Of Giants

Good Morning!  You know, I’ll just come out and say it this morning, I love All Saints Sunday.  I’ll even say it again, I LOVE All Saints Sunday.  It is a celebration of incredible meaning and significance! But people tell me, “Keven, aren’t you Lutheran?  Aren’t the saints more of a Roman Catholic thing?”  In response to the abuses of his time, our own Martin Luther did say that the living needed far more tending than the dead, but even Luther believed the departed saints were to be seen as a gift. 

                “We honor departed saints,' he says,"…so that we might be encouraged and grounded in the Doctrine of Faith.  It is the same Doctrine which the saints also taught and by which they lived.  Thank God for His favor in giving them to us.”

                All saints day is an amazing day, it is the one day a year that we acknowledge we belong to a very special community, one that transcends life and death.  The one day where we speak openly of the powerful spiritual bond that exists within us, through us, and between us.  So enormous, so penetrating, so incredible is this bond that neither death nor our own human sin can break it.  But All Saints Day is more than this, too.  All Saints day is also about another gospel, the gospel of the Holy Spirit.  It is a day we can look back and see the amazing things God has done throughout human history.  With All Saints Day, we recognize that God is not some far away clockmaker, the unmoved mover who merely set everything in motion.  With All Saints Day, we see that God is present and active amongst his children, the most moved mover, who works constantly through and beyond time to bring redemption to His world.

                Of whom then shall we speak?  This list spans millennia, authored by the third person of the Trinity Himself, whose work in human hearts produced heroes that outnumber the stars in the sky.   Shall we speak of giants?  Shall we speak of men like Augustine of Hippo who with naught but pen and paper shaped the Western World? 

“Our heart is restless, (O God), until it finds rest in you” he writes, and to those in this age of Science who will listen he says “that miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.” And that “Faith is to believe in things you do not see, and the reward of faith is to see what you believe.”

Perhaps instead we should speak of the Eastern Fathers, like St. John the golden-tongued, and a more tireless advocate for the poor you will not find.  “No matter how just your words may be, you ruin them when you speak in anger” St John says, and “if you cannot find Christ in the beggar at your door, you will not find him in your church.”

Perhaps we should speak of American giants, giants like Roger Williams who proclaimed that godly religion cannot be forced religion, that belief only occurs when a person freely chooses it.  Or giants like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Giants like Dorothy Day, Francis Willard, Billies Sunday and Graham.

Or should we talk of Lutheran Giants?  Should we talk of Martin Luther, who defied not only the Pope but his Church for the sake of Christ and the good news?  Should we talk of Phillip Spener and August Francke, Pietists who in a world that would talk endlessly about angels and head of pins pointed us all back to the spiritual needs of the people.  Should we speak of unsung heroes like Phillip Melancthon, the great systematizer of Lutheran Theology, or perhaps we should speak of Lutheran war-heroes like King Gustavus of Sweden, whose actions brought about the end of the thirty years war and ensured Protestantism’s survival to the present day.

But perhaps, this will not be so useful to you.  Perhaps, try as you might, you feel a disconnect between these people and you.  You may say to me, “Yes, Keven, I know that Christians everywhere and everywhen share a bond beyond understanding.  I know that despite what the world tells us about the church, as broken as we are, we’ve done things that moved and shaped the world for the better.  Because of people like these we have advances in medicine that cure the sick, because of people like these we can produce food on a scale unimagineable to the ancient world.  Because of people like these, cruel punishments have been outlawed, slavery for the first time in the history of the human race is called what it ought - kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, and though it may be small the voiceless are being given a voice in ways that were not there before.  I know that these men and women stood against the tide and in the end it was the tide that fled.  But, Keven, I am nothing like them.  What do I have in common with greats like these?

Ladies and Gentlemen they have a word for that sentiment, it’s the same stuff they make at Oscar Mayer.  It’s called Baloney.  These men and women are no different from you in any way, save in only one thing.   Let us look closely at our gospel lesson if you wish to know what it is, what is we are missing is there, imbued throughout the text itself.  Our gospel lesson has been called Luke’s version of the sermon on the mount.  Let’s read it again and see if you can catch it.

“Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.  Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.  Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Did you catch it?  Do you see what you’re missing?  Do you see the one thing that gave every single saint their power? 

It’s hope.

