Bigger Than a Breadbox 4/28/2002

First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture: Job 38-42 (selected segments)

Recent letter writers to the New York Times are bemoaning the loss of the golden age of radio. If that be true, I don’t have the foggiest notion when that age was, let alone where it went. But I do remember a day before television when we sat in the living room and watched radio. If you don’t believe such a thing is possible, ask somebody who was there.

Among the shows I remember “watching” on the Philco was a game show entitled Twenty Questions, which featured a panel whose task it was to guess the name or nature of something by asking questions, no more than twenty. The only panelist’s name I recall is that of Lyle VanDeventer. I am certain, however, that by 12:05 this afternoon, I will have the entire panel, the emcee and the corporate sponsor, so gifted are you at coming up with such things.

There are only three “specifics” I remember about the show. First, the panel was very good. Second, the panelists were given one clue, namely that whatever was to be guessed could be classified as being animal, vegetable or mineral. Third, somewhere in the twenty questions a panelist was bound to ask: “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

The very question dates me. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a kitchen with a breadbox. In fact, let’s have a show of hands if you still have a breadbox in your kitchen. Yesterday afternoon, in an antique shop in Tequesta, Florida, Kris found an old breadbox and suggested I carry it home as a prop. The price tag said $28, which wasn’t daunting. But then I realized I’d have to haul it on the plane. So, thanks to Duane Young of the 8:15 crowd, I now have this breadbox in the pulpit as a visual reminder.

The “breadbox question” was the panel’s way of getting at the issue of size. So much so, that the phrase “bigger than a breadbox” came to represent something that was rather large. A “yes” answer to the breadbox question kept the panel (and the rest of us ) from thinking in terms too small. But it is time to leave radio trivia behind and confess a theological bias. I am finding that I am at a stage in my life where it is becoming increasingly important to view God as being “bigger than a breadbox.” Or, to put it another way, I am growing increasingly irritated with movements that strip God of grandeur and holiness, the better that God might be perceived in terms more accessible and intimate.

We are witnessing the domestication of God in our time. Which is not without appeal. For it is nice to have a God who is comfortably relational. And relationships come easier when the one being related to is of a similar size. Several years ago, Modern Screen Magazine ran a series entitled “How the Stars Found Faith.” It was there that the late JaneRussell announced: “I love God. And when you get to know Him as I know Him, you’ll find He’s a living doll.” Which doesn’t do much for me. But I’m sure it meant something to Jane.

While the intimacy of Jane’s relationship with the Almighty seems a bit too intimate and familiar, I vividly recall a hymn of similar closeness:

            My God and I walk through the fields together.

            We walk and talk and jest as good friends do.

            We clasp our hands, our voices fill with laughter.

            My God and I walk through the meadows hue.

Other verses continue the image:

            He tells me of the years that went before me,

            When heavenly plans were made for me to be….

And then, jumping from pre-birth to post-death:

            This earth will pass, and with it common trifles,

            But God and I will go unendingly.

As a boy, I sang that hymn as a solo. It spoke powerfully once. And there are moments when it speaks powerfully still. I like the idea that mine is a “companioned journey.” There is comfort in the notion that God might take my hand in his. But a “companionable God” does not speak to all of me. For that God is a bit too small….and a bit too near. In that sentiment, I may well be alone. But hear me out.

When I used to teach Stephen Ministers how to be Stephen Ministers, one of my teaching specialties was prayer. It was my task to teach people how to pray out loud….in the company of others. Which is hard for the average person to do, given that prayer is perceived as being both personal and private. But there are techniques associated with doing it publicly. The first is to find a comfortable form of prayerful address. How are you going to address God aloud? What noun are you going to use? And what adjectives are you going to use to modify the noun?  In those years, I gave Stephen Ministers lists of nouns and adjectives, encouraging them to circle the ones that felt most natural. Some circled adjectives like “loving” and nouns like “Lord.” Others circled adjectives like “gentle” and nouns like “Friend.” A goodly number, both male and female, expressed an affinity with the noun “Father.” As do I. Yet I modify “Father” with adjectives like “almighty” and “heavenly.” I find myself less able to pray when the terms of address are too intimate, or when they suggest that prayer is simply a quiet little chat with someone as near as my elbow. Meaning that, as a form of approach, “gentle Friend” doesn’t do it for me.

I am in good historical company. The Jews of ancient Israel were terribly concerned lest God became overly familiar. Their concern permeated their laws. Don’t build statues of God. Don’t make images of God. Don’t even refer to God by name. That concern also permeated their stories. Consider Moses. God met him in a burning bush. But Moses was immediately told to take off his shoes, lest there be any assumption (on anybody’s part) that Moses, in full dress, had any right to be standing there.

But out of that encounter, God forged a relationship with Moses that was haunting and compelling. There was little doubt in Moses’ mind that he must do what God asked, which was to rescue God’s people. God had heard their groanings all the way from Egypt. Therefore, Moses was being sent to command the liberating effort, as well as be God’s chief negotiator in the court of Pharaoh. But in order to answer Pharaoh when the Egyptian ruler asked, “Says who?” (as surely he would), Moses said to God: “You had better give me your name.” But God simply answered: “Just tell them I Am who I Am. Tell Pharaoh that the great I Am sent you.” All of which was God’s way of saying: “There is more to me than any name can encompass.”

On another occasion, when Moses got overly close to God’s presence, he was told to turn around, face the mountain and hide himself in the cleft of the rock until God passed by, given that “no man can see the face of God and live.”

Sure, these stories are ancient. But they aren’t there by accident. These stories exist because our ancestors in the faith knew there was a danger in allowing a too-cozy relationship with deity to develop. For everything we humans get our hands on, we want to massage, manipulate, manage and muscle into submission. So why would it be any different if we humans were to get our hands on God?

