What's your pearl?

Here is a true story that I read a few years ago. An aging woman decided to move into the city to a retirement home. She had a big sale to downsize. One thing she did was slap a "for sale" sign on her late husband’s pride and joy – a 1963 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing that he had bought in 1972. She remembered that he had told her the Mercedes was collector’s item worth one hundred thousand dollars not long before he had died fifteen years ago, so that’s what she priced it. 

One shopper saw the for-sale sign in the car’s window, and he immediately wrote her a check for twenty-five hundred dollars to hold the car for him for the day. Then he went to the bank and opened a home-equity line of credit. On the way there he called his broker and cashed in mutual funds. Then he maxed out his Visa card on a cash advance. He wound up with a certified check for $100,000 and drove back to buy the car. He knew what the widow did not: in the years since her husband died the car had increased in value to $250,000.

That man was willing to take risks to obtain something of tremendous value. I knew a man in Nashville who told me a long time ago that he was offered the opportunity to become one of the original investors in the franchise license for all Davidson County for Wendy’s restaurants. He turned it down because he did not want to be diverted from the business he had already built up. Later, of course, he wished he had invested.

Would you pay a hundred thousand dollars for an ordinary orange? Eleven millionaires drowned when the Titanic sank in 1912. One who survived was Arthur Peuchen, who left $300,000 in a lockbox in his cabin. "The money seemed to mock me at that time," he said later. "I picked up three oranges instead." A hundred thousand bucks each.

What is of ultimate value to us, so much so that we would sacrifice almost anything else to obtain it? Jesus spoke about that Matthew 13.44-45:

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

In the ancient world a large, flawless pearl would have been something like the Hope diamond of its day. Ancient literature tells of single pearls worth millions of dollars in modern value. When this merchant found such a pearl, he cleaned out his stock and sold his personal possessions to buy it. The merchant apparently did not come out ahead financially; he just changed assets at even value. There is no hint that he sold the pearl later. For all we know, he simply kept it.

But this story is not really about an actual pearl, is it? What Jesus seems to be trying to communicate is the importance of knowing first, what is of ultimate value and second, what will it take to obtain it.

Contrast this parable with the story of a young man, also told in Matthew, who asked Jesus what he needed to do to gain eternal life. After a short conversation, Jesus tells him, "Sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me." But the man said no. Matthew says he went away sorrowful because he had “many possessions.” Jesus offered him ultimate value but the young man declined because, he thought, the price was too high.

Today is interactive sermon day. I would ask that everyone take a moment, turn to your neighbor and talk briefly about what this parable means for you. Pause

Matthew 13 is a series of parables, one right after another. Parables are narrative stories that set up a situation at the beginning, show a kind of “twist” in the middle, and end with a punchline. This parable does that, too, although not very obviously. In fact, I think that all of Matthew 13 from start to finish is one long parable about the kingdom of heaven and what it takes to be in it with the punch line in verses forty-nine and fifty, which tell of severe judgment at the end of the age. It’s quite grim.

So, for anyone who understands the parable of the pearl to mean, “The pearl is the gospel, and we should be willing to surrender everything for the sake of the kingdom,” I shall not disagree. But I also remember what our bishop, Bill McAlilly, likes to say about his son’s soccer coach, who would always ask his players after a goal was scored, whether by his team or the other: “So what? Now what?”

So, say the parable of the merchant is about doing whatever it takes to be in the kingdom of heaven. That’s fine. So what? Now what?

That is the hard part for me because it forces me to ask, “What is my pearl right now?” Because you see, everybody has a pearl. What’s mine? What’s yours?

What is it that I treasure more than anything else – so much that, like the merchant once he gets the pearl, I am not willing to part with it, ever? That’s my pearl. Everyone here has a pearl, also. So, take a moment now and think about the answer to this question: What is your pearl? What is more important to you than everything else? What is it that would make you give up almost anything else to keep? If you are inclined, turn to your neighbor and talk it over.

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When I served a church is west Nashville, I did some volunteer ministry at Lighthouse Ministries, a live-in center for men suffering from addiction issues or homelessness. I remember counseling a young man who just would not follow the rules of living there. He said in one session with the director and me that he really wanted to go home to visit his mother over Christmas but of course he had no money even to take a bus to Jackson, Tennessee, where she lived. The director said that funding could be provided, but it was not simply free. He had to follow the rules and go through the process of making his life better. He said that was too hard and there were too many things out of his control. I asked him, “You can make your bed tomorrow morning, right?” He nodded. “Well,” I said, “that’s in your control and it is one of the rules here. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Do the things you can control.”

His pearl was to spend Christmas with his mother. It was a good goal. I remember a discussion about this parable by Vanderbilt Professor Amy-Jill Levine. She said that after class one day where they talked about this parable, a young female student came to her and said, I know what my pearl was. I did give up everything for it – all my money, all my possessions, I even ended my marriage for it. It was alcohol. I was willing to give up everything I had to get the next drink.

When I ask myself what my pearl is, I also cannot avoid asking, Is that what my pearl should be? Is my pearl a good one?

Professor Levine also talked about leading a Bible study at River Bend Prison and discussing this parable, where an inmate told her that his pearl was freedom, to be released from prison. Another said that his pearl was simply staying alive while he was in prison.

Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning not long after he was liberated from a Nazi concentration camp near the end of World War Two. The Library of Congress lists this book as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. Frankl lost his entire family in the camps – his wife and children did not survive.

But Frankl wrote about all the things the Nazis, with all their evil designs, could not take away. He wrote of people who entered the gas chambers praying the Lord’s Prayer or the ancient prayer of the Jews, the Shema Israel. He told of starving prisoners who went through the huts giving their meager bread ration to others near death. Such acts convinced Frankl that a person’s ability to choose one’s attitude, to control one’s inner life, no matter the circumstances, was the single human freedom that no earthly power could ever destroy. So even the worst that this world can throw at us cannot take everything. Frankl did not talk about parables, but he did find his pearl, to be in control of his inner life. And that was how he found freedom in the camps, even surrounded by death at every hour.

What’s your pearl? Should it be?

The error I have made so far in talking about this parable is individualizing it, as if Jesus was talking to and provoking thought in individual persons. Yes, there is a lesson for each of us in this parable and my lesson and yours won’t necessarily be the same. But there is a lesson for us together also, with the same focusing question: What is the pearl of our church? What is the centering and central focus of our life together as the body of Christ? Is that focus what should be our focus?