Hope!  Hope in a God that is both good and powerful, hope that whatever things look like now, no matter how bad they are, hope that the Light of God can and will drive back that darkness, that circumstances can and will change.  The poor, the hungry, the despised, Jesus says, these are the blessed of this life, because look what God will do for and through them.   Do you struggle financially to even keep food on the table, that is great news!  For it means you are compassionate and not greedy, it means that you share with others whatever you are given.  Most blessed are you!  For it is to you that kingdom of God belongs.  Are you hungry now?  Do your needs outweigh your ability to meet them?  Blessed are you, for God sees you and will not keep you that way.  Are you despised?  Do people hate you because of your skin, your family, your faith?  Blessed are you!  For you have joined the halls of heroes, for that is what the forces of evil did to anyone that God ever sent.

But you who are wealthy, do you earn far more than you need?  Do you enjoy luxuries while your brothers and sisters starve?  Do you feast, tending to your own needs while others go without?  I warn you that you have received your compensation, Jesus says, and it is far less than what they will get.  Yes for those who fill their stomachs now, enjoy it while you may, for the Lord sees that you do this at the expense of others.  Do not seek after wealth or fame, because in doing so you join with every villain that has ever been doomed to destruction.  But there is hope for you too, because unlike the poor, the hungry, and the despised you have a choice.  You don’t have to be this way, you can choose to be generous and compassionate, and know that God will see you.

And so Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to do good to those who despise us, not because those actions are without cost, but because the power and hope of God far outweigh them.  The chance to win a brother back to God is worth far more than a shirt, stolen goods, or a second strike on the cheek.  Love fills the world with good people, it creates the environment we all long to live in.  But we don’t do it, because in the end we have no hope.  We hoard, we despise, we lash out in hate because we don’t believe there is any hope for something better.

Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, do you think Martin Luther posted his 95 theses because he thought they’d have no effect?  Do you think Dietrich Bonhoeffer started an underground seminary in Nazi Germany because he thought it would be pointless?  Did Julian of Norwhich proclaim the Motherhood of God because she thought no one would believe her?  Did Athanasius of Alexandria, a short black man from Africa, pound his pulpit, persuading people of the rightness of the Trinity from exile, because he thought all there was left to do was give up?

NO!  Ladies and gentlemen, if you feel at all disconnected from this community, if you look upon these greats in the Christian faith and see no way you can be like these giants it is only because you have not hope enough to look in the mirror and see your own stature.  I speak of giants today in the Christian church because within this community there exists nothing else.  If you do not feel like a giant, it is only because the cares of this world have you hunched.  You are a child of God, and your worth and ability far exceed your circumstances.  As C.S. Lewis so poignantly put, there are no mere mortals, so quit believing that you are one.

You were made to do incredible things!  You are part of a community that has shaken the very foundations of the world .  As broken as we are, by the grace of God we are the monsters lurking under the devil’s bed.  So one-sided has God made this battle that hating us, starving us, robbing us and beating us does not work.  The only tactic left for the forces of evil is to convince us, tempt us out of our belief that this world can be better and that we can make it that way.  Do not give into them!  This community is ours by birthright!  Do not let anyone or anything convince you otherwise.  Your participation in this eternal gathering of heroes makes you a giant, so stand tall and let the world quake at your every step.

Amen.

A Matter of Heart...

          What is this?  Is this Church?  Why isn’t everybody in pews?  Where’s the organ, the chancil, and the altar?  What about the sanctuary and all those other hard to remember terms they don’t teach in seminary?  And what about those funny guys in the long dresses?  How can this be worship?  How can this be Church?

                Well, sometimes things are not always what they seem, and just because it isn’t what we are used to, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as true.  But mistaking something for its trappings, getting fooled by the outside and not looking within is something we as humans will always struggle with.  We don’t like change, we don’t like it when differences crop up into our lives.  Between bills, work, family, and all the drama that gets put into that mix we like things to stay the same, we like things the way we are used to, the way we can handle them.  Humanity’s been like that since Adam and the fall, and it was no different for people living in Jesus’ time as it is today.

                Most people don’t really appreciate how different Jesus’ ministry was, how so very radical  compared to what was going on at the time.  I want you to imagine yourselves as Israelites living in Palestine, as 1^st century Jews living within walking distance of the Holy City. The temple and the synagogue are the biggest contact points of your faith, the places where you fully embraced your identity as Jews.  The synagogue was where you learned about your ancestral religion: Your learned what to eat, what to wear, and what to do.  The temple, however, was where you most publicly proclaimed your identity and where you performed the most important rites as an Israelite.  Here the Day of Atonement was performed, here the sacrifices and the various offerings were made to absolve all Israel of her sins.  Here was where you were supposed to meet God.

