Holyagnostic

The Church Report

Welcome once again to the friendly confines of The Church of Transcendental Hesitation, the fastest growing congregation in the world. If you are new to us, where have you been? Feast on the theological wisdom of The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D.

Archives of our past services and the matchless messages of our pastor can be relived by clicking on The Church Report in the Categories section of the blog.

And now...there is a kind of hush all over the world as The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D. approaches the pulpit...

By request...

How Do You Handle Your Guilt?

One of the most powerful words in the Bible is the word "remember". Old Testament writers used the word to point readers to their belief in the action of God in their history. "Remember" is one of the last words to be uttered by Jesus to his disciples. The occasion is one of such importance to the Christian community that it is enacted again and again. "Do this to remember me." The Roman mass and the Protestant communion are each a dramatization of the death of Jesus. Over and over and over again in our ecclesiastical rituals we are told to "remember". And we need it. We tend to forget God's actions to give us freedom.

Hebrews 12:1 "...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,.."

Florence and the Machine: "...it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off..."

How do you handle your guilt? Carlyle Marney used to say we are fooling ourselves if we think the matter of our innocence has not been settled. That condition disappeared a long time ago for all of us. How we are responsible in the face of our guilt is the only real question left for us now.

For some the weight that hinders is heavy. Listen to two stories.

It had been a rough week at work for Robert. He was enjoying a Saturday football game for relaxation. A word hit him wrong from his wife and in anger he decided to get away to watch his sports in a bar. While backing quickly down his drive he failed to see his young son behind the car in the driveway. The car crushed the son's life. He was gone. Guilt came to visit in his place.

For Janet, the busy life and feelings of resentment toward her mother gave her the excuse to stay away. She hadn't seen or talked to her mother in years. Her mother fell sick with what Janet thought was a temporary medical condition, She was completely unprepared when her mother suddenly died. Before Janet could have another conversation, her mother was gone. Guilt came to visit in her place.

In our lives the stories may not be as shattering, but we all know the uneasy feelings that come when we have done something that we "wish to goodness" that we had not done, or have left undone something that we wish we had done. The weight and ensnarement can be debilitating. In order that we not forget, the church again and again in its rituals repeats the message of Jesus, "Remember me. Remember my death. You are forgiven"

Some ways in which many handle guilt lead down unproductive paths.

Internalizing or stuffing it. Self loathing and depression can result.

Externalizing or throwing it. Finding and punishing other people's evil is the strategy .

Reparations or paying for it. How much is enough becomes the issue.

Redemption or being set free. Here is "the more excellent way."The communion table is the symbolic representation of this journey and what Jesus wanted the disciples to "remember." You have been forgiven.

Listen--He against Whom we have ultimately sinned, does not condemn us, but rather is willing to give us a second chance at life on the same terms that He gave us our original chance; namely, apart from our deserving it. God's love is not reward-love, but gift-love. What he feels for us is not created by what we do or fail to do, but rather by what He is as Gracious Giver.

There is nothing I can do to make God love me any more than He already does.There is nothing I can do to make God stop loving me. Once we realize that He Who gave us our first chance to live out of grace is willing to give us second, third, and fourth chances, then the weight of guilt is removed and we are freed to "go and sin no more." We can live differently.

Robert did. A boys baseball league in Atlanta exits now because of his energy. It bears the name of his son.

Janet did. A pastor told her of one who had needs and no family. Janet's care for her helped heal the pain of her own loss.

Forgiveness is the realization that God takes our sin seriously, but not ultimately.

Remember...will you? You are being set free.

Benediction: Depart now in the fellowship of God the Father, but as you go, remember...By the goodness of God, you were born into THIS world; By the grace of God you have been kept all the day long, even to this very hour; and by the love of God, fully revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, you are being redeemed.

Recessional Music: Florence and the Machine

The Church Report (continued)

Who Is Your Audience? Part Quatre

There is one undeniable fact that can be drawn from the words of Matthew six. The Jesus that Matthew knew, believed that there was a father in heaven in front of whom one could live his life.

Imagine an actor being chosen for the lead role in a play that would eventually win her a Tony Award as best actress. She credits in her acceptance speech the experience of having the playwright present during all the rehearsals. He was a constant provider of information about the character that had been created by his mind. He had brought her to life on paper and now was able to describe and inform the shaping of a performance on the stage.

The actress reveals that at the end of the performance, the playwright said to her, "You have played that role exactly as I imagined when I created it."

For those who believe in a creator/God, there is a powerful ethical motivation to live into the role that was in mind when they were chosen to exist. Imagine that creator/God saying, "You have lived exactly what I had in mind when you came into being."

Places everybody. The audience is in the house. The curtain is about to go up...

The Church Report (continued)

Who Is Your Audience? (Part Trois)

Hang on to your seat. It looks like we have moved to a completely different movie theater.

"I thought we were exploring the question, 'Who gives you your grade?'"

The question and the image that it inspires is different, but the conclusions that we can draw about living are exactly the same. The Bard of Avon was powerfully on target when he said, "All the world's a stage". The picture that we see in our minds when Jesus is teaching about Jewish piety can easily be seen as a drama with "the hypocrites" staging their actions to an audience in the synagogue.

Living one's life with others as the audience in Jesus' example is a no-no according to Matthew. But there are times outside the temple in which it not only is appropriate, but necessary.

