“What Do We Do Now?”

Mediation for the Ascension Sunday/7^th Sunday of Easter (Year A), 1 June 2014

Ascension Sunday

The Scriptures for this Sunday are Acts 1: 1 – 11, Ephesians 1: 15 – 23, and Luke 24: 44 – 53.

I am beginning a personal study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I think I was introduced to this individual when I was in college because of his anti-war stand but I didn’t equate that with his religious writings. In fact, I may not have even been aware, some thirty-five years ago, what he thought in that area.

But now it is a different story. I still am interested in a man who would renounce his pacifist background and work actively against a totalitarian regime, knowing full well that in doing so he risked his own life. And how, in these efforts, he challenged each one of us to examine our own belief in Christ and what it means to be a Christian.

I am aware that some of what Bonhoeffer wrote doesn’t set well with some religious writers and thinkers today. But at a time when Christianity is slowly but seemingly steadily moving towards a more legalistic and rule-bound religion, maybe we should stop and think about what he said. And how does this apply to this particular Sunday, Ascension Sunday?

I get a sense from in reading today’s passage from Acts that the disciples and other followers really didn’t want Jesus to leave. I am not sure if they were afraid of what might happen after He left or if they felt that they weren’t ready. Jesus did tell them that they would receive the Holy Spirit but that they would have to wait. I wonder how that would be received in today’s society with our “I want it now” mentality?

For me, the meaning of Ascension Sunday and the subsequent preparation for Pentecost is that the responsibility for bringing the Gospel message to the people is shifting from Christ to us. For three years, Jesus brought the Good News to the people and taught the disciples how to do it themselves. Granted, the disciples weren’t really aware that was what He was doing but during this period of time, from the Resurrection through this Sunday and on to next Sunday, the “light bulb” in their minds was beginning to come on.

I have said it before but it bears repeating. As much as I am Southern born and Southern bred, so too am I evangelical. I was baptized an evangelical and I was confirmed in the Evangelical United Brethren Church and I have this evangelical nature to me. But just as I do not hold to so many of the Southern traditions that tore this country apart some 150 years ago, I am not an evangelical in the manner that it is used today.

And quite honestly, and this will tick off some of my friends, I don’t think my purpose as an evangelical is to make you come to Christ or condemn you if you don’t. I don’t see evangelism as the imposition of my will on your life.

Rather, I hold to evangelism in much the same manner that Clarence Jordan did. For Dr. Jordan, evangelism was the declaration that God was changing people and the world. It was the broadcasting of the Good News that kingdom of God was breaking loose in human history and that a new social order was being created and that we were all invited to share in what was happening. Evangelism required that we declare the Gospel in both word and deed.

Yes, evangelism includes challenging people to yield to Jesus, to let Jesus into their lives and allow the power of the Holy Spirit to transform them into new creations. But it was much more than than. It was also in proclaiming what God was doing in society right now to bring about justice, liberation, and economic well-being for the oppressed.

Evangelism was the call to participate in the revolutionary transformation of the world. It required that you live out the Kingdom of God in community and through social action. (notes on evangelism from the foreword to The Cotton Patch Gospel: Luke and Acts by Tony Campolo).

So, if evangelism is our opportunity to show the Gospel as well as speak of the Gospel, shouldn’t it be done on our own. It isn’t that we don’t need Christ to do the work but He sort of wants us to do the work, don’t you think?

And yet, how many people are willing to do that? They are quite willing to speak of what needs to be done but not so quick to take on the task. And what I have gained from reading Bonhoeffer is the distinct impression that we need to be doing what we have been called to do. My early reading of The Cost Of Discipleship suggests that he saw the church more in the streets than in a sanctuary on Sunday.

I don’t think he was saying that we shouldn’t be in the sanctuary on Sunday but that isn’t where we were going to do the most good. And this fits well with my understanding of prevenient grace, that having achieved a state of grace, we need to work to improve on it rather than lose it.