                But not all of your fellow Jews are happy with things the way they are, indeed the strife with your countrymen is almost equal to the strife you feel with your Roman conquerors.  In the first century there are four major divisions of the Jewish faith that you must contend with, all quite different from one another.  There were the Sadducees, the ruling class of Israel.  Surprisingly secular believers, they do not believe in angels or spirits nor do they really believe in an afterlife.  They pick and choose from their Bible, taking the verses they like and conveniently excluding what they don’t.  Only the first five books of Moses were Scripture to them, you see.  Cutting out ¾ of your book means cutting ¾ of your responsibility and where life would be at odds with the Prophets, the Prophets could simply be discarded.  Still, while deeply flawed by power and compromised by convenience, it must be noted that these are the only Jews among your people who are not racist, that do not believe Gentiles are bad simply because they are gentiles and by extension they do not believe Jews are good only because they are Jewish.

In addition to the Sadducees, however, there are the Pharisees and they are not so far from our evangelical movement.  They are a Scripture driven movement, a missionary movement, and a grass roots association interested in keeping the Scriptures central in the daily lives of their fellow Israelites.  No one person leads it, no organization heads it, rather it is rallied by its charismatic preachers who often decried their government and were quick to advocate war against foreign powers.  Their adherence to the whole of Scripture often makes them legalistic, obeying the bare words on the page but caring little for the spirit in which those words were given, but at the same time you will be hard pressed to find a Jew more openly living their faith or more interested in relieving the suffering of their people than this group.  

After the Pharisees are the Essenes, Puritans and End Time Believers.  They believe most of the country has fallen into horrible sin, so they do not mix with the common Israelite, seeing them as too tainted, too unclean for Holy Living.  They have removed themselves from society and live in the desert far away from the false government and the false religion that have taken on God’s name.  When God comes to judge their nation, it is their intention to be “Left Behind”, looking forward to the destruction of the temple and the coming of a great teacher.

There are also the Zealots, a group of Jews who feel that the only response to an unclean and gentile ridden government is its violent overthrow.  They were inspired by the Maccabees, the Jewish generals who threw off gentile oppression and foreign entanglements by the sword.  These are your constitution party members, the liberty lovers and the militiamen seeking to return their society to its perceived origins.  They are believers in their weapons and are fervent in their opposition to their government, but they are also the Jews most willing to give their lives in defense of their friends.

But finally, there are the people like you and me.  People who are somewhere in the middle, perhaps seeing one side or another but in all honesty just trying to eek out an existence that both gives credence to your people and shows faithfulness to your God.  You know the Temple isn’t perfect, you know the flaws of your leaders, and you know the dangers of losing your way of life, but it’s also all you’ve got to work with.  And so you work, you live, and you wait.  You endure the times and raise a family, doing your best with what you have…that is until someone comes along and shows you a better way.

And that someone comes…a man, a lowly carpenter’s son, rumored to be of illegitimate birth.  He is a rabbi, but he is not like the other rabbis.  He has no education, no formal training.  He didn’t apprentice himself to another teacher like the others did, he simply took up the mantle one day and, shockingly, people listened.  But people did more than listen, they followed.  They followed by the thousands.  And when this rabbi took disciples, he didn’t take the cream of the religious crop.  He didn’t go to the Scriptoriums, the religious schools for their best students, he took everybody.  He took fishermen, tax collectors, Zealots!  He even taught women!  And what did this man teach?  He taught that the root of all evil was neither Sadducee nor gentile, but the love of money and power and any Jew was quite susceptible.  He taught that gentiles were not an enemy of the religion or the state and they were indeed capable of great faith.  He taught the Temple was about to be judged and replaced with nothing, that the new holy community could be comprised with just two people without any buildings or sacrifices for sins.  He taught that there are no unclean foods and that working on the Sabbath is not necessarily against the law if those works are for good.  He taught that the Scriptures are Holy and Good, but they need filling to be complete.  But more than any of that, in a land of schisms and disagreements, in a land more and more given to violence this rabbi taught that Peace was the answer, that love for neighbor was the solution, that simple faith in God even unto death was the way.

                Now, all of you may be wondering, what in the name of the Holy of Holies does this have to with our gospel text?  Well, I’ll tell you.  As a Jew or even a Gentile in the first century the question arises, indeed begs to be asked how then is this Jesus still a Jew?  How can this sect of Christians still consider themselves part of Judaism when they will eat any food, have no use for temple or sacrifice, are willing to include gentiles into the people of God, and understand their Hebrew Scriptures as now secondary to the message of the gospel?  Yes, this Jesus might be important, indeed he might be the most important man who ever lived, but how can Christianity be thought of as having Jewish roots?