An employer can make us dance for our supper, but at least there is the thank you note that comes in the form of a paycheck. The owner of a restaurant or business must play to the audience of his customers or she will soon join the ranks of failed and unemployed.

But blessed is that person who works in a situation where there is freedom to act in a way that pleases you. You are able to set your own goals and ways of achieving them rather than having them come from on high. Only a person who is interested in escaping from freedom would chafe in such an environment.

I know a person who worked for himself in the brokerage business. He had spent twenty years working that way, but decided he wanted to join a monster brokerage house to play with the big boys.

My friend said that the company gave him about a dozen different objectives that he was expected to meet. When he had reviews by the manager he discovered another set of expectations that were related to the goals that the brokerage had set for the manager.

The friend quickly learned that he was used to playing for an audience of one, himself. The lesson for him was that high performance was achieved by having the goals chosen from the depths of who HE was rather than coming from some complex heartless bureaucracy that knew little of what motivated him.

But there is another audience brought to our view in the images described by Jesus.

To be continued...

The Church Report (continued)

Who Gives You Your Grade? (Part deux)

The words of Jesus in Matthew six are obviously telling us that in the realm of Jewish piety there ARE some persons to whom we should not give the powers of evaluation. I discovered that the lesson can be applied elsewhere in life.

Sometimes one cannot escape the gravitational pull of those who gave us our grades in school. I had a friend who had a pastorate near a seminary. The church over the years had learned the economic lesson that seminary students will work for "sweat shop" wages. They had acted accordingly by hiring staff members from the the abundant pool of want-a-be-ministers who were studying at the seminary. My friend had only recently been able to break them of this habit. The church had hired one who had graduated seven years before as their minister of music.

My friend told me that at one of the church's staff meetings, a secretary casually commented that the dean of the seminary music school had been by the church that morning and had picked up one of the order of worship folders from the previous Sunday's services. A dark expression appeared on the face of the music minister. He reached for a copy of the worship folder that was on a table behind him. He became lost in pouring over the content.

Later, the pastor asked about the music minister's actions. The staff member confirmed that when he heard that his old teacher had been at the church and carried with him the worship folder, he had panicked and wanted to see again what he had helped plan. He was fixated on the content with such questions in his mind as, "What will my teacher think of my work? Would he have chosen this hymn for that part of the service? Did the anthem appropriately work with the theme of the service?" In other words, he was still giving the power of evaluation of his work to his teacher, who was years away from occupying that kind of place in the minister's life.

The exchange and the honesty of looking at his behaviors allowed the staff member to see that even though years had passed since his school work, his teacher was still "giving him his grade". It's possible to get stuck in academics long after the bell has rung telling you that school is out.

To be continued...

The Church Report (continued)

The question now becomes how do we incorporate this understanding of our labor? How can we get this sense of meaning down into the marrow of where we practice our work?

The ideal way is to start paying attention to one's gifts early in life. Then one can easily find work that corresponds to what she can do and what she likes to do. My wife's surgery this week gave the occasion of talking to a nurse who came to his work exactly this way. He was the night nurse working a 12 hour shift. After a couple of visits to our room, I realized that he was the same guy who had been my attendant during a surgical sojourn nine years ago. We asked how long he had been doing this in the same hospital, and found that he had been employed there for seventeen years. It was not only his appearance that brought the memory that he had been in our lives before this week. It was his attitude. At four o'clock in the morning of a long shift, a pleasant attitude has to come from some inner source of strength.

"How do you maintain your attitude in the middle of the night surrounded by all of this pain and suffering?"

He laughed and explained, "You are right. The circumstances as well as the tasks are demanding. But this work is exactly what I dreamed of doing since I was a teenager. I love it! I'm doing what I want to do."

There, even though we were surrounded by bedpans, needles, and the moans of the suffering, it was almost like being back at that ancient Samaritan well, listening with amazed disciples to the words, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

If early on, we can tie being and doing together when it comes to deciding our work, the kind of positive meaning that both Jesus and this nurse found in their work can penetrate the whole process.

But we must be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that not all work is inherently satisfying or fulfilling. Much of what has to be done to keep the wheels of life turning is not romantic at all, but dull, characterized with drudgery, and down right distasteful. Yet even this kind of work can be redeemed if the dimension of meaning is preserved. There are lots of things that we do that are not pleasant in themselves, but the results that come from them are values that we can affirm. Eric Hoffer was right when he said that we must shed a lot of our romantic illusions about labor and pleasure perfectly meshing. There are diapers to change, letters to be typed, and dishes to be washed that involve precious little inherent satisfaction, but if a person can remember why these things need to be done and what purposes they serve, then doing them can give back a sense of satisfaction as well as taking energy from you. In fact, there can be meaning in labor even if the wage it earns is the only obvious benefit.

Years ago, I heard a friend tell of going to college with a girl who was an only child. Both of her parents did "shift work" in a cotton mill. The father went to work at seven in the morning and got off at three in the afternoon. The mother went on at three and got off at eleven. This meant that these parents only saw each other on the weekends, because one was always asleep when the other left for work. My friend said that if he had not gotten to know these two, he would have said that such a work pattern was downright dehumanizing. But for them it was not. Each knew why they were working this way. It was so they could give their daughter a better set of opportunities then either of them had known. At graduation, the friend happened to notice their expressions as their daughter walked across the stage to receive her college diploma, and he said that the satisfaction that streamed from their faces was a beauty to behold. The work they did was hard and in itself repetitious and boring, but it was a means to an end that made sense to this couple, and thus something was added to their lives by their work as well as taken out of them.