We have seen the wisdom of such counsel. It explains why we begin worship with expressions of God’s grandeur. Didn’t we open our service this morning by singing:

            O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

            Consider all the worlds thy hands have made.

            I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,

            Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

            Then sings my soul….WOW

            ….which was omitted from the text of the hymn, given that the lyricist decided to substitute the words “how great thou art.” But you get the idea.

There are, you see, good worshipful reasons for beginning thus. But I am not content to leave it there. I find myself needing to sing “How Great Thou Art” for a pair of personal reasons which, only now, are becoming clear to me. Kindly hear me out.

First, I need to sing of God’s grandeur as a way of clarifying whether my primary desire is that God serve me or lead me. I am 61 years old. This makes me at least middle aged. While far from the scrap heap of once-useful clergy, it has been a long time since anybody referred to me as “that bright young Turk of the church.” I have pretty much assessed my strengths, accommodated my weaknesses, and gotten comfortable with who I am. While I am sufficiently restless so as to never be completely settled, I do understand how easy it is for routines to become ruts, and for ruts to become caskets (albeit without ends or tops), and how tempting it is to cozy up to a God who will take care of me, companion me, fulfill me, forgive me, and allow my needs to set the agenda for our conversation, the better that I remain comfortable and secure.

But that is not the way I got here. I did not get here simply because God said “yes” to me, but because I also said “yes” to God. I did not get here simply by saying “Come into my life,” but rather “Take my life.” And I did not get here simply by making God welcome, but by submitting myself to obedience. For more than 60 years it has most often been “well with my soul” when I have been stretched in my skin. Comfortable as my surroundings are (and they are quite comfortable, thank you), this is still a barren land. And competent as I appear, I am very much a pilgrim. And so last Sunday’s hymn remains this Sunday’s prayer: “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim in this barren land.”

A pair of lay people were talking about their newly-appointed preacher. Said one: “There is no question he will love us as we have never been loved.” To which the other responded: “But when the time comes, will he be able to lead us where we have never been led?” At this stage of my life, I need God the Leader every bit as much as I need God the Lover. At 60 years of age, I am reasonably certain that I am loved. Truth be told, I haven’t spent ten minutes in the last ten years wondering whether God loved me. What is less certain is that I know, with clarity, where God would have me go.

Second, I sing a hymn of grandeur because I need to turn large chunks of my world over to a God I can trust with confidence. At 61 years old, I am at the top of my game. I am healthy. I am competent. I do not lack for education or experience. I know how to get people moved. I know how to get things done. I know how to affect change. But every day I realize that what I bring to the world’s need….what I bring to the church’s need…..what I bring to your need….is literally a drop in the bucket of what is necessary. It is a strange feeling to have reached a point in my life when both my sense of confidence and my sense of inadequacy are higher than they have ever been.

In a great book title, Philip Watson paraphrased Martin Luther by reminding us to Let Go and Let God. And, on more days than not, I find myself saying: “What choice is there?” Still, I need to believe that God is equal to all that I dump in God’s lap.

John F. Kennedy once said the thing that surprised him the most about the presidency, once he got there, was how little power he had to actually do anything. I read Kennedy’s statement 30 years ago. But I am only coming to understand it now. For, even at the height of my powers, I can’t do much of anything, either. To be sure, I can choose which side will receive the weight of my oar. But this boat we call “history” seems increasingly beyond my capacity to steer….or beyond anybody else’s capacity, either. Most days, it seems as if we have settled for steerage by committee (which may explain why we keep going in circles). So handing more and more of it over to God seems like the only reasonable alternative.

Woody Allen once quipped that God wasn’t dead but was merely an underachiever. Which, to some, was irreverent….to others, funny. But it’s a fear that many hold. Is God up to the challenge? Therefore, it is imperative that (in my search for God) I end up where Job does, face to face with a God who is bigger than I am….knows more than I know….and whose immensity and intellect I can somehow trust. In fact, it is probably more important (at this stage of my life) that I trust God, than that I love him.

A few years ago, I found myself in the copilot’s seat of a twin engine prop plane piloted by a man named Ralph. Ralph was flying six of us from the Livingston County Airport to the St. Clair Inn for dinner. It was one of those charity auction deals where Kris and I got to tag along with the winners. And, for reasons not entirely clear to me, Ralph suggested I sit up front.

Copilot is the best seat in the house. Or it was, until I realized I didn’t know the first thing about flying or landing that plane. I mean, what if Ralph suddenly grabbed his chest and pitched forward? What would we do? So I watched everything Ralph did….just in case. I asked some very pointed aeronautical questions….just in case. I even tried on Ralph’s headset so that I could sense a connection with the voices on the ground….just in case. But there was no way I could learn enough, fast enough. That plane had only one pilot. And it wasn’t me.

As it turned out, there was no cause for worry. Ralph was an experienced pilot with a good record. And a good heart. I even noted that when the waitress at the St. Clair Inn took the beverage order, Ralph said: “Make mine tomato juice.” I smiled, knowing that I was in the hands of a prudent and responsible man. I was also in the hands of a friend.

But whether Ralph was a friend or a stranger was largely irrelevant to my flying experience. Sitting in the copilot’s seat, I found it did not matter whether Ralph loved me, liked me, or merely tolerated my presence as one who came with the deal. What mattered was Ralph’s ability to fly the plane.

Another Ralph (an embalmer by trade) once gave me one of the nicest compliments I ever received. I had just finished speaking to his Lion’s Club which, in those days, met in the basement of a bar. As we were walking back to the car, Ralph said: “You know, I love to watch a craftsman at work. I don’t care whether it’s a meat cutter, a bricklayer, another embalmer, or someone who does what you just did. I can’t get enough of it.”

Which brings us back to Job. Filled with doubts….filled with complaints….filled with uncertainties….his head swimming with questions about God and God’s ways….his hands bloody and raw from beating on the gates of heaven, refusing to leave without an audience with holiness….what does Job get?