So, I would ask each of us right now to answer this question: What is it that we do, that if we stopped doing it, would lead us to think we had surrendered a central, vital element of being a church belonging to Jesus Christ? Please discuss with your neighbor.

Here is a second question: Is there anything that we are not doing that, by its omission, is already surrendering central, vital element of being a church belonging to Jesus Christ?

And here is the third and final question, not for discussion but for answering for oneself: Does it matter – does it really, truly matter enough for all of us together – as a church – to do whatever must be done to take hold of that pearl?

These are hazardous questions. If we are honest with ourselves individually or with ourselves as a congregation, we would have to admit that, as W. Edwards Deming pointed out, the main purpose of human organizations is to maintain the status quo.

The first time I thought about this for myself, I came to understand that my pearl was just that: preserving the status quo. I understand that the prospect of change can be disturbing. At the outset it can seem like entering a dark room blindfolded. Yet as Sam Cooke sang in 1964, “A Change Is Gonna Come” whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not, whether we are prepared for it or not. And there are only three ways to deal with change:

1.     Make things happen,

2.     Watch things happen, or

3.     Wonder what in the world just happened.

Over time, I came to realize that no matter how wonderful the status quo feels, it is not possible to maintain it. The only place the status quo is maintained is a cemetery. As Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead” and, “God is the God of the living.” To be alive is to change.

So, discuss briefly with one another this question: In the coming months and years, what changes to our status quo are coming? And what would we like the changes to be? Here is a template I use:

First, rediscover and renew our calling from God as Christian ministers and lay people, as individual disciples and as connectional Methodist church people. Jesus told Peter he would make him fish for people. Do we remember when we got hooked by Jesus? Is it still fresh? Or did we get stuck in a rut, which is to say, did we devote our energies to preserving the status quo?

Second, are we intentionally making disciples or just accepting people into membership? We should discern together and put into place together an intentional path to discipleship. It cannot be enough any longer simply to accept people into membership and leave them free lancing afterward. No longer can we say, “We have Sunday School classes and Bible studies and women’s groups and community ministries, and we hope that one of them is right for you.” Jesus did not give us the mission of making church members, but of making disciples.

Of course, we will have to figure out just what a disciple is, but I will leave that for another day.

Third, do we see all the people, including both the people of our fellowship, whether members or not, and the people of our larger community? William Temple observed, “The church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.” I think that’s a bit of an overstatement, since I think we would agree that police, fire and rescue departments and the US military also exist for the benefit of non-members. But Temple’s point is still sound: Jesus didn’t begin the Church in order to convey member-benefit packages to church people.

Now, we do benefit, and very richly. But not in ways awarded by other organizations. Jesus put it this way to his disciples just before he was arrested: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. So, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Fourth, how shall we preserve that of our church which is excellent and gives glory to God, of which there are many examples? It is true, that as Sebastian says in The Tempest, “What's past is prologue,” but it is also past. We cannot plan for the past, only for a church we will bequeath to our children and grandchildren.

Personally, I am optimistic! After all, Jesus said, "Do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For people who don’t know God wear themselves out themselves over such things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. So, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, then all those other things will be given to you as well."

Good words to live by and plan with. Thanks be to God!

Who knows? What we can learn from ancient Nineveh

 Jonah 3:1 10

1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."

3 Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city   a visit required three days. 4On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."

5 The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 

"9    Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."

10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

Jonah visited Nineveh during the glory days of the Assyrian empire. From about 885 to 625 BC, the Assyrians dominated the ancient world. As early as 841 BC, Jehu, King of Israel, was forced to pay tribute to the Assyrian ruler, Shalmaneser III. This kind of harassment continued for over a century. Then Assyria brutally conquered Israel in 722 BC.

God called Jonah to go to the heartland of his people’s worst enemy. It was a radical order which would have taxed the obedience of any prophet.

Once there, Jonah goes straight to work. He doesn't look for the local Holiday Inn to drop off his luggage. He doesn't buy a paper to check up on the local news. He doesn't request an audience with the king. He shows no interest in the power structure of the city. He just marches in and for three days he shouts to the Ninevites that their time is limited. Whatever the Assyrians may have thought about him, Jonah got their attention.

Jonah foretells gloom and doom, death and destruction. His voice is not one of woe, but of triumph. Nineveh, the capital of Jonah’s hated enemy, will be overthrown. This is a good deal! These pillaging, plundering and looting Assyrians are finally going to get what’s coming to them, and it’s about time, too!

Jonah is a man of judgment, certitude and certainty. In Jonah’s world there are actions and consequences. This is how things are. No wriggle room, that’s Jonah. How can we argue with that idea? It’s true, isn’t it? if you work hard, you get ahead. If you make good grades, you get into a good college. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Actions have consequences.

In fact, the promises God are often found in scripture phrased in “if-then” terms. In Deuteronomy we read, “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of earth. However, if you do not fully obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands, all these curses will come upon you.”

At the beginning of the story, Jonah learns that the wickedness of the Ninevites has come before God. Jonah pronounces doom for the Ninevites, but he never tells them why they deserve it. Presumably, the Ninevites understood why an Israelite and an Israelite’s God would condemn them. There is no word of grace in Jonah’s proclamation. Throughout scripture and in our own experience of knowing God, God’s grace is always pre-eminent. It is prevenient, to use the Wesleyan term. God’s grace always goes before his messengers and prepares the receivers of the message to hear it. As things turned out, Jonah’s imperfect prophecy didn’t prevent the Holy Spirit’s work. The Ninevites were convicted of their wickedness by Jonah’s warning. The whole city repented and was spared.

Despite Jonah’s imperfections, we need people like him. It’s far too easy to become morally, economically, culturally and religiously lazy, even wicked. Especially when things are going pretty good, as they were for the Ninevites then and are for most Americans right now. I am pro-prosperity. I see no inherent moral virtue in poverty. We have nice homes, good schools, good jobs, nice clothes and a high standard of living. These are good things. We have a good life. I don’t mean they are good in some sort of double talking, theologically wisecracking sort of way. I mean genuinely, truly good. But how easy it is to be seduced by the siren song of secular success and forget whence comes our wealth and good life. It’s all on loan from God.