We started our dialog at a place long ago with Jesus and a Samaritan woman by a well. We saw Jesus at work and saw the transforming power that meaning can give to such an enterprise. Now, what about your work? At the end of this week you will probably have a TGIF moment. That's OK. Time away from work does refresh us and is absolutely necessary. But what will it be like on Sunday night? Here is where you will need to apply for yourself the message of Jesus. What does your work mean to you? are you driven to it, the reason for doing it being all outside of yourself? Then, inevitably, it will drain and exhaust you. Or are you drawn to it? That is, are there aspects about it, either intrinsic or extrinsic, that make sense to you? If this is the case then even the most exhausting task has the ability to add to us as well as take from us. This was the secret of Jesus' revitalization. His work was like food to Him.

I wonder, then, about you and your work? Will you let the secret of Jesus become your secret too? Wouldn't it be something to greet the dawn after next Sunday night with the celebratory words, "Thank God! It's Monday!"

Wow! Wouldn't that be great?

The Church Report

Welcome to the friendly confines of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation, the fastest growing church in the world. Today, our pastor, the Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle D. D., who is world famous as a scholar and communicator, will dialog with us concerning a four letter word: WORK. It's Labor Day after all.

But first, music that will guide our minds toward the theme of the day. We present Sam, who is the cook in our kitchen, as the soloist. Sam gives an artistic expression of how some experience the realm of work. The title of the anthem is Chain Gang.

And now, The Right Reverand Doctor Tweedle, D. D. with his message entitled, Thank God It's Monday!

One of the curious realities of American life is this holiday that we call Labor Day. Am I the only one who sees a bit of irony in the fact that we call attention to the work and workers of the world by taking the day off? Most of us probably agree with the bumper sticker philosophy of work that has been co-opted by the restaurant chain, TGIF, thank God it's Friday. It is an expression of celebrating that work is done and that only now can we enjoy our time away from those efforts.

Do I dare suggest to you that there is another way? Down this path is a new way of thinking and acting that results in a different twist to the bumper sticker. Can we ever have a feeling toward our work that at the end of our time away we could start a new week of effort by saying, "Thank God it's MONDAY!"??

Let's begin by reading from John's perspective of the "good news." In John 4:1-7; 31-35, we find these words:

(New International Version)

John 4

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?"

31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."

32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"

34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.

Most of the approaches to understanding this event in the gospel account focus on the incredible change that occurs in the life of this Samaritan woman. And well they should, for there may be no better illustration of the transforming power that a conversation with Jesus could produce. This woman comes to the well for water at a time of day when other woman would not be there. Was she hiding from others? Was she scared? Did she feel guilty? Who knows? But there can be no doubt that a dramatic "before-after" picture is painted. As one expositor puts it, "She who had made it a habit to avoid people except at night now openly sought out her peers to let them in on the Good Thing that had graciously burst into her life." Talk about a change agent! Jesus could bring it, couldn't he.

But look deeply now into this story and you will see something else happening here. The woman was not the only person that day to change. It happened to Jesus, too. Follow completely the account in John's words and see that Jesus was visibly worn out. He had been walking since before dawn when he arrived at the well for the woman's noon time appointment with destiny. A week of troubling, wearing conflict in Jerusalem was behind him. He sends the disciples for food while he rests in the shade. His humanity was reaching its limits.

But instead of slipping back further into the shadows when the woman comes to get water, Jesus begins a conversation that looks into her soul. I think what Jesus did that day at the well was to start working. This kind of encounter was exactly what he must have considered his vocation or calling, because he did it so often.

And look what happens. The one who was so fatigued by the journey has been refreshed by work! The disciples were amazed at the difference. He looked revitalized. He even refused the food they brought because "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." He explained to his followers that they must come to realize that doing God's work was really exciting to him. It was energizing. It was to his spirit what food and rest were to his body. It was as though he was saying, "I find working with and for the Father exhilarating, indeed!"

I find that this change experienced by Jesus is every bit as remarkable as the one involving the Samaritan woman. Let's face it, for most of us, work is an emptying experience. Our society is built on the premise that holidays and vacations are what replenish. Work is what drains us. But Jesus seems to have found a way to go to work and come home refreshed. What was his secret? Can we discover this treasure and make it available to our own lives? Here on a Labor Day holiday, that would be a great find, wouldn't it?

May I suggest that the first step in appropriating Jesus' experience is to see that he was drawn and not driven to do work. He chose to do it of his own free will. He was not forced to do it. The impetus came from within himself. He was not driven to act by some external pressure. He was drawn to the interaction because it made sense to him. It was something he felt needed to be done, and he wanted to do it. It was meaningful to him. Do you see the powerful distinction? The difference between work leaving us exhausted and emptied out or replenished and renewed goes back to one single question--why are we putting forth this effort? What meaning does it have for us?

Are you familiar with the writings of Victor Frankl? He wrote from the context of a Jewish prisonor in a German concentration camp. He brought his psychiatric training to the question, why do some prisoners die while others live? He came to the conclusion that the captives who had a meaningful reason to live, did. He repeated his thesis again and again: "If a person has a why to live, he can overcome almost any how.

As Frankl listened to the stories of his fellow detainees, he heard one who had a retarded child who needed his care; another had a fiancee waiting to marry him; Frankl himself had a book he wanted to complete. In these varied stories, Frankl found the one common theme. The existence of those "whys" overcame all the horrific "hows" of concentration camp life.