                        Answers? No.

                        Assurances? No.

                        Affection? Not really.

What Job gets, for all of his trouble, is the privilege of glimpsing a Craftsman at work. Somehow, I find myself wanting to believe that as Job listened and watched (longer than anybody has before or since), he finally tiptoed away, closing the gate quietly behind him….satisfied that even if he (Job) was still in the dark, at least God knew what God was doing.

Note: Prior to the sermon, I confessed to an imbalance in my usage of the Bible for preaching, given that the last time I built a sermon around an Old Testament text was in the month of January. I then talked about the Book of Job….what it was and what it wasn’t. I suggested that the first 37 chapters alternated between Job’s lament and Job’s complaint, relative to the disproportional amount of suffering that had befallen him. But I suggested that chapters 38-42….when Job is finally granted an audience with the Almighty…. did not so much record God’s answers as God’s questions. I then said it was not too far out of line to suggest that the sum of God’s interrogation could be gathered under the heading: “So What Do You Know About Running a Universe?” Following which I read selectively from God’s questions to Job and, more pointedly, from Job’s humble responses to God….where, in effect, Job confessed that he really didn’t know much about running a uni

Before Winter 9/8/2002

First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture: II Timothy 4:9-5, 19-21

As most of you know, we now have all of the formal approvals we need from the City of Birmingham to build our Christian Life Center, and it is our intention to break ground as part of our anniversary celebration on Sunday, September 29 at 12:30. Many of you even attended one or more city meetings which stretched over eleven months from beginning to end.

Strangely enough, it was the most mundane of those meetings that produced a moment of high drama. The date was Monday, August 12. The setting was the City Commission. Little appeared to be at stake, which is why we made no effort to drum up a crowd. A few of us appeared before the Commission, not to present anything, but to formally request a place on the next meeting’s agenda….the meeting scheduled for Monday, August 26. It all sounded routine, especially with our ducks in a row and eleven months of practice behind us.

Little did we know that the Commission was staring at a mountain of unfinished business and was seeking to delay anything and everything it could. Hence, they proposed that we have our final review, not on August 26, but one month later on September 23. After all, “this month, next month, what’s the difference?” Quickly, we had to explain the difference. One month’s delay would slow the permit process….itself, a six-week effort. No permits, no site work. No site work, no bulldozers and back hoes. No bulldozers and back hoes (before the ground freezes), no footings and no asphalt. Meaning nothing to park on….or build on….till spring. All of sudden the critical question became: “Does anybody know when the asphalt plants close for the winter?”  When the commissioners heard “the first week in November,” you could sense the tide turning in our favor. Which is how we got on the August agenda, just as we hoped.

All of which brought back memories of an era when the coming of winter forced people to act with greater urgency than is required today. At the house in which I was raised, we had to get the screens down and the storms up….before winter. Out in the garden, we had to get the daffodils into the ground and the dahlias out of the ground….before winter. And when it came to the car, there were things like antifreeze, studs and tire chains to consider….before winter. Even today, one hears commercialized warnings directed at those who would fail to winterize. And there’s always the necessity of a flu shot. Again, before winter.

With that in mind, I would launch our program year by holding up a little phrase from Paul’s second letter to Timothy which breathes the same urgency. As the letter unfolds, Paul is in a Roman jail….dying. At this point in his life he is down to three close and abiding friends….the Master whom he serves….the doctor (Luke) who serves him….and a young half-caste apprentice, Timothy, who Paul has left in charge of the church at Ephesus. So he writes Timothy from jail, asking him to come to Rome and bring his books and his old travel-stained robe. To these requests, he adds a postscript: “Do your best to come quickly. Come before winter.”

Why before winter? A pair of reasons suggest themselves. One has to do with mobility. The other with mortality. Mobility means that winter may render the Mediterranean unnavigable, with bitter gales closing the shipping lanes till spring. Mortality means that Paul doesn’t figure to be around come spring.

Before winter or never. It sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But the truth is, there are things that will never get done if they are not completed before winter. There are certain doors, open now, that the winds of winter will surely slam shut. And there are certain voices, available now, which winter may silence forever. Most obvious, of course, is the voice of some significant other. Not everybody we know and love is going to weather another winter. Had Timothy dallied till spring, he would have arrived in Rome to find Paul silent in the ground.

This awareness of winter’s inevitability injects a certain urgency into every human relationship. It has long been rumored that mothers tell their daughters they should never go out of the house without clean underwear, lest they become involved in an accident and wind up in an emergency room. For similar reasons, Kris and I never go away for more than a day without making sure the house is clean and the dishes are out of the sink, lest there should come a day when we don’t return to the house and someone else has to come in and sift the stuff of our lives. The tragedy is that all kinds of people who die with clean underwear and no dishes in the sink, also die with words on their lips they wish they could have spoken, or words in their ears they wish they could have heard.

Fred was flying on one of those small jets from somewhere to San Diego. You know the ones I mean, the jets that have three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other. He was one of the two….on the aisle. She was the other one of the two….next to the window. She was a stranger….traveling alone….forty-ish….and crying. Fred, being a minister, figured it was his professional duty to respond to the crying. Which he did by saying: “It would seem that this is not a very happy trip for you.”

“No,” she said, “it isn’t. I’m going to my father’s funeral.”

“I’m sorry,” said Fred. “I can tell by your tears that you and your father were very close.”

“No, on the contrary, I haven’t spoken to my father….written to my father….called my father…. seen my father….in seventeen years. Seventeen years.”

“Really?”

“In fact,” she said, “the last time I saw him, I was in his home. We got into a quarrel. I got up from the table, threw my napkin on my plate, and as I slammed the door leaving his house, I said: ‘You can go to hell.’ That’s the last thing I said to my father. And now he’s dead.”

