front wall off the parish hall and dead bushes and weeds in the courtyard. There were no signs, so what else could one conclude?

That is what at least part of the community believes about this church. So I ask you, are we a credible witness to the love of Jesus Christ in this community, or do we verge on the edge of existence as a painful reminder to some that literal Bible interpretations are not necessarily what Jesus really meant?

Now there are concrete (no pun intended) things we can do to dispel the community buzz that we are out of business. Last week, the bishop suggested that we erect some temporary signs proclaiming “Grace is growing. Join us for worship on Sunday” He also suggested that we clean up the weeds and derelict appearance of the property so that people who drive by understand that we are very much in business.

Since some community buzz has already begun in a negative way, we might also consider some advertisements to help make our case. We need to make a positive buzz.

A construction project offers both peril and opportunity. Buddhists call this yin and yang. I call it common sense. Peril because if we ignore all the opportunities, we will simply pay for an expensive expansion of facilities for a small group of people. Opportunity because we can extend our best welcoming mat to the wider community and say “Come on in. We are renovating our campus to serve this community better. Join us and you will grow too.”

I want you to raise your hand to vote for one of two options: 1. We are renovating this campus for the existing members. 2. Come on in. Join us and you will grow too. Vote.

So the question emerges from here, why are we doing this? Are we giving our money to the building project and pinning our hopes on something that basically enables us to maintain our traditions? Or are we opening ourselves up to something totally new, to the Holy Spirit, so that not only are the buildings renovated, but WE are renovated? Are we re-novating ourselves in this project? Are we literally making ourselves new again?

Maintenance of existing traditions and structures versus mission to the wider community is what we are addressing today. When we change our buildings and church campus, what do we need to change about our worship, our Sunday education, and ourselves in order to do the work God has given us to do?

Because of the bishop’s visit last week, we have moved our monthly healing service to today. There are some here who claim that our healing has helped them battle cancer. There are some who have buried loved ones in the full dignity and blessing of the church. If one aspect of our mission is to go out like those first disciples, two by two, healing and casting out demons, then can we or should we expand this particular service as part of our mission here in Muskogee?

The world out there is watching us, whether we like it or not. Some folks out there want us to go out of business. For them our failure to thrive might be proof of the validity of their particular beliefs or proof that there is no God at all. But for all those who are out there spreading false rumors, there are a hundred more who need the work and the love we do at Grace – a hundred more.

Mission and ministry happen right where we are planted. We don’t have to go to a far-away place. When we bring the love of God, the compassion of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to others, something happens that you may not have considered before. In the same way, when Jesus sent the disciples out two by two, they returned transformed. They were changed and you will be transformed too. Ministry is a two way street.

The question of whether we are renovating the facilities for ourselves or for the community around us is a red herring. The answer is both.

So in the midst of major construction, can we clean up our parking lots and property to tell the world that we are very much in business? Can we put up signs inviting those hundreds to join us?

When they begin to show up, you will be amazed at what happens next.

The poet-biographer Carl Sandburg is best known for his gentle spirit. Poet laureate under President Kennedy, he read some his work at Kennedy’s inauguration. Yet beneath that gentle veneer is a compassionate heart, a champion of the poor and downtrodden, and one whose early works were more of a conversation about our assumptions, our privileges, and how much of real people’s lives we continue to miss.

I will quote from Sandburg’s poem titled “The Eastland” which starts out talking about the worst civil maritime disaster in American history.

I will begin with what Sandburg’s reaction to today’s Gospel might have been had he been a cub reporter for the Chicago Times writing about the beheading of John the Baptist. Here’s an adaptation of Sandburg’s poetry:

Let’s be honest now

For a couple of minutes

Even though we’re in Jerusalem.

Since you ask me about it,

I let you have it straight;

My guts ain’t ticklish about what happened to John the Baptist.

It was a heck of a job, of course

Beheading a prophet because the governor’s wife was sleeping around

And didn’t like what he had to say.

The SS Eastland was a passenger ship used for tours in the Great Lakes. On July 24 1915, a Chicago corporation held a picnic for its workers. 2,500 people were on board that day. The company photographer wanted all the families wearing their Sunday best outfits to move to the top deck for a photograph. Most of the people were low income black families. Even though it was moored to the dock, the Eastland rolled over killing 844 people. The boat was overloaded to begin with. The corporation wanted a nice photograph for their annual report. Like the beheading of John the Baptist, the result was ghastly.