But I don’t think that we can do anything if we are completely and totally focused on Jesus, here on earth. And while it may be presumptuous on my part, I don’t think that was His intention either. We weren’t going to do much with Him around, no matter how much we might want Him to be.

But Jesus reminds us, as He reminded the disciples gathered that day that He would send the Holy Spirit to facilitate the actions that we have to take.

So what do we do now? We proclaim that Jesus is the Christ and then we show the people what it truly means to be a Christian, by not only our words but our actions and our deeds. We open our hearts and receive the Holy Spirt so that we are empowered to bring the Good News to the world.

“Where Are We Headed?”

Mediation for 6^th Sunday of Easter (Year A)

25 May 2014

Memorial Day

The Scriptures for this Sunday are Acts 17: 22 – 31, 1 Peter 3: 13 – 22, and John 14: 15 – 21.

The title for this piece was going to be “The One True God” and I was going to focus on Paul’s comments to the Athenians about their unknown god and our society’s focus on other gods, such as money and material.

And part of what I was going to say was how we have transformed a day to honor all those who have died in the service to their country into a day to satisfy our own needs. I was going to also point out (and I had this thought long before the present scandal in the VA erupted) that while we give some degree of honor to those who have died, we care very little about those who were wounded, injured, or maimed during the course of the combat activities or as a result of their combat. And this lack of care goes a long way back and is not limited to just the current administration. It was also pointed out by some that those who blame the current political administration of this country were among those who voted against increasing or at least maintaining benefits for current veterans.

I wish that was the only problem we were facing at this time but the shooting in the Santa Barbara area Friday evening along with the shooting in Brussels on Saturday spoke to our preoccupation with violence as a solution to our problems. I don’t know all the details about the Brussels shooting but it would be an easy guess that it was predicated on violence and hatred, perhaps not of the three who were killed but on a group of people.

And it would be easy to blame the system for failing to warn us about the young man in California. We can’t blame the guns because he bought them legally and cleared all the proper legal checks. And no matter what his mental state was, he saw the solution to his own problems in terms of violence.

And while all of this individual versus individual violence was going on (and how much more happened that we did not hear about?), there were at least three violent attacks against society with car bombs and armed militia involved. The one thing that I think these attacks have in common is that they were initiated by religious fundamentalists who seek to impose their version of religious law on the populace.

There are days when I think that we are on the verge of the end times, what with all the weather-related problems and the societal-problems. But I also know that those who would loudly proclaim such news also say that the solution to the problem is the imposition of their own version of religious law. The book that these fundamentalists use may be different from the book that the other fundamentalists use and their methods, for the moment, may be less violent but in the end they want to impose their own beliefs and values on all the people of this globe, no matter who they are or what they believe.

And the hallmark of fundamentalists, at least for me, is that you are not to question the authority of those who lead, only blindly accept what they say as the truth.

Within the United Methodist Church is a group of 80 pastors who have this view and they are willing to destroy the denomination if that means that their views are the dominant ones. These 80 individuals hide behind the curtain of anonymity and no one outside their own group knows who they are. But they have made it clear that theirs is the view that counts the most and that makes me wonder.

First, since I don’t hold those same views, what will they do with me if they gain control of the denomination. What will they do to my chosen vocation of chemistry and science when I am ordered to believe that this universe, planet, and the life on it was created in a span of six days? Will their drive for a legal truth destroy the lives and careers of people who seek the truth using the mind that God gave them?

Perhaps the scripture that I should have used was from last week when Thomas asked Christ where we are headed and Philip asked how would we know when we got there.

I see a society that may not believe as these unknown leaders do but they are not willing to say anything against them. There seems to me a blind acceptance of the moment by too many people in society today, a willingness to accept what is happening with perhaps a hope that something better will come.

There is clearly a societal wide fear of the unknown, a fear so large that we are unwilling to venture beyond the safety of our present state, no matter how hypocritical that might be.

My greatest fear is not the unknown but that we are unprepared to solve the next problem. We actually know all the answers to the present questions (though not all are in the back of the book) but we don’t know the answers to the questions that haven’t been asked and we don’t have the ability to find the answers.

