Breathing (sermon on Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2010)

Jon Kabat-Zinn has essentially made a career

out of teaching people how to breathe.

He calls it mindfulness,

and describes it as

“actively tuning in to each moment in an effort to remain

awake and aware from one moment to the next.”

It’s a way of bringing our minds into the present moment—

since, as you may have noticed from time to time,

our minds have this habit of wandering.

Instead of noticing the feel of the sun on our faces

or the incredible scent of the newly-mown grass

we fixate on that conversation we had yesterday

with the person who never listens to us the way we want

or we worry about tomorrow

and how we will do what needs to be done by then.

Another way Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it is that

we become “lost” in our thoughts.

So he decided to see what would happen if you took people who were

chronically ill

or in constant pain

or under intense stress

and taught them to pay attention to their breathing

as a way of tuning in to the present moment.

He starts by asking people to just try a little experiment:

Close your eyes

Sit up straight

And become aware of your breathing.

Don’t try to control it

Just let it happen and be aware of it,

feeling how it feels

as it flows in and out.

Now, he knows as well as anyone that just sitting there

watching your breath is likely to make you feel foolish or bored.

If that’s the case, the next thing he suggests is this:

Take the thumb and forefinger of one hand,

pinch your nose shut and keep your mouth closed.

Then notice how long it takes before your breathing becomes

very interesting to you indeed! (1)

The point, of course, is that if we stop breathing

we will die.

And so noticing our breath actually becomes a way of

noticing our life.

Today is Pentecost.

This is the day the apostles—

those called by Jesus to witness to him throughout the earth—

received the Holy Spirit

and became the church.

The word “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek,

the original languages of the Bible,

actually means “breath” or “wind.”

This wind, this breath, this Holy Spirit

is not just from God

it is God.

It is the third person of the Trinity,

the one who came for us soon after Jesus returned to God

the one who is still with us now.

And just as our breath is necessary for us to have life,

so the Holy Spirit is the very thing that gives life to the church.

If the church does not have the Holy Spirit, it will die.

But like anything else that is with us all the time,

that happens whether we notice it or not,

most of the time we can’t be bothered to notice the Holy Spirit

any more than we bother to notice our own breathing.

If you think about it, the same is also true with language.

Our native tongue, the language we first heard

whispered to us by our mothers and fathers

eventually came from our lips as naturally

(as they say)

as breathing.

Our ability to speak and understand what those around us are saying

is rarely something we notice until we discover

we can no longer summon words at will

or until we are surrounded by people

who do not speak our language.

Certainly the people who built the tower of Babel had no idea

how fortunate they were

that they all

spoke the same language.

After all, they had never known anything different.

“The whole earth had one language and the same words.”

How convenient that must have been.

How it must have simplified their communications and the interaction of one community with another.

And yet even though God had blessed them with this means of unity,

they were afraid of

“being scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

So they built for themselves a city to live in

and a tower that reached up to the heavens

so that they could remain together,

unified by their language and their customs and their God.

It was comfortable.

It was what they had always known.

It was a group of people united by what they had in common.

It was a group of people who had forgotten to notice what

—and WHO—gave them life.

When God saw the city and the tower,

God knew what had to be done.

The people’s worst fears needed to be realized.

And so God gave them many different languages

and “scattered them abroad...over the face of all the earth.”

It was the very thing they had been afraid of in the first place

and it happened because they took their unity,

their one language,

and they used it

to serve themselves instead of God.

You see, when God created human beings

and breathed the breath of life into us

and gave us the gift of language,

it wasn’t just so we could understand each other.

It was also so that we could spread the good news!

Language was the way God intended God’s people

to tell each other about God,

to share their faith stories

and to hear the stories of others,

to witness to God’s work in the world.

But if God’s people just stayed in one place and kept to themselves,

taking turns climbing the tower to heaven

then how would the good news spread abroad

“upon the whole face of the earth”?

In order for God’s people to be united,

they first had to be divided, scattered

spread abroad throughout the earth

so that the earth—the whole earth—could be populated

with people of God who could witness. (2)

And so God took the thing that the people had feared

—being scattered—

and made it something that served God’s purposes.