One of life’s lousier moments is when we realize that we never got around to saying what somebody has now slipped beyond the range of hearing. Because of winter.

Not everything in our personal lives can be put on hold. Some things, yes. Other things, no. It’s true for relationships. It’s also true for opportunities. I don’t know if opportunity knocks but once. They say that. But do they really know that? And who are “they,” anyway? Still, folk wisdom is often grounded in reality. And next week (unless I miss my bet), at least twenty of you are going to tell me about a door that was there to be walked through, had you taken advantage of the limited time it was open. Where time was concerned, you thought you had plenty. And where the door was concerned, you thought it was permanently wedged. But you didn’t. And it wasn’t. Instead, the door came spring-loaded. And when it slammed in your face, it felt like….well, you know what it felt like….it felt like winter. Brrr.

This is true in public life, every bit as much as in private life. People who practice statecraft know that there is often a moment in the affairs of nations….an open window in the escalation of conflict….which, if seized in time, can arrest a slide into disaster. Isn’t the real sadness of the Middle East the number of such moments that have been missed, leading historians to say: “The window was there. Maybe only for a few days. Maybe only for a few hours. But nobody took advantage of it before winter blew it shut.”

Labor negotiators know the same thing. Settlements signal themselves with whispers, long before they speak themselves with offers. But if nobody is attentive to the whispers, there are no offers. I saw baseball at Wrigley Field on Monday, as I was pretty sure I would. Because, for the first time in memory, the participants seized the opportunity available to them and behaved sensibly, proclaiming that “the need to get it done” took precedence over the need to get it all.

But the most important voice of seasonal urgency is not the voice of a significant other, nor the voice of public or private opportunity. It is the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. As you know, I am as willing to explore the social and psychological aspects of the Christian faith as any preacher. But I have never lost my sense of the centrality of Christian conversion. The church which fails to preach conversion has no gospel. And the church which fails to harvest converts is as disobedient as it is dumb.

But the Christian faith did not begin around an oval table in a first century seminar room, with a bunch of people pondering “Messianic musings in the Middle East” (“Well, Eli, tell us what people up your way are thinking about Jesus.”). No, the Christian faith began beside a lake when Jesus laid it on the line to a couple of guys about who he was and who they were….and then (at some point in the conversation) said: “So are you guys coming or fishing?”

Sooner or later, it comes down to just such a decision….about who is going to be the central loyalty of your life….whose name you are going to name….whose banner you are going to carry….whose kingdom you are going to seek….and in whose army you are going to march. When the surrounding culture is a quasi-Christian culture, maybe you can backburner such a decision and drift in the general direction of the prevailing ethos. But I’ve got news for you. The prevailing culture is no longer Christian. Which means that you no longer can….go with its flow, I mean. Drifters need to become deciders.

And even if you’ve already made that decision, I think you need to freshen it from time to time. In the space reserved for “denominational preference,” a lady once penciled in the words “Jehovah’s bystander.” When pressed for an explanation, she said: “I used to be a Witness, but I sorta became disinvolved.” So have a lot of us, lady. So have a lot of us.

Let me re-offer a confession. There are times I worry that I have done you a disservice as your preacher….especially in my preaching about grace. You know that I am “bullish” on grace. You know I think that God’s mercy and love are going to be there for you, whether you avail yourselves of them early or late. You know of my belief that anybody who will go to the cross for you will not let any barrier (including your cussedness, your hardness of heart, or even your death) get in the way of his desire to wait you out, track you down and bring you home.

Nor would I backtrack on any of that. But my fear is that you will hear me preach such things (especially when I do so with passion and eloquence) and will say: “No rush. No big deal. I’ve got all the time in the world. And if I push the envelope of Ritter’s sermons to the outer limit, maybe I’ve got all the time in the next world, too.”

I suppose you can test that out. But I hope you don’t. Not because of the eternal consequences, but because of the immediate ones. A sweet young girl (filled to the brim with Jesus) dials my telephone and asks: “If you die tonight, do you know where you will spend eternity?” And a part of me wants to answer: “Sweetheart, I am prepared to leave eternity in God’s hands, but if you’ve got anything that will help me figure out tomorrow, I’m willing to listen. I need all the help I can get right now.”

Let me put it as bluntly as I can. This is my tenth year as your pastor, I think I know you pretty well. And one of the things I know about you is that you are as bullish on grace as I am….. meaning that there are probably not more than ten of you who have spent ten minutes in the last ten years worrying about your fitness for eternity. You ask me all kinds of questions. In fact, you’d be amazed at the range of questions that you put before me. But I can’t recall more than one or two of you ever inquiring about your prospects for eternity. As a congregation, you’re a pretty confident lot. So I am not likely to motivate you to make a present commitment in order to secure a future reward. Which, given my theology, I am not inclined to do anyway. But what I have said….loud and clear….early and late….yesterday, today and (as God gives me voice) most likely tomorrow….is that the purpose of saying “Yes” to Jesus Christ today is for the sake of today.

Think about it this way. I didn’t marry my wife when I did, just so I’d have somebody to grow old with, retire with, or rock in the nursing home with. Kris wasn’t some kind of insurance policy against the day when my bladder failed and my friends baled. I married her because I believed that, whether I could live one day longer without her, I didn’t want to….and figured it was stupid to go on pretending otherwise.

So there I stood at 3:00 on July 2, 1966 in a sanctuary eerily reminiscent of this one. Right down front I stood….two preachers before me….three friends beside me….an organ swelling around me….goose bumps rising all over me….sweat dripping….heart racing….hands shaking….five thousand to the left of me….another five thousand to the right of me….all of them standing….she walking….toward me (of all people).  And I suddenly thought to myself: “Saints preserve us, this isn’t just ‘hanging around’ with Tina Larson anymore.”

I didn’t need to do that. At least, not right then. I probably could have strung things out for a year or two. Maybe even three.