In his words to the congregation today, Peter points out that we do have the answer, though we may have forgotten it. The words of Christ, written in John today, speak of what we have been given as well.

Christ did not give us a set of rules; He gave us a way of Life. He spoke of the Way, the direction we needed to be headed.

With yesterday (May 24^th) being Aldersgate Day, we are reminded of what happened to John Wesley and how his legalistic, formal approach to living really didn’t work. But that moment that he accepted the Holy Spirit, things began to change.

Perhaps it is time that we forsake the gods of violence and hatred, of money and material. Perhaps it would be best if we sought the solution instead of relying on others to lead us. Quite honestly, I don’t think they know where they are going.

Perhaps it is time that we seek Christ. Then we will know where we are headed.

“Chosen By God”

During the month of May, the New York Annual Conference Board of Laity conducts a morning devotional in preparation for its Annual Conference.  I was asked to do the devotion for today, Thursday, May 22, 2014.

Good morning, my name is Tony Mitchell and I attend Grace United Methodist Church in Newburgh, NY. The scripture for this morning is from Romans 5: 1 – 11; I will read Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Gospel version, “The Letter to the Christians in Washington.”

Since we have been put in the swim with God because of our faithfulness, we have a close relationship with Him through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through Him, we also got an open door into this favored position we hold, and we get “status” from the confidence we receive from God’s greatness. Not only so, but we also get “status” from getting banged up, being fully aware that getting banged up makes us tough. Now toughness makes for reliability and reliability for confidence, and confidence doesn’t let you down. For God has given us a love transfusion by the Holy Spirit he provided for us.

While we were real sick, in the nick of time Christ died for people who couldn’t care less for a loving God. Hardly anybody will die for an ordinary person, and it’s possible that someone might screw up enough courage to give his life for a truly good person. But God convinces us of his love, because while we were still sinful trash, Christ gave His life for us.

So now that we have been taken on board by his sacrifice, shall we not all the more be saved by Him from “the life away from God.” For if, while we were rebels, we were won over to God through His Son’s death, how much more, having been won over, shall we be saved in His life. And on top of all this, we get “status” with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have been won over.

This reading to the Christians in Washington (or Rome if you will) prompted me to think of a particular sports metaphor. Actually, two came to mind.

You know how it is when the Super Bowl is over and the MVP of the game has been announced. The announcer goes up to this player and asks, “Now that you have won the Super Bowl, what are you going to do?” And the player responds, “I’m going to Disney World!”

I get that impression sometimes when I hear someone tell me that they are a Christian, that they have won the fight and are going to heaven. I probably wouldn’t mind this so much except that the announcement is made in such a way that seems to say that I am not going to get the same rewards; that this outcome is for them and them alone. It is this attitude of exclusiveness that is causing so much trouble for the church today. When the doors of the church need to be open, people are finding them closed. And the people who need to be opening the doors are the members and not necessarily the clergy.

That’s why I think that the more appropriate metaphor for this reading, one that would apply to our having been selected or chosen by God, is the recent NFL draft, the upcoming NBA draft, and the Major League Baseball draft, whenever that is held.

Players in the draft are chosen for the skills and talents that they can bring to a team and history tells us that players in the later rounds of the draft have as much or a greater impact on the fortunes of the teams that select them than those players who get all the glory for being picked in the first round.

We all know Paul’s words, elsewhere, that each of us has been given a particular set of gifts and that we need to utilize those gifts for the betterment of the community, not simply or solely for our use.

Our society is very much a selfish, self-centered society. Society teaches us that each person should look out for themselves and that society should help the individual. Paul will point out that what we receive through the Holy Spirit, what empowers our gifts and our abilities, is very incompatible with this selfishness and self-centeredness. Your energies are wasted when they are focused inwardly but they multiply when focused outward, to helping others (from “Two Roads”)

Yes, there is something special in being chosen by God and, as Paul wrote so many times (including today’s reading), it eases the pain and makes the difficult times a little easier to endure. And we gain confidence in our ability to do something when we know that! But we should also not let the possibility of pain, difficulty or failure quenches the Spirit and lets the wonderful talents that we have be wasted.