How often does our attention focus on the high profile news articles while the real injustice and the real crimes pass us by? How many Eastlands and John the Baptists and child militias of Joseph Kony do we have to read about before our heart will truly break, and we can see the real disasters all around us every day? Here is what Sandburg says where he compares the spectacular news and death toll from the Eastland disaster with what he sees every day going to work:

Well I was saying

My guts ain’t ticklish about it.

I got imagination: I see a pile of three thousand dead people

Killed by the con, tuberculosis, too much work and not enough fresh air and green groceries

A lot of cheap roughnecks and the women and children of wops, and hardly any bankers and corporation lawyers or their kids, die from the con-three thousand a year in Chicago and a hundred and fifty thousand a year in the United States-all from the con and not enough fresh air and green groceries…

If you want to see excitement, more noise and crying than you ever heard in one of these big disasters the newsboys clean up on,

Go and stack in a high pile all the babies that die in Christian Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Chicago in one year before aforesaid babies haven’t had enough good milk;

On top the pile put all the little early babies pulled from mothers willing to be torn with abortions rather than bring more children into the world.

Jesus, that would make a front page picture for the Sunday papers

The poem goes on to talk about all the people going to work every day: the prostitutes, the laborers with their broken bodies, the children who work in factories and the women who dig through garbage barrels for food. Here is how it ends:

By the living Christ, these would make disaster pictures to paste on the front pages of the newspapers.

Yes, the Eastland was a dirty bloody job –bah!

I see a dozen Eastlands

Every morning on my way to work

And a dozen more going home at night

We construct our lives around a series of myths and beliefs. They help us cope with not just information, but emotional overload. They can blind us to reality causing us to ignore the violence around us or worse, to retreat from it in safe cocoons. Some of the myths and beliefs we live by have no basis at all in the Bible. Some of them help us justify our sense of privilege and place in the world above that of others.

Let us pray: Lord, save us not just from our unbelief, but from our beliefs. Save us from the beliefs and myths we have constructed that keep us safe and insulated from the hungers and needs of others. Save us from our need for privilege and security. Save us from the myth that because there is so much ignorance and greed and crime and violence in our community that we are overwhelmed and paralyzed by it all; that we cannot do anything about it. Save us from the assumptions that because our buildings are not finished, we must wait to try anything until they are completed. Save us from seeing only the spectacular while we miss the everyday disasters and violence all around us. Open our eyes Lord. Break our hearts Lord. Help us to be your hands and feet in this community. Save us Lord, from ourselves.

I just returned last night after six days on a mission trip with some of our youth. It was a fabulous trip. I hope, pray, and plan that we will have more youth going on this next year. The word “mission” simply means to be sent. We were sent this week to San Antonio. The trip was successful because WE were transformed and so were the people to whom we were sent. In short it was a trip with very positive outcomes.

Just before we embarked on this mission trip, Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee enjoyed a bit of positive publicity where a Facebook post on Channel 8 in Tulsa referred to Grace as a very tolerant, accepting and loving community. I mention this because there are consequences to who we are and what we do. We want Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee to form our youth and adults in ways that matter. Through regular Sunday worship, through our education and formation programs, and through mission work we form people around the heart of Christ. We want our children and our adults to have a faith that matters. I call this “consequential faith.”

But if current national trends continue, more than 50% of young people raised as evangelicals or as mainline Protestants will leave their Christian faith entirely. Research reveals that they leave the faith NOT because of the influence of culture, but because of what we teach them in church! Amazingly, BOTH mainline Protestants like our own church here, AND evangelicals are sending a message to our youth loud and clear. Here is what we teach them: “Faith is not important in your everyday life. Your religious identity is completely private and up to you. It is kind of like whether you choose to celebrate Christmas or Chanukah, Easter or Passover. Your faith commitment amounts to having good self-esteem and being kind to others.”

I grant you that these are all good things to do, but what do we teach our children that has truly important consequences for their life? How can this milk toast teaching of our faith ever compete against truly pressing global needs such as hunger, disease, water supply, and the treatment of women and children? The answer, of course, is that a milk toast faith will never compete with such pressing issues. If we do not change what we are doing, then we will end up with well-intentioned children who may be passionate about issues that engage them, but who essentially have no faith.

The faith tradition that we pass on to our children has become a bland, feel-good, and completely unimportant kind of Christianity. One writer calls this a “moralistic therapeutic deism.”

So what do we need to do in order to pass on to our children a lively faith that has positive consequences in their lives and the lives of others?

This mission trip is a first step. Why?