On the other hand, Frankl found that those prisoners who had no sense of meaning soon "gave up" and either succumbed to disease or voluntarily took their own lives.

If Frankl is correct and I believe that he is, then what is true for life is certainly also true for that which we call work. If I have a "why" for my labor, that is, if the reason behind my work makes sense to me, and is something I can affirm, the I can endure all kinds of drudgery and still experience satisfaction and replenishment. But if some positive "why" does not exist, then work soon becomes a curse and the forty or fifty or how many hours a week are spent in the effort are filled with resentment and boredom. I wind up drained and exhausted.

(Editor's note: The Grand Finale--tomorrow...

The Church Report

Welcome again to the refreshing spirit that fills The Church of Transcendental Hesitation like the fresh winds of spring. We are glad you have chosen to join with thousands from many locations for a service from the fastest growing church in the world.

Our pastor, one of the most brilliant theologians and communicators of our time, prepares our thoughts for one of the two central celebrations of the Christian Church, Easter. And now, The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle D. D.

With apologies to Spielberg and Lucas, the words of our text today come from "long ago and far away" from this place and time. They reach us from the sixth century B. C., over 2500 yrs ago. and are set in the land of Babylon, a city state that was located about 50 miles south of what we know as Baghdad, Iraq.

But in the dimension of the human heart, these same words reach right down to where most of us live and are as relevant as today's headlines. Lost jobs, savings washed away by the markets, the government owning companies are some of the things that litter our landscape that is not unlike being taken captive and transported to a country not our own. The text will bring the sounds of harsh and angry words that are usually held from our sensitive ears when they originate from the Biblical materials. But as we realize the situation which gave rise to these "fist shaking" kinds of emotions we will see our own faces, because they represent events that happen to us in one form or another, again and again in our existence.

You see, these people had just been caught up in one of those cataclysmic changes in History. Babylon had decided to flex its military muscle and sweep down to do a little regime changing. They destroyed the Jewish state and carried what was left in captive to their own country. There, EVERYTHING was different. The topography, the customs, the religion, the weather, and almost anything else that you might be able to name had been changed because the rug of history had been pulled out from under them.

And now, imagine one of the captors saying, "Hey, we need some music! Sing us one of those songs from the country from which you come. Entertain us!"

From those open wounds of warfare, captivity, and derision come these words from the Psalmist. Some pronouncements of scripture give us guidance in how we should act. Others give us examples to avoid. Psalm 137 is from the latter.

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.

2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,

3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .

6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

Listen to an echo of these words applied to a New Testament context from the Broadway stage and the musical Godspell and realize on this Palm Sunday that the disciples were about to face one of those upheavals of history in their lives:

We Hung Up Our Lyres

The first reaction of the captives to their new surroundings was strongly negative. That shouldn't be a surprise. Something within us yearns for security and stability and when strange lands appear, they are almost always frightful places. These people who were exiles in body became exiles in spirit. They retreated to two rooms of the imagination for comfort: nostalgia and anticipation. They abandoned the present moment to flights of thought in "once upon a time" and "someday, over the rainbow." In doing so their history became mythology and their future utter fantasy.

In thinking about Jerusalem their images grow bigger than life. They request the loss of the symbol of power and speech if they sanction the thought of forgetting their lost city. Then they project themselves in a hoped for future that has some of the most barbaric images found in the Bible. They want the future to hold for Babylon a dose of its own medicine. When the primary emphasis concerning change is what has been lost, the movement will then naturally journey toward bitterness and hostility.

Remember these folk were not low life rabble. These were the cream of society, the best and brightest of the "chosen people." And they show that even good people in the face of violent change can be transformed into beings filled with ugly bitterness and contempt.

Can you see the relevancy of these ancient words to the changes that are swirling around us just now? Minds move with nostalgia back to times that through the mists of the years appear to be far better than they probably really were, and we paint the future with the anticipation that those in responsible places will "get their comeuppance." We will cry against bonuses for those unworthy and we will assemble our rage at "tea parties." Don't ask us to sing our songs of joy when you have ripped our lives from their secure moorings!

What can we learn from this picture of history and people going bad? The plaintive sad wail reaches down the canyons of time and distance to echo in our minds. "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

The answer, I believe, is to be found in realizing that change is not just one of the ways that the God of the Bible works with us, but is a primary means of shaping us and our world. Change is so much a part of the universe that one might paradoxically say that change is its only constant.

If that is true, doesn't our rebellion really say to the Almighty that He doesn't know how to do this creation stuff. "Get out of the way," we seem to be saying. "Let me show you how the world and life ought to be put together." Such arrogance to limit His presence to joy, when we may miss some of His most powerful gifts in the whirlwinds of pain.

The mistake that the ancients made was in their image of change being so negative that it was blasphemous to suggest that anything good could exist in their new place. My thought is that if we don't learn to sing in Babylon we might forget the tune and be unable to sing when the waves of the spirit of the universe wash over and are ready to set us free.

Therefore, I would conclude that the question of the Psalm is a crucial question for all of us. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? We are in a different world right now than the one we have known before. And we always shall be. This is the way life is given to us. The challenge is learning to concentrate on what is being given rather than on what is being taken away. To receive with gratitude what is coming and surrender gracefully what is going is the stance which makes it possible to find light in the darkness, roses in the desert, and joy and growth in the midst of change. Change is the way He works, not something that works against His way. It is always give as well as take. Therefore, take joyfully what is given, and give humbly what is taken, and in so doing, you will be able to sing the Lord's song, not just in strange lands, but everywhere.