                And the answer is that appearances can be deceiving.  What looks one way can in fact be another and THAT is a theme that Luke deeply addresses in his gospel.  Luke begins his tale as a Gentile would.  Important people, people of divine importance, are often heralded before-hand.  So important is this Jesus, however, that even Jesus’ herald John is heralded beforehand.  Yes, this all occurred as a gentile would think fit, but these heralds are not gentile, they are Jewish.  Jesus and John are born to Jewish parents.  John’s father is a Jewish priest and Jesus’ parents have him circumcised and presented at the Temple according to Jewish law.  The inherent Jewishness of the Jesus story is hammered home time and time again and the relevance of the Jewish scriptures and their filled-full-ment in Jesus is not some outlying afterthought or a tangential footnote, but is central to the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people.  Indeed, where the story seems least Jewish, it in fact shows quite the opposite.  Joseph and Mary are recorded in Luke as obeying the Roman census.  Most jews rebelled at every census, but Joseph and Mary did not.  Their scriptures told them to obey the gentile king, to pray for them and indeed intercede for them while under their rule.  The Prophets proclaimed this, and Mordecai in Ruth lived this, even to the point of seeking royal permission to defend themselves against Haman and their enemies.  Joseph and Mary were not less Jewish for obeying Caesar; they were in fact more Jewish than all the rest of their countrymen.  And so it is for this part of the story, Jesus having just proclaimed the faith of a centurion now goes into Nain and raises a widow’s son, just like Elijah the Jewish Prophet did so many centuries before.  But unlike Elijah, who raised a gentile widow’s son, Jesus goes to the Jews and returns a Jewish widow’s only son back to her.  God has indeed returned to bless his people.  They were not left out.

                So yes, things changed.  The trappings of the past, the trap-things, the outside appearances that ensnared, yes they were discarded but the heart was no less true to its heritage.  God is not an exclusive God.  Claiming the Gentiles did not mean dismissing the Jews, and the blessings of the future in fact did not include the cursing of the past.  Both were upheld and one did not happen at the expense of the other.  So it is with us.  So often we look at the future and we see great cataclysmic change.  We look at our society and our children. We say “look how different it’s all going to be”…except it’s not.  2000 years from now we will still be silly, ridiculous humans in need of Jesus, but I will not lie to you, my friends, things will look different.  We will have a different president, we will live in a different world.  Our children will grow, they will not be exactly like us and our church will look very different in the years to come.  It’s only looks.  God is the God of the old and the new, and he gives the same heart to them both if we ask Him.  So yes, things will change, just not really.  And we can take heart in that.               

The Last Barrier

What is the point of Pentecost?  What is the use of this day we call the birthday of the church?  Are we celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit into our midst, the dawning of a new age of humankind, or are we merely re-enacting a story, a play that is no longer relevant, whose only characters have become long devoid of any meaning?  Are the secularists right?  Are we merely the perpetuators of myths, peddlers of superstition and an age-old decrepit sort of order?  Are we what they say we are? Are we the pitiful inhibitors of progress they claim; con-artists so pathetic that we have actually bought into our own con, sellers of the invisible to a people too scared and too uneducated not to buy?  Is today a myth?  Is the only difference between Pentecost and Pandora, of the Holy Spirit and Heracles, that people have evolved out of the one and not the other?       

A tale of whispy fire and the miraculous speaking of other languages, of blessings bestowed by breath, and Advocate that only exists for those who believe he does?  If someone asks us as Christians, when we speak of Pentecost, which one do we speak of?  Is it the one in John or is it the one in Acts?  Two separate accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit, two very different stories of the coming of the third person of the Trinity, how can both be true? Who in their right mind would ever believe such tales? 

If we are honest we would admit these are all very good questions, and as strange as it sounds I wish more Christians would ask them.  I won’t lie to you, ladies and gentlemen, I have studied the history of the Church, and I see something of a disconnect between the followers of Jesus now and the followers then.  The followers then spoke boldly and with power.  They spoke against the social injustices of their time, sought reform, and went to their deaths gladly.  They took babies off of garbage heaps and found them homes, we trick scared mothers into fake Crisis Pregnancy Centers.  They fought for the treatment of criminals, removing cruel punishments; we take away their right to vote and have governors go on record to say they do not mourn for a second that they have executed an innocent man.  They brought a message into the wilderness of the world, taking a vibrant gospel to a people who did not speak their tongue or even remotely knew their ways.  We won’t even go across the street to get to know our neighbors.