I really began to understand what it meant to be a part of the United Methodist Church when I realized that, having been saved by and through the actions of Jesus Christ, I had to do something with and in my new life.

People will see the fire of the Holy Spirit in us, the same fire that danced around, over, and through the people gathered together that first Pentecost some two thousand years ago.

We know too well that fire destroys everything foreign to it and everything akin to it gives it strength. The fire of zeal lets each person use their different skills and abilities in different directions (adapted from Art of Prayer)

It is not that we all do the same thing; that might be rather boring. And while we are empowered to do our own thing, it is so that the community of which we are a part can grow in Christ.

I close with this simple thought, “if not now, when?”, and “if not I, who?”

Let us pray.

Our Gracious and Loving Father, we thank thee for finding us amidst the turmoil and strife of everyday life. We thank thee for sending your Son whose sacrifice on the Cross saved us from a life of sin and death. And we thank thee, O Father, for the gifts that you have given to us. Now, be with us as this day begins and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, let us use those gifts so that others may come to know You as we do. In thy name we pray.

And all the people say, “Amen.”

Yellow Lines and Dead Armadillos

The title of a recent post by John Meunier, “Only Two Things In The Middle of The Road?”, posed a question that I am sure not many people would know how to answer. For those who are not enlightened and never read Molly Ivins or Jim Hightower, I am providing the answer as the title of this piece.

But the purpose of John’s post was not to offer some Texas humor but rather provide links to some of the discussion taking place in the blogosphere concerning the thoughts and efforts of some to seek a schism or not seek a schism in the United Methodist Church.

Now, if you have received an e-mail from me, you know that there are a series of quotes that I find interesting:

• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. (Henry David Thoreau)

• And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free (John 8: 32)
• Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. (John F. Kennedy)

The quote from President Kennedy was given in response to the need for a ban on nuclear weapons but could easily apply to the situation the United Methodist Church is facing today. If we don’t end that which threatens to divide this denomination, then it will kill it. I don’t think that schism is the answer simply because neither side will be able to survive the aftermath.

I was brought up to seek the truth. I choose to walk a path that encompassed and still encompasses a life of science and faith. To seek the truth should be each person’s goal and the distillation of the facts to their simplest components the means by which we find that one single truth. (There may be a hint of Eastern mysticism in that, I am not sure.)

But the one quote that has been a part of my life for as long as I have known the quote and even before I knew that there was such a quote was the one from Thoreau. Circumstances and choice lead me to a path of my own choosing.

I choose to walk with Jesus Christ. It has taken me many places. And when I may have strayed from that path, I always found a way to get back to it. The discussion of, for, or about a schism in the United Methodist Church seems to suggest that there are only two paths and I have to choose between one of two possibilities.

That I would have to choose between those two options neither sets well with my own philosophy/approach or the path that I did choose to walk. And so many other times, the finality of the choice being offered doesn’t give me the opportunity to make up my own mind.

Granted, I would be considered a political liberal or progressive. And I have written that I don’t see how one can consider the Gospel message to be a conservative one, especially not in the context of today’s conservativism. Granted, I came to this conclusion because I saw too many individuals who did not care about others or worked to insure that their views were the dominant ones.

And when you look at what Jesus did to the power structure of his society, how can anyone work to make sure that the power structure of today’s society excludes others. I am not a Wesleyan scholar but I get the impression that was the thinking that drove Wesley to begin the Methodist Revival some two hundred years ago.

The one thing that I do know is that the road I walk demands attention to Jesus, not what others are doing or saying. I hold to the faith and work to see that the Gospel is there for everyone, not selecting those who get to hear it or somehow don’t come up to a particular set of standards.