First we spent two days at Good Samaritan Community Center. Started by the Episcopal Diocese there in 1951 in a very poor Latino community, Good Samaritan has helped thousands of adults and children every year with meals, after school programs, tutoring, computer classes, music classes, art classes, supervised playgrounds, senior programs, counseling, social work, and other programs.

Some of the children have absent fathers while others may have fathers in jail. If you could have seen the sheer delight and glow on their faces when our kids played with them, you would know what transformation is. You would be witnessing a true miracle.

Next we spent two days at Mission Road; a residential institution serving the needs of about a thousand intellectually and developmentally disabled people every year. At the end of our visit, one of the staff there told us how important it was for us to volunteer there and work one on one with the residents (mostly kids). Many of them are “mainstreamed” where they attend public school. In school and in public, these kids are used to having other make fun of them. They may have a variety of disabilities, but they have feelings and they know the sting of humiliation. The staff person told us that our kids simply sat down with them and worked with them with no judgments or humiliation. We displayed a sense of acceptance these kids rarely experience from others.

For two days, our kids simply gave the love of Christ to others, accepting them on their own terms. I can stand before you today and tell you that for a hundred kids at Mission Road this week, it was a miracle even more consequential than feeding five thousand.

We can teach all kinds of Bible stories, theology, history and doctrine, but I think what we need to do is far simpler than that. We need to teach and DO three things:

Engage in mission – We need to be sent. We need to engage in the work of Christ for others NOT because we are going to fill someone’s belly or make them fell accepted, but because by sharing the love of Christ, we will ALL be transformed.

Give sacrificially – Our youth and the adults gave of their time this week. All of us could have done other things, but we chose to spend a week in San Antonio. A lively, consequential faith is one where we give not just from our excess but where we actually give up something precious to us. We give sacrificially of our time, talent, and treasure.

Work compassionately – The motivation for mission and sacrifice should not have anything to do with getting to heaven, being saved or even doing something FOR someone else. The motivation needs to be simple human compassion. When we read in the Bible that Jesus had compassion for the crowd or the Samaritan had compassion to the victim he found on the road, the word in the original text is far more graphic. It says literally that his guts were moved with emotion. I can tell you that this week, our kids and the adults were moved with compassion on a daily basis.

Mission, sacrifice, and compassion: that’s all we need to pass on to our children. Would you like to help?

It was a busy Thursday with a 7:00 AM Building Committee meeting and a 6:00 PM confirmation meeting. Other meetings were scheduled and one was cancelled during the day. The outside door was left unlocked by the Building Committee. Around 8:30, a man came into my office so quietly he startled me. He walked with a shuffle. His limbs were thin. He asked if he could come in to talk to the pastor.

Somewhat reluctantly, I took him to the library where he sat on the couch. I have been scammed many times by people with hard luck stories. I have turned away a few people based upon appearance. This time, I let him in. His voice was raspy and thin. I could detect the south Bronx accent. He began to tell me his story.

He served Ladder Company Number 5 in New York. On that day in September 2001, he was the first one in to Tower 2. He carried out dozens of people in countless trips up and down the stairs. Caught between the fifth and sixth floor when the tower collapsed, it took him 17 hours to get out of the rubble. Only two out of nine in his company survived.

Brought up Roman Catholic, he said he converted to Episcopalian based upon how he was treated by the Episcopal Church. He knew the name of the church across the street from the site of the World Trade Center. He knew the name of the woman priest who was on duty that day and who converted the church into a food, rest, and emergency care center for the police and firemen. He told me he had visited a large church “over there” (here in Muskogee) that “looked like a bank.” He said the pastor there treated him like trash and would not help him. At age forty five, he was in the final stages of stomach cancer. He had lost eighty pounds.

He pulled up his shirt to show me the surgical scars on his stomach, looking more like a road map than human flesh. During the few hours he spent with us, he was in some distress. He showed me his stomach later and I could tell it was bloated. He talked to me about his memories of that day. He shared details and stories I cannot repeat from the pulpit. The stories and descriptions were too vivid and detailed to be part of someone’s scam. He said that he should not have survived that day. We talked about survivor’s guilt and he seemed to understand a little better.

He quoted John 15:13 “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and he added to it, “Greater love is to lay down one’s life for people you don’t even know.”

I typically write my sermon on Thursday. I had started on it Wednesday night but I decided to throw that one away. It seemed like the sermon God wanted me to preach had walked through the door.

His shirt was soiled and he asked if we had any clothing. B.J. reached into our box of tee shirts and found one his size. As he started to put it on, I saw a tear in one corner of his eye. I said, read what it says. He looked and smiled as he read out loud, “Loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

The launching point for the story of the Good Samaritan is the question posed by the young Bible scholar who was attempting to trap Jesus. The question was “And who is my neighbor?”

