The Measure You Give, the Measure You Get 

Luke 6:27-38 

June 26, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel  

            On a police chaplain “ride along” I watched as the officer pulled over a 17-year-old driver.   She was traveling 50 MPH in a 25 MPH school zone with kids on both sides of the street.

            She was in tears as he issued her first moving violation citation.   The license plate frame of her red sports car read, “Fast Cars, Hot Men, Cold Champagne.”

            It reminded me of Jesus’ words, “The measure you give will be the measure you get” from his Sermon on the Plain.

            Many of the same teachings in our scripture for this morning from the gospel of Luke, we hear in Matthew’s version known as the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7).  In Luke’s version, Jesus chooses his twelve disciples on a mountaintop and then comes down to a level plain to deliver the sermon.  

All who will listen are equally in need of Jesus’ words not just those on top.

He talks about loving others, loving enemies, of not judging but forgiving.  He ends with an illustration about a measure; “the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

A measure was an instrument of market economics in first century Palestine and is still used in many countries today.   Dry goods such as grains, sugar, spices, and flour are sold by volume not weight in market places around the world.   It can be a 1-kilogram metal cylinder or can.   It can be a cup measure or quart of glass.   

An honest merchant will maintain the shape and quality of the measures.  A dishonest salesman will purposely bang up and dent his measure, or even place a false bottom in them so to cheat the customer.    The prophet Micah says that such false measures are an “abomination to God” (6:10-11).

Our Lord defines “a good measure”.  The merchant offers an abundant measure “pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”  It’s a similar phrase to “you shall reap what you sow” (Galatians 6:7) or the Beetle’s famous lyric, “And in the end, the love you take will be equal to the love you make.”

We know that to be true in so many parts of our lives.

You get as much out of your work as you put into it, or your marriage, or your health, or your church.

We will get as much out of our church as we put into it.  That is so true that we remind ourselves of our own commitment to the church and the meaning of our own baptism each and every time we repeat the sacrament.   We are asked to respond during the liturgy as we re-affirm our own commitments.

In the United Methodist Church we rarely baptize people privately, only in special circumstances.  Rather we do so publicly in the community of faith.

Who, all by ourselves, can live up to such standards as Jesus; “Love your enemies, pray for those who abuse you turn the other cheek”?   Nobody!   We need each other to learn how to live out such values, to create such a lifestyle.  We need each other to stay on Christ’s path when it is so easy to stumble.

Jesus suggests to us that reciprocity and humility is how we should form and regulate human interaction in business, within families, even with adversaries.   That is how we are supposed to treat each other in the church.

The measure you give is the measure you will get.  

In Mary Owen’s short story, Winning Isn’t Everything (Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan’s Soul, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Park, Florida, 2001, pp.136-138), she describes an event at her son’s Little League T-ball game in Davis, California that illustrates the point:

“A small boy stepped up to bat.  The crowd watched like hawks…waiting for the sought-after home run that most likely wasn’t to be.  After all, these kids were five and six years old, much too little to stroke a ball past the pitcher, if at all.

The little guy’s determination showed in his stance: gritted teeth, slightly bulging eyes, hat-clad head bobbing slightly, feet apart, hands with a death grip on the bat.  In front of him was a small softball, sitting perched like a parrot on a lone tree, awaiting the six swings that the batter was allowed.

Strike one.

“Come on, you can do it!” came a solitary voice out of the bleachers.

Strike two.

“Go for it, Son!” the proud father yelled encouragingly.

Strike three.

‘Go, go, go…’ the crowd joined in.

Strike four.

“You can do it!” just the father and a couple of viewers crooned, others losing interest and turning to bleacher conversations.

And suddenly bat hit ball, amazing the crowd and the little boy, who stood rock still, watching it travel slowly past the pitcher on its way to second base.

“Run!”  The stands rumbled with stomping feet.  “Run, run!”

The little boy’s head jerked ever so slightly and he took off towards third base.

“No,” the crowd yelled, “The other way!”

With a slight cast of his head towards the bleacher, he turned back toward home.

“No!”…the umpire waved him toward first base.

The kids on both teams pointed the way.  The crowd continued to cheer him on.  Confused, he ran back to third.  Then following the third baseman’s frantic directions, he finally ran toward first base but stopped triumphantly on the pitcher’s mound.  The pitcher moved back, not sure what to do next.  The crowd stood…all arms waved toward first base.  And with no thought for his position, the first baseman dropped his glove and ran toward the pitcher.

“Come on,” he yelled, grabbing the hand of the errant batter and tugged him toward first base while the crowd screamed its approval.  The ball lay forgotten as the triumphant twosome hugged each other on the piece of square plastic that marked the spot where lives are forever shaped.  

Two little boys, running hand in hand, toward a goal that only one should have reached.  Both came out winners.

No one will ever remember the score of that summer afternoon encounter.  Competition…lost to sportsmanship, an innate formula for winning.”

How often do our relationships at work, at church, in our families, even in our marriages degrade into power struggles?   Feelings get hurt, needs go unmet, emotions simmer and pretty soon somebody’s got to win and somebody’s got to lose.

While preaching on the plain Jesus uses the word “agape” in the original for our English word “love”.    It’s a love that has the welfare of another as its goal.   It’s a love in which everyone is a winner and nobody has to lose.

