Past Articles from 2004 until last year. Many important lessons can be found in each of these articles.
I found a great book the other day, Wayne Biddle’s Field Guide to the Unseen (Henry Holt & Co. 1998). It looks like it might be one of Roger Tory Peterson’s classic guides, but instead of cataloging flora and fauna, this book lists the ingredients of “the inescapable stew we’re in” (dust jacket) – what constantly surrounds us, but remains invisible. It is quite a trove of scientific information about everything from allergens and alpha rays, to B.O. and burps, to Quarks and Radon. The entry on mites (and their attendant feces) is perhaps the most disturbing bit, but the entry on Krypton was particularly fascinating – especially since Superman has returned (to a theatre near you) this summer. Biddle even has a short entry for God, and, taking into account this is not a religious tome, but a merely scientific one (albeit a bit whimsical at times), I think his treatment pretty even-handed.
There is one entry missing. If Mr. Biddle hadn’t mentioned God I would not slight him for it, but when he writes: “We can be thankful God will always be invisible,” (p. 70), I hold him accountable for his failure to mention Angels.
Angels are “ministering spirits, sent for the sake of those who will inherit salvation” Hebrews 1.14.They appear rather frequently (not always visibly), from Genesis to Revelation, helping Hagar find water, making Balaam’s donkey speak, defeating entire armies, ministering to Jesus in the wilderness and the garden, releasing Peter from jail, etc…As the Hebrews writer will further remind us (Hebrews 13.1ff) we may be in their presence and not even know it.
To emphasize this point we have an example in the Old Testament, and one in the New Testament which illustrate both the variety of the work of Angels and their unseen presence. In II Kings 6, the Syrian army has come to capture Elisha. He and his servant wake one morning to see an army surrounding the city walls. The servant trembles, but Elisha (v.16) says: “Don’t be afraid, those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then he prays that the servant’s eyes will be opened, and the servant sees the hillside aflame with armies of angels. The prophet strikes the army of Syria blind, feeds them all lunch, and sends them home.
In the New Testament, when, in Luke 16 Jesus tells us about an unnamed rich man, and a beggar named Lazarus, he says that when Lazarus died “he was carried by the Angels to the bosom of Abraham,” (v.22). This is not just some pretty metaphor. Jesus doesn’t make things up. He says that when the righteous person dies, the angels are there, and that whatever happens to translate us from this life to the next, they facilitate it.
We lost our sister, Catherine Mason last week. She had been so sick, in so many ways, for so long, that her rest in the bosom of Abraham is certainly a blessing to her. Her last day was a blessing as well as nearly 30 of her family: her husband, siblings, children, grand children, great-grand children, and loved ones gathered around her to say goodbye. The little room in the ICU unit at Virginia Hospital Center was filled with loved-ones those few, short minutes between the time they removed the respirator, and she began her heavenly rest. As full as the room was with people, there were others there, unseen helpers, ready to take her home, and others to minister to the rest – those still waiting to receive their inheritance.
I thought, that day, “There are angels, right here in the room with us, we just can’t see them.” It was an electric feeling. But then, when are they not in the room?
There is so much of interest at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. - dinosaur bones, a blue whale, a bug zoo. The most visited exhibit, however, is on the second floor - it is the gemstone exhibit. The Hope diamond is there, and the jewels of Josephine Beauharnais. One has to wait in line most days to get a glimpse of the Hope diamond, rotating in its case. The jewelry exhibited along the walls similarly generates a crowd. If you go beyond this room - if you force your way past the jewelry exhibit you find yourself in a long, narrow room - generally empty of people, but filled with wonders.
In this room gemstones are displayed in their natural settings, and their various forms. Quartz pieces are there in every imaginable color and geometric configuration: emerald skyscrapers, stacked sapphire blocks, beveled garnet shafts - crafted by God's hand. Most amazing of all are the stones from which these stunning pieces emerge. Outwardly they are warty, gray-green lumps. But when they are cut open, they reveal a veritable pirate's chest of treasure.
I've always thought about Jeremiah's moving lamentation in that way. We are used to linear stories with happy (or at least resolved) endings. Jeremiah, writing a dirge (a form unfamiliar to most of us), and writing with an eastern, elliptical sensibility, seems to begin in despair and end with it. But that isn't what he has done at all. He has created a circle with a center, a sphere with a core, a song with a heart inside. Like those stones that seem so gray, rough and ugly, Lamentations has a crystalline and beautiful center. At the precise middle of the book we read these words: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases...
I find this model helpful. Life is rarely linear, rarely resolved in twenty-two to forty-six minutes, like most television programs. Challenges and heartaches aren't neatly packaged up each week, with a cliff-hanger now and then. Death, divorce, disappointment, poverty, illness, loneliness, failure - are persistent, complicated, rough and sometimes ugly. It is easy to believe there is no light (and thus no God) at the end of the tunnel. But for the believer, at the core of even the most acute pain, there is the steadfast love of God, and His mercies renewed every morning - the eye of every storm, and the gemstone inside every rock, the beating heart of all life...