So, captive, stranger, one hurting from pain and loss, sing us a song...will you?

Our recessional hymn comes with a dramatic reading and then a request to sing along. It will do you good. Encourage our soloist to please eat her vegetables. The title is "Sing."

The Church Report

The secure walls of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation sometimes give us such a sense of warm security that we are numbed to the perils and pain outside. But the world's economic events of the last few months are unavoidable and penetrate even the stronghold of our sanctuary. Join with our church's praise band, Think Freud, in our rousing call to worship hymn, Money.

Now, moving toward the pulpit is the Senior Pastor/Theologian in Residence of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation. While attending to the needs and pressures of the fastest growing church in the world, he finds time to pen brilliant words of wisdom by which you will want to live. Holyagnostic presents The Right Reverand Doctor Tweedle, D. D.

Real Estate Values tumble. Your 401k and stock portfolio looks like economic locusts have been at work voraciously. Bernard Madoff bamboozles sophisticated investors out of fifty billion dollars. A stimulus package of gargantuan tax expenditures is the politician's reaction. All these recent dramatic, cataclysmic events focus our thoughts on the fragile monetary structures upon which we all depend.

Our text this day are words from long ago that echo across centuries to give us guidance in these times that few of us have before known. Listen to the words of a man named Jesus as he teaches specifically those whom he had chosen to learn, and as he speaks also to the curious, hopeful crowds who could not dismiss his unique magnetism.

Matthew 6:19-21 (New International Version)

19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

In Carson McCullers novel, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, one finds the story of one individual's search for authentic fulfillment and as such is a story about us all. At many points we humans differ from each other, but here is a place where we are all just alike. We hunger for fulfillment and satisfaction of our most primal needs. What is life if not one great big "treasure hunt" where we constantly search for that which can nourish our hearts. There is not an issue in life much more basic than the question of our hearts and our treasure. And it was to this issue that Jesus' word came to his disciples and to us. What was he saying?

The obvious distinction that Jesus is drawing is the one between the material and the personal realms of existence, or that part of our life that pertains solely to time and space and that part that has a destiny in "the world beyond worlds." Call it "soul" or "spirit" or "personality" or whatever you will.

But less obvious is the distinction between the means by which we live and the ends to which we live. It is a precept that is crucial. Things were made for persons, not persons for things. The material realm of existence is the means by which we are supposed to live. It is here to facilitate the development of human personality, the part of creation that is going to live on long after the earth has ceased to be and is thus the end for which we should live.

Jesus' words then, are a warning against getting the means and ends of life confused and trying to find in one realm of existence what is to be found only in the other. The "lonely hunter" will never find what she is looking for solely in acquiring or accumulating or possessing material objects, no matter how many of these we have or how we try to manipulate them.

Why is this do you suppose? Why does the storing up for ourselves treasures on earth never finally satisfy or fulfill? There are at least two reasons. The first, Jesus alludes to in mentioning the fragile and transient nature of material things.

A recent death in the family took us up into an attic of one who was a lifetime collector and accumulator. A "must have" piece of furniture, a long out of style sport coat, and many other items brought the realization that what once was thought of as something that they had to have now was something they didn't even want to keep. What once was in style was something that would be embarrassing if worn. Yesterday's treasures have a way of becoming tomorrow's junk. The attic taught the lesson of Jesus. Material objects are simply too fragile and transient to deliver to our hearts the kind of fulfillment they crave.

A few years ago while traveling south on I-65 in the afternoon rush hour traffic, Jesus' words were proven to me. A worthless piece of metal,spewing smoke, was barely reaching 35MPH while trying to climb one of Birmingham's hills. I yelled as I finally was able to pull around the antique through a break in the traffic. "It ought to be against the law for that car to be out on the road!" It was then that I saw the kind of car that it was. It was a perfect match for the candy apple red, 1960 Pontiac coupe that was the joy and excitement of my young life in college. Thirty odd years had done serious damage to the "treasure" that I wanted and loved with all my pride filled heart. Now, I was uttering epitaphs and wondering why it was legally in existence. "Things" don't have the power to satisfy and hold their value, do they?

The second reason that Jesus gives us this warning is that fulfillment for those created in the "image of God" comes in relationship. What we hunger for most is warmth and tenderness, understanding and mutuality. We want to hear and be heard, to touch and be touched, to love and be loved. These are qualities which material objects can never provide. How can a house or a diamond or a car listen to our innermost hearts or forgive us, or implant hope within us? The very things we most surely need "to get us through the night" are things no material object even possesses. You "can't get blood from a turnip" is another way of saying neither can you get love and affection and human understanding from the inanimate. And nothing is more disappointing or futile than attempting to do so. When we relate to the means by which we live as if they were the ends for which we live, we are doomed to profound failure in our lonely hunt for being.

In our text, Jesus not only tells us what not to do, but provides a path by which we indeed can become our best selves. It lays hidden in the meaning of "store up for yourselves treasures in heaven."

For me that phrase pertains to whatever we do to enrich that part of us and others that is eternal. Anything we do to enhance and enlarge our capacities to know and relate and affirm and appreciate and bless is "laying up for ourselves treasure in heaven." This certainly includes learning to use the material order in ways that bless the human order. Did Jesus think that the realm of things was evil in itself or something that ought to be scorned or rejected? I don't think so. He rather saw this realm as the servant of the other realm, and invited us to invest those things we could never keep in those things we could never lose.