On that first Pentecost, we have the reversal

of what happened at the tower of Babel,

where everyone could speak but no one could understand.

With the arrival of the Holy Spirit,

as the church breathed its first breath,

what happened was that the apostles could suddenly

speak other languages,

and this was no punishment or party trick;

it meant that they could go out from their hiding place

and preach the gospel.

It meant they could go tell the story of what God had done

in Jesus Christ, and most importantly,

It meant that everyone outside could suddenly

hear the gospel in their own native language.

Suddenly, the truth of the gospel sounded as familiar to them

as the sound of their own breathing.

It was truly a remarkable moment in the history of the church.

The problem is, we tend to remember it as just that—HISTORY—

when in fact the appearance of the Holy Spirit

is no more something that happened only in the past

than your breathing is something that only happened the moment you were born and never since.

The problem is, most of us have

become so accustomed to the presence of the Holy Spirit

—which is God!—

among us that we have stopped noticing it.

But when we stop noticing the Holy Spirit among us,

we stop noticing the life of our church.

It’s like forgetting the fact that we can only

do the things we do each day

because we take air into and out of our lungs

nearly a thousand times an hour.

We breathe in...we breathe out.

We live.

So if we stop for a moment and take time to notice

the breathing of our church,

which is the Holy Spirit giving us life.

tell me: what do you notice?

The church breathes in:

in worship

in Bible study

in choir practice

in times of fellowship

in caring for one another

The church breathes out:

with free movies for our community

by offering food to needy families through our food pantry

through our relationship with Firestone Park Elementary with a global mission initiative to do what we can to eradicate slavery.

The church breathes in...the church breathes out...

The church lives.

When Jon Kabat-Zin teaches people

to pay attention to their breathing

it doesn’t take away their pain,

or their disease

or their stress...

but it changes their relationship to those things.

It changes the way they view and participate in

their lives.

When we notice the Holy Spirit among us

it’s not going to take away our worries

about growth

about money

about whether

“our children will have faith and

“our faith will have children.”

about how exactly we are supposed to witness.

But noticing the Holy Spirit can change

our relationship to those questions,

and the way we view and participate in

the life of our church.

It can literally inspire us

and divide us and scatter us abroad and give us language

to preach the gospel!

When was the last time you breathed? Did you notice it?

Amen.

Endnotes:

1. Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Bantam Dell, 2005, p. 22-23.

2. In this interpretation, I am indebted to Walter Brueggemann’s analysis of the text. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. WJK Press, 1984.

Being Church (sermon, May 16, 2010)

Acts 1:1-11

A minister I know got on a plane recently. He began to talk to the person in the seat next to him and they soon exchanged names. Fishing for a conversation topic, the minister asked the man, “So, do you go to church?”

“Funny you should ask,” replied the man. “My family and I just recently made a decision about church.” He went on to explain that the previous year, he and his family had let themselves get totally over-extended. Between work, social commitments, and the activities of their two children – one in elementary school, one in middle school – they were exhausted by Christmas. They were determined that this year would be different.

So one Sunday, having gone to church that morning, they held a family meeting to review all of their commitments in light of how each helped them be the kind of individuals and family they wanted to be. After an hour and a half of conversation, they made their decisions. And they decided to stop “doing” church. Girl Scouts remained, but church was out. “It's just not that meaningful," the man explained. "We go each week and finally realized we're not getting anything out of it. It doesn't connect with the rest of our lives, let alone help us lead those lives. So we're done. We’re not doing church any more.” (1)

When I read texts like today’s passage, frankly, I’m not surprised that so many people today feel that church and the Bible simply don’t connect with their lives. I mean, are we really supposed to believe that the disciples actually stood there and watched Jesus float away on a cloud and disappear from sight? Frankly, that is more than a little absurd. Before Galileo, people may have believed that heaven really was “up there” and earth was “down here,” but now we know way better than that. So what could this text possibly have to say, not just to those of us who thought it was worth our time to show up to church this morning, but for people like that man on the airplane and his family, who have decided that what church offers them is not enough to justify the sacrifice of time and energy it requires? What does this text offer people like that?