To the church in Rome Paul writes, “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor” (12:9-10).

Imagine what our homes and church and marriages would look like defined by a good measure of such love.

But that is not how God deals with us.  In fact, God may often do just the opposite; “…for God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked”.  God does not give us equal measure for measure.  We don’t reap exactly what we sow with God.   As much as Jesus’ message of equality in love should prevail in human life and society there is no such equality between God and us.  Rather God gives us love, mercy and grace we don’t deserve, forgiveness we cannot earn.

A while back, I received an email from an old friend, Rev. Jonathan Jelanding.   While I was principal of the Methodist Theological School in Sibu, Sarawak, East Malaysia thirty-seven years ago, Rev. Jelanding was my best faculty member.   Bonnie and I spent our three years as United Methodist missionaries in Northern Borneo trying to convince everyone involved in the Iban church, and in the missionary headquarters in New York City, that we shouldn’t be there.   In our first assignment out of seminary, we worked very hard to get ourselves out of a job.

It was long past time to train Iban pastors at the graduate level of theological education so they could lead their seminary and train their pastors without the confusing influence of North American culture and expectations.   As long as they continued to send missionaries, the Iban church would never move past its legacy of dependency and grow its own leadership in theological education.     

It was personal stress and our infant son’s illness with typhoid fever that finally forced us to return home.  

When we came back to California, while waiting assignment to St. Paul’s UMC in Reno, Nevada, I saw a pastoral counselor to help me through the guilt, shame and anger I was experiencing because of what I perceived as a terrible failure as a missionary. 

At the time I didn’t know that the church “powers that be” would use our return to America as the occasion to shut down the school in Sibu as a missionary assignment, as we had been requesting, and fund a scholarship for Rev. Jelanding to study for a Masters of Divinity degree in our United Methodist seminary in Ohio.

Since then, two other Iban pastors have also earned advanced degrees and they make up the core of the faculty now at Sibu. 

I’ll never forget the words of the wonderful Presbyterian minister and licensed therapist who helped me work through my crisis of failure as a missionary when he said to me, “Can’t you see that God has used your brokenness for something good.  Doesn’t that grace and forgiveness you preach to others also count for you?!”

I wept reading Rev. Jonathan Jelanding’s email.  He emailed me just to let me know had just been elected President of the Iban Conference of the Methodist Church of Malaysia [like our Bishop].

This God gives us love we don’t deserve, forgiveness we cannot earn.  Somewhere in varying degrees each one of us comes to a church looking for that very same word of grace.

Isn’t that really why we are here, why we join a small part of the body of Christ, because in a sermon, or a song, in discovering a new friend or the desire to renew old vows, somewhere in this particular place and with these people, we have heard the God who loves us, in spite of us, call our name?

That God calls us to love each other with good measure because the measure we give is the measure we get.   We can do so because that God loves each one of us even more than that.

Amen.

Success? Seriously!

Luke 12:22-34

June 19, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel 

We really count on our parents to define “success” for us as we grow up.  It is often their expectations and boundaries that shape who we are, good or bad. 

Here’s an example of one set of parental values that have had a powerful impact on our culture.  You may be familiar with the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling: 

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same; 

If you can…watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss; 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son! 

Nobel laureate Kipling wrote these words in 1895.   Such values defined, and in many ways continue to define, “success” for a man, specifically in our northern European culture.  Let’s not pretend otherwise, these words were intended for men, specifically English men.   Yet these concepts permeate our Northern European dominated society affecting all genders and cultures to be sure!

Humility, honest self-evaluation, perspective and perseverance are admirable qualities for anyone. Yet the stoicism that denies pain, refuses to ask for help and the work ethic of exhaustion…“filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run”…can become negative qualities that affect anyone too.  Especially men.

The multi-tasking region in which we live brings many benefits; high incomes, lots of possessions, varied options for recreation and the future.  Yet it also comes with great costs; multi-tasking stress contributes to addiction, relationship failures, family struggle and personal levels of anxiety and depression. 

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, women are twice as likely to develop depression as men in the United States.  One out of seven men will experience depression six months after becoming unemployed.  The highest likelihood for male depression is in retirement.  Men are three times more likely to commit suicide as a response to depression than are women.  (60% of the average annual 33,000 gun deaths in the USA this last decade were suicides, predominately by men…senior men…[NYT 10/08/15]) 

While generally women measure their worth by their relationships, men do so by task.   Male identify and worth is so tied to work performance, and the traditional roles of providing for one's family, that unemployment or retirement can become a crisis in a man's life.   We rate our self-esteem by our job titles and how close our office is to the CEO's.   We measure our worth by the income we produce and save.  

Our gospel lesson this morning, found only in the writings of Luke, would suggest that even those living in Palestine 2,000 years ago knew all about the priorities of material excess. Our text challenges us to consider how much is enough.   

Jesus refers to ravens, birds and lilies to illustrate natural glory and beauty.  And then reminds the listener how fragile and transitory this life is, “…the grass of the field is here today and gone tomorrow…” maybe a reminder from the Hebrew book of Ecclesiastes; "eat, drink and be merry...for tomorrow you will die…" (8:15, Isaiah 22:13)  Jesus is suggesting another option if we become “rich in God”; “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all else will be given you….”   

How much is enough? 