The question we perhaps need to be asking at this time is more to the point about where you are headed, not which side of the road you are walking on? Are you headed in the right direction with your life and your goals? Are you helping others find their own path to Christ?

“The Stones In Our Lives”

The Scriptures for this Sunday are Acts 7: 55 – 60, 1 Peter 2: 2 – 10 and John 14: 1 – 14.

My initial thoughts when I read the three readings for this Sunday suggested possible titles of “Rolling Stones” or “Sticks and Stones”.

But I have never been a big fan of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (though I once suggested that the AARP was making a big mistake – see “I Think The AARP Is Making A Big Mistake”). And there is too much violence and discord in the world to even think of using the other possibility.

But there came an image in my mind from many, many years ago when my family moved into our house on Coyle in San Antonio, just down the street from Maverick Elementary School. Our house had just been built and there really wasn’t much grass in the back yard (and the dirt that was made of a rather insidious clay that, after getting wet, hardened into a almost unbreakable rock known as caliche). My dad assigned me the task of clearing out all of the rocks and stones in the backyard so that we could plant grass. I was paid, I believe the grandiose sum of $.25 per 100 rocks!

And there were the rocks that we pulled out of the ground when we were preparing the Children’s Garden at Grace UMC in Newburgh (see “The Garden We Plant”).

The key to all of this, you see, is not that we gather the rocks together but what we do with them afterwards. As best as I can remember, I merely moved all of the rocks in our backyard in San Antonio from all over the backyard to one spot where they probably got covered up. The stones I uncovered in the Children’s Garden at Grace were moved to one spot and marked off a section of the garden.

You get the impression in reading the passage from Acts that the people went around gathering up stones in order to make Stephen the first person to die for his faith. But we are also told in this passage that Saul was there that day and those who participated in the stoning gave their cloaks to him for safekeeping. And while it is necessary that we understand why Stephen died on that day, it is also important that we know that Saul was there as well, for it suggests to the reader that something else is about to happen.

You don’t put someone’s name in a passage from the Bible unless there is a reason for doing so (see some thoughts on this in “The Other Side Of The Universe”).

In his letter to the congregation Peter speaks of the stone that is the cornerstone of faith, Jesus Christ, and like the cornerstone of a building, the most important stone in our life. When I think of Saul going to Damascus to continuing persecuting those who will become known as Christians, I thought of the road or roads from Jerusalem to Damascus that he had to have walked on.

I recall from some history that I read many years ago that it was the roads that the Romans build that linked the places of the Empire together. The primary purpose of the roads was to insure that the Roman troops could get from place to place in order to maintain order. But those roads were built to last and many are still in existence today.

The Roman troops had to have gathered countless stones in order to build each road. But the irony of this is that a road that was built to let troops get from point A to point B in order to put down a possible rebellion or allow a young, angry prosecutor to continue the repression of a new faith group became the site of an encounter between Christ and that prosecutor. Instead of being a path of potential violence and hatred, it became the path that would lead to The Truth and The Way, the very path that Jesus spoke of when Thomas asked Him where they were all going.

What are the stones in your life today? What stones must you gather together for the sole purpose of getting rid of them? We cannot build the Kingdom of God here on earth when we gather the rocks and stones out of hatred and ignorance, when we gather them for purposes of violence and oppression. Such rocks become, as Peter pointed out, something to trip over.

But in choosing to follow Christ, those same rocks can be gathered together and help build a new life.

There are stones in our lives today. The question will always be “What will you do with them?” Shall we destroy this world or shall we build this world through Christ?

“What Is The Ultimate Question?”

A Layperson’s Theological Perspective

What is the ultimate question?

Let me first start off by saying that, unless the person asking the question has read any of Douglas Adams work, the answer is not “42”!

And one must be under the age of five to ask the ultimate philosophical question, “Why?” Of course, those who have raised children know that the answer to this important question of life and the universe is “Because!”

More importantly, what if you do not know what the question that will determine your next step professionally or personally will be? How do you prepare for that question or series of questions?