Let me re-tell Jesus’ response: A man is beaten up by life’s journey and knocks on the door for help. One church says he looks like homeless trash and they throw him out. ‘He doesn’t sound like one of us’ they say to themselves. Another church invites him in, gives him food and drink, gives him a shirt to wear, prays with him and helps him with transportation. Which of these churches is a neighbor to this man?

Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee Oklahoma is a church with tremendous compassion. We reach out to our local community and to those in need. That is why we need to dig deeper and make sure we can complete our building project with a functioning kitchen.

Grace Episcopal Church is also a church that teaches and forms people. We actually teach and form people to be compassionate servants of God. We do this through our programs with young people, adults, choir, mission trips, social events, and worship. We are a congregation that reaches people and teaches people. This is our role in Muskogee, and we do these things better than any place for fifty miles around.

We are small right now. I must confess to you that I worry about our future a lot. I worry about the building project and I worry about our operating budget. But when I can be part of the compassionate heart of this church, that worry goes away. It is as if God reaches out to jolt me out of my worry. God smacks me with a 2×4 and says “Look at who you are. Look at this church. Right now you are just seeds in the hand of the planter.”

And so we are.

We are mustard seeds in the hand of the planter. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God ? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

At some point in the life of every congregation, they experience being a tree or a shrub with branches and fruit and great size. Trees and shrubs have a life cycle. At some point they produce seeds and then die. At some point the planter takes those seeds and scatters them. After a while they begin to grow again.

With seeds of reaching and teaching in compassion, God has a plan for us; a hope and a future. All we have to do is make sure that we water and tend the garden.

Today’s readings seem to be the perfect complement to the Father’s Day weekend float trip followed by yesterday’s float on the Illinois River. When I moved here in March of 2010, two things I brought strapped to my SUV were a mountain bike and a kayak. I have traveled thousands of miles by small boat. I have rescued people and I know the terror of involuntary exit from a boat in heavy whitewater. I was on a commercial raft trip in Tennessee with a friend. We slid into an eight foot drop and I was unable to stay in the boat. I will never forget the image of the shadow of the raft going over my head as I remained trapped below the surface. To this day, God only knows how I got free. This was undoubtedly the kind of terror the disciples experienced in their small, wooden craft tossed about by fierce winds at night on the Sea of Galilee.

Whether the first century or the twenty first century, life seems to be ruled by chaos. Just about the time things seem to sail in a predictable course where your family, friends, health, and job all are going well, something happens to knock it off course: a dread disease, a layoff, a death, a relocation, a divorce, something. Chaos lurks under the surface, always ready to strike fear and bring about suffering.

Many world religions begin with the contemplation of human suffering. Buddhism was born from this contemplation. Judaism has the book of Job among others. Christians have the writings of Paul. We will return to the book of Job shortly, but first a cautionary note.

It is possible to chop the Bible into convenient proof-text pieces and then use those pieces to prove or disprove almost any point of view. This is the real danger of those “Bible camps” for kids where they go and bulk up on memorizing chunks of scripture. It makes the parents proud, but it takes the student or the seeker out of the process and replaces them with a robot that only knows the words of all those Bible chunks. As a result, the student or seeker is no longer capable of thinking for themselves. They have lost their God-given gift of human reason.

The proof-text approach looks at today’s reading in chapter 38 and treats it as a footnote to the previous teaching on how to live a faithful life. I could not disagree more with this conclusion. Behind this popular (and in my view, wrong-headed) interpretation of Job is the presumption that people suffer because they have sinned.

The best sermons do not spoon feed you answers. They leave you with questions to ponder.

An English priest said long ago that we are to “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the Bible. To do this, you need to get some perspective. Let’s cruise up to 10,000 feet and take a look.

Did you know the over-arching story of the Bible starts in a garden and ends where? The Garden of Gethsemane, or perhaps the garden where the Jesus is laid in the tomb. Adam and Eve hear God’s footsteps in the garden at the beginning. At the tomb, Mary sees Jesus and thinks he is a gardener.

We could have started today’s service with a different blessing than the Trinity. We could have said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” which is taken out of the Book of Job just before today’s reading. Remember that Job has lost everything: his possessions and his family. Instead of cursing God for his predicament, Job shaves his head, tears his clothing, and says, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Knowing that context, does it shift your understanding of what we are saying when we start our Sunday worship with that text?