And...
...Transforming all life.
If you pick up a warty, gray-green rock, and know that inside it is a blazing, brilliant cascade of crumbling quartz obelisks, then you know you are not holding a warty, gray-green rock at all, but a treasure.
Simon, Simon - Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you. That your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers (Luke 22. 31-32).
Jesus says this to Peter just moments before his arrest, and just hours before Peter denies Jesus the third time, the cock crows, and their eyes meet. Peter is nearly destroyed by his own failure. Nearly - but not destroyed, because his love for Jesus survives, and Jesus said - I prayed for you. Jesus said when you return. Jesus said when, not if. Jesus said when.
This is the steadfast love of the Lord - the prayer of Jesus, the confidence of Jesus, the certainty of Jesus. It transforms our failure into inner-strength - into strength for others. And so we concur with Jeremiah it is indeed good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord (Lamentations 3. 26).
I was browsing the used book nook of the Central library the other day and picked up this little paperback entitled Weird Moments in Sports – or as we preachers call it 91 Pages of Sermon Illustrations. It is one of those Scholastic Inc. books the kids still order from school. Before I paid a dime for it, it was owned by J.J. Jocsa (Jorsa?). Little books of this sort are a gold mine for preachers, who, if an illustration were to be found in a sanguine tuber could, indeed, produce blood from a turnip.
I was not disappointed. Opening the book at random I fount this entry:
During the 1965-66 season, Chris Kelley of Wyoming’s Greybull High School pulled off in incredible four-point play. Kelley came out of a scramble for the ball, and in his confusion, broke to the wrong basket. Just as he was about to lay the ball in he was f
ouled by an opponent. The goal was scored (two points for the opposing team) and then Chris made two free throws for Greybull.
Wow the nuggets are lying there just waiting to be harvested. There are so many angles you can take with this story.
For instance, you could add to it the story of Wrong Way Riegles and launch into a long discussion of knowing which way is home – pulling in Jesus’ comments about the two roads (Matthew 7.13-14), and maybe ending by taking that Robert Frost Poem The Road Not Taken out of context. – I mean it has been done a million times before, and folks seem to really like that poem taken out of context.
One of my favorite books is James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks. Lipton, who is better known as the host of Inside the Actor’s Studio (“We end, as always with the 
famous questionnaire by Bernard Pivot…), is a collector of collective nouns. We all know that a group of cows is a herd, and that a group of lions is a pride. Mr. Lipton’s research has revealed that cats gather in a clutter, turkeys in a rafter, and elk in a gang. Mr. Lipton also explains that fish gather in schools because in Middle English that was a variant spelling of shoals.
People have appropriate group names as well. Judges grouped are a bench, clerics are a school (because of their training, not because they hang out in shoals), trustees are a board, cardinals are a college, and voters are a constituency.
I’ve invented two group names and sent them to Mr. Lipton. Since I do a lot of weddings, I find it helpful to have a group name for bridesmaids and groomsmen. The collective name for bridesmaids is coif, short for coiffure or “hairdo.” This is appropriate since all bridesmaids have hair appointments to get enough starch sprayed on their heads to shellac a corner cabinet. A group of groomsmen is a quaff. “Quaff” means to drink heartily, which is what most groomsmen do (not the ones from our congregation). Since the words are homonyms, I thought them clever as well as accurate (hooray for me). For four years I have (over)used them whenever I do a wedding. “Do we have our full coif of bridesmaids here, or is someone missing?” I will say, or “The full quaff of groomsmen need to be at the church by 1 pm.”
When children of God gather we are a congregation – a word that is the English (by way of Latin) equivalent of the Greek word –ekklesia - “those called to assemble.”
But what are we a congregation of? What is the proper noun to use for a saved person, who, with other saved persons, gather together in congregations?
The easy, most natural answer would be “Christian.” But that would not hold the most weight in the New Testament. The word “Christian” is only used twice in the New Testament (Acts 11.26, and I Peter 4.16). Both times it is a word outsiders use for us, not the word we have used to describe ourselves.
the twenty-fifth anniversary of Yankee Stadium, the house he built, and they were retiring his number. He would die soon, and had to be helped to even walk to the dugout. He couldn’t tie his shoes by himself. Photographers from around the world were there that day, and took a lot of photographs, but the one we remember was taken by Nat Fein of the New York Herald Tribune. * He wasn’t, a sports photographer; he usually took snaps for special interest features – man bites dog stuff – but the photographer scheduled for the event took ill, and at the last minute he was sent.