Two thoughts:

First, it has been almost fifty years since I completed my own confirmation class. And while I am confident that I came out of that class with a better understanding of who I am what I know about the church and theology today is far more than I knew then. But what I know I know from experience and my own thought and not through an organized study of faith, theology, and Methodism.

And I wonder how many others today understand those same areas. How many times has a pastor focused on those topics for an extended period of time and in such a way that people come away with clearer understanding?

I know that when I write a message to be presented on a Sunday morning, I have focused on the lectionary readings and have tried to place them in the context of what is happening today. On some occasions, I am pretty sure that what I said has challenged one of the listeners to seek further information but that is speculation on my part. I am sure that everyone who has, either as a lay servant/speaker or pastor, hoped that what they said on a particular Sunday changed the life of someone who heard or read the words given that day. But, until the Day of Judgement does come, we have no way of knowing if that happened.

So the question/thought arises, how do we who have been charged with preparing the minds of individuals to open the hearts and souls of those same individuals do just that, prepare them for the ultimate question, the one which we do not know?

And that leads to the second thought, what might be the ultimate question or what questions should we be able to answer so that we can answer the question we do not know, especially from a layperson theological perspective?

Is it perhaps, “Are you saved?”

Or is it one of Wesley’s historical questions –

1. Do you know God as a pardoning God? Do you have the love of God abiding in them? Do you desire nothing but God? Are you holy in all manner of conversation?
2. Do you have gifts, as well as the evidence of God’s grace3, for the work to which you have been called? Do you have a clear, sound understanding and a right judgement of things of God; a just conception of salvation by faith? Do you speak justly, readily, and clearly?
3. Do you have the fruit? Have you been truly convinced of sin and converted to God and a believer as edified by your service?

Things for me suggest that I spend some time working on the Wesley questions, if for no other reason than to clarify some things in my own mind. There is no doubt in my own mind that I can answer those questions in the affirmative, though the language that I might respond in may not be the accepted form.

Over the next few weeks I am going to look at the questions John Wesley posed. I invite your thoughts and comments about those questions or questions you feel that the laity and especially the laity who have been called to serve should be able to answer.

“What Path Will You Take?”

Which Path Will You Take?

A meditation for the 3^rd Sunday of Easter (Year A), based on Acts 2: 14, 36 – 41; 1 Peter 1: 17 – 23; and Luke 24: 13 – 35.

I actually began these thoughts a few weeks ago after receiving “Wesleyan Wisdom: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” by Donald Haynes. In his piece, Dr. Haynes offered a brief history of Methodism and the paths that we have taken from those early days in England some two hundred and fifty years ago. Some of the paths we choose to take; others we were forced to walk. His capsule history of Methodism was predicated on what members of the church have felt the church should and should not be doing and, as a result, has caused many to take a different path. And we are at that point in our history once again where we will be forced to choose which path we want to walk.

I am, of course, talking about the issue of sexuality. Some people have already indicated which way they will go in this regard; others are standing by the wayside, waiting to see which path they will take. And others, perhaps many more than those who have decided or those who are waiting, are walking a third path away from the church, convinced that God doesn’t care about them and they will find what they are seeking elsewhere.

The division of the church some 170 years ago was over the issue of race and slavery. But it was predicated on a lack of knowledge about the human species, a knowledge that was proven to be quite lacking in substance. I personally believe that too many people are ignorant when it comes to knowledge of sexuality and it is that ignorance that drives so much of the division.

I fear that the United Methodist Church will again be divided but in such a way that it can never be reunited. What will the names of the divided church be; certainly not “United”?

It was easy to name the church when we split apart back in the early 19^th century. When we split on the issue of pews and church dues, those who opposed the renting or buying of the pews formed the Free Methodist Church. When we split apart on the issue of slavery and race, the Southern churches became the Methodist Episcopal South church. But what shall we name the new Methodist Churches that we seem to eager to form?

That’s a question I am not prepared to answer today, if for no other reason that there will be no church to name. And I would work for the continuation of the United Methodist Church instead its destruction.