Oh, but I did need to do that. I really did. And, by the grace of God, I was smart enough to know I did.

My friends, I’ve gotta believe there are a lot of you in this church who have been “hanging around with Jesus” for a long time….occasionally touching the fringe of his garment….listening to him speak from the relative safety of a sycamore tree….or a church balcony….or even right down front (maybe even in the choir), the better to fool your friends and fake out your preacher. I have got to believe this church is comfortably filled with the closet admirers of Jesus.

All of which would be all right, I guess, if Jesus wanted admirers. Except I doubt he does. I think he’d rather have some followers.

So what are you going to do about Jesus?

I think you need to decide sooner or later, today rather than tomorrow, now rather than sometime….not because you may die on your way home from church….but because you probably won’t.

Note:  Before reading the text from II Timothy, I explained that there are some texts I have used, and there are other texts that have used me. This is a text that has used me, ever since I first heard Colin Morris preach it nearly thirty years ago. I’ve probably visited it three or four times since. Look for Morris’ treatment of it in the book Mankind, My Church. As for the preacher and the stranger flying to San Diego, credit Fred Craddock for that one.

Any Way You Slice It 8/11/2002

First United Methodist Church. Birmingham, Michigan

Scriptures: Exodus 16 (selected verses); Matthew 6:11

Today’s subject is bread. And I have got to believe that, were I to divide you into groups of five and give you ten minutes to discuss the matter, each such grouping would come up with twenty good bread stories, so universal is the topic. But since our sanctuary is not built for small group discussion, I am going to tell you my bread stories and you will have to either resonate or suffer in silence. So here goes: “A Short History of Billy and Bread.”

I am but a boy….a “wee lad” as the Scots say. It is either a Monday or a Thursday (those being the days my grandmother bakes bread). Never on Tuesday or Friday. Always on Monday and Thursday, with at least one loaf per day coming home under the arm of my father. As bread goes, it’s good….although I am more impressed with the baking part than with the eating part. For my grandmother’s crusts are….well….crusty. Which is why I make my mother trim them from my sandwich before cutting my sandwich into squares…..or (better yet) triangles. Living with my lunchtime requirements is not easy for my mother. But I outgrow them in time for marriage.

About this time I become interested in the communion bread at my church. Not theologically interested, but functionally interested. I notice that the bread is always passed on little silver trays piled with precut pieces. I find myself wondering:

1.      Who cuts the pieces and do they need any help?

2.      Who decides how big the pieces should be, and how quickly can I scan the entire tray in order to select the biggest one?

3.      Do Christians always trim the crusts before cutting the pieces, or is this simply the whim of the Methodists?

Occasionally, I ride with my father down Grand River late at night and pass the best smelling building in all of Detroit. It is the building where they bake Wonder Bread, and the aroma that permeates the street almost persuades me to become a baker. Except my father points out I’d have to work nights. Today, that building houses a casino and, in its own way, still makes bread. Which still smells.

I am now a young minister, attending a denominational meeting, listening to a sermon by a man who, for my money, may be the best preacher I ever heard. His name, Colin Morris. His denomination, Methodist. His country, Great Britain. His particular assignment, President of the United Church of Zambia. In his sermon, he is describing a severely malnourished Zambian male who dropped dead just a few feet from the front door of the manse. A subsequent autopsy revealed nothing in his stomach, save for a few undigested balls of grass. When death came to the beggar outside his study, Colin Morris was inside his study reading a clergy journal of the Church of England. The subject of the lead article being: “The Ceremonially Proper Way to Dispose of Leftover Eucharistic Bread”….meaning communion bread already consecrated by the priest, but not consumed by the smaller-than-expected number of congregants. Within a few weeks of hearing Morris’ story, a grade school kid approaches me after communion and asks if he can have the remainder of the loaf left on the altar. I hear myself saying: “Sure.” In response to which I hear him saying: “Oh boy.”

I am now as mature in my career as I am in my midsection, having been just appointed senior minister at First Church, Birmingham. It is late Saturday night before my first Sunday. The doorbell rings. I open it to find Bill and Ivah DaLee standing before me. I learn that Bill bakes bread as a hobby and that he and Ivah think it appropriate to feed me on Saturday night prior to my feeding them on Sunday morning. Which they do. And which I do.

A few more years go by and Kris and I find ourselves in Egypt. We are quartered in a converted Cairo palace, one of the most opulent hotels in which we have ever been privileged to lay our heads. In one of the garden courtyards, a woman is baking flatbread in a makeshift, wood-fired oven. Still stuffed from lunch (and having just made reservations for what I expect will be a sumptuous dinner), my stomach rebels with the cry: “No….no….pass her by.” But seeing her seated there baking her heart out (looking for all the world like an Egyptian Martha), I can’t not buy some.

Finally, I am in an Israeli kibbutz, flush on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (midway between Tiberias and Capernaum). I am far from alone, given that forty friends are with me. The morning cannot be any more perfect (even though the tour bus is a tad late). Communion by the lakeshore is suggested. Of course. Why not? An inspired thought. Someone produces a bottle of wine bought the day before. Someone else produces a silver chalice bought the day before that. But what about bread? No one has a spare loaf anywhere. A breakfast bagel, maybe. Toast from the dining room, possibly. Then it is remembered that the buffet table in the dining room features an incredible centerpiece of foodstuffs (fruits….vegetables….cheeses….and a beautiful loaf of braided bread). Which I dispatch someone to steal (the bread, I mean), so that we can break it with Jesus….on his shore….of his lake….in his land. In response to which everybody says: “Never has holy communion meant so much to me. Thanks, preacher, for creating such an inspirational moment.”

* * * * *

Enough of stories. Digest them at your leisure. Like over a sandwich. Or whatever. It’s time to make a few points. Biblical points. Hopefully, obvious points. Better yet, memorable points.