Considering the way we live here in Northern California,  one has to wonder if our definition of success includes the option for anything less than…“filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.”  

We see this in the stress our young people go through about their options after high school graduation.   Every parent wants the best for their children.  Every mom and dad would do anything to see their son or daughter “succeed” in life.  Yet our kids shouldn't have to develop ulcers, depression, turn to drugs and alcohol or acting out behavior or consider suicide because their grades or SATs aren't good enough to get into Stanford.  There are other options in a young person’s life between homelessness and getting into the four-year university of their parents’ dreams! 

Of course we want our children to become all God wants them to be, to reach for excellence, to thrive.  But if in our parenting there is no room for failure, I can guarantee   you that the world will offer it in unkind ways. 

Some of you may have known about fathers who out of ignorance, meanness or a misguided pedagogy of self-reliance pushed and shamed their children to achievement. You know the kind of man I am talking about, one for whom you can never be “good enough”. 

There once was a rigid and strict Abbot Father of a monastery that required five years of absolute silence between individual meetings with his monks.  At the end of each five year period, the monks got to sit down with the Holy Father in his office and say two words…two words only…that is all they could speak every five years.   At the end of his first five-year period of silence, the new monk came into the Abbott’s office, sat down and was asked, “well my son, what do you have to say?” to which the new monk replied, “bed hard”.    Another five years came and went, again the new monk came into the Abbott’s office and when given permission to speak said, “Food lousy”.   Then another five years came and went and again the new monk came into the Abbott’s office.  When asked by the Holy Father, “What do you have to say?” the new monk replied, “I quit”, to which the Abbott replied, “Well, I am not surprised; you’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.”​

If you grew up with a father for whom you could never be ‘good enough’ you have a special challenge in life.    Parental voices of shame and disapproval can frame our living and stifle our growth especially when they are delivered as a means to “make us stronger” or “to teach us a lesson”.

For those of us who had fathers who taught us that ‘we were enough’ by virtue of our birth, we are blessed indeed.  That was certainly true of my own father whose unconditional love has shaped who I am.

The fathers we admire today…and we have many of them here in this congregation…not only provided for their families, they took the time to teach their four year old daughter how to ride a bike or the 16 year old son how to drive a car.  They are the fathers who read their boys to bed at night and played catch with their daughters in the back yard in the morning.   Thank God for all men, biological father figures or not, who teach children healthy boundaries in life by saying “no” without shaming them.  Thank God for the male teachers and pastors and relatives who can pull a young person aside to insist of their negative behavior “that is wrong and it can’t continue” without the child ever thinking that his love for them is at stake.    

The fathers and father-figures who have learned to balance the demands of life with fun and grace and humility teach all of our children what really is enough.  How much material wealth could ever buy us security in a life that by its nature is insecure?   Yet how much wealth in the things of God...which we call by the name love...can ever be enough?  It is what makes life worth living. 

Just months before his death at the end of a 16-year journey with Alzheimer's disease, Dr. Donald Minkler, Bonnie Bollwinkel's father, could speak very little.  Confined to a wheel chair and bed in an excellent dementia unit in the East Bay, Don could no longer eat solid food or care for himself.   Watching the decline of this brilliant man, a physician, San Francisco University Medical Center and UC Berkeley faculty member, recognized international expert in Maternal and Child Health, was painful and exhausting for his family.  His immediate family were certain there were moments when he could recognize them and his true self would still be there.  Their regular visits cheered them up as much as Don.   They didn't get a lot of time with their father during his professional life.  Oddly enough his illness was an opportunity for them to spend time together, which even with his limitations brought precious gifts. 

One day his daughters Bonnie and Jenny came to visit him in the unit, each bringing a favorite liquid treat that they knew their father always loved.  Bonnie a coffee-milkshake, Jenny a Mango smoothie.   They arrived at the same time and immediately identified the dilemma of bringing too much to comfort their father. 

Don had a wonderful sense of humor throughout his life, was a truly humble, self-effacing man.  His daughters teased him, holding out both cold and delicious treats, asking "So Daddy which daughter do you like the best, Bonnie or Jenny?"   

Don looked at both daughters and their bribes and was able to say clearly, "Me"!  thus avoiding the choice between two siblings and making a joke about himself.  It is a moment they will never forget. 

Don Minkler's huge success in life, like so many other male father figures and loving parental figures of either gender, wasn't defined by how much material wealth they had accumulated but by such values we find in Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of "success": 

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to learn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have live.  This is to have succeeded.”

Amen.

You Can’t Take It with You

Luke 12:13-21

June 12, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            What would you do if you won the lottery?

            Quit your job?  Pay off all the bills?  Buy a new house?   The motto of the California State Lottery is, “Imagine the Possibilities!”   The idea of receiving millions of dollars by chance is intoxicating to many, as if all that money would make your dreams come true.

            Yet it turns out that money, earning it or spending it, is one of the biggest stress factors in our lives.  Maurice Chevalier once asked, "Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?"  How to manage money is a constant challenge and is rarely any fun. 

            If you are unemployed, moving to a new community for a job or losing sleep over debts money matters are no fun at all.
            So what would you do if you won the lottery?

            Jack Whittaker won one of the largest individual lottery jackpot in United States history on Christmas Day 2002.  He won $ 314.9 million from the Powerball lottery, choosing to receive a cash payment rather than annual installments.  He received $113 million after taxes.