And so I looked at these things, I looked at the church then and the church now and I asked myself, “What happened?”  How did things get to be this way?  What happened that turned a group of people so empowered into a people so lifeless?  Ladies and gentlemen, most people forget I did not go to  seminary first and then to law school.  I was not some naïve schoolboy loyal to the Christian story because my family would disdain me if I didn’t. I didn’t go to seminary first and then law school, I went to seminary as a fully trained attorney.  I knew garbage when I heard it, and if you think you’ve got it tough try being a theology professor under cross-examination by one of your students.  Ladies and gentlemen, I know evidence, I know reason, I know how to reconstruct an event that happened in the past, and I know how arguments are made.  These stories are NOT garbage.  They are NOT myth.  Just because someone gives an account of the fantastic does not mean it is fantasy.

I don’t say these things because I believe blindly in the stories handed down to me, I was a questioning believer.  I took nothing at face value.  I read, I studied, I learned.  When I read these pages I put them to the fire because as a believer in God I knew that was what He wanted me to do.  He wanted me to see if these words were true, He wanted me to taste and see that He was good.  He did that because He wanted me to have a relationship with Him not a human religion.  I was not supposed to believe human institutions but doubt Him.  So I tested the Scriptures, I attacked them as vehemently as any lawyer would, because as a man of conscience THAT’S MY JOB.  I cannot take this message into the world if in fact I am not convinced of its truth.  I am not going to spread lies that get people hurt, and I am not going to risk a single ounce of my time and resources over something I am not 100% positive that it actually happened, and neither should you.  And what was the end result of all that testing, you may ask?  Well, I’m here aren’t I?

Ladies and gentlemen, our so-called scholars do a-lot to detract against our Bible.  They’ll go to all sorts of lengths to say our Bible is not what it says it is.  They say Moses did not write its first five books, but they won’t tell you how many ancient Egyptian Words are in those Hebrew books.  They won’t tell you that the author of those books not only clearly spoke Hebrew and Egyptian, was clearly very literate, knew the landscape of ancient Egypt very well, so well in fact that modern archeology has had to catch up to him, was extremely familiar with Pharaoh’s court and was well versed in ancient military tactics.  Clearly not the markings of a prince of Egypt.  What is more, they fail to answer the question what would be the point of even writing such books.  They say the Exodus is a myth, that the Israelites were merely an uneducated band of loosely aligned raiders roaming through Palestine.  What they fail to explain is why then these books even be written.  If I came down to you today and said America wasn’t actually a series of colonies that fought for its independence but that we were all slaves of the Canadians thousands of years ago forced to build their monuments but freed by a God you’d never heard of before, you might think it was interesting but you wouldn’t believe it.  If you wouldn’t believe it, why would they?  I’ve been around lawyers, my friends, and the first rule is if you are going to lie you have to make it believable.  What is the point of telling your audience a story of how you were rescued from slavery miraculously unless your audience already knew it was true?  Who else would ever receive such an idea?

And that’s just our Old Testament!  Imagine what they do to the New?  Jesus never existed and his divinity was manufactured in the 4^th century at the council of Nicaea.  Well first of all, which is it?  Conspirators generally don’t manufacture divine status to people who never existed.  Second of all, these are all extremely interesting conclusions to make of works that by all accounts were penned in the first century.  Ladies and gentlemen, Nero caught Christians and used them to light his palace grounds. After Nero comes Domitian.  Since just taking us up and killing us wouldn’t suffice anymore he denounces us as atheists and kills us then.  After Domitian came Trajan, and despite all this persecution in less than a century a governor in northern Turkey complains about how these Christians are turning up everywhere: the city, the countryside, everywhere.  He captures our women, tortures them, and discovers we don’t do anything terrible but that we worship Jesus as Divine and the see the emperor as human.  After Trajan came Marcus Aurelius, who after learning that killing us outright wasn’t working decided to just torture us to the point of death or imprison us and let us die of exposure.  And they weren’t just attacking the laity anymore, the targets became ever more nuanced.  They went after our bishops, our scholars, our learned men and women.  Their great minds like Celsus, unable to argue effectively against Christianity, unable to denounce Jesus’ miracles as false, unable to decry the empty tomb, their greatest mind could only say Jesus was a fatherless criminal who healed the sick, drove out spirits, and raised people from the dead by witchcraft.  I guess if you can’t win a debate through argument, the only thing left is to kill the debaters.  And so all this and worse continued until Constantine and the Edict of Toleration occurred over half a century before any Church Council.  Ladies and gentlemen, does this happen for people that don’t exist?  In a world where you literally had a different religion for every foot of ground you could walk on, do you pick the one that gets you tortured and killed if you weren’t radically convinced of its truth?  It’s pointed out that people die for their religion all the time, except no they don’t.  The terrorists that attacked the world trade center on 9/11 didn’t die for Mohammed, I’d argue greatly they didn’t even know Mohammed.  They didn’t die for their religion, they died for their politics.  They died to effect political change, these Christians didn’t die for politics they endured politics until it killed them.  Christianity is the only social movement in history that defeated a superpower by losing.  Do people do that for a lie?