One of the richest persons in the Bible realized this. When Job lost all his wealth, he honestly acknowledged, “I came naked from my mother’s womb, I will leave this world naked. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” The Bible is clear about who gives us what we have. Deuteronomy records God’s admonition to the Hebrews in chapter 8. I’m going to slightly—but only slightly—paraphrase it:

Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to keep his commands. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, when your companies grow large and your stock holdings increase and all your stock investments beat the S&P 500, your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God and you may say to yourself, “My power and knowledge have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is God who gives you the ability to produce wealth. If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and bow down to them and worship them, you will surely be destroyed.

We are the wealthiest nation ever to exist. Stupendously endowed with enormous natural resources, fresh water and fantastically productive soil, we have formulated an economic and political system unmatched in all history for material production and comfort. Are we blessed by God? You bet! Yet I fear that as a nation we say, “Our power and knowledge have produced this wealth for us.”

A few years ago survey by the Barna Group discovered that almost two-thirds of Americans agreed that the purpose of life was enjoyment and personal fulfillment and that each person’s responsibility is to oneself. Robert Wuthnow wrote in his book, God and Mammon in America, that Americans are, as a culture, spiritually adrift in making decisions in economics, career choice, workplace commitment, consumerism and charity. Those who described themselves as committed churchgoers often said they had their materialistic and workaholic tendencies reinforced by their religious beliefs and faith training. They live, they admitted, “pretty much the same as those who have no faith at all.”

In his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. lamented, “The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent, or often vocal, sanction of things as they are.”

It is sometimes a Christian’s responsibility to stride like Jonah into the hearts of our cities and the boardrooms of the powerful and proclaim, “You are forgetting the Lord your God and are following secular idols like consumerism, perverse entertainment and secular pride. You worship and bow down to them, but the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Jesus said judgment comes to those who store up things for themselves but are not rich toward God. Life is more than good food and the body, more than fine clothes.

The Ninevites believed what Jonah told them. From king to pauper, they repented and called upon God. They gave up their evil ways and violence. “Who knows?” they declared. “God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” When God saw they had turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not destroy them.

Now how can that be? God went to a lot of trouble to get Jonah to the Ninevites and now they are spared? Just because of a little sackcloth and ashes and fasting? What’s the deal? Actions, consequences, right? Not here! The dirty, rotten Assyrians beat the rap on a technicality. Jonah sulked and left town.

Well, not so fast. The Assyrians were never ones for small gestures. Their army’s effectiveness would have made William Tecumseh Sherman green with envy. Nineveh was the largest city in the world at the time, almost sixty miles around. Its walls were so thick that three chariots could be driven abreast on top. Fifteen hundred watchtowers were set along the wall, each tower two hundred feet high—oh, yes, the Assyrians made big plans and did things in a grand way.

So it’s no surprise they went for big-time repentance. Their repentance was no pro-forma, half-hearted, mealy-mouthed, “Dear-God-we’re-sorry-please-forgive-us” ritual. It was Super Bowl level, Nobel-prize caliber, Neiman-Marcus catalog, total quality repentance. No public opinion polling. No encounter groups or sensitivity sessions. No city council meetings or legislative deliberations. No Sunday School series or committee meetings. There was no temporizing or excuse making. There was only a collective shock of having been judged by the ultimately righteous God and their desire to turn away from sin.

I’m not sure we know how to do that kind of repentance today. Many of you may remember a best-selling book of the nineteen seventies called, I’m Okay, You’re Okay. I’ll bet the Ninevites said that to one another before Jonah showed up. It’s hardly a clarion call to repentance. We typically plead for God’s intervention in the mess we’re in now, as if God is a cosmic lifeguard who exists to bail us out of our self-made predicaments.

The Ninevites’ repentance was deep and profound—a genuine conviction of ignoring God and going their own way, doing their own thing. They urgently called upon God, giving up their sinful ways.

Jonah knew what kind of God he was representing. The forty days came and went. Nineveh was still standing. Jonah was so mad he wanted to die. He yelled at God, “I know this would happen! I knew you were a God of love, gracious and compassionate. That’s why I didn’t want to come here is the first place.” The Assyrians knew something about God, too. They knew something about God that it’s easy to forget. God responds to humble, genuinely contrite appeals for mercy. “Who knows?” they cried. “Perhaps God will relent and show compassion.”

The Ninevites took a chance on God. They bet on God’s mercy and love. We should not deride their faith.

Jesus told the story of the prodigal son who sank so low he slopped hogs for a living. The pig slop was better than his own meals. He set out for home, penniless, to ask his father to accept him as a servant. Who knows? Maybe his father will say yes.

A Roman centurion approached Jesus of Nazareth. The centurion’s beloved servant was desperately ill and near death. Who knows? The centurion thought. Maybe this Galilean rabbi really can heal my servant.

Do we have the faith even to ask, “Who knows?” It is true that the Ninevites had a deadline to meet to get right with God. Forty days is not a long time. But how much time do we need? We would be alarmed if we knew we would not live another month, but we are careless even though we don’t know we’ll live another day.

Who knows but that there are people sitting here who are not right with God and realize it? There’s no reason to wait any longer. No more time is needed. Christ’s grace has already brought you to this place, and not by accident. This is a church of the crucified and risen, living Christ, not a social club or civic organization. Our founder was a homeless Jew who was executed as a criminal insurrectionist and religious heretic. He was never on the social “A” list and he wouldn’t have been invited to the Swan Ball. Yet it is through this Christ Jesus that God accounts us as righteous. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Today is the day. Now is the time.

Who knows? Perhaps God really is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, just as Jonah knew and the Ninevites discovered.

Jesus's Catch and Release

 Luke 5.1-11

1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."

5 Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."

6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon.  Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."

11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

I've always wondered whether Peter knew Jesus, or at least knew about Jesus, before they met this day. If not, Peter seems terribly compliant for a total stranger. But anyone who drew large crowds would have had a well-known reputation, so even if Peter and Jesus had never met before, Peter had surely heard plenty of gossip and rumors and reports about Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus asked Peter a question then gave a command. First, he asked to use his boat as a speaker’s platform. Peter could have said no. But Jesus did not ask Peter to sail into deep water and deploy his nets. He ordered him.

But the command was also a promise. Jesus didn't tell Peter to sail to deep water, let down the nets and maybe you'll get a catch of fish. No, all of this is matter of fact to Jesus: Sail the boat, let down the nets, catch the fish.