            Mr. Whittaker was already a millionaire building contractor in West Virginia.  He immediately pledged to tithe 10% of his winnings to three pastors that had helped him along the way.  He has made good on those commitments.  He has been very generous to a variety of charities and his family.   He is building two churches, feeding and clothing poor children and building senior citizen housing in his community.

            And…since Christmas Day 2002, he has also been charged with assault and drunken driving.   He was a regular patron of the Pink Pony strip club outside of Cross Lanes, West Virginia, where he was known for giving very generous tips to the dancers.  In August 2003 he was drugged and robbed of $500,000 in cash from his Lincoln Navigator by two employees of the club.

            His wife and family have been so overwhelmed with requests for donations from around the world that they have had to become more and more reclusive.    It has even affected his granddaughter, Brandi.   Mr. Whittaker once told the Associated Press, “She’s the most bitter 16-years-old I know.”

            When charged with yet another drunken driving citation he told a TV station, “It doesn’t bother me because I can tell everyone to kiss off.”

“He just reminds me of a kid in a candy store,” says Gerald Abreu, former minister of the Tabernacle of Praise Church of God in Hurricane, WA.    “I think Jack believes in God and trusts in God.  I just think that some of these things have overwhelmed him and I think he’s struggling right now,” said Michael Osborne friend and co-worker.¹

            Money in and off itself is no evil.  Scripture tells us “…the love of money is the root of all evil…” (I Tim 6:10)  

It is important that we provide for our material needs and comfort in this life.   Earning an appropriate income, saving for our future, taking care of our families is an essential and noble duty.   Christians are called to be good stewards in managing wealth.   Yet so often it seems if money ends up managing us.

            In our gospel lesson this morning Jesus tells the Parable of the Rich Fool.   He tells the story in response to brothers arguing about how to divide the family inheritance.  They would like Jesus to mediate the dispute.  The Lord refuses, warning them of the power of greed, warning them of misplaced priorities.  The parable itself describes a rich man who invests in bigger barns thinking it will do his soul good, only to die that very same night, unable to take his possessions with him.   Jesus concludes, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”

            This July I will celebrate my 40^th year of ordained ministry.  After all that time I am very much aware that whenever the topic of money comes up in church folk always expect the preacher to ask for more.  Eyes glaze over.  People stare at their feet or the ceiling, checking their watches to calculate how long this is going to go on!

            It’s like the story of the man who lived alone in the Irish countryside with only a pet dog for company.   One day the dog died, and Muldoon went to the parish priest and asked, “Father, me dog is dead.  Could ya’ be sayin’ a mass for the poor creature?”  Father Patrick replied, “I’m afraid not; we cannot have services for an animal in the church.   But there are some Methodists down the lane, and there’s no tellin’ what they believe.  Maybe they’ll do something for the creature.”  Muldoon said, “I’ll go right away Father.  Do ya’ think $5,000 is enough to donate to them for the service?”  Father Patrick exclaimed, “Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus!  Why didn’t ya tell me the dog was Catholic!”

            More than a lesson on charitable giving, our Biblical lesson this morning is trying to tell us about the hold money can have on our hearts.

            In the Sermon in the Mount Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).  Comparing our passions for lotteries with church giving does illustrate where our hearts are.

            In 2003, 59 Protestant denominations in the United States, including the United Methodist, with a total of 48 million members, gave $31 billion to their churches. In 2012 those same denominations reported 45 million church members contributing $29 billion; that’s a 6% decreases in both membership and giving during that decade.² 

In comparison, during 2014, 173 million Americans, about 60% of the adult population, spent $ 70.5 billion on lotteries.³

$29 billion for all churches.  $70.5 billion for the lottery.

“For where your treasurer is, there your heart will be also.” 

            Such statistics suggest that many more Americans have their hearts in the dream of the lottery than they do in the promises of the church.   This, in spite of the sociologists suggestion that governments increasing dependence on income from gambling, is nothing more than an indirect tax on the poor as lower income folk disproportionably play.   This in spite of the illusion of winning something for nothing.  Michael Orkin, a professor at Cal-State Hayward calculated in his book, What are the Odds (W.H. Freeman & Company; 1st edition, January 1, 2000), “Put in perspective, if you buy 50 [lottery] tickets a week, you’ll win the jackpot on average once every 30,000 years.”

            Governments are more and more eager to offer gambling as a way to raise budgets because we are more and more eager to invest in that jackpot dream.  That is happening at the same time fewer of us are investing ourselves in the church.

We yearn for meaning in life, something to make sense of the stress under which we live.  We want joy in our lives seemingly stifled by routine.  We want to make a difference in the world.   Yet fewer and fewer of us think that can happen in a church.  Yet it would seem that more and more of us believe our dreams will come true by winning the lottery.

In 2012 the average church member in America gave $763 to their church for the year; that’s $14.60 per week.²  In the Accounting Principals' latest Workonomix survey, the average American worker is shelling out more than $20 a week on coffee at Starbucks.

If people see their church as a center for transformation, where people’s lives are being changed for the better, they will make an investment not a donation.  If joy and expectation are shared and celebrated in a church, people will write their first check each month to the church not wait to see what’s leftover after all the other bills are paid.  If people discover inspiration beyond their world and life in a church, there will never be a budget deficit but a challenge to manage all the money coming in.

Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Eleanor Boyer’s heart is invested in her town of Somerville, New Jersey and her church there.   In 2003 she announced that she was giving all of the $ 11.5 million she had won from the New Jersey lottery to her church and other charities in her town.   Although she could have used some of the money, she adamantly said she did not need it.   When asked how much of the lottery winnings she would give away, she simply said, “All of it.”⁴  [So if you do win the lottery be sure to see me right away!]

The challenge for Christians is not how much money we have but we do with it.   It tells us where our hearts are.  John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement said, “Earn all you can, save all you can and give all you can.”

I do not intend to diminish the real stress and pain of those going through economic hard times right now.   And…metaphorically each and every one of us here has won the lottery.   That you and I get to live in the United States of America and enjoy the privileges and prosperity of this community makes us all wealthy beyond measure.

            Jesus would have us become “rich in the things of God”.  We do that by investing in those places which transform lives, share joy and inspiration.   The only eternal value money has is how we spend it to foster love in this world.  Certainly we have got to take care of our families and meet our obligations.  But Jesus warns us that even if we win the lottery, we don’t get to take it with us.

Amen.

1          USA Today 2/12/04, CBSNews 12/27/02

2          Eileen W. Linden, ed., Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2012, National Council of Churches, NY

3          CNN Money, February 11, 2015

4          Douglas Lawson, More Give to Live, ALTI Publishing, 2001, pp. 59-60.

5          Gallup, December 16, 2013

“Essential Beliefs”

Romans 5:1-10

June 5, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel 

            An essential belief can transform a life.  A principal, an ideal can make all the difference.

            “On June 7^th, 1944, when Lt. Horace Henderson of the Sixth Engineer Special Brigade landed on Omaha Beach as part of the D-Day invasion, he writes, ‘I noticed that nothing moved on the beach except one bulldozer.  The beach was covered with debris, sunken craft and wrecked vehicles.  We saw many bodies in the water…we jumped into chest high water and waded ashore.  Then we saw that the beach was literally covered with the bodies of American soldiers wearing the blue and gray patches of the 29^th Infantry Division.’

            His job was to distribute maps but because the front line was just over the bluff at Omaha, only men, ammunition, weapons and gasoline were being brought ashore, so he had no maps to hand out.  He and his section unloaded jerry cans of gasoline, the first of millions of such cans that would cross that beach.

            Sometime that afternoon, Henderson recalled, ‘Before the bodies could be removed, the first religious service was held on Omaha Beach.  We prayed for those who had been lost and thanked the Lord for our survival.  I promised God that I would do all in my power to help prevent such a terrible event ever happening again.’

            Lt. Henderson went on to become a director general of the World Peace through Law Center and was appointed by President Eisenhower as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations”  (Steven E. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, Torchstone, 1997, pp. 27-28).

            Sometimes an essential belief can change the world.

            In Eric Erikson’s book, Young Man Luther (reissue edition, Norton, 1993) the noted psychiatrist suggests that our biblical lesson this morning from the fifth chapter of Romans helped begin the Protestant Reformation. 

            As a young Roman Catholic priest, Martin Luther encountered the radical grace of God in this text.  

            He grew up in 15^th century Germany under the Holy Roman Empire where Holy Communion was served only to the wealthy and powerful.  It was a time when the scriptures were read only in Latin and solely by the priests.   Rome offered forgiveness for the sins of those who could make donations to the building of the Vatican.

Paul’s words in verse eight rocked Luther to the core; “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us”.   The blessings of God’s love were not the reward of correct dogma, righteous living or proper worship.  Salvation doesn’t come into the world because of anything we do.  It isn’t offered on the basis of social status or wealth.   It comes as the free gift of a God whose nature is so completely love that God offers that gift to all.

It is simply there for us to receive.

As a result, Luther would translate the Latin Vulgate bible into vernacular German so the common people could read the scriptures for themselves.   He would write hymns to the tunes of popular drinking songs of his people.   He would publicly protest the hypocrisy of his church and be tried for his teachings.  Although never wanting to start his own church, he would begin a movement of “protestors” or “Protestants” that would spawn a myriad of new Christian institutions.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in 18^th century England, had one of the turning point moments in his life when his “heart was strangely warmed” at the Aldersgate chapel in London while listening to a reading of Luther’s commentary on this same fifth chapter of Romans (Albert C. Outler, John Wesley, Oxford University Press, 1964, p.66).

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

The salvation offered us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus isn’t the property of any one church.   I often joke that when we die and go to heaven and are met at the pearly gates by St. Peter, he isn’t going to ask if we are Methodists, Presbyterians or Episcopalians.    Salvation isn’t given to those who are baptized in the “right” way, or who “believe” the right ideas, or who go to church every Sunday, give 10% of their money to charity or become missionaries in dangerous places.

It isn’t what we do that makes God love us so; including the religion we practice. 

If Jesus teaches us anything by word and deed it is that God is so completely love that God can do nothing less.   

That is our essential belief.

Curtis Rogers knows that essential belief.  It is how he came to know the truth of Paul’s words that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint…”   At the age of 36 the divorced father had to decide whether to move back to Florida or stay in Santa Clara County, California so he could be close to his daughter.   Staying would mean he would be out on the streets instead of living with his family in Miami.