Point number one: We need bread. Everybody knows we need bread. God knows we need bread. Jesus knows we need bread. And by “bread,” I mean the kind that is found on the table and the kind that is found in the wallet. In a best-loved Bible story, Jesus tells several thousand people to sit down (in groups of 50, no less) and then tells the disciples to feed them. As you will recall, the disciples voice a pair of protests. First, they say they have no bread. Second, they say they have no money to buy bread. So Jesus takes matters into his own hands. Or he puts them into a little boy’s hands (depending upon which version of the story you prefer). But at the point where the story lands in the lap of the disciples, they lack bread of both kinds…..the edible kind and the spendable kind.

Both kinds are important. Jesus tells the tempter that “man does not live by bread alone.” Notice he does not say that man does not live by bread. Of course man lives by bread. Man is a bread-dependent animal. I am talking about bread which is wheat, rye or pumpernickel. But I am also talking about bread which is salary, Social Security and stock options. People have to eat. People have to be able to afford to eat. I have never been a proud bread baker. But I have been a proud breadwinner. Anything wrong with that? Nothing whatsoever is wrong with that. Unless (and until) I come to the point when life starts and stops with bread….when the day begins and ends with bread….or when I get sucked into the popular mythology that if I just have enough of this (hold up loaves) and this (hold up twenty dollar bills), I will be happy. Because I won’t.

Point number two. We need bread. God provides bread. It is okay to ask for bread and okay to receive bread. There may be an occasional blessing we gain from fasting, but there is nothing that we gain from starving. God wants you to eat. God wants you to be able to afford eating. God would prefer that you not obsess over either….eating or affording. But God is into providing. It may not come as expected. But it will come. Daily manna is what the people of Israel got in the wilderness. To be sure, they got sick of it….and tired of it. But it kept them going. As best as we can figure, “it” may have been a sticky, sweet secretion from the tamarisk tree which dripped to the ground (generally in May and June), crystallized by night, turned white, and actually contained calories. It hardened into thin, wafer-like sheets which people broke off and ate. Someone once described it as having the texture of Styrofoam. But hey, a little peanut butter and jelly, and anything’s edible.

Did they actually eat the stuff? Probably. Did they eat it exclusively? Probably not. But the story is their way of saying: “It is not God’s will that anyone should go without.” And the word “daily” means that it will come when needed (as needed) so that just when you think “Oh, I’m all right for now, but I’m gonna be hungry tomorrow….lonely tomorrow….weak and fainthearted tomorrow….poor in spirit tomorrow….or just plain poor tomorrow,” you can ask God tomorrow. You can take the “daily bread” promise to the bank, although you cannot necessarily take the bread to the bank. This is what is meant by the suggestion that manna spoils when you try to keep it overnight. Which is not a prohibition against stored-up things like savings bonds, insurance policies, college funds, freezer plans or home-canned tomatoes. But which is a statement of trust which proclaims: “I may not know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow.”

Let me illustrate. I do all kinds of planning, the better to do a consistent job of preaching. But I never have so much stuff in the well….so many ideas in the pipeline….so many stories at the spigot….that I don’t occasionally come up dry. But I have got to tell you that on those empty-well days, something always seems to come from God-only-knows where (and I literally mean from God-only-knows where) when I need it most. Daily manna! For some of you, it’s a kernel of corn. For me, it’s the germ of an idea.

Point number three. We need bread. God provides bread. Churches ought to double as bread trucks. Meaning that the church which turns its back on issues of hunger and hungry people forfeits its right to the title “church.” No matter how poor the church is….how weak the church is….how hell-bent and focused on survival the church is….if some form of bread delivery is not part of its charter, it has no charter. You think I’m wrong? Read the New Testament and then come back and tell me where I’m wrong.

Every year at Annual Conference, a slew of ministers retire. At that time, they have the option of giving a brief retirement speech. One year, a fellow whose career had been nondescript at best, chose to forfeit his few minutes at the microphone and, instead, presented the Bishop with a loaf of his homemade bread. Which generated tumultuous applause (either because it took less time or because it was different). The guy who followed him was a fellow who really felt that the Bishop had done him wrong by putting him in all the wrong churches at all the wrong times, following all the wrong people, thereby contributing to his overall sense of depression and failure. All of which led him to say: “Wouldn’t you know it? First they send me to follow Paul Blomquist and you know how hard it is to follow Paul Blomquist. Then they send me to follow Tim Hickey, and everybody knows that nobody can follow Tim Hickey. Now, on the day I finally hang it up, they send me to the microphone to follow a bread act.”

Well, if we clergy read the New Testament, we’re all sent to follow a bread act. And if we don’t have a bread act…..or can’t create a bread act….we’d better hang up the old preaching robe, stick several ballpoint pens in our shirt pocket, and go door to door selling aluminum siding. Because the day is coming when Jesus will say, “Friend, why didn’t you notice me when I was hungry?” And, for the life of us, we are not even going to remember when that was.

Point number four. We need bread. God provides bread. Churches ought to double as bread trucks. And just as Jesus is full of bread, bread is strangely full of Jesus. Start with the fact that Jesus is full of bread. Jesus was a Jew. Which suggests that every Friday night, Jesus celebrated Shabbat with a Sabbath meal. And every Friday night after his mother lit the candles and his father poured the wine, he (as the oldest son) pronounced the blessing over the “challah,” the flaky bread of the Sabbath family meal.

Which happened every Friday. Without exception. Until that Thursday when he said: “I’m afraid I’ll miss the next one, friends. But if you break the bread without me, I’ll be in it.” Meaning what….“that I’ll be in it?” Did that mean in body….in spirit….in memory? Two thousand years later, we’re nowhere near settling that one. But while the Catholics come to the table proclaiming “a doctrine of real presence,” I’ve yet to meet anyone coming to the table proclaiming “a doctrine of real absence.” All of which makes me wonder why we can’t come together around the notion that, where bread is concerned, “Jesus is in there somehow.”

