Sermon for September 30, 2007

The Prophet Without Honor
Matthew 13:54-58

The following sermon draws heavily upon remarks by James Buchanan at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago: http://www.fourthchurch.org/%202000/04.09.00.html

Remember Junior High romance? I do. There was a girl. And there was a school dance coming up. Not just any dance – our fist middle school semi-formal dance. I was sure this girl would go to the dance with me. I thought she was pretty and fun. But mostly, I knew she would say yes. So, I did what many self-respecting 6th graders do. I had my best friend to ask the girl if she would go to the dance with me. As I saw it, there was only one slight glitch in my plan. My best friend always tried to convince people that he was a Martian who was left on earth as an orphan child. In hindsight, putting my romantic future in the hands of an orphaned Martian may not have been a good move. We all sat on the bleachers in gym class -- the girl and her friends on one side, my best friend and I on the other. He slid over to her, held up his hand in a sign indicating that he came in peace, and he said, “Ya Yaaa! Grok! Dee Doba Pukee Tolba. Reeta bah Flootah Matt” As he said it he pointed at me and smiled. I buried my head in my hands. She looked confused. She apparently did not speak Martian. My best friend then leaned over, cupped his hand over his mouth and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and smiled. My friend quickly shuffled back to me, grinning. She said yes.

That next week, I was so nervous I got sick. My mother and I bought a wrist corsage at the hospital flower shop while visiting a relative. As I picked out my only tie. I knew my date would wear the white dress with the little red polka-dots. It’s the only one I ever saw her wear. I knew it was going to be a good night. Little did I know, It would be my first date with rejection.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all felt the stinging pain of rejection. We’ve been turned down dozens of times. Parents told us no. We’ve been rejected in romance. We have received rejection letters from colleges, or rejection from job applications. Many of us have stifled our life by heeding some misguided critic who implied we were not good enough. Beethoven’s music teacher called him a hopeless composer. Albert Einstein’s parents thought he was sub-normal. At his first dance audition, Fred Astaire was told that he was balding, skinny, and can dance a little. In the dead of night, Charles Dickens sneaked off to mail a manuscript, petrified that his friends would find out and ridicule him. The manuscript was rejected. More rejections pierced him before he won the hearts of millions with classics like Oliver Twist.

Part of what a family is for is to help individuals deal with rejection. A pioneer in family therapy at Chicago Theological Seminary used to say that a family is where you know you will never be turned away; where you will always have a place. Your family is supposed to be the group of people you can count on being on your side. Sometimes we have to find other families when our own doesn’t work. At its best, the Church is a family for us all. And sometimes it does work, at home, the way it is supposed to.

Mel White, an evangelical pastor, professor at Fuller Seminary, author, consultant and writer for Jerry Falwell, husband and father, after years of struggle, announced that he was gay and that he was leaving his marriage and profession. Rejection is a mild word for what happened to him. Former colleagues would not speak or return calls. He was picketed, called names, publicly berated and told that he should be stoned to death, that he would die of AIDS, that he was going to spend eternity in hell. In the middle of it all, White’s parents were caught by a TV interviewer who asked on camera, “You know what other Christians are saying about your son? They say he’s an abomination. What do you think of that?” “Well,” the mother answered in a sweet, quivery voice, “he may be an abomination, but he’s still our pride and joy.”

Family is where you know you have a place. The night of my junior High semi-formal, my family dropped me off at the school. I met my date there. She was a vision of beauty in her white dress with red polka dots and red carnation wrist corsage. We went and sat on the bleachers. As soon as the music started, I knew there was going to be trouble. I’ve always been too self-conscious to dance. I think my date wanted to dance, but I was terrified. I just sat on the bleachers and cracked jokes, hoping to compensate for my fear. Finally, she told me that she had to use the ladies room. She went in with a gaggle of her friends. A half hour later, she was still in there. Over the next hour, her friends would run out of the ladies room and ask me what I did to my date. She was in there sobbing out of control. I didn’t do anything. My poor dancing skills certainly should not have made her cry. She never came out of the restroom that night. I found a pay phone and called my parents to pick me up. I held it together until my father came to get me. I jumped into the front seat of his old silver pick-up, slammed the door. All my father had to do is look at me and ask, “What happened?” I cried all the way home that night. I had felt the first sting of rejection, and didn’t know what to do. I was so glad my father came to get me and bring me to the comfort of my home.