Well, although it’s easy to get caught up in this strange and improbable description of Jesus rising up to heaven, we should remember that the first century author of Acts would have believed that the earth was smack in the middle of heaven “up there” and hell “down there.” So in having Jesus rise up to heaven on a cloud, that author isn’t making a statement about the location of heaven. In this description of Jesus’ ascension, the author is making the point that from this moment on, Jesus is no longer present on earth with the disciples. Forty days after the resurrection he returns to God, not dead, exactly, but no longer a living, breathing, eating, teaching, guiding presence on earth. The point of the ascension is that Jesus, God revealed in human flesh, is no longer here. Jesus is no longer here to eat with prostitutes and tax collectors; no longer here to cure diseases; no longer here to tell us just exactly what, by the way, would he do?; no longer here.

But in another, very tangible way, Jesus is here: “You will be my witnesses,” he tells his faithful disciples. “You will be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The day Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire at Columbine High School was a long, grueling day for the parents of every child who attended the school. Many of the parents waited at a nearby elementary school, where students arrived as they escaped the building and signed in. Parents checked and rechecked the sign-in sheets, looking for the familiar handwriting of their children. Although the shooting was over shortly after noon, students kept arriving at the elementary school for hours. Every twenty or thirty minutes a new busload of kids would arrive and there would be another round of tearful reunions. But at 4p.m., the buses stopped coming. Authorities promised that there would be one more bus, but it didn’t come. The remaining parents looked around, knowing that some of them would receive the worst news a parent can imagine.

Four more hours passed and still the bus didn’t come. Finally, the county coroner handed out forms asking the parents for descriptions of their children’s clothing and other physical details and to retrieve their children’s dental records. At that point, for many of them, the truth began to sink in. Their children were dead.

The press had been cleared from the area before the parents had been addressed by the coroner, but Lynn Duff, a Red Cross volunteer, was there assisting the families. Lynn noticed that the Evangelical Christian parents responded differently from the other parents. This is how she described what she observed:

“The way that [the Evangelicals] reacted was markedly different...It was like a hundred and eighty degrees from where everybody else was. They were singing; they were praying; they were comforting the other parents...They were thinking a lot about the other parents, the other families, and responding a lot to other people’s needs. They were definitely in pain, and you could see the pain in their eyes, but they were very confident of where there kids were. They were at peace with it. It was like they were a living example of their faith.” (2)

“You will be my witnesses,” Jesus tells the disciples just before he leaves them. Their task -- our task -- is to witness to Jesus by carrying out his work in the world, the work of healing, comforting, serving, loving all people. That is what it means to “do church” and that is what Jesus calls us to do. “Doing church” certainly doesn’t just mean showing up on Sunday morning and checking off “worship” as one of many activities in your life. “Doing church” isn’t a Sunday activity at all -- it’s a daily activity, it is the primary task of our lives as children of God and witnesses to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.

But what, then, do we do when -- for us or for others -- “doing church” has become just another activity among the many activities that take up our time and drain our energy? Well, thankfully, buried in this description of Jesus’ ascension, there is an answer to that very question. Because before he leaves, Jesus doesn’t just tell the disciples what to do, he also gives them what they need to be his witnesses: “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now,” he promises. And “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Jesus doesn’t expect the disciples -- or any of us -- to “do church” by our own power or ability -- if that were the case, then sooner or later, we would all burn out on church. Jesus promises that witnessing to the gospel is something we will do by the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us. And that means before we can “do church” at all, we have to ‘be’ the church, we have to be baptized by the Holy Spirit, we have to open ourselves to the living God that is at work among us here and now. Before we can “do church” we have to “be church.”