The fact is, the 9/11 terrorists didn’t know Mohammed, but our gospel writers knew Jesus, and in the end they didn’t call him Prophet or Rabbi, they called him God.  And while so-called scholars, what they really are media pundits with enough money to buy their Doctorate, they dismiss the gospels out of hand and they do so too readily.  Each gospel is argument, a challenge to the most basic precepts their audience has.  Mark addresses persecuted Christians afraid to talk about Jesus and he ends his gospel with a conundrum, with Jesus’ tomb empty and women too afraid to speak about what they’ve seen.  Matthew’s gospel is a message to fellow Palestinian Jews about how Pagans acted more righteously than they, Luke’s gospel is written literally to a hostile witness, he is writing his gospel and acts so that Theophilus will believe what he has been told.  Theophilus is not a believer yet, and the fact is you don’t spend years upon years researching and writing books in the ancient world to convince someone of an easily disprovable lie.  And then there is John.  John’s gospel is literally an insult to his audience’s intelligence.  It is back handed slap that says that an itinerate uneducated homeless rabbi from hillbilly Judea knows better than all of Greek education and philosophy combined.  It enrages, it taunts, no it demands you investigate what they have to say and see for yourself whether or not it’s true.  Ladies and gentlemen, as a man with his law degree you don’t make these plays unless you know you can win.  These arguments grab the audience by the ear and MAKE them look at the Jesus story, they insist you do not take them at face value and order you to spend every ounce of your energy trying to refute them so that when you fail you’ll finally get it.  After every argument is spent, after every dart you’ve thrown at them bounces off, only then does doubt evaporate.  Only then does the fantastic reality of a God who loves you, who loves you enough to become human and die for you, only then does it sink in that it’s real.  All of it. 

The problem with the Church today, my friends, is not that our stories are false, the problem is we let people make us too afraid to question whether they are false.  We let fear overcome us, fear of how people will treat us if we question, fear of what the answers to those questions might be.  That fear crippled us, made us unwilling and unsure.  It made us falter in our dedication to the point where we had to be guilted into even doing a half measure.  It made us think one hour a week was enough, but that one hour a week for many turned into one every two, then one a month, then just Christmas and Easter.  We traded a transformed people and a transformed worth for a few magic words and a belief in fire insurance.  As your pastor I will remind you it doesn’t work that way.  The man who buried his talent in fact does not get rewarded for doing so. 

Ladies and gentlemen, last year I pointed out that you were innocent.  You remain so.  After everything that happened, after everything that this congregation went through it chose to remain faithful to its character as it always has done, but a year ago I said Innocence would not be enough.  Our foe is too wily and too cunning for innocence alone, and I challenged you to be wise as well as innocent, and you have been.  You’ve been unorthodox, you’ve broken boundaries, taken calculated risks, and today we’ve beaten the odds.  We are still here are we are more fruitful for Christ than we ever have been.  This year, however, this Pentecost it is time to be something more.  You have been innocent, you have been wise, but now I challenge you to be Empowered.  Accept the Holy Spirit into your lives and follow His direction.  Strap on his sword and put on the full armor of God.  What is Pentecost ladies and gentlemen?  Pentecost is God’s sucker punch.  After Yeshua’s victory in the resurrection the forces of evil, hate, and human misery were left in disarray; too distracted, too dizzy, too focused on keeping away from Christ in the boxing ring to notice that God gave us the gloves.  The time to strike is now, the time bring comfort for the grieving, relief to the wounded of body and spirit, the time call out the unjust for all the hurt they cause IS NOW.  The Greedy, the power-mad, the hate-mongers, and the pilferers of human suffering are out there and they have no idea the Holy Hell they’ve called down on themselves.  Let’s get out there and do it.