Let’s think about today’s passage from 10,000 feet. First you need to think about what the writer’s goal is and the audience for whom the story was first written. Did you know that there are earlier versions of Job in three ancient languages predating this writing by more than a thousand years? These texts were found in Sumeria, Babylon, and Egypt. Some of the wording in the Hebrew Job is a word for word translation of parts of these earlier texts.

In every case, the over arching purpose of the writer was NOT to use it as a story about what God will do for us because of our faithfulness. Instead, these four stories of Job tell us about the nature of God. Each version attempts to address the question that is as old as humankind: Why do the righteous suffer? Or to use the title of a modern book written by Rabbi Harold Kushner, “Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”

Preaching easy answers to questions that have no answers is basically elevator music. It is intended to calm your fears while you are trapped inside a little box going up and down. How many of you intentionally listen to elevator music on your iPod or your car radio? Easy answers to the Bible may calm our fears in the short term, but in the end they have no substance and no lasting effect. Let’s look at this ending of Job again.

This passage could be told in a modern movie format. I can imagine David Attenborough giving the opening line and Morgan Freeman taking God’s lines. This is poetry and it is full of powerful images. This is a story about God’s faithfulness to us and to all of creation.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements– surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
“Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb? —
when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?”

This week I attended a seminar on technology for churches. One new concept called “Environmental Projection,” involved taking a panoramic photograph of the inside of a large cathedral, and then projecting the images on the inside walls of a mega church so that the vast expanse of bare, sheetrock walls of a mega church suddenly looks like the inside of a real church. The whole idea made me laugh and it underscores the lengths people will go to make a poor imitation look like the real deal.

Relationships and communities are like that too nowadays. How many of you have been “Friended” on Facebook by someone you didn’t even know? Or by someone you cannot stand to be around? Beneath that mountain of information that we share about ourselves is the real truth of relationships that no amount of computer software will ever replicate. Social media may help reinforce pre-existing personal relationships, but they are a poor substitute for the real deal.

Today people who don’t even know each other can be “linked into” networks of colleagues. We can tweet and chat and IM and Skype and text to all of our friends and loved ones all over this tiny planet and even into outer space, but the sense of social isolation seems to be increasing in spite of all these virtual ways to connect with one another.

I used to watch “Extreme Makeover” on TV occasionally. The concept was to find a family in distress with a house that was in terrible shape. The reality TV crew would come in, design and build a brand new house for the family while they spent a week on vacation. The show would open where the host knocks on the door early on a Saturday morning to rouse the family. After the knock they would all come to the door. “Are you ready for this adventure? For your new house?” he would ask.

One time I looked closely at the family. Here it was, 7:30 on a Saturday morning and the family all popped out of their front door wearing color coordinated, neatly pressed polo shirts. In real life, most families roused at 7:30 on a Saturday morning are not going to come out looking like the Brady Bunch. At that moment I realized how much of the show was totally scripted.

So we have big box, mega churches trying to be real, old traditional churches by displaying images of the old stuff on their walls. The mega churches are taking the reality TV strategy trying to make themselves be something that they are not. Word is on the street that the evangelical churches are now discovering (gasp), structured liturgy!

We have social network technology serving as the reality TV of personal relationships. Whether it is images of a traditional church projected on the bare walls of a mega church, or whether it is electronic devices masquerading as your “friend,” a real church and a real friend can be hard to find.

Who are you really connected to? Who can you trust? When you are lying on that hospital bed and the doctor tells you to get your affairs in order, who are you going to pray to? Do you pray to the God that made you rich because some preacher told you to say a few words of belief in a televised service? Do you pray to the God who answers all your prayers just the way you want?

Or do you have a rocky relationship with this God out there? Have you had life experiences that felt like parts of you were getting pruned away? Have you wondered why parts of your life seemed to fade while unexpected parts flourished? Do you wonder when you pray late at night whether God is even listening at all?

You may recall the Trinitarian approach to prayer. We pray to the Father through Jesus working in us with the power of the Holy Spirit. We have a complicated relationship with God. Like real human relationships, it has its ups and downs. It has its wonders, mysteries and mountain top experiences. Our relationship with God is organic, natural, and totally real. “I am the vine. You are the branches.”

You won’t find God on a Facebook page.

And then there is the church. Let’s spin the idea of “Environmental Projection” on its head for a moment. Suppose we got it all wrong. Imagine that we find a way to project bare, painted walls over all these windows. We cover up the windows telling the story of the Bible. We cover up the dedication and love of families, some still sitting here, who labored as saints in ages past. We cover up the century of liturgies from four different prayer books. Next we strip the altar rails, pews, and all that objectionable stuff out of the front and just make it look like a junior high auditorium.