I recently learned about a beautiful Muslim custom. As soon as a Muslim baby is born, the adhan, the call to prayer, is whispered into the baby’s ear. The first two words are “Allahu Akbar” which means “Allah is great” or “God is great.” So the first thing a baby hears is the word “God” whispered into her ear. This same call to prayer echoes through the streets five times a day in Muslim countries. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, the call to prayer reaches your ears, reminding you of what was first whispered in your ear when you were born, reminding you that God -- who created you and sustains you and loves you -- deserves your undying devotion and praise. (3)

Although we Christians don’t have a similar custom that I’m aware of for blessing a newborn baby with the name of God at the moment of birth, we do have a ritual through which we assure children and adults that they are loved and claimed by God. That ritual is the sacrament of baptism, and although we baptize with water, just as John the Baptist did, in that act we believe that the person being baptized receives the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit Jesus promises his disciples, the very Spirit that will come like wind and fire at Pentecost, the Spirit that is even now in this place, that moves in you and me and enables us to witness to the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

On a recent Dixie Chicks album the musicians and mothers who make up the band included a beautiful lullaby dedicated to their children. Here are the words to the chorus: “How long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough? Is forever enough? How long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough, ‘cause I’m never, ever giving you up.” (4)

The promise we receive in baptism is this: we are God’s beloved. God is never giving us up, nor is God ever giving up on us. The good news of this text is that witnessing is not dependent on our abilities. And although many of us like to think of ourselves as capable people with important responsibilities and duties, the truth is, in God’s eyes we are as helpless and dependent as newborn babies. So in order to act as the church -- to “do church” -- we first have to “be church” by receiving the gift of the Spirit, God’s gift of love to us.

Sometimes those of us who are longtime church members and leaders don’t always make clear to everyone who walks through the doors that “doing church” is much less about doing and more about being. God gives us the gift of the Spirit so that we can spread the word: “how long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough? Is forever enough?” Because you can give up on church, you can give up on God, but God is never giving you up. Amen.

Endnotes:

1. David Lose, “Dear Working Preacher,” May 9, 2010.

2. Dave Cullen, Columbine. Twelve, New York, 2009, p. 94.

3. Martin B. Copenhaver, “Whispered in Your Ear,” Journal for Preachers, Vol. 23, No. 3, p. 38.

4. Listen to the song here.

Open (sermon, May 9, 2010)

Acts 16:9-16

On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the gospel? Let’s say one is closed up tight. Yes, you’re in church, but that’s just because it’s what you’ve always done on Sunday mornings or it’s what you are supposed to do. But really, your expectations are lower than low. You’ve already heard the gospel and are pretty sure it’s got nothing new to say to you. On the other end of the spectrum, let’s say ten is wide open and eager, you are ready for God to come to you, ready for the Spirit to work in you, you are hoping and praying that today is the day you will meet God face to face and live to tell us all about it. You are ready for something different, a change from the routine that has you bored to tears, ready for God to shake things up.

On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the gospel?

In today’s text, we meet characters who would undoubtedly rate themselves pretty high on the openness scale. First, we have Paul and the other apostles who are traveling around, spreading the gospel, wide open to the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit to tell them where to go and what to do. And sure enough, Paul has a vision in which he sees a man from Macedonia calling for help. They agree that this means they should head in that direction and so off they go. They spend a few days in the city, apparently without ever encountering that man from Paul’s vision. On the Sabbath they go outside the city gates thinking that there just might be a place by the river where people are open to the gospel.

That’s where they find Lydia. This self-sufficient woman, who makes a living selling expensive cloth, is clearly open to the gospel; the text tells us she is already a worshipper of God, which means she wasn’t Jewish but she had heard of the God of Israel and she was intrigued. She listens to what Paul has to say and right there on the spot decides that she and her whole family will be baptized.

It’s a story full of people open to God, and look at how all that openness pays off: because Paul is open to the vision leading him to Macedonia, because Lydia is open to the good news Paul shares, the gospel continues to spread throughout the land.

How open are you to the gospel, to receiving it for yourself and to joining in the effort to spread the gospel throughout the land?

Well, I don’t know about you, but these days, I can’t say I feel all that open. Maybe it’s because there are simply too many things in the world today that cloud our minds with worry and anxiety -- car bombs in Times Square, an oil spill that just keeps getting worse, chemicals that cause cancer, a stock market that swings wildly, two wars that won’t end. And when there’s all this to worry about, getting ourselves into an open and receptive state takes time. And who has that kind of time when there are family members and friends who depend on us, bills to be paid, meals to prepare, houses and gardens and, for that matter, church buildings and grounds that demand our attention?