He decided to stay in San Jose even though he couldn’t afford to live there.  “The stereotype of black fathers is making babies and not taking care of them.  I didn’t want to fall into that category.”   After wearing out the welcome with some friends he wound up sleeping in a bunk bed at a San Jose homeless shelter.

When he heard that the Valley Transportation Authority was training bus drivers he jumped at the chance.   His classmates in training never knew he was homeless because he showed up at the VTA every day in a white shirt and tie.  

Through the Community Service Agency he got help to get into a small apartment in Sunnyvale.  Today Curtis Rogers earns $23 an hour driving a bus and has a thriving business on the side as a disc jockey at parties and weddings.   

His ex-wife says of Curtis, “He’s a very good father, it’s never ‘no’ or ‘I don’t have the time’.”   His daughter Jaleesa, wrote him this Father’s Day card a few years ago, “Thanks for being there for me for the last 15 years.  You taught me many things, but the most important thing you taught me was how to love.   Except for my mom…I’ll never love anyone as much as you…” (San Jose Mercury News, June 19, 2003).

God is like the parent who would rather be homeless than give up on his child.

God is like the soldier who in the face of war would dedicate his life to give peace a chance.

 It isn’t what we do that makes God love us.   All God is asking is that we receive that love and live by it.  

As we take Holy Communion this morning will you join me in rededicating ourselves to this essential belief?

Amen.

What a Piece of Work is Man?

 Psalm 8

May 29, 2016

Memorial Day Observance

Mark S. Bollwinkel

 

In the back drop of the Nine Year War with Ireland and all of the intrigue surrounding the end of Elizabeth I’s reign at the end of the 16^th century, William Shakespeare writes a tragedy of epic proportions based on a fictional fallen hero named Hamlet, prince of Denmark.   Driven to insane revenge by the murder of his father the King by his uncle, who soon after weds Hamlet’s mother the Queen, Shakespeare’s play profoundly illustrates the madness of power and greed at all human levels; international, personal and deeply spiritual.   By the end of the play all the main characters are dead and the audience is left to ponder the meaning of life itself.

In Act II, Scene ii, two friends named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are charged with accompanying Hamlet to England with secret instructions to arrange for his death.  Pretending concern, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ask Hamlet how he is holding up with the death of his father and the taking of his throne and queen by his murderous uncle.   Shakespeare has Hamlet reply with bitter sarcasm and irony:

I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?  (Hamlet Act II, scene ii, pp. 287-298)

Can you hear the echo of our Hebrew scripture lesson today from Psalm 8 in Hamlet’s soliloquy?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
   mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
   and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
   you have put all things under their feet…  

 

            Both pieces of literature suggest that God is active and alive in human destiny; that the earth and creation itself is inspired and transcendent.   Yet the two voices could not be more different.   One rejoices at the prospect.  One grieves the consequences of people who refuse to live up to such holy calling.   One is written in the comfort of abstraction by theologians.  The other is written by one who had more than his share of suffering and disappointment in the human condition.

            In the first chapter of the book of Genesis it is suggested we human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, that we are the children of God (1:27).  In the very next chapters with Adam, Eve, Able and Cain we children of God lie, betray and murder.

            “What a piece of work is man!”?   We may be crowned with glory and honor or all that we strive and hope for can be left as nothing more than dust.  And the choice is always ours.

            No where is the dilemma more profound than when it comes to war.

Christians have long debated the morality of war.   Some of the faithful have argued for a pacifist stance, refuting any justification for violence, citing Jesus’ many teachings on the subject.   Some of the faithful, citing the Old Testament in particular, will insist that God sends the good out to war against the evil using any violent means necessary to guarantee victory for the righteous.

Over the centuries still others have crafted a “just war theory”.  It suggests that to stand by and do nothing while evil ones plot and carry out violence on the innocent means that the good are in complicity with that evil.   Violence in measured response, strictly in self-defense, is justified then by the good as a last resort to stop greater violence.

Those “faithful warriors” who put on a police or military uniform and are daily willing to lay down their lives for others are living by that ethic (John 15:12-13, Romans 5:7).  They deserve our greatest respect.   We citizens should only ask that heir valor be spent when there is no other alternative.

While accepting the Nobel Prize for peace, President Jimmy Carter said, “War may be a necessary evil, but it is always an evil” (December 10, 2002).   Throughout history war rarely solves anything and in most cases makes things much worse.   Yet there come times when good people have no other option but to fight.   It is the legacy of those men and women who were willing to sacrifice everything to defeat totalitarian fascism in Europe and Asia during World War II that insured the peace and prosperity we now enjoy.     

On one of the walls of the World War II Memorial in Washington DC are quotes from this poem by Archibald MacLeish:

The young dead solders do not speak.
Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses.
(Who has not heard them?)   They say,
We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say,
We have done what we could
But until it is finished it is not done.
They say,
We have given our lives
But until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say,
Our deaths are not ours,
They are yours,
They will mean what you make them.
They say,
Whether our lives, and our deaths were for peace and a new hope
Or for nothing
We cannot say.
It is you who must say this.
They say,
We leave you our deaths,
Give them their meaning.

                        (The Human Season, selected poems 1926-1972, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1972.)

            What meaning have we given our fallen heroes?  If we best honor the legacy of their sacrifices by what we do with this world they have left for us, how have we memorialized them?   