We have thrown out the bedrock Nicene Creed with all of its challenges and stability. We have peeled away the idea that fixed-form prayers and structured liturgy could actually be helpful in leading you to that organic connection to others and to God. We have taken a wrecking bar to worship principles and a sense of community that has worked well for 2000 years. What did we get in return for all this effort?

We just created the big-box, shopping mall mega church where the pastor preaches absolutely anything that comes to his mind (and they are almost all male). We get a church that oddly floats free from any real, organic connection to the timeless church of the past two millennia. We get the virtual church of anything goes. We get the good time place that answers your prayers the way you want. We get the reality TV church that emphasizes only this generation with no connection to the generations of the past.

I am not suggesting that you cannot have a real, organic, complicated relationship with God in this kind of a church. I am suggesting that the process of creating these churches is just like the process of live television: It is completely absorbed in the now. In doing so you have discarded so much that can anchor you and connect you. Developing the kind of relationship we value with God, will be very difficult.

“I am the vine. You are the branches.” We are connected to, grafted on, growing out of and part of God in so many ways. We are also connected to each other right now, in the past and in the future. We do not need environmental projection to make this a real church. We are real already. Now, go out and bear good fruit.

Some of you may know that since we have an interim organist, yours truly has been selecting most of the music except for the choir anthems. As I was looking on the web for mother’s day church music, I noticed that someone suggested the song, Harper Valley PTA.

Instead we sang a familiar tune with strange new words about a fourth century saint who may be obscure to many of you. Monica, mother of three from North Africa, would probably not be remembered except that she was the mother of St. Augustine AND the mother of Perpetua. Perpetua you ask? Well, yes, Perpetua would be martyred as a young adult; literally fed to the lions in the coliseum in front of a crowd. So Monica, the obscure, North African mother would change the course of world history through her own powerful faith and her children.

Although raised by Christian parents, her pagan husband prevented the baptism of their three children. Their eldest son, Augustine, would eventually go to school in Carthage where he adopted the Manichean belief. Have you ever noticed how even children who are close to their parents will often adopt habits, beliefs, and lifestyles that are totally foreign or even offensive to their parents? Monica was dismayed at her son’s choice of this crazy, Manichean religion. After seventeen years, she would eventually follow him across the Mediterranean to Rome and then to Milan before he converted to Christianity.

One of my favorite children’s stories is “The Runaway Bunny,” a 1942 book by Margaret Wise Brown. The book is a dialogue between a young bunny and his/her mother. The child-bunny fantasizes about going to all these places, and each time the mother bunny says she will follow the little bunny or be with the little bunny. Here are some excerpts:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a fish in a trout stream
and I will swim away from you.”

”“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,
“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

“If you become a tree,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a little sailboat,
and I will sail away from you.”

“If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,”
said his mother, “I will become the wind
and blow you where I want you to go.”

“Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might just as well
stay where I am and be your little bunny.”

And so he did.
“Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny.

Because of their religious differences, Augustine tried very hard to run away from his mother. He was in his twenties and took passage on a boat to Rome without saying good bye to her. Soon, she followed him to Rome only to discover he had already left for Milan. She followed him to Milan. Eventually the Bishop of that city would change Augustine’s heart. Augustine converted to Christianity and the world was changed as a result. Monica passed away six months after her son’s conversion. She died in a foreign land after spending several years following her son.

There is an old Spanish proverb that says “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.” I still haven’t figured out if that means that I equal about ten pounds of a mother, but I do know that we are both in the love business. Jesus tells us that “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is what mothers do.

Like it or not, we develop our first understanding of God’s love from our mother. This may or may not be a good thing, but develop we do. Healthy mothers sacrifice themselves for their children by giving of their time, their money, and as in the case of Monica, even their choice of place to live.

Some of us may have had less-than-ideal mothers and childhoods. Even in these situations, you may find love like a rose on a thorny bush. In many respects, a healthy church community can fill in the gaps for people with less-than-ideal families of origin. When you walk in the door of a healthy faith community for the first time, some people will say they feel like they are finally “at home.” I think what they are experiencing is a lack of judgment, a sense of acceptance, a smile, a touch, – in short, love.

Yes, healthy mothers and healthy churches are in the love business and our job is very simple: spread the love. Mothers do this by sharing their love with their children and grandchildren. In our church community we provide a safe place for those who have been wounded by other churches and even their families. Unlike places that talk a lot about Jesus and the Bible, we don’t talk a lot about what Jesus says, we simply try to do what he does. We share the love, or in the words of Jesus, we “love one another.”