Sometimes the best antidote to rejection is a family that knows how to be a family.

Part of what is going in today’s story of Jesus is that outsiders become insiders, and people who should be insiders become outsiders. The people rejected by religion and society get special treatment from Jesus. Pharisees, scribes, religious officials, don’t get it. They won’t budge. They won’t leave the safety of their rules, regulations, and assumptions in order to entertain a new idea.

The most devout, the most committed, the most pious, are the very ones who hound Jesus, question him, accuse him, berate him, oppose him and ultimately kill him. There is an obvious warning here—not to the overt sinners of this world, but to people of faith. The faith community proved to be Jesus’ toughest audience. And the warning to the church today is contained in that deceptively simple but devastating conclusion.

Jesus moved on. He left. He didn’t have time to waste on people so certain of themselves, so rigid, so arrogantly exclusive that they could not hear, let alone believe, the good news of God’s unconditional love.

One of the reasons they rejected Jesus was their own rigid religiosity. But the other reason was that he was just Jesus. He was the carpenter, Mary’s illegitimate son. He didn’t look like a Messiah. He certainly didn’t act like the Messiah they expected. He didn’t look like or sound like a Word from God. He was just Jesus, an ordinary man, their old neighbor. Jesus cannot force them to believe in him or love one another, and so nothing new happens, no miracles, new birth, no Kingdom of God.

The good folk of Nazareth, in order to get it, are going to have to change the way they think. They will have to live more loosely with their traditions and be open to something new as it comes to them in the ordinary . . . the everyday . . . the commonplace.

How easy it is to miss goodness and beauty and truth—because we think we already know where and how to find it.

Martha Beck wrote a book, Expecting Adam: a True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic about the birth of her son, a little boy with Down Syndrome. The Beck’s Harvard colleagues advised them to terminate the pregnancy because of the hindrance the child would be to their academic career. But Adam was born and changed the way his parents see life. Martha had to accept Adam’s difficulty in speaking. It was frustrating to him and heart breaking to her. At a particularly low point, she was in the grocery store with both of her children and told them they could each pick out a treat at the candy counter. Katie chose Lifesavers and a chocolate bar. But Adam went to a basket of red rosebuds and picked one out. His mother put it back and said, “No, honey, this isn’t candy—don’t you want candy?” Adam shook his small head, picked the rosebud out again, and placed it on the counter. At home the incident was forgotten.

But the next morning, there Adam was in her bedroom, with the rosebud in a small vase. Martha wrote: “I looked at him in surprise. I didn’t realize that he knew what vases were for, let alone how to get one down from the cupboard, fill it with water, and put a flower in it. “Adam walked over to the bed and handed the rose to me. As he held it out, he said in a clear, loud voice, ‘Here.’”

Sometimes goodness and beauty and truth come to us in unexpected and ordinary ways. Sometimes people close to us—children, parents, teachers, students, tutors, husbands, wives, lovers and friends—convey the truth and grace of God and God’s love in Jesus Christ.

He will be rejected, not only on this day when he read and spoke in the synagogue in his hometown, but officially by his religion and by the Roman governing authorities. He will be rejected dramatically by scribes and Pharisees and Priests and by common people caught up in a public spectacle. He will die alone, publicly humiliated.

He will give new meaning to ancient words written by one of his people centuries earlier—
“He was despised and rejected by others: A man of suffering and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3)

It is the deepest mystery of our faith that God’s love was expressed through rejection and crucifixion. It is the deepest mystery of our faith that in his rejection we behold God’s deepest commitment and love for us. Whatever else happens to us, whatever rejections scar our hearts and mark our spirits, we are forever welcome and safe in God’s strong love. “Surely,” the ancient prophet said, “he has borne our infirmities he was wounded for our transgressions and by his bruises—by his rejection—we are healed.”

Sermon for September 16, 2007

The Unforgivable Sin
Matthew 12:22-37

Three ministers and their wives got into a car crash and died one day. They found themselves standing at the pearly gates together before St. Peter. St. Peter opened his big book, pointed to the first minister, and said, “You’re going to Hell.”

“What? Why?” cried the minister.