In Anna Quindlen’s novel Every Last One, the main character, Mary Beth Latham, is the mother of three teenagers and the wife of a kind and stable doctor. She has several close friends, some new, some old. She runs a successful landscaping business. And yet at times she finds herself crying for no discernible reason: “I have no excuse for my own tears,” she says. “In the way of women my age, I increasingly count my blessings aloud, as though if other people acknowledge them they’ll be enough: three wonderful children, a long and happy marriage, good home, pleasurable work. And if below the surface I sense that one child is poised to flee and another is miserable, that my husband and I trade public pleasantries and private minutiae, that my work depends on the labor of men who think I’m cheating them—none of that is to be dwelled on. Besides, none of that has anything to do with my tears. If I were pressed, I would have to say that they are the symptom of some great loneliness, as free-floating and untethered to everyday life as a tornado is to the usual weather. It whirls through, ripping and tearing, and then I’m in the parking lot of the supermarket, wiping my eyes, replacing my sunglasses, buying fish and greens for that night’s dinner. If anyone asks how things are, I say what we all say: fine, good, great, terrific, wonderful.” (1)

Openness sounds like a good idea, but if we allow ourselves to be open and receptive, whether to God or the gospel aren’t we taking a big risk that other things might also find their way in as well, like those thoughts and feelings that lurk just below the surface of our daily lives,? Aren’t we afraid that opening our hearts to God might also mean letting in our deep loneliness, our fear of failure, the debilitating guilt over things we’ve done or haven’t done?

Would you be surprised to learn that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the business for security consulting firms skyrocketed? It turns out that in the face of the fear and insecurity generated by the attacks, people wanted to reinforce the locks on the doors of their houses. It’s not like having a stronger lock on your front door is going to protect you from terrorists, but still, when people were feeling afraid, they closed up, they locked themselves away. It happened ideologically, too. Yes, there was that time just after 9-11 when Americans were more closely united than ever before, but then we began to drift apart again, closing ourselves off into ideological camps, refusing to be open to the ideas and opinions of those whom we are already certain are wrong.

The writer Anne Lamott grew up in the Bay area of California, the daughter of atheist intellectuals. She went to college on a tennis scholarship but spent too much time partying and after two years, she dropped out. She worked as a writer and even had some success -- articles in magazines and two novels. But still, she struggled and continued drinking and doing drugs.

Then, one night she was at home, drunk again, feeling awful, and that’s when it happened. She writes, "I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner. ... The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there — of course, there wasn't.

“But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this. And I was appalled--I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, 'I would rather die.' " (2)

Instead, she started attending a tiny church and began to think about turning her life around. She kept drinking, though, especially when her third novel got bad reviews. The low point came when she was to speak at a benefit in front of 150 people who had paid to hear her. She drank so much that she passed out...right in the middle of her speech. After that, she decided to get sober, and slowly, slowly, she did and has been ever since. She found strength and support in that tiny church, especially when she became pregnant and the baby’s father left her. She began to write nonfiction books about motherhood, her conversion to Christianity, and her stumbling, irreverent, and persistent faith. These books got rave reviews and opened up many people who might not have been able to hear the good news of the gospel any other way.

Of course, Anne Lamott is just one of many people who were completely closed off to God. That includes Saul, whose conversion to Paul we heard about two weeks ago -- he was headed to Damascus to persecute Christians when he met the risen Christ and discovered that he was going in the wrong direction. Then there are the disciples, the very ones who saw, heard, and touched Jesus in person and yet still struggled to be open to his teachings. When he told them that he would have to suffer and die and rise again, they refused to believe him. And when he did die on a cross, the first thing they did was lock themselves away in a house, as scared and insecure as those who got new locks for their doors after 9-11.