* * * * *

That’s enough for one morning. Except for this. Notice in the Lord’s Prayer that the request for daily bread is phrased in conjunction with the request for forgiveness from trespasses (“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses….”).

Perhaps it would surprise you to learn that during Medieval times there emerged a Jewish custom whereby, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, people gathered on the shore of a lake or river to cast their sins into the water. How did they do it? In the form of tiny pieces of bread, that’s how they did it. The Jewish name for it is “tashlich,” and it is undergoing something of a revival in our culture. In fact, I may even give it a try. I can see it now. As I cast my bread upon the waters of Quarton Lake, passersby will smile and say: “Look at that old man feeding the ducks.” Only I will know that the old man is baring his soul.

Note: For information on Jewish rituals involving bread, I am indebted to a wonderful new book by Harvey Cox entitled Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey through the Jewish Year. For Colin Morris’ story on the starving Zambian, find an out-of-print copy of Include Me Out. For a better introduction to the wonderful body of Colin Morris’ work, read either The Hammer of the Lord or Mankind, My Church.

This sermon was occasioned by the return of 100 persons from First Church’s Choir Camp, the theme of which was “Bread.” As a part of the 10:00 worship service, Choir Camp participants sang a number of bread-related songs. During their week at Camp Lael, they read bread stories, built a bread oven and actually baked some of their own loaves for personal and sacramental consumption.

A Survival Guide to the Waiting Room

First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture: James 5:7-11

If you ask my wife and daughter, they will tell you that patience is not one of my virtues. I could challenge that, I suppose. Consider Christmas presents. Leave mine in the hall closet three weeks before the big day….tell me they’re in there….tell me not to go in there….and I won’t. Not only won’t I peek, I won’t even open the door. If I know something good is coming, I can wait.

After all, it wasn’t my fault that Kris and I got engaged while waiting at a stop light at the corner of Telegraph and Grand River. “Not a very romantic place,” you say. “Right on,” I say. But one of us knew that I had been to the jeweler that afternoon….knew that I hadn’t been anywhere since stopping at the jeweler that afternoon….figured that the result of my visit to the jeweler must be in the car somewhere that afternoon….and that’s the short answer as to how it was we got engaged at a traffic light.

But I know that Kris and Julie are right….about me lacking in patience, I mean. It is evident, not so much in the way I push my churches (which I’ll admit to), but in the way I push elevator call buttons (which I hate admitting to). Even when I can see the people waiting….even when I can see that the desired button is already lit….I push it anyway (two or three times, in case the contact is weak). And if the elevator doesn’t come in ten or twelve seconds, I push it again. I mean, why take things for granted? But what else would you expect from a man who’d rather climb an escalator than ride one?

In a crowded restaurant, I’ll give them my name in exchange for their beeper. But I don’t trust beepers. I trust head waiters. Even though they say they can signal me, I want them to see me. So I don’t go to the outer limits of their signal. I go no further than the outer limits of their sight. That way, I check in with them, every six or seven minutes, to see whether my name is moving up the list.

“A flatter stomach in forty days,” the announcer promises me. But the one who captures my attention is the one who promises a visible reduction in forty hours. Or better yet, a solution I can drink before bedtime that will trim my body while I sleep. Too good to be true, I thought. And apparently it was, given the lawsuits filed just last week.

There is an impatient child in me that sings with Maria (the teenage lover in West Side Story….still one of my favorite musicals): “Today, the minutes seem like hours….the hours go so slowly….no better than all right.” Truth be told, I am a whole lot more patient than I used to be. But I am still a man in a hurry….albeit living (I suspect) in the midst of a people in a hurry. After all, they don’t call us “movers and shakers” for nothing.

Which is why I am not comfortable….nor will I ever be completely comfortable….with my esteemed colleague’s warning that ours is not a faith for people in a hurry. He goes on to write:

If you are in a hurry, you had better hurry on out of here….and out of the Christian faith….because you are in the wrong place. If somebody has sold you a bill of goods, suggesting that if you just say three prayers, do three acts and come to three services, all will be well, they probably have a bridge in Brooklyn they will be willing to sell you next. If, however, you want to take the Christian faith seriously, you had better get used to disappointment, postponement and delay. Because that is the experience of people who believe in something very much worth believing in, but is not yet present or experiencable except in spurts and sputters.  (Peter Gomes)

Which is why this little word from the book of James (which Martin Luther once called “an epistle of straw”) constitutes my signature text for the third Sunday of Advent.

            Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.

But what in the world does that mean to people like us….people for whom the coming of the Lord has more to do with “was” than “will be”….and more to do with yesterday than tomorrow?

My friend’s daughter, Jennifer, asked her preacher father, Eric: “Daddy, why do we prepare for Jesus’ birth when Jesus has already been born?” To which, after thinking about it for a minute, he said: “Because Jesus still needs to be born in the hearts of people who overlook, ignore or simply pass by his manger.” Which is a good answer, insofar as it goes. It is sort of like saying: “Sweetheart, the world has seen the truth. What the world needs now is for the truth to sink in.”

But when James issued his cry for “patience until the coming of the Lord,” he was talking, not about things already seen, but about things not yet seen. He was talking about things having to do with the Kingdom that John the Baptist said was coming….the Kingdom Jesus was supposed to bring….complete with all of the promises we proclaim during Advent (to the point that they are almost clichés). I am talking about promises like:

            Light over darkness,

            Hope over despair,

            Meekness over might.

            Valleys lifted….mountains leveled,

            Crooked things straightened….rough places smoothed,

            Highways in the desert,

Nations streaming up the mountain of the Lord,

            Lions and lambs lying down for a mid-afternoon nap under the same blanket.