“Because you lusted after money. You never actually stole any money, but in your heart, you were constantly thinking about money. You had money on your mind so much that you even married a woman named Penny. So you’re going to Hell.” And in a puff of smoke, the first minister disappeared. St. Peter flipped a few pages in his book and pointed to the second minister. “You are also going to Hell,” he said sternly.

“Why?” said the anguished minister.

“Because of your love of alcohol. You never actually drank any alcohol, but you constantly yearned for it in your heart. You thought about it so much that you even married a woman named Brandy. So you’re going to Hell. “And in a puff of smoke, the second minister disappeared.

The third minister turned to his wife and said, “Well, Fanny, it’s been nice knowing you.”

Here’s something for us to think about today. Is God really like that? Does the God you worship enjoy the thought of damning you because of your faults? Does God ever get tired of our mistakes? Will God ever stop loving us? Can we ever move ourselves beyond the boundaries of God’s forgiveness?

Imagine this scenario. You come to worship and have a transforming experience. You make a decision to change some aspect of your life – to turn something around or do something better. You day to yourself, “This week, I’m going to be good.” It’s easy to be good in church, right? Walk out the doors into the so-called “real world” and what happens? If you are like me, then you blow it. Some dimwit upsets you and you lose your patience. Someone betrays you and you plot revenge. Someone hurts you and you want to hurt that person back. It’s not that we didn’t take our life-transforming commitments seriously. We meant them with all our heart. We want a new and changed life. But something gets in the way and trips us up. And so we go back to church, recommit ourselves to godly living, and then we go home and mess it up again.

How do you think God feels about this scenario? Does God lose patience? Will God punish us for not fulfilling our commitments? I grew up with a faith that said, “Yes, of course God will punish us!” My faith told me that all of us are guilty before God. All of us deserve to be punished. God does not allow certain kinds of behavior even if everyone does it. If everyone breaks the law of God, God holds everyone accountable. God would not be God if He (God was always “He”) allowed the punishment to be suspended. This means that sin must be punished. I was a very worried teenager and young adult. I just knew that God was terribly angry about the sin I was born with as well as the sins I committed. As a just judge, God would punish me, and all sinners, now and in eternity. We ourselves cannot hide the filth of sin; but we could be washed clean by grace. The Savior, Jesus Christ, stood between me and the awesome judgment of God. God sent Jesus to take my place. Jesus received the awful punishment for sin that you and I deserve. It is in Jesus that we see God’s justice and God’s mercy being displayed at the same time and in the same person. This is what I was taught. This is what I believed.

I was also taught that there was sin and there was unforgivable sin. If I ever did anything to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, I would earn a non-refundable one-way ticket to Hell. But what was blasphemy? I was taught to equate blasphemy with doubt. I was told that the original sin was doubt. The only way to reverse it was to have faith in Jesus. There was no doubting that Jesus died the death I deserved. It was sinful to doubt that Jesus performed miracles. I questioned how Jesus could be the one and only way to get to heaven, but I kept those thoughts to myself. I was taught that if the temptation of doubt troubled me it was because Satan was messing with me. But I always felt tortured. The more I tried not to think bad thoughts about Jesus, the more they flooded my mind. I had doubts. I was sure that I had committed the unforgivable sin.

I realize that not everyone has this problem. For instance, The Blasphemy Challenge continues to play on YouTube. People are encouraged to submit online videos saying their names and the words “I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit.” Some of the videos get right to the point. Some are quite vulgar. I saw a video of a man named Jim who filmed himself standing in the doorways of various local churches. At each church he proudly said, “My name is Jim. I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and I’m not afraid.” He figures if there really were a God, he would be instantly punished for saying such callous words in a church. Since Jim is still alive, there must be no God.

What do you think? On the surface, Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading sound clear: whoever blasphemes the Spirit will not be forgiven. Will Jim’s public blasphemy send him to eternal punishment? Can we ever do something that puts us beyond the reach of God’s love? Let’s take a moment to revisit our Gospel story.

A man is brought to Jesus. The man is blind and he cannot speak. People assume that demons have taken up residence in him. Jesus has compassion and heals the man. Jesus enters that which others see as unclean or defiled, and he brings new life. As soon as he’s done, the criticisms begin. Those who are in power—those religious leaders who feel that Jesus threatens their positions -- accuse him of healing in the name of the devil. It’s an insult. They think that they are the only one’s allowed to represent God. They insist that they alone have the full and complete accounts of reality. They leave little room for debate or difference of opinion. They expect unflinching loyalty from their followers. They try to discredit Jesus by saying he’s in league with the powers of evil.