Muskogee has afforded a number of career and lifetime firsts for me. For example, last week I got the 8:00 service to laugh twice during the sermon. Also last week, I managed to get into an argument with a homeless person about scripture. There were several lessons in that encounter, not the least of which was security for our staff. As I left a while later for pastoral visits, I was concerned for the safety of staff and volunteers at church, knowing that there was a mentally unstable homeless person out there who now had a grudge against me.

The other lesson, surprisingly, was about stewardship. This former truck driver came into the office needing a pair of eyeglasses. With a few calls and emails we found someone who could take care of this man’s needs. He returned to the office and we told him the good news. Next he plopped down in my office to chat. I asked him how he managed to get into his current predicament and where he was going after he finished his time at the Gospel Rescue Mission. He evaded the first question, smiled and said “I will go wherever I go.”

Then he started asking me questions like “If you lost everything you had, would you be sitting here smiling?” He seemed arrogant about his state of bliss and my inability to get down to a zero level. I told him it would be impossible for me to lose everything because the last thing I would have to lose would be my faith in a redeeming God. He smiled with his arrogant smile and quoted Philippians 4:19 “My God will fully satisfy every need of yours.” He quoted this scripture in a way to justify his lack of concern for where he will go or what will happen to him. Because he believed God would provide for all of his needs, he was off the hook for responsibility or accountability. He didn’t like my reply.

“But you have only cited half the verse.” I said. “It is not about God as a servant to my needs but the entire verse is talking about God’s power on earth through Jesus. The verse ends with “according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” This did not make the homeless person happy. In fact, he went from calm to ballistic. He was agitated in the chair. He got up. He pointed an angry finger at me and said as if to convince himself, “God will supply all my needs.” And he walked out.

How was this encounter connected to stewardship? Here was a person who was rescued by the inappropriate application of scripture. This man was led to believe that because part of a sentence from a book told him that God would give him everything he needed, that he did not need to do anything to receive such blessings. For him, the Bible was the book that sanctified his anything goes philosophy. For him, the Bible said all he needed to do was believe what some authority figure told him, and he would have a wonderful life.

I could see where he was going with this proof text of scripture, and I would have nothing to do with it. Lines were clearly drawn. I was still willing to work with him for his new eyeglasses, but he walked out. I am sure he thought I would go straight to hell. I prayed for him. He sauntered down the street with two bad knees.

How does this apply to stewardship? Stewardship is not just about what we choose to give back to God. It is about how we care for what God has given us. Belief in a “vending machine God” as this homeless person did, is both a very primitive stage of religious development and bad stewardship. God is not a vending machine where we punch the button “God, I need some place to stay tonight” and God provides. You punch another button that says “God, I need food today” and God provides. God doesn’t work like this. To believe in this god is to engage in the magic thinking of three year olds.

The distinction in stewardship is the same old battle between the private religion preached by evangelicals around the globe, and the public religion of Jesus. Private religion puts God in the position of the eternal giver of blessings, gifts, and meeting the demands of people who way “God will provide all my needs.” The public faith of Jesus says that we are to respond in gratitude for what God has given us. And out of gratitude, we are to pass on the blessings to others.

Real stewardship invites us to look at what God has provided us already: our lives, our health, our families, our community, this church, our jobs, and so on. We give thanks for what we have been given. Our celebration every Sunday is a service of giving thanks for the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. What part or our own lives and our selves can we give up in return for what Jesus has given us?

Our Epistle from the first book of John refers to something we exchange at the altar rail every Sunday. John tells us, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” At the rail, you will hear “The body of Christ, keep you in eternal life.”

Those who are into private religion, the faith of God meeting my needs, and the faith of personal salvation, will hear this as a proclamation that if I believe in all the words about Jesus, then I will live for eternity. But in the public faith of Jesus, eternal life is not about eternity. It is about living FOR something right now. Living FOR what God wants you to be. Living FOR the benefit of others.

Do you live for the betterment of this church, this community, your schools, your children, your grandchildren? Do you live for moving our community to a more sustainable environmental practice? Do you live for justice with the poor and disadvantaged in our community? Do you live for improving the health and well being of other people here? If these are part of your hopes, dreams and daily life, then you are living in eternal life right now.

When you receive the wafer in your hands, and you hear the words “The body of Christ keep you in eternal life.” This is a nudge to put your life in the service of others.