It is fitting and good that we erect stone memorials, wave flags and march in parades, of course.   But our lasting tribute to the fallen is how we live and the future we build for their, and our, children.

In January 1945 at the end of what is called the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest bordering Germany:

 “Maj. Roy Creek of the 507^th Army Rangers, one of the heroes of D-Day, met two aid men carrying a severely wounded paratrooper back to an aid station.  Creek took his hand to give him encouragement.  The trooper asked, “Major, did I do OK?”   To which he replied, “You did fine, son.”  But as they carried him away, Creek noticed for the first time that one of his legs was missing.  “I dropped the first tear for him as they disappeared in the trees.   Through the fifty years since, I still continue to fight the tears when I’ve thought of him and so many others like him.  Those are the true heroes of the war.  I hope and pray that we never fight another one.””  (Steven Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, Touchstone, 1997, p. 390)

   Since World War II have we built a monument of the justice, economic development, cultural tolerance and investment in education in the world that would ensure the peace for which Maj. Creek prayed?

Memorial Day Weekend always reminds me of my dad.  Growing up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana we would attend a BBQ hosted by one of his friends who lived on the parade route.  We’d listen to the Indianapolis 500 auto race on the radio, eat hot dogs and hamburgers.  We’d wave at the parade participants.  My father and his buddies would salute the flag whenever it passed, all being veterans of the Second World War.  

Just last week my mother shared with us a letter of commendation to my father’s Army unit for valor in the battle of Iwo Jima.  She had saved it in a long lost file.  We never knew of his two bronze stars until his military record was read during the internment ceremony for his remains at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon. 

I am proud to be the son of Cal Bollwinkel who lived his life with honor and humility.

 

...what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

   mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

   and crowned them with glory and honor.

Today we remember and thank God for the brave men and women who sacrificed so much in the cause of war.   Whether their wars were just or the contrivance of politicians, those in uniform honored the best intentions in the human condition.  They fought, and some are still fighting, for a world of peace and a better future for their children.

Isn’t up to us who live on to work for that peace and future promise?

Amen.

Connecting the Head and the Heart

Matthew 28:16-20

May 22, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

Traditionally the Sunday following Pentecost is known as “Trinity” Sunday, an annual attempt to teach the doctrine of the Trinity to the Church.  We all remember the Trinity, right, the notion of “God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

We sing about it in one of our favorite hymns, No. 64, “Holy, Holy, Holy”; (verse 4) “Holy, holy, holy!  Merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity”.  We sing it in our Doxology following the Offertory.  That’s the song we sing in praise of God after we collect our financial gifts to the church, hymn number 95,  “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise God all creatures here below; praise God above the heavenly hosts; praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost”.  If you grew up in a Roman Catholic family you learned to end each and every prayer with the same phrase while genuflecting.

If you grew up in a traditional Protestant church as a kid you probably recited the Apostle’s Creed each Sunday, (No. 881):

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead and buried, On the third day he rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, The holy catholic church, The communion of saints, The forgiveness of sins, The resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting.  Amen.

The Trinity is one of the central doctrines of the Church but we don’t find the word “trinity” anywhere in the Bible.  We find the combination of the words “God”, “Jesus” and “Holy Spirit” only 7 times in the entire New Testament (Acts 2:33, I Cor 12:4-6, II Cor 13:13, Eph 4:4-6, I Pet 1:2, Rev 1:4-5a) and only once as the phrase, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  Which is in our text from Matthew this Sunday.

The Trinity as a notion of God having “one substance and three persons”…Father, Son and Holy Spirit…came from an early church leader by the name of Tertullian (160-220AD).  He was a lawyer from Carthage and a convert to Christianity.  He was the first theologian to write in Latin.  He was the first to come up with the idea of three separate and distinct natures of the one God.

The idea goes like this:

God is the Creator, Source, and the Eternal Transcendent One.  God is above and beyond human comprehension.  This God is universal to all human cultures and time, especially known to Israel as the God who acts to save, love and forgive.  In the awe of nature, the silence of prayer and the presence of another we encounter the God that is “over” us.

God is Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this loving God of Creation.   Jesus was fully human and fully divine, the culmination of God’s saving acts.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead not only offered his disciples the same promise of eternal life, but ushered in the Reign of God on earth.  Jesus is the incarnation of God in human form, one born like us, who would laugh and eat and cry like us, and who would die like us.  Jesus is God “with us”.

God is the Holy Spirit, unleashed because of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit is the divine spark in us all that makes us alive, makes us human.  The Holy Spirit binds each individual into the fellowship of the church empowering the individual and the church to service and loving kindness in this world.  The Holy Spirit is that “friend” and “comforter” (John 14:15-31) that shapes us, moves us and carries us through the hard times.  The Holy Spirit is God “in us”.

God over us.  God with us.  God in us.  That is the Trinity.

Just like an egg.  One egg, three substances.  Shell.  White.  Yoke.  One egg in three persons, blessed trinity!

Even after learning it by repetition, as a child its meaning could be quite confusing:

After a hardy rainstorm filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in the puddle through her kitchen window. The older of the two, a five year old lad, grabbed his sibling by the back of his head and shoved his face into the water hole.

As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother runs to the yard in a panic.