Do you remember the rich, young ruler who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to for eternal life. He was asking, in effect, what can I do to satisfy the hunger in my heart. By implication, his wealth and power were not adequate for filling his need for authentic treasure. What did Jesus tell him? "Go and sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor. Then come to follow me." It is obvious from such a command that Jesus did not regard this man's wealth as something inherently evil. If that had been the case, He would have said to him, "Go and destroy your material possessions immediately so that they cannot harm you or anyone else." On the contrary, Jesus looked on these possessions as a positive good if they were invested in the humanizing process. It was an invitation to reverse the direction of his life. "Stop using means as ends. Invest that which you cannot keep into that which you cannot lose." The tragedy of this story is that the young man left as unfulfilled and dissatisfied as he was when he arrived. The narrator says that it was because he "had great riches." He either could not see the truth or break old habits.

What a haunting symbol is this story for those of us who live amid the unprecedented affluence of the twenty first century. Even with our current economic crisis or perhaps because of it, we need to ponder the "treasure hunt" called life. When Jesus says there is a way to relate to things that leaves one poor and another way of relating that makes one rich, we need to listen.

There is an old "preacher story" about a boy who lived so far out in the country that he was twelve years old before he had ever heard of a circus. You can imagine his excitement when a poster went up at the school house one day that the traveling Ringling Brothers Circus was coming to a near-by town the next Saturday. He could not wait to get home to tell his family the good news. With his telling came the inevitable question, "Daddy, can I go?" The family was poor, but the father sensing the importance the boy placed on this wondrous new reality in his world, told him that if he got his Saturday chores done early that he would provide the money to go see the circus.

On Saturday morning all the work was finished and the boy waited patiently for his money. The father reached into his overalls and pulled out a dollar bill, the largest amount of money the child had ever had at one time in all of his life.

The boy ran at a trot the whole distance from his farm to the town because of his excitement. And as soon as he got to the outskirts of the village he found crowds lining both sides of the street. He worked his way through to where he could see what was happening, and soon an incredible spectacle was spread before him. Walking in front of him was a line of the most amazing things he had ever seen. Here were the clowns, the bands, the cages with the various animals, and each passing wonder was greater than the last. Eventually, the tail end of the procession came in sight. Bringing up the rear was the traditional old clown with floppy pants, droopy eyes, and a red rubber nose. As the clown moved by where the little boy was standing, the boy reached in his pocket, got out his precious dollar bill, gave it to the clown, and turned toward home. What had happened? He thought he had seen the circus, when he had only seen the parade!

Isn't the story a parable of the mistake that many are making right now? These hearts that are lonely hunters are taking out the precious dollars of their lives, and giving them to material objects, as if they were the final treasure, when in fact, they are only the prelude, the means toward the end, not the "real thing" itself. That has got to be one of life's most tragic mistakes, thinking you are in on the circus, when you are only in on the parade.

Jesus said "storing up for yourself treasure on earth" is like confusing the means with the ends. There is a better way. Will you learn from the teacher? Will you...?

Leave quietly now with the music of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation Orchestra, Heavy Dergible, building you a Stairway to Heaven

The Church Report

Once again we welcome you to the friendly confines of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation, the fastest growing church in the world. While the cold winds of winter may be blowing where you are, we are surrounded here by the warmth that comes from the fellowship that we share not only with each other, but with The One who calls us his own.

If you are new to our congregation, your presence arrives at an appropriate time because the message from our brilliant theologian and communicator, The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D., is entitled "The Practice of Hospitality". Settle back in our comfortable pews. Enjoy the way the sunlight streams through the majestic stained glass. And for our special music, listen to an original composition by one of our members. The song was for his young daughter, Jenney, whom he knew would eventually grow up and leave him a Stranger on the Shore.

The text for today's message is Hebrews 13:1-2:

Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

And now we invite you to listen to the most significant minister in Christendom today, The Right Reverend Dr. Tweedle, D. D.

The practice of hospitality has always been an important perspective in Biblical religion. Originally, the concept was born of necessity. With few public accommodations for travelers, hospitality in homes was essential if one were to make long trips. However , there is more to this reality than just that. The hospitable stance became a model as to how one should relate to the unknown or the strange or the not-yet-experienced. And it is clear that hospitality to the ancients was a two way street. Not only did it offer a way for a host to help a guest, but more often than not, the guest proved to be the bearer of some unknown blessing that he or she would bestow where there was receptiveness.

Abraham received three strangers and invited them to his tent for a meal and rest. Just as out text today suggests, these visitors were angels who were the first to tell Abraham and Sarah that they would have children. (Genesis 18:1-15) A widow in Syria because of her hospitality to Elijah was given a continuing food supply and the gift of life for her son. (I Kings 17:9-24) It was after travelers on their way to Emmaus showed hospitality to their unknown companion that he showed his real identity to them when he broke bread while sharing a meal. (Luke 24:13-35)

The process then is well established in scripture. Hospitality is not only a way of giving to the stranger in need, it is also the means by which blessings are derived when those whom we have received turn around and give us their gifts as well.