Perhaps the certainty of Jesus' voice compelled Peter to comply. The first word he said was, "Master," so Peter willingly put himself under Jesus' authority. He told Jesus it wouldn’t work but he would try it anyway.

So Peter and crew sailed to deep water and let down their nets. Right away they caught so many fish that the nets began to break under the strain. Peter called the boat of his partner to come help. By the time it got there the fish were so many that they filled both boats to the point that the boat started sinking.

What was Peter going to do with all those fish?

That question was not actually on Peter's mind. He fell at Jesus' knees and told him, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" 

Peter would later be the first disciple to announce that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. The germ of that confession formed on a boat foundering from the weight of the fish Jesus caused to be caught. Yet there had been no dramatic command from Jesus' lips; he never stretched his hands over the sea and yelled, "Fish! Come forth!" Jesus simply gave three simple commands, all to Peter, not the fish: sail the boat, let down the nets, catch the fish.

Peter knew who Jesus was all right. And Peter knew who he was himself. He and Jesus were like water and oil to one another in the holiness department and Peter knew it. Jesus knew it, too, but Jesus knew something Peter didn't. Peter saw only his own sin. Jesus knew that inside every sinful person is righteous potential.

Invoking that potential was the trick. Suppose Jesus had gone aboard Peter's boat to preach his sermon to the people on the lakeshore, just as the passage relates, and then, instead of telling Peter to sail the boat, let down the nets and catch the fish, Jesus had merely said, "Come and follow me." Would Peter have gone with him? I think not.

What was different about the enormous catch that made Peter leave everything behind? It was not that Peter realized he was a sinful man; he already knew that, though after witnessing the fishing miracle he knew it more urgently than before. It's not that Peter suddenly knew Jesus to be a holy man worthy of obedience: Peter had already called Jesus, "Master."

I think what made Peter follow Christ after the catch when he almost certainly would never have followed him beforehand was that Jesus gave abundantly to Peter before Peter confessed his sinfulness.

"While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That proves his loves for us."

There is a story of Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York City during the Great Depression and all of World War II. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. 

A tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions – ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and said, "Here is the ten-dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a woman has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

The following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 – worth 973 dollars today - was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red‑faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

Do you think that the grandmother voted for LaGuardia next election?

It was Jesus' grace, undeserved and in fact unasked for, that overwhelmed Peter. So, Peter fell at Jesus' knees, protesting that he didn't deserve the abundance Christ offered. Jesus said don't worry, from now on you will be catching people for me. Jesus was a fisher, too, but he fished for sinners like Peter, like you and like me.

Here’s another fish story by novelist Frederick Forsyth called, “The Emperor.” It told of Roger Murgatroyd and his wife, Edna, who went to the former French colony of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean for a vacation one summer. Myrgatroyd, a bank branch manager, had never done anything particularly challenging in his life. He became intrigued at stories of an immense swordfish in the offshore waters. The Emperor, as the locals called the swordfish, had often been hooked but never caught, even after titanic battles lasting hours. Experienced deep-sea fishermen were certain that the swordfish was of world-record size: twelve hundred pounds and at least twenty feet long.

Myrgatroyd decides to give deep-sea fishing a try and as luck would have it, he hooks the Emperor about 9 a.m. By noon Myrgatroyd's lips are cracked from sun and spray. His arms are burning with exhaustion from fighting the great fish. Two hours later the charter owner, Kilian, pleads to relieve him at the line for awhile.

"Myrgatroyd opened his mouth to speak. A split in his lip cracked wide and a trickle of blood ran onto his chin. The cork grip of the pole was becoming slick with the blood from his palms.

"My fish," he croaked. "My fish."

More time passed, reeling in and out, keeping the line taut so the Emperor couldn't spit out the hook. "His vision was blurring ... And his body was one searing ache. Shafts of sharper pain ran through his right shoulder where he had torn a muscle. ...

"For another ninety minutes they fought it out. ... Myrgatroyd's exhaustion was moving close to delirium. Muscles in his calves and thighs flickered crazily like light bulbs before they fuse."

After eight hours, though, the Emperor had nothing left. He wore out only slightly before Myrgatroyd would have. Myrgatroyd reeled in the line until Kilian could seize the steel trace that held the hook. Then he slumped in his chair, spent. The boat's crew heaved the huge fish toward the deck, where Myrgatroyd suddenly realized, shocked, that a boy was about to plunge a gaff hook into the Emperor's head.

Myrgatroyd's "voice came out more a raucous croak than a shout. "No!"

"The boy froze and looked down. Myrgatroyd was on his hands and knees looking at the tackle box. On top lay a pair of wire cutters. He took them in the finger and thumb of his left hand and pressed them into the mashed meat of his right palm. With his free hand he hauled himself upright and leaned across the stern.

"The Emperor was lying just beneath him, exhausted almost to the point of death. ... From two feet away the fish stared back at Myrgatroyd. ... it was alive but had no strength left to fight. ...

"Deliberately, Myrgatroyd placed the jaws of the cutters on either side of the steel trace where it was spliced into the hook. He squeezed. Blood came out of his palm and ran into the salt water over the marlin's head. He squeezed again and the wire parted.

"The Emperor stared at Myrgatroyd as another wave washed over him. He shook his tired old head and pushed his spike into the water. The great crescent tail rose and fell and pushed the body forward and down. The tail was the last they saw of him, driving the marlin back beneath the waves."

Kilian turned the boat toward shore. When they docked a boat boy jumped off and ran to the village. Kilian secured the vessel, then helped Myrgatroyd walk onto the pier. "The hem of his shorts had fallen to below his knees and his shirt flapped open about him, dark with dried sweat. A number of villagers were lining the narrow jetty, so they had to walk in single file.

"The first person in line was Monsieur Patient. Myrgatroyd nodded to him and smiled. "Merci," he said.

The old man pulled his hat from head. "Salut, Maitre," he replied.

Myrgatroyd walked slowly up the jetty. Each of the villagers bobbed his head and said, "Salut, Maitre." They reached the end of the planking and stepped onto the gravel of the village street. There was a large crowd of villagers grouped there. "Salut, salut, salut, Maitre" they said quietly.

"What are they saying?" Myrgatroyd whispered to Kilian.