The point of this sermon is not to get you to go home today and fling open all the doors in your life -- the doors to your house, the doors to your heart. Don’t get me wrong: we could all benefit from spending time daily in the kind of prayer that doesn’t just tell God what we want but in which we truly open ourselves to God and attend to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. But when I look at this text, this story of how the gospel continued to spread across Asia and into Europe, the good news I hear is this: “The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” You could argue that as a God-worshipper who had gathered for prayer that morning, Lydia had done everything she could to open herself up to God, but at the end of the day she could have been Anne Lamott, drunk and miserable; or Mary Beth Latham, desperately lonely beneath the veneer of a blessed life; or the disciples, locked away in their grief and confusion over Jesus’ death...Lydia could have been any of us and still -- STILL -- God would have opened her heart to listen eagerly to the good news Paul shared.

Our God is undeterred by whatever obstacles to openness we put up. Again and again, God shows up in the most unlikely places to the most unlikely people and pries open hearts that had been closed up tight.

After Lydia hears and believes the gospel she opens her house to her fellow believers, insisting that Paul and the apostles come and stay at her home. God opens her heart and she, in turn, opens her home to strangers. Anne Lamott does the same thing through her writing: by sharing her experience of God’s grace and her ongoing attempts to be faithful, she extends gospel hospitality to all who have read her work. Openness breeds more openness...and the gospel continues to spread throughout the land.

On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the gospel? Well, the good news is, it doesn’t matter whether you are a one or a ten, whether you are wide open or closed up tight: our God can open any heart, even yours and yours and yours and yours, even mine. (3) Thanks be to God. Amen.

Endnotes:

1. Anna Quindlen, Every Last One. Random House, 2010.

2. The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, April 10, 2010, read it here.

3. I am indebted in this sermon to the homiletical work done by the Rev. Mark Ramsey in his sermon “Locked” preached at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC on April 11, 2010. Listen to or read Mark’s sermon here.

The Game-Changer (sermon, April 25, 2010)

Acts 9:1-20

In the last days before the final vote in the Senate on the health care bill, I heard yet another story on the radio about people who had gathered in Washington, D.C. to express their support for or their opposition to the bill. The reporter said that the demonstrators had pretty much kept to themselves; supporters of the bill on one side of the street, protestors on the other. But at one point, for some unknown reason, someone crossed the street, and that’s when things got ugly. The reporter caught some of the exchange on tape.

“What’s the matter with you?” one angry voice shouted.

“You must be a total idiot!” countered the other.

These two people weren’t just a little upset; they were apoplectic. Their voices were hoarse and filled with fury. It was extremely unpleasant to listen to, even over the radio. Had I been there to witness it, I would have been sure that violence was going to break out. Clearly, these people had no business talking to each other because there is no way either of them is going to change the other’s mind. Their views are set in stone. Immovable. Unchangeable.

Our two main characters in today’s story from Acts represented two sides of a debate as polarized as our current political climate. On one side of the street there was Saul, the number one persecutor of the earliest followers of Jesus. When Jesus was crucified the high priest and the temple leadership hoped that would take care of his radical ideas once and for all. But even with Jesus gone, his pesky followers were still showing up all over the place, speaking in tongues, preaching in public, saying that Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. It was the worst kind of blasphemy and Saul, a brilliant, ambitious, and faithful young Jew, had made it his personal mission to shut up these followers of Jesus. In his mind they were completely misinformed and downright heretical.

Today’s story from Acts isn’t the first time we hear about Saul. He shows up at the stoning of Stephen, and though it’s not clear if he actually participates in this murder, the text clearly states that he approves of it. Then we hear that Saul “was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” (Acts 8:3)

In today’s story, Saul is on his way up to Damascus with warrants in his hand, breathing threats and murder -- yes, murder! -- against Jesus’ followers. He is a man with a mission, as driven and determined as any one of the impassioned tea partiers making headlines today.

So, on one side of the street we have Saul of Tarsus. On the other side of the street we have Ananias, about whom we know little. All we’re told is that he lived in Damascus and was a disciple of the Lord Jesus. We can be reasonably sure, though, that Ananias was absolutely convinced of two things: one, that Jesus is Lord and two, that Saul of Tarsus is his worst enemy.