            Blind guys seeing….lame girls walking,

            Peace poles in everybody’s front yard,

            Along with a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage

                        (or was that Franklin Delano Roosevelt?).

Jesus came. But not much of that stuff came with him. And if it did, it didn’t last. Which is why we are still waiting. Not for another baby in Bethlehem. Been there. Done that. Instead, we are waiting for nothing less than the coming of Jesus Christ in glory. Haven’t been there. Haven’t done that. The first coming had to do with the introduction of God’s plan. The second will have to do with the fruition of God’s plan. Getting it launched was one thing. Getting it right, quite another thing. James knows that his readers have been to enough “welcome the baby parties.” What James (and his readers) are waiting for is a victory celebration.

If you are like me, you can probably count the sermons you have heard about the Second Coming on the fingers of one hand. More to the point, you will probably have several fingers left over. I’ve engaged in such exercises before, and will probably do so again. But not today. Nor do I wish to get all bogged down in speculation about the specifics of the Second Coming. Because I’m rather vague about the specifics.

            Will Jesus come visibly or spiritually?

                        Don’t know.

            Will Jesus come imminently or futuristically?

                        Don’t know.

            Will Jesus come violently or mercifully?

                        Don’t know.

            Will Jesus come cataclysmically or developmentally?

                        Don’t know.

Will Jesus come in Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva, Epworth or Salt Lake City….in the air or on the square?

Don’t know.

            When he comes, will we all be left standing or will some of us be left screaming?

                        Don’t know.

And will the resultant Kingdom come only in heaven, or also on earth (as it is in heaven)?

                        Don’t know.

Which is not because I’m stupid, but because there are a few things that are not mine to know…. such knowledge being above me, beyond me, unavailable to me, unimagined by me and (don’t miss this) too wonderful for me.

Sure, I have my opinions.

A.    I think we are in for a long wait….yet.

B.     I think God’s plan is workable….here.

C.     I think bits and pieces of the Kingdom are visible….now.

D.    I think that any return of Jesus will have more to do with perfecting all of us, than with killing off half of us.

E.     And I think that the authors of the wildly successful “Left Behind” novels are as wrong as they are rich….giving us wonderful characters wrapped in terrible theologies.

But I could be wrong. Meanwhile, we wait. So how do we wait for the coming of the Lord? I’ll tell you how we wait. We wait collectively, confidently and constructively. That’s how we wait.

Collectively, first. This morning’s title, “A Survival Guide to the Waiting Room,” suggests hospitals and people who go there. Not necessarily people who go to be treated, but people who go to wait for the ones who are being treated….especially to wait for those who are being cut, being chemo-ed….or being cared for during comas. There is easy waiting and there is hard waiting. There is short waiting and there is long waiting. There is “no big deal, she’ll be back up to her room in no time” waiting. And there is “tough it out, touch and go, we really won’t know anything for 24 to 48 hours” waiting.

And thinking I was going to talk about that kind of waiting, Carl Eicker e-mailed me on Friday asking if I was familiar with that particular category of saints known as “with’ems.” It’s spelled just like it sounds….W I T H E M S (although you need to add an apostrophe between the H and the E). I’m talking “with’ems” (as in “with thems”)….as in people who come to the waiting room where the waiters are waiting, and wait with’em. These are people who don’t necessarily know surgery….don’t necessarily know pharmacology….don’t necessarily know psychology…. and probably don’t know much in the way of theology. But they do know sitting….and coffee-go-foring. You know ’em. You need ’em. The with’ems. Can’t wait without ’em. And in the great yawning delay….while waiting for Christ’s second coming….maybe that’s a primary role for the church. To be “with’ems” for each other, I mean. How do we wait for the coming of the Lord? Collectively, that’s how we wait.

And confidently. When you engage your search engine this afternoon to see what famous people have said about the word “patience,” you will discover this little gem:

            I am extremely patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

Can you imagine who said that? I’ll tell you who said that. It was Margaret Thatcher who said that (back in the Iron Maiden’s prime in 1983).

But let me twist Margaret’s words just a bit. My confidence consists, not in the fact that I am going to get my own way in the end, but in the fact that God is going to get God’s own way in the end. Which has been a recurring theme of mine since September 11, last year. I keep reminding you that you need not waste any Kleenex on the Almighty….that God means to win….has the means to win….and will win. How do we wait for the coming of the Lord? We wait confidently.

And constructively. “Wait like the farmer,” James says, which constitutes the final clue. For patience is the essence of farming. Unless it is hard work that is the essence of farming. Or could it be that hard work, coupled with patience, is the essence of farming?

Peter Gomes’ father was a bog farmer….meaning that he grew cranberries. It takes seven years to build a producing bog from start to finish. We’re talking seven years….which makes cranberries perhaps the most biblical prop of them all. But we’re also talking seven years of unremitting physical labor, coupled with a precise understanding of how water, sand, ice, insects, birds, bees and frost all contribute to the fragile ecosystem that makes a bog (and upon which the berries depend).

Peter then writes: “One day when we were in his garden, and I (then a young fellow) told my father that I thought I wanted to go into the ministry, he looked at me without missing a beat with his hoe, and said: ‘I always hoped my son would do honest work.’”

Well, says Peter, I have since discovered that what is true in farming is also true in ministry.

A.    That the harvest is the result of incredible patience (and)

B.     That the harvest is the result of incredible work.

Waiting, alone, will not do.

Working for the sake of keeping busy….keeping out of mischief….keeping bread on the table, will not do.

Working at that for which we wait, that will do.

“My father is working and I am working,” said Jesus. So who are you to be sitting on your duff?

Note:  During this Advent season, I owe a debt of gratitude to Peter Gomes of Harvard for distilling three decades of preaching in Memorial Church of Harvard University. On a pair of occasions, Peter turned to the book of James and the subject of patience. As always, I find his reflections instructive.