"They're greeting you," came the answer. "They're calling you a master fisherman."

"Because I caught the Emperor?"

The captain laughed softly. "No Englishman, because you gave him his life back."

Do you remember when you got hooked by Christ? And do you remember that he gave you your life back? He suffered immensely while you and I fought him, but we finally yielded. And then an amazing thing: he let us go because the grace of Christ gives us life – our true life, more abundant than ever. Jesus said, “If the Son of God makes you free, you will be free indeed.” And so we are.

That's what Peter suddenly knew one day when he sailed with the Master – that Jesus was a catch-and-release fisherman. And that's why he left everything and followed him.

What is the meaning of Christmas?

During the last week of September, Cathy and I were shopping in a Lowes where we saw that the store was already putting up Christmas displays. (Thankfully, as a society we have apparently have moved beyond calling them, “holiday displays.)

I don’t think I have ever seen Christmas displays go up so early. But as we all know, the Christmas season is the major revenue season for almost every business. With the economy as it is, I suppose that businesses want the shopping season the begin as early as possible.

Have you ever wanted to get a “jump” on Christmas? Do you remember being a child and thinking that Christmas Day would just never get here?

December 25 was identified as Jesus's birthday very early by a Carthaginian scholar named Tertullian. His reasons for that date carry no weight today, based as they were on Jewish legendary traditions that important martyrs died on the same day of the same month that they were conceived. Since the Gospel of John dated Jesus's crucifixion on March 25, ergo, his conception was the same day, hence his birth was nine months later on Dec. 25. This dating was, by the way, 75 tears before the Romans started celebrating Saturnalia or any other pagan holiday near the date. 

Even so, Christmas Day as we think of it was not much celebrated by the early church. Easter was (and remains) the foremost Christian holy day. And despite Tertullian's calculations, Jesus was almost certainly not born in December since shepherds would not have been in the fields with their flocks in that month. (The Eastern Church and the Coptics celebrate Christmas on different days than we do.)

The most important thing about Christmas is not when it is, but what it is and what it means.

Christmas means “Immanuel,” God With Us. This is a name ascribed to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. When we affirm our faith that the baby born in Bethlehem’s manger was God in the flesh, then we easily see why Jesus is truly God With Us. This is Good News, indeed!

And yet we should not rush too quickly, like the shepherds, to the manger. For while the Gospel is Good News, it is good only because of the bad news that preceded it.

Jesus came to deliver us from our bondage to sin and death. That’s Good News! But the bad news is that we needed saving to begin with. Unless we confront the gravity of the human condition into which we are born we do not grasp the life ring God casts to us in the person and work of Christ.

That is why, in the traditional Bible passages for the weeks leading to Christmas Day, getting ready for Christmas is not the point. The point of the season is to prepare for the coming of Christ, the Son of God, not to get ready for a religious holiday. The passages of Advent present the imminent presence of God in the flesh as both awful (that is, “awe-full,” not bad) and wonderful.

"For the glory of the Lord shall be revealed," promised the Scriptures, and the glory of God can hardly be beheld impassively. One either runs to embrace the Lord or runs from him. Neutrality is not even possible.
 
So the passages for Advent typically include reminders that, absent God’s gracing presence, we mortals are lost in our sins. We are reminded that, “Christ has come, Christ will come again.” And his next advent will not be so innocently or unthreateningly accomplished.

Yet Advent also shows that by being born the baby in the manger God was not going on the offensive against us. He joins us as our ally. In fact, God’s kingly, overwhelming power is found there literally to be defenseless, so much so that Joseph and Mary had to flee the town to save Jesus’ life.

Is there power in such weakness? No, not in weakness per se. Jesus’ Godly power, or our own, is found neither in human weakness nor in strength, but in faithfulness. It is God who is strong, not we mortals. Compared to God’s strength, human weakness is inevitable but it is also inconsequential. God knows this, so he did not shrink from being born of woman, just as we are, nor from enduring the travails of human life in all its triumphs and disappointments, its joys and frustrations.

And at the end, death on a cross. But death could not hold Jesus because God is stronger than death.

Manger scenes became a popular artistic motif during the Renaissance. In almost all such paintings, the artists included the cross somewhere in the scenery. Sometimes it was on the horizon outside the manger. One artist, Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), painted a cross on a shelf on the manger’s wall, such as many homes would have had (left, click image for larger view).

Let us take a cue from those theologically-trained artists. They knew the connection between the manger and Calvary. So did Jesus. As his last trip to Jerusalem loomed, knowing what it portended, Jesus told the disciples, “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour” (John 12:27).

What is the meaning of Christmas? The meaning of Christmas is the cross.

Pearl Harbor Horror and Grace-Filled Reconciliation

Four months after the Japanese navy wreaked massive destruction and loss of life by bombing Pearl Harbor, U.S. Army Lt. Col. James Doolittle led sixteen small bombers on the first bombing mission against Japan. The bombardier on the sixteenth plane was Jacob DeShazer. He released the plane's bombs on Nagoya and the plane flew on to China, where they were captured by the Japanese. They were tortured mercilessly. They contracted dysentery and beriberi because of the deplorable conditions under which they were confined. Three of the crew were executed in October.

The other five men suffered a starvation diet, their health rapidly deteriorating. One died. A year later the four survivors began to receive a slight improvement in their treatment. The Japanese gave them a single copy of the Bible, which DeShazer had never read. DeShazer waited six months to have his turn to read it. He read it cover to cover more than a dozen times. DeShazer credited his survival to accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ from that lone Bible.

In 1948, DeShazer was sent back to Japan to testify in war crimes trials of his captors. He stayed for thirty years, preaching the Gospel around Japan. He established a church in Nagoya, the city he had bombed. 

One man who learned of DeShazer’s witnessing was named Mitsuo Fuchida. Fuchida had converted to Christianity in 1949 and met DeShazer the next year. Fuchida became an evangelist, preaching in Japan and over much of the world. He lived a few years in the United States before retiring in Japan.

Do you recognize the name, Mitsuo Fuchida? On December 7, 1941, he had commanded the air armada that attacked Pearl Harbor. In 1952, after becoming an evangelist, he said in an interview, “Christianity has opened my eyes, and I hope through Christ to help young people of Japan” to learn to love their former enemy, America. Speaking in 1959 at Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, he said that after the war he had observed American missionaries in Tokyo feeding the starving and teaching the “ways of Christ.” Such forgiveness, he said, made him want to know more of the Christ “they professed to love.” One of his talks was called “From Pearl Harbor to Calvary – My Testimony.” 