Father Henri Nouwen in our own time has written of the value of recovering this biblical concept of hospitality and the applications it could have across our social structures. It was especially his mention of the home and the parent/child relationship that intrigued me. The more I thought on his exposition, the more it resonated with my own experience, first as a child and then as a parent.

What Nouwen is suggesting is that one of the best ways for a parent to understand a child is to think of that one as a guest in the home; in fact, the most important guest one is ever asked to entertain. And what is a guest? Father Nouwen identified three characteristics. He or she is a person who comes from somewhere else, who stays for a while and then moves on in a journey that is his or hers to determine. Let's allow his rubric to organize our conversation.

First of all, our children, like guests come from somewhere else. They have not been with us before and at first will be like strangers to us. Our understanding and love for them will have to grow.

A fellow pastor told his congregation recently of a visit with a new mother while she was still in the hospital. After words of congratulating joy were shared, the pastor said that the mother surprised him by confessing her ambivalence toward her new baby and the circumstances that now faced her. "I had always assumed that I would have instant and overwhelming love when I saw him. Instead, I had this mixture of love and fear. My son was like a stranger and the new responsibilities which are mine seem so overwhelming." The mother was feeling all kinds of guilt for these unexpected feelings.

What this young mother was feeling was the same as those that come from meeting any stranger. Deep affection never springs immediately full grown the instant the host and guest first meet each other. Hospitality is creating that free and friendly space where strangers gradually shed their strangeness and get to know each other. Realizing that our children come from somewhere else, that they are not ourselves, that they have an element of strangeness about them is a healthy place to begin.

We also need to be reminded that our children never completely belong to us alone. We have been allowed to share a bit in the act of creation. Kahlil Gibran says, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you." What an important truth. Just as guests are not slaves or possessions, so no parent should think of the child as belonging solely to him or her. This sets our responsibilities in a more reasonable perspective. It reminds us that our interactions with our progeny, important as they are, are by no means the whole story.

Samuel Southard's book, Every Child Has Two Fathers, expounds this message. He reminds us that along with peers, society, and the child's own will, God is also at work in the lives of our young. Parents only play one hand in the game of rearing our children, and this realization should free a parent from the anxiety that the whole load rests exclusively on their shoulders.

One of the first gifts that came our way when our first son was born was a tiny handkerchief from my home congregation. The inscription on the card expressed the hope that the item would be passed to our son's own child years into the future. What emotion welled inside me to realize that here were a group of people who were already committed to joining with me in a momentous task that would span generations. I was not alone. And neither was my son.

The second characteristic of a guest is that he or she only stays for a little while. What an important point to make concerning the parenting role. It is not a lifetime vocation. There are times when it seems like the effort is eternal. It is not. While it is hoped that there will be an ongoing relationship as the years go by, the crucial years of parenting are relatively few. That is good news for some of you who are caught in the seemingly endless flow of diapers or the turbulent teens. And it is a good realization that helps us know what to do when.

I know personally that when we have out of town guests in our home that their presence will affect the way I allocate my time. Knowing that they will only be with us for a short period of time, I set aside some that I had planned to do in order to accommodate their needs and enjoy their company. I want to be hospitable.

The principle can apply to parenting as well. I know one father who deliberately structured his professional career to correspond to the needs of his family. He chose a job that left him lots of free time while his children were young and then as they moved out and became less dependent, he increased his vocational involvements. I really admire the kind of maturity that knows when to do what and I wish more fathers and mothers realized how really brief the parenting opportunity is. For the average adult, there will be plenty of time to pursue other concerns when the nest grows less active and even empty.

Looking back, I doubt if any parent will begrudge having invested a major part of themselves in this endeavor. What is more likely is that we overlook the transitory nature of our children's stay with us and come to regret that when they needed us most we were off somewhere else. The haunting lyrics of Harry Chapin's Cat's In The Cradle can be an anthem of warning or a painful ode to lost opportunity.

Never forget. Children, like guests, only stay with us for a while.

The last characteristic of a guest is that they eventually leave and set out on a journey all their own, and this, too, is parallel to the parent/child relationship. By the very way we all come into the world, dependency is a necessity in the earliest stages of life, but to perpetuate such a state and never encourage or allow a child to grow up and move out on his or her own is a perversion of parenting. The whole purpose of the years of "cleaving" is to prepare for the challenge of "leaving." Carlyle Marney used to point out that the first thing done after birth is to cut the baby loose from its mother's body, and this is a prophetic symbol of what the whole parenting precess is about. Remembering that our children are really guests with journeys of their own to make will help prepare us for the awesome task of letting go and bidding farewell with our blessing.

Ironically, the better one is at the first stage of parenting; that is, being attentive and responsive to a child's every need, the harder this letting go "second-phase" task may be. David Redding has compiled a prayer that illustrates the problem:

"O Lord, do not let William grow up too quickly. May he make no decisions without consulting me first. May he still find his greatest pleasure in my company. I know he is developing new interests, and making new friends, but I do want to share in every part of his life. Remind him constantly of all that he owes to his parents. Prevent him from growing too independent. And if he must have a girl, let it be that sweet little Cynthia Black."

Who among us who are parents have not felt every single one of those desires. But of course, this is what we must let go if our children are to become the free-standing individuals they were meant to be.

Eric Fromm describes romantic love as "two becoming one", but parental love as "one becoming two." I believe his perspective is correct. Thinking of our children as guests with journeys of their own to take can help us handle those moments when our children take the inheritance that we have given them and set out for some "far country" where they must learn for themselves those things that they would not let us teach or that no one can really learn from another. This is by no means easy, but it lies within the circle of what being a good parent is.