Saul’s views about the followers of Jesus and Ananias’ views about Saul were set in stone. Immovable. Unchangeable. Clearly these were two people who should be kept as far apart as possible. Put them together on the same side of the street and you could almost guarantee violence would break out.

So, picture Saul, simmering with rage, crossing the street, going as fast as he can to Damascus, ready to take down those Jesus lovers once and for all. But instead of a clash between two immovable, unchangeable opponents, there is a flash of blinding light and a voice from heaven: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Why do I persecute you?” Saul might have said if he wasn’t rendered speechless and sightless. “Because I serve the Lord God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and you and your followers are ruining my people’s understanding of who God is! I’m not just going to sit idly by while that happens!”

Now picture Ananias, faithful and confident, going about his business, not looking for confrontation with anyone, when suddenly Jesus appears, saying, “Get up and go find Saul of Tarsus and lay hands on him so that he can see again, because he is the one who will preach the gospel to the Gentiles.”

“I must have misheard you, Lord,” we can imagine Ananias saying politely. “Because it kind of sounded like you said Saul of Tarsus, who would probably kill me if I tried to touch him and who couldn’t possibly preach the gospel to anyon. He doesn’t even believe you are the Lord! How could he preach anything except bigotry and hatred?”

I can just see Jesus smiling gently at the sightless Saul, now groping in the dark, and at Ananias, completely incredulous...smiling at them and marveling at how hard it is for human beings to believe that God’s love and grace really does extend even to our worst enemies. Then Jesus says to both of them, “Trust me, and do as I say.” And with that, the immovable, unchangeable is changed...by God. Ananias goes to Saul, lays hands on him, heals him, baptizes him. Saul’s murderous rage against Jesus’ followers transforms into a passionate zeal as he preaches the gospel far and wide to people he once believed were on the wrong side of God’s story.

*****

They just might have played the oddest game in Texas high school football history last year down in Grapevine, Texas. The game was between Grapevine Faith and Gainesville State School, and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through. You heard right. The other team’s fans. They even made a banner for players to crash through that read "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, since Grapevine Faith’s mascot is a Lion. There were even 200 Grapevine fans who sat on the Gainesville side, cheering for the Gainesville players—by name.

"I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us to tackle their kids," recalls Gainesville's quarterback, Isaiah. "But they wanted us to!"

And even though Faith won 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach a squirt-bottle shower like he'd just won state.

But then you saw the police officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. You see, Gainesville State is a maximum-security correctional facility.

The strangeness that night in Texas all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something nice for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, while Gainesville was 0-8 with 2 touch downs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets. Many of these kids families had disowned them, some long before they ended up in prison.

So Coach Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? In an email the Coach asked half of the the Faith parents to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"

"Imagine if you didn't have a home life,” the coach said. “Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

And the next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they’d never seen before. Hundreds of fans.

"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman. "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"

It was a strange experience for teenagers who had grown used to people crossing the street to avoid them. "We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games," says Gerald, a lineman who will spend three years at Gainesville State. "You can see it in their eyes. They're lookin' at us like we're criminals. But these people, they were yellin' for us! By our names!"

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah, one of the kids going back to prison, surprised everybody by asking to lead the prayer. “We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."

As they made they way to the bus, the Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, "You'll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You'll never, ever know."

As the Gainesville kids got on the bus, they received gift bags with food, a Bible, and letter from a player on the opposing team. As the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they'd never met before, who for one night made the feel as valuable as every other person on the planet. (1)

We live in a divided world. It is so tempting to believe that the world is composed of us and them, to think that there is right and wrong and that these categories are set in stone. But we are the beloved children of the living God, whose Son moved the stone away from his own tomb and walked out of it. We are followers of the risen Lord, who commands us to see the world all people in it differently. There is no us and them, there is only us. And when the scales fall from our eyes by God’s grace, we are called to share the good news that every person on this planet is equally loved and valued by God, no matter what side we’ve been on in the past, no matter what mistakes we’ve made.

Unchangeable? Immovable? Set in stone? Not with God. With God, all things are possible. Amen.

Endnotes:

1. Read the original story by Rick Reilly here.