"Why on earth did you do that to your little brother?!" she says as she shook the older boy in anger. "We were just playing 'church' mommy," he said "And I was just baptizing him…in the name of the Father, the Son and in...the hole-he-goes." (attributed to many sources)

This understanding of God was new to the Western world which up until that time had worshipped many and different gods.

Personal monotheism was a radical notion.  It suggested that an individual could actually have a relationship with the One God, Creator of the universe; a relationship based on love.  It was an idea that turned the world upside down. 

It is too bad that the notion has become so common in our lives that it is something that we recite without much thought.  We may have lost just how important an idea it was.

For the writer of the gospel of Matthew it was much more than an idea.  It was the power and commission for the disciples of Jesus to change the world.  For the apostle Paul it was much more than a doctrine.  It was a lifestyle.  To the difficult and struggling church in Corinth he reminds them, in effect, “You’re not just anybody, you are the people of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!  Now live like it!” (II Cor 13:13).

How ironic these past two weeks that the theme of the United Methodist General Conference was based on our scripture reading from Matthew this morning; “Therefore, Go!”   You may have noticed in the press that the Conference was torn by dissension and controversy with both conservative and progressive camps in the church threatening schism.   They were inviting each other to “Therefore, Go!” in an entirely different meaning than the original intention!  [Not to worry, for all of our heat and bother the UMC is not going to split anytime soon!]

What do we do with the reality of the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit?  How does Church of the Wayfarer live out its commission to “go out into all the world …in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in England, was born and raised in a devout Christian family, was an ordained Anglican priest, an instructor of Church History at Oxford University and served as a missionary to the colony of Georgia.   It was not until he was 35 years old that he would describe “his heart strangely warmed” during a vesper service in London in a Chapel on Aldersgate Street (Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley, Oxford University Press, NY, 1964, pp. 14-15).

This happened just weeks after he returned to England discouraged and depressed from failure as a missionary.   He was seeking encouragement for his faith.   He sought out fellowship and counsel from a group of Moravian Brethren to whom he was introduced on the passage home.   That evening at the Aldersgate Chapel, May 24th 1738, 278 years ago on Tuesday, while Martin Luther’s commentary of the fifth chapter of Romans was being read, Wesley understood in his heart and not just his head, that God loved him for just who he was; “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…but God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us…” (5:6-8). These verses from the apostle Paul are the heart and soul of the Protestant Reformation.   We do not have right relationship with God because of anything we do, believe, say or practice.   God loves us before all that.  God’s nature is so completely love that God offers us that grace before we deserve it, in spite of our failures, simply because God is love.

After a life of academic learning and organized piety, that night Wesley got the good news in his heart and it transformed his life and set him on the course to change the world.

He didn’t call the moment a “conversion” experience; although an important spiritual experience in his life, it was one of many  (Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, Abingdon, 1995, pp. 80-82).   Months later he would begin the open air preaching and small group organization that would become the Methodist revival which changed England and contributed to the Protestant Reformation.  

Wesley once defined a true Methodist as “one who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart”; we are to simply and profoundly love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind and love one’s neighbor as oneself (Heitzenrater, p. 107).  

When the heart and the head are connected it is a powerful force in a human life indeed.

In the gospel writer John, we hear Jesus teach, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing”  (John 15:4-5).

He is describing that holistic connection between God, Jesus and those who follow his teachings and example.  Spirituality can be empty narcissism if it isn’t connected to the way one lives their life.  Pious behavior however noble and righteous can be dead if it does not come from the source that transcends ego.  

Our mission statement at Church of the Wayfarer is ‘Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out”.  It echoes Wesley’s call for the unity of personal spirituality and social responsibility.   If we follow the teaching and example of Jesus one can’t divorce the one from the other.  We can’t just love God or just love neighbor.   “Jesus spirituality” completely combines both as essential (I John 4).  In the words of the gospel writer John, we bear little fruit from our behavior if we are not connected…if we do not abide…with God’s spirit.

For Wesley, for all of his academic and pious credentials, it was in the Aldersgate experience that finally made that very connection.

When the heart and head are connected, it is a powerful force in a human life indeed.

Anne Lamott, the well-known humorist and committed Christian, has struggled with addiction and domestic abuse throughout her life.  She has no hesitancy to share that her faith in the living God has made all the difference in her life:

“I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”  (Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Riverhead Books, 2006)

Matthew reports Jesus’ instructions to his followers shortly before he returns to heaven.  Our mission is still the same today to go and invite all into a relationship with the triune God…Parent, Child and Spirit.

We come here each week.  Something must compel us to be here, the music or the message or the fellowship of like-minded people.  Yet how many of us will invite a friend to come and experience what we find valuable enough to spend our Sunday mornings doing?

We have not come here to merely cope with the world and the difficulties of life, as important as that is.

We have not come here to maintain an institution.

We are here to change the world and ourselves.

Each week we sing and pray about “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  We don’t recite these words merely because they are tradition.  We do so because our job upon leaving this beautiful room is to spread the word about the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t do that by knocking on doors or preaching on the street corner.  We make disciples by being ones.  It’s our commitment to live out our lives as disciples that attracts people to the faith.

That means that if we want our church to grow…more members and volunteers and ministries…if we want our church to grow it is up to us to live out the love that Jesus taught us in word and deed.  And we can only do that when we connect our heads and hearts in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.