The models for parenting are many. Sometimes we think of our work as xeroxing, that is, trying to make little copies of ourselves. At other times we feel like lion tamers--whipping creatures into conformity to our will. But for me and hopefully for you there is a more helpful model. It is the biblical one of host and guest. For me it takes some of the anxiety out of this very crucial responsibility. While parenting is one of the most important endeavors any human being ever undertakes, we should not make an idolatry out of it. After all, our worth and destiny as persons does not depend on our succeeding perfectly as parents. We are only one factor in that momentous process.

Hopefully then, coming to understand hospitality will free us to fulfill the highest single responsibility we have as parents; namely, to enjoy our children, to take delight in them, to regard them not primarily as possessions or responsibilities, but gifts given to us by Another for us to share and celebrate. When this attitude prevails, the the Biblical principle of the guest bestowing blessing back on the host can also take place. In literal truth, the process of parenting is "entertaining angels without knowing it."

May the Original Parent Himself, God the Father, show us how to be hospitable in the home, that there, of all places, gifts may be shared and both host and guest, parent and child may be enriched!

The music of the recessional today is lead by James Morris's son and the band Whitenburg Doors.

The Christmas Church Report

The Church of Transcendental Hesitation never looks more beautiful than it does at Christmas. Light and color are splashed everywhere. The murmur of the sound of fellowship softens and in preparation for the message of Christmas, the thousand voices of the choir of the the world's fastest growing church join with our orchestra to provide the special music.

And now the most articulate and influential theologian and communicator today, the minister of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation, The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D. Today's sermon title: "That's Unbelievable!"

Twice a year those of the Christian faith are drawn to celebrations that are at the core of who they are and what they practice in their religion and life. And those of us who have been reared in the church come to the familiar stories of Christmas and Easter with a kind of soothing ease that belie the explosive nature of the narratives.

It's difficult in our culture so steeped in the traditions for even a casual observer or participant to imagine what it would be like to hear the two messages of Christmas and Easter for the first time without all the trappings surrounding the celebrations. What would it be like under those circumstances to hear that God became a man and despite dying a terrible death, he conquered that last barrier by living again? I think that I know what I would probably say if it were possible to hear the two stories that way, "That is unbelieveable!"

And I think that exclamation is exactly the stance that is rationally and theologically appropriate for the two major peaks on the Christian calendar. Will you think in those terms as we explore for a moment the first of these, Christmas? What does the Christmas story teach us about God?

First, notice that the flow that night was from above to below. It was not from below to above. This is an absolutely crucial point in the story. Earth didn't reach up to lay hold of the reality of the Divine. Instead, it was the other way around. God reached down to make contact with humankind, to establish rapport with those He had made. God makes the first move.

Phillips Brooks, America's best known nineteenth century preacher, traveled from his home in Boston to visit Bethlehem. And in 1865 his church organist added music to the words Rev. Brooks wrote about his experience:

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

Those last two lines express for me and probably for you the anxiety of trying to get our minds around this old, old, story. I find myself saying, "I hope it is true." But then the voice of doubt says, "I fear that it is not."

On the one hand stands the deepest single hope of humankind, the desire to know on an intimate basis our Source. Yet over against this God-hunger are a million fears. Does God exist at all? Is he only a product of our wish-fulfillment? Or perhaps He does exist, but is unknowable because of the huge chasm that separates the created from the Creator. Is he the Unmoved Mover who is indifferent to our reality?

On and on we could go with our fears that stand over against our deepest human hope. But listen,in one single stoke, the Christmas story sweeps all of these aside. It announces not only that He exists and can be known, but that He wants to be known. Above all, that big theological word, Incarnation, means that God knows how to get in touch with human beings and that wants to do so.

After that first Christmas it was possible to mark it down in our book, "God wants to relate to you more than you want to relate to Him, and He has ways of doing it."

It really is unbelievable, isn't it?

A second thing of importance to my understanding of the Christmas story is that God did the unexpected. People wanted a soldier or a politician. Nobody expected a baby and a manger. It was as though He laughed and said, "Surprise!"

No one expected a cave outside of Bethlehem. None expected a peasant girl from Nazareth. But that was the place and the means by which the Almighty chose to enter history.

It seems to me that the lesson learned from those elements of the familiar story is that we will probably go wrong if we too specifically define how God will come to us.

Samuel Miller was in Germany in the late 1930's and went one night to see the last of what he called "the metaphysical clowns" perform in Munich. One scene began with a circle of light in the center of an empty stage. The clown entered and started looking around intensely. After a while, he was joined by a policeman who asked, "Have you lost something?" He answered, "Yes, the key to my house." The officer joined him in the search.

After several minutes the policeman said, "Are you sure you lost it here?" To which the clown answered, "Oh, No, I lost it over there." He pointed to a dark part of the stage. "Then why on earth are you looking here?" asked the policeman. The clown answered, "Because there is no light over there."

Like the clown, we often want to define the ways that we want Him to act in our lives and world. The Christmas story tells us that He may prefer a surprise party instead. He may work away from our stained glass windows and formal pageantry. He may appear at places unexpected far from the definitions and boxes into which we wish to place Him.

But He is looking for you. He has already taken the initiative. The flow is from above not from below, and it may surprise you when you see it. Bring your hopes and fears because what is about to happen is unbelievable!