Mitsuo Fuchida and Jacob DeShazer

Mitsuo Fuchida, who had bombed Pearl Harbor, died in 1976. The man who had bombed Nagoya, tortured POW Jacob DeShazer, conducted his funeral in Japan.

In October 1999, some American and Japanese veterans of the battle of Pearl Harbor went to Kyushu, where is the port from which the Japanese fleet had sailed to make the attack. The site is now a peace park. These men, once mortal enemies, gathered to plant cherry trees in honor of their reconciliation. Richard Fiske, who survived the sinking of USS West Virginia, said that as the trees grow, they hoped children would understand what the trees and the park represented, “because,” he said, “if we don’t tell our little ones, our future is none. We give ourselves to them. They carry the future.”

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we come before you as part of your global family, thankful for your generous love and abundant blessings. May we honor your holy name by living up to the inheritance of your salvation, as we bear the name of your son, Jesus Christ our savior, with passion for his work of reconciliation of all the world. 

May your vision of peace and justice be realized and enacted among nations finally at rest from war, among families at peace with each other, and hearts that find their rest in you. Lead us to that day when every tear is dried, every life is fulfilled and the law of love is written on our hearts.

We thank you, Lord, for the lives of all those whose sacrifices have made our freedom possible. We beg your grace for our country and your wisdom to guide each of our citizens. Let us not squander the freedom we have been given by those who died to preserve it. 

Remove from human beings the arrogance of power, our trust in anger, our reliance on weapons, and our love of violence. Chasten us with humility and strengthen our trust in you. Make us agents of your peace in all places. Amen.

Christ the King Sunday

John 18:33 37

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” 

34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, known as Christ the King Sunday. It is the final Sunday of the Christian year. Advent, the opening of the Christian year, begins next Sunday. 

Christ the King Sunday was celebrated for the first time in 1925, inaugurated by Pope Pius XI. World War I had ended only seven years before, a war brought on by demagoguery and allegiances to ideologies which killed and injured many millions. Pius watched as Mussolini’s Blackshirts marched past the Vatican. He knew about Hitler’s rising star in Germany. 

 Pius could read the writing on the wall. It was time, he thought, to forestall the coming future, to place something in the way of the coming tragedy which he saw taking shape. He believed it was essential to proclaim openly that the world had lost its sense of what leadership was and what it meant to rule. He wished to give people an alternative to fascism and Nazism and their false god of socialist ideology.

And so Pius originated a new festival day in the church, that of Christ the King. What would Pius say if he could observe events of the twenty-first century? 

It is one Sunday before Advent and I am writing about Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate, who sentenced him to death. We are about to begin the season of Advent to anticipate Jesus’ birth. Today’s passage seems out of place, more suited to Easter week in the Spring than in November.

Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday of the Christian year. It reminds us that the end of the story is that Christ’s reign is established forever: “And of his Kingdom there shall be no end,” says Luke’s Gospel. One week from now is New Years for the Church. 

If Christ is king, then there are two crucial questions: what kind of king is he? And over what kind of kingdom is Jesus sovereign? Jesus stands in front of Pilate, the personal representative of the most powerful ruler on earth, the Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar. Pilate has been told that this man Jesus is called the king of the Jews, a kingship that the Jewish hierarchy strenuously denies. Jesus has not refused the title of king, though. Not only that, but he talked and taught and preached about his Kingdom more than any other topic. Kingship seems to have been a title Jesus was comfortable with.

So Pilate asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 

Pilate wants to know whether Jesus’ kingship, whatever it was, represented a threat to Roman rule. The chief priests had told him it did. They had emphasized to Pilate the political implications of Jesus being acclaimed as the Messiah who would bring the Jewish people to freedom. They had accused Jesus of treason. Pilate wanted to know was whether Jesus was just a harmless religious dreamer, or a dangerous insurrectionist bent on leading a rebellion. 

Historians say that Pilate was not terribly competent as governor. But he ran a good intelligence operation, and he knew about the Jewish people’s hope for a messianic king. Jesus, bedraggled, beaten, and exhausted as he stood before Pilate, could not have seemed very threatening, but Pilate wanted to make sure. 

But Jesus won’t cooperate. Pilate asks, "Are you the king of the Jews?" and Jesus answers basically, "Is that your idea or are you just repeating rumors?" It is a response that challenges Pilate to make up his own mind. 

Jesus’ response to Pilate echoed what Jesus had asked the disciples on the road one day: “Who do the people say I am?” In other words, what are the rumors? Then point-blank to the disciples: "Who do you say I am?" 

Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” It is sadly not an answer that Pilate can give.

On the other hand, Jesus throwing the question back to Pilate might have been a good defense strategy. Pilate is both judge and jury. Jesus acknowledged there was a lot of hearsay about him and then forced Pilate to consider what he actually knows about Jesus. Pilate must make up his own mind.

That is the same challenge Christ the King Sunday makes us face. We have heard a lot of things about Jesus: he healed the sick, he told some parables. We’ve even heard he is the son of God. But are each of us convinced of that, or do we merely repeat what others have told us without thinking them really true? 

Americans are fairly anti-monarchical. We’re not quite sure what “king” might mean for us. We get our notions about it from Hollywood, mostly – a bunch of sycophants standing around some English monarch muttering, "Yes, m’lud." So we tend to dismiss the royal character of Jesus as ancient metaphor with no contemporary significance. But doing so downplays the cosmic authority Jesus has. There is a great deal more to Christ than human decency. He is much more than a friendly fellow who is reliable and kind, tells interesting stories and is nice to children. Human affairs and the destiny of the universe itself are in his hands.

Asking Pilate what he thinks about him was no academic question for Jesus. It was a matter of life and death for him. There were only two possible answers Pilate could give: either Jesus was a pretender to the throne who must he stopped, or he was truly a king requiring recognition.

So Jesus answers: What have you heard about me, and what do you say for yourself?

 The answer matters. In a way, we of the church are sitting in Pilate’s seat now. Each day the same question sits before us all. Each day we can desert our Christian calling. Or we can tame it and make it safe and comfortable. We can turn inward and make our churches social clubs for the saved or a fortress for the spiritually pure. We can make up our minds that Jesus is a convenient reason to get together to feel good about ourselves or to have a nice place for family activities.