Living FOR the betterment of other people is what all Christians are called to do. We are Christians because our focus is outward towards others. This is not a private religion of me and Jesus and my salvation. This is a faith of making God present for other people in ways that improve their lives.

After Judas hanged himself, the disciples wanted to bring a new person into their circle to replace Judas. All things being equal between several candidates, they drew lots, believing that the hand of God would determine the selection of the lot. Matthias was chosen because of this process.

You should know that the Greek word for clergy is “kleros.” It is the word used in this passage for “lots.” The notion of becoming a clergy person is that your vocation as clergy is your lot in life. God chooses the one to be ordained. All we have to do is respond. That is really true for all of us; ordained or not.

Once I tried to get the bishop to declare the first Sunday after Easter, “Missouri Sunday,” but he wouldn’t go for it. If you are from the Show Me State, today is your day. Thomas had to have been a Missourian because he told the other disciples, “Unless I see where the nails went in his hands and the wound in his side, I will not believe.” In other words, “show me.”

But there is so much more today than just seeing and believing. Next Sunday is Earth Day, a day when we celebrate our common stewardship of the earth. Our psalm today reflects the universal brotherhood of mankind. This psalm has been a popular Israeli folk song since the 1940s. And of course on this first Sunday after Easter, we hear about the very early Christians, how “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.”

I would guess that over the centuries, a swimming pool of ink has been spent on the story of Thomas, about not-seeing and believing, and about the power of belief itself. This may be one of the touchstones where we start moving down that slippery slope – that dangerous territory where we tell the world that being Christian is all about what we think and say instead of how we actually behave and what we do.

That disconnect where we say one thing and do another is dangerous and unholy. Maybe it is time to leave Thomas alone and focus on concrete terms of what it means to live together in harmony. The psalm talks about oil used for anointing kings, but instead of the tiny dab we get at baptism, there is so much of this expensive oil that it flows down to the bottom hem of the clothing. What a mess. The metaphor conveys a sense of abundance and the messiness. Living together in harmony is not easy. It is messy AND in God’s dream for us, it is abundant.

Next the psalmist goes on to say that living together in unity is a blessing like dew in the mountains hundreds of miles away that overflows so much it can provide water in the desert. The unity of humankind ordained by God is described as oil and water – two things that don’t mix. Could they be Democrats and Republicans? Christians and Muslims? Rich and poor? What could we do at Grace Church in Muskogee to demonstrate how we actually live together in unity with each other and with the greater Muskogee community?

Our local newspaper carries articles every day on the front page about meth lab busts, growing marijuana in the garden, violent crime, and the decay of education. All of these things are signs of people living separate lives, apart from one another in dis-unity.

Could those of us sitting here provide a concrete antidote to the toxic front page news just one day a week for a year? Could we deliver fifty two examples of living together in unity? Can you imagine a weekly press release? “Grace Church builds community garden” “Grace Church creates basketball court” “Grace Church beautifies corner with rain garden and landscaping” “Grace Church restarts meals programs” “Grace Church launches new GED and ESL programs” “Grace Church Youth make a difference teaching others.” The heart of this parish has always reached out to the community, but could we actually organize and get others involved so that we make a difference right here in Muskogee? Could we put some good news on the front page just once a week for a year?

I must confess to you that I have recently written about plugging the holes in our programs so that Grace Church provides opportunities for all ages to get involved. If you look around, you can see there is plenty of room for more people to join us. But maybe this is the second place where churches lose their way. The first place is when churches emphasize words and thoughts over behavior. The second place is when the primary goal of church programs is to increase membership. Both of these practices are hypocritical and both are major reasons why the public stays away from churches.

I am suggesting that we return to a much more basic idea, an idea where the return on investment may not be an instant increase in church membership. I want to plant a seed in your hearts which is a song that Jesus must have sung as a child while doing chores with his mother. It is a very simple idea, and it is God’s dream for us. “How good and pleasant it is when people live together in unity.”

There is a strong caveat here. Living together in harmony does not necessarily mean doing things FOR other people in the sense of well-off people giving charity to the less fortunate. When we sit down to eat during Servings of Grace, we are living together. We may also have the mentally ill with us posing challenges. This is the messy part. God’s dream for humanity is not people of the same social and political class coming together to say a bunch of words on Sunday. God’s dream is messy where Christians and Muslims, gay people and straight people, rich and poor, black and white, and all kinds of different people are able to live together in harmony.

One day a week for a year; could we actually do it? Could we actually get on the front page of the local paper once a week with some good news for a change? I wonder.