In the piece I was going to write, I was going to argue that we should begin to ignore The Discipline in what I hoped was much the same way that Jesus offered that He was the fulfillment of the law and not the law itself. I did so because I saw and see too many people for whom The Discipline is the final answer to all issues related to the church and denomination. But I could not write that piece.

I could not write that piece because I was not prepared to remove the structure of the denomination. Every organization needs some sort of structure or it will fall apart. And I have no desire to do that. So I let the notes I wrote sit, just in case I came up with something else.

I fear that we are slowly losing our intellectual ability to discern and to think. We, as a church, respond too often with a voice of ignorance and hatred. We no longer offer hope and opportunity. We do not invite the stranger in but tell them to stand outside and wait. We tell people that they must be like us for God to accept them, ignoring the fact that God does not make such a distinction.

How did the people feel in those days following the Resurrection? Wasn’t it with a feeling of despair and rejection, of loss and being lost? How do people feel today? Is it not with that same sense of loss, despair, and rejection?

The title for this piece is what I was going to use in the original piece and I think it is appropriate, especially since our Gospel message for today is about individuals walking on a path. And at the end of that day’s journey, those two individuals had to make a decision as to whether or not to invite the stranger that had walked with them to stay with them for dinner. Only then, when the stranger blessed the meal did they realize that they had been walking with Christ all along.

Perhaps we are in some way on the road to Emmaus, walking with Christ and not even knowing it is Him. We are so concerned about our struggles that we cannot see Him and yet He has been a part of our lives for as long as we can remember.

In his letter to the congregations, Peter wrote, “Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.” But it seems to me that our arguments today cloud our consciousness and we are unable to see God in our lives.

And when Peter stood with the other disciples that day in Jerusalem, he urged everyone who heard him to repent and change their lives, to get out of the culture that was trapping them.

It was, I believe, that noted baseball philosopher, Yogi Berra, who once noted that “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Of course, one might presume that Mr. Berra was merely channeling the prophet Jeremiah when he (Jeremiah) wrote:

God’s Message yet again:

“Go stand at the crossroads and look around. Ask for directions to the old road,

The tried-and-true road. Then take it. Discover the right route for your souls.

But they said, ‘Nothing doing. We aren’t going that way.’

I even provided watchmen for them to warn them, to set off the alarm.

But the people said, ‘It’s a false alarm. It doesn’t concern us.’

And so I’m calling in the nations as witnesses: ‘Watch, witnesses, what happens to them!’

And, ‘Pay attention, Earth! Don’t miss these bulletins.’

I’m visiting catastrophe on this people, the end result of the games they’ve been playing with me.

They’ve ignored everything I’ve said, had nothing but contempt for my teaching.

What would I want with incense brought in from Sheba, rare spices from exotic places?

Your burnt sacrifices in worship give me no pleasure. Your religious rituals mean nothing to me.” (Jeremiah 6: 16 – 20, The Message)

Whether we choose to hear the words of the disciples or the words of the prophets, we have to make a change in the direction we are headed. Jeremiah warned the people of the dangers that they would encounter if they did not choose the correct path. Peter urged the people in Jerusalem to begin a new life in Christ.

What path will we walk? What decisions will we make? Shall we let our prejudices and ignorance lead us or shall we open our eyes and free our minds so that we see Christ?

After a message a few weeks ago, I told the speaker that the message didn’t seem to have an ending. That is a problem that I often have as well, struggling to find an ending for my messages.

But the ending for this message is quite clear. We can continue to walk on the path that we have chosen to follow but it is quite clear that it is a path that leads to destruction and death. Or we can choose to walk that path with Christ, knowing that such a life leads to freedom and life.

But to walk this second path, we must repent of our old ways, forsake our ignorance and see the world as God would have us to see it, not as others would see it. We can walk on the road to Emmaus and ignore the strangers that we encounter, or we can treat the stranger as a friend and see Christ. The choice is clearly ours this day.