Or we can make up our minds that Jesus is the son of living God, crucified and risen, who takes away the sin of the world and demands that to follow him we have to deny ourselves. And we could understand that to believe that fact obligates us to be the presence of Christ in the world now, to live as and lead others to become disciples of Jesus Christ. 

Each day we have to make up our minds. 

So there Jesus stands with Pilate. It is quite a contrast: Pilate, the representative of the most powerful empire the world had ever seen, confronted by a man with no armies, no palaces, no courts, but who claimed kingship, nonetheless. What kind of king, what kind of kingdom? Well, not one like Pilate knew, not of Pilate’s world. Pilate beheld a man said to be king, but who said his kingdom was not like those of the rest of the world. 

And so it is not. Jesus tells Pilate that if his kingdom were like Pilate’s, his subjects would be fighting Pilate’s soldiers even as they spoke. But they were not. The kingdom over which Christ is sovereign is a kingdom where the ordinary rules of power politics and the social order don’t apply. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is not a place, but a community of persons enveloped by God’s grace. It is a kingdom that transcends place and time, class, nation and worldly status.  

Pilate cannot even imagine such a kingdom. He doesn’t even ask Jesus to explain what he means. Finally he orders Jesus crucified. Pilate’s sentence is the logical end of the way of the world, using systems built on competition or conquest or power, intended to make subjects of people. But Jesus has no subjects because only kings of the fallen world have inferiors whom they can rule. Jesus called his disciples friends, not subjects. Jesus’s kingdom will not be brought about the way Pilate knows, by conquest and domination. Pilate’s only contribution will be ordering his soldiers to hammer nails through the hands and feet of the man Pilate rejects as king, ironically guaranteeing that Christ’s Kingdom will be established for eternity. 

Standing before Pilate, Jesus looks forward to a world ruled by love, perfectly expressed in the self sacrifice of his life. It is a love confirmed by God raising Jesus up from death. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus says. The kingdom of Christ is one-part heaven and one-part earthly. It is a kingdom that is within us and among us when we confess Christ as risen Lord. Yet it is not fully here, it is always in the process of becoming and fulfilling. It is a kingdom of people who know Christ as savior.

Jesus’ kingdom is populated by people empowered by the Holy Spirit to live together as God intended from the beginning. Its citizens are transformed by Christ’s resurrection into a community of faith, hope and love. We of Jesus’ kingdom reject the standards of this world that say that for every winner there must be a loser, for every gain there must be loss. 

Paul wrote that if life in Jesus is not anchored in eternity, then we are pitiful creatures. But Jesus’ kingdom isn’t only the sweet by and by. If Jesus’ kingdom is nowhere at all but some angelic realm, what good is that now? Jesus said he came to grant life more abundant – here, today, now. 

 That is the truth Jesus came to testify. We are born into world systems which just do not work the way God intended. We cannot always act the way God wants us to act. The only way out is to get a visa to a new place to live: the kingdom of God. You don’t have to move your home, just your soul. But be forewarned. The entry fee is high. You have to believe something clearly incredible: that, as the apostle Paul wrote, in Jesus dwelled God bodily, that Jesus really died and really was raised from the dead. Merely agreeing to a proposition won’t do. Jesus said that if we believe in him, we’ll act like it. We will do what Jesus would do if Jesus were here.

The church stands in front of the world. If it is to be true to its Lord, it must say, “Our way of living is not your way of living.” We act in contrast to the way the world works. We have no armies, no palaces, no courts of law, but we claim dominion over the world, nonetheless. We are a kingdom not of this world. 

In this kingdom, God comes into our lives to renew our redemptive purpose, heal our wounds, and sustain our place in our community of faith. He sends us to carry each other’s burdens, to meet one another’s difficulties, to rise above despair and anxiety. He calls us to himself, to seek his face in our hearts and the hearts of others. So we gather as citizens of Christ’s kingdom and pray for the Holy Spirit to touch us, to lift us up, and send us out of the church into the world where we live and work. There we will be part of Jesus’ ministry to the world which began so long ago, with only a choir of angels singing to shepherds far from town, and which Pilate thought could be ended by nails in a cross and a stone rolled over a rocky tomb.

But it did not end, for Christ is the risen King! 

A reflection on Veterans Day

 2 Samuel 23:13‑17:

13 During harvest time, three of the thirty chief men came down to David at the cave of Adullam, while a band of Philistines was encamped in the Valley of Rephaim. 14 At that time David was in the stronghold, and the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem. 15 David longed for water and said, "Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!" 

16 So the three mighty men broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD.

17  "Far be it from me, O LORD, to do this!" he said. "Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?" And David would not drink it. Such were the exploits of the three mighty men.

It is appropriate to honor the veterans of our country. I realize that this may seem a little self-serving since I am a veteran myself, but I hope you will trust me that this isn’t for me. As a Cold Warrior, my service was not especially demanding compared to the men and women who served in the hot wars of Vietnam, Korea, World War Two or the wars since 9/11. They are whom I have in mind.

To honor our veterans is not to glorify war. Certainly, no combat veteran would ever glorify war. After the Civil War, General William T. Sherman became disgusted at the rhetoric of glory being used to describe the war’s campaigns. In a graduation speech at the Michigan Military Academy in 1879, Sherman said, “War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell!” 

Despite war’s cruelty, there are many admirable features found among men and women in wartime. The battlefield is a place of many emotions. There is fear and anger. There is resignation and determination. There is hope and despair. The chief emotion at work on the battlefield is an unlikely one. It is love. In the desolation of the battlefield, love abides. Warriors love their country but don't talk about it much. Besides, when flies the angry iron, they fight for their buddies. A soldier who fought in Iraq wrote,

I've found the hard way that war is not glamorous. You quickly lose the idea of being a man fighting for his country when you have to carry your comrade who has been wounded in a gun fight. It's not about fighting for the flag, it's about fighting for my life and fighting for my buddies’ lives. These men I am lucky enough to serve with, I have become so attached to it's like they are my brothers.

A Marine major in Iraq wrote of a young corporal, a squad leader, who, during the invasion of Iraq was wounded by an enemy grenade. This Marine refused evacuation and continued to guide his squad until he passed out from loss of blood. 

Recovering at a hospital in Germany, he convinced his doctors to release him, “borrowed” a camouflage uniform from a Navy corpsman, called his wife and told her that he wasn’t coming home because his Marines were depending on him, and then talked his way onto an Air Force transport back to Iraq. He had the “golden ticket.” He was headed home as a war hero with medals to prove it, but he just couldn’t bear to let his Marines down, so he schemed and connived and got himself back into the fight. There are those who will call that kind of response foolish. Then may God grant that I be such a fool. You may question the wisdom of that Marine, but he’s the kind of man you want on your side when the chips are down.

For a couple of years after 9/11 I tried to go back onto active duty as a chaplain. But for arcane reasons I don't fully understand, it was literally against the law for me to re-enter the service as other than an artillery officer. When our forces moved into Iraq in March 2003, I actually felt ashamed I was not with them. I know that is unreasonable, and that other men and women superbly carried the torch I passed on to them. But I still think I should have been there. 

Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. It is a love known well by veterans. Many veterans still grieve for buddies long dead. I knew well a very elderly gentleman who was a stretcher bearer in World War II. He still has bad dreams of wounded men dying as he is carrying them to an aid station.

During seminary I read of a World War I veteran named Cadet Shirer. He was a medic assigned to a U.S. hospital caring for wounded soldiers in France. “One case I never forgot,” he said.

When me and the nurse passed him, he’d say, ‘Sister, can’t you help me?’ He was burnt, blinded in both eyes. . . . He’d had chlorine gas. The nurse said, ‘Take care of this man, he’s going to die.’ I worked with him and I worked with him. I think his suffering controlled my whole life. Later I picked up Stars and Stripes and learned he didn’t die. Was I happy! His name was Stanislaus Nagursky. Would you believe a man could take so much interest in another man that he’d remember a name like that for 79 years? I still see him in my sleep at times. I still see him in my sleep.

Mingled with grief for friends who died there is sometimes a feeling of guilt at being alive. The battlefield is not an equal-opportunity destroyer. It often seems entirely fickle. An artillery shell explodes overhead and all around you are struck down, but you suffer not even a scratch. You see a plane hit by antiaircraft fire and fold up in flames just ahead, but your plane escapes. James Jones, wounded at Guadalcanal and author of the classic World War Two novel, The Thin Red Line, wrote that the greatest psychological problem among combat troops was not the threat of death but the shock of remaining alive. Some veterans also carry with them the particular burden of having killed other human beings, which war permits but somehow does not justify.

Second Samuel relates that David was thirsty and homesick and didn’t watch his mouth. David said, "Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!" Three of his veteran campaigners overheard him and took great risks in enemy territory to bring back water from Bethlehem to David. But David poured it on the ground, refusing to drink it. "Far be it from me, O Lord, to do this!" he said. "Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?" And David would not drink it.

Americans are free because of the risks of mighty ones who brought them the cup of freedom at great risk. Do we drink from the cup without considering it was bought with the blood of many who gave or risked their lives for it? Far be it from us, O Lord, to do such a thing!

Probably every veteran has experienced a moment when the imponderable awfulness of what soldiers do makes them stop and give cry to the deepest-rooted hope for a better world, populated with better people. Soldiers pray for God to come near when the fog of battle closes in. They see only dimly that out of blood and death there can come a brotherly world. They are alert for signs that the kingdom of God could break in even among ruins and horror.

And the kingdom does break in, without regard to nation or cause. On the morning of June 6, 1944, Franz Mueller, a German soldier, and six of his comrades found themselves in the middle of a division of American paratroopers. They stumbled across two American soldiers attending to a third, who was dying from wounds. Franz spoke English and he told the Americans he was taking them prisoner. But the dying American couldn’t be moved so everyone sat down and waited for him to die. 

Shortly, the two American soldiers knelt beside their friend and began to pray the Lord’s Prayer. After a moment, Franz knelt and joined in. Another German soldier who spoke English joined in, too. The other five Germans didn’t speak English, but they recognized the rhythm of the prayer, so they prayed in German. For this small moment in the midst of war, God’s kingdom broke in: nine soldiers of two enemy armies, suspending their politics and nationality, praying together—four in English, five in German.

Ernest Gordon was a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp. He wrote of a train trip he and his fellows made while in the hands of the Japanese. At a stop in Burma, a train of Japanese wounded pulled alongside.

“They were in a shocking state,” Gordon related. “I have never seen men filthier. Uniforms were encrusted with blood, mud and excrement. Their wounds crawled with maggots. The wounded looked at us forlornly as they sat waiting for death. They had been discarded as expendable, the refuse of war. These were our enemy."

Without a word most of the officers in my section unbuckled their packs, took out part of their rations and a rag or two, and with their water canteens in their hands, went over to the Japanese train. Our guards tried to prevent us, but we ignored them and knelt down by the enemy to give water and food, to clean and bind their wounds. Grateful cries of "Arigato" (thank you) followed us when we left.

I regarded my comrades with wonder. Eighteen months ago they would have readily destroyed [the Japanese]. Now these same officers were dressing the enemy’s wounds.

We had experienced a moment of grace, there in the bloodstained railway cars. God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice and had given us the will to obey his command, "Thou shalt love."

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins against us. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). This is the hope and faith we have in Christ when faced with the mournful mutter of the battlefield: that in Christ we can be reconciled with each other and with all peoples.

We all have a personal vision of heaven. Here is mine. When the end of the age has come and Christ has put everything under his feet, the dead shall be raised. And all of us who have borne arms and weapons, whether American, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Panamanian, Afghan or Iraqi, we will all meet again. We will not meet in battle, but at the foot of the Prince of Peace. 

Cadet Shirer will find Stanislaus Nagursky and they will have a wonderful reunion. My father-in-law will embrace the men who died on his stretcher and will no longer have to grieve for them. The men who died in the next foxhole or airplane will greet us, smiling. 

And we will find the people whom we have shot or stabbed or clubbed or bombed. We will see them face to face and we will say, “In Christ’s name, forgive me!” And they will reply with elation, “In the name of Christ, you are forgiven!”

That day has not yet come. Let us pray it comes quickly. Until then may the Lord watch over those who are serving now, to make them instruments of justice, enablers of peace, and finally to see them safely home.