But Jesus has come to clean house. Jesus leads the revolt against the powers that keep people trapped. Jesus turns things around on the religious leaders. Jesus says, “Ignorance can be forgivable. Failure can be turned around. However, using religion to turn human liberation into something odious is not pardonable. The real sin against the Holy Spirit is refusing to see when God does something real before your very eyes.”

Jesus engages in a battle of one-upmanship. His opponents are the ones who are against God. They are captives to their need for power. They smother God’s effort to make broken people whole. And when you intentionally do that, you bypass the grace of God.

Think again about the faith commitments you have made – and perhaps failed at. Maybe we fall short in our quests for transformation because we are looking for Jesus to take something bad in us and make it good. Jesus did not come to make a bad people good. Jesus came to bring dead people to life. We can be good but not alive. There are a lot of people who are morally pure, but they have no life, no joy, no celebration. If our faith is not marked by raw, passionate love, then we are no better than the close-minded religionists that Jesus corrected.

Author Shane Claiborne tells a story about living in intentional poverty with some friends in Chicago. He headed out one night to get a loaf of bread in an area notorious for its prostitution and drug trafficking, where the air is thick with tears and struggle. He walked past an alley, and tucked inside was a tattered and cold woman on crutches, selling herself to make some money. On the way home, he saw the woman again, crying and shivering. He knew he could not pass her by. Shane stopped and told her that he cared for her, that she was precious, worth more than a few bucks for tricks in an alley. He brought her to the house he lived with his friends. As soon as they entered the house, the woman wept hysterically. When she gained composure, she looked at everyone in the house and said, “You are all Christians, aren’t you?” Up to this point, no one had said anything about God or Jesus. There were no crosses in the house – not even a Christian fish on the wall. She said, “I know you are Christians because you shine. I used to be in love with Jesus like that, and when I was, I shined like diamonds in the sky. But it’s a cold dark world, and I lot my shine a little while back. I lost my shine on those streets. She asked these people to pray with her. They did. They prayed that this dark world would not take away their shine.

Weeks went by, and they did not see the woman. One day, there was a knock on the door. On the steps was a lovely lady with a contagious ear-to-ear smile. Shane stared at the woman, not recognizing her. She finally spoke. “Of course you don’t recognize me, because I’m shining again. I’m shining.” He finally realized that she was the same woman he pulled off the streets. She talked about how she had fallen in love with God again and she wanted to give him something to thank him for his hospitality. She said, “When I was on the streets, I lost everything, except this.” She pulled out a box, confessing that she smoked a lot and always collected Marlboro Miles points from the cigarette packs. “This is all I have, but I want you to have it.” She handed Shane the box filled with hundreds of Marlboro Miles. Shane says, “It’s one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever been given.” He uses them as bookmarks in his Bible. Every time he sees them, he is reminded of all the broken lives that have lost their shine.

When people tell me that they have rejected God, I say, “Tell me about the God you have rejected.” They usually describe a God of condemnation, of laws and lightening bolts, a frowning, gray-haired God who enjoys boring committee meetings. You know what? I have rejected that God, too.

The bottom line is that piling guilt upon ourselves does nothing to correct the source of our real problem. Know this and believe this. God wants you to shine again. You are guilty of nothing. God loves you. God loves you more than any of us can even begin to fathom. You are a bright and clean spirit in God’s eyes and the only one who sees this differently is you. God already accepts you for who you are, and God is not going to punish you while you struggle to live the life of faith. Jesus Christ shows us that God makes broken people whole, and that there is nothing you will ever do that can put you outside the boundaries of God’s love.

Sermon for February 11, 2007

I finally posted the last three sermons in the series on The Lord's Prayer. Sorry for the delay.
--matt

The Lord’s Prayer: Thine is the Kingdom
Luke 17:20-24

“We’ll be out until 10:30,” said Chad’s parents as their friends came by to pick them up for banquet. “While we’re gone, stay home and finish your history paper.”

“Can’t I use the car for just a little while?” asked Chad. He had gotten his driver’s license just last month. “Um, I need to borrow a book from Todd. I’ll only be gone a while.”

Absolutely not,” warned Chad’s father. “You have all the books you need for tonight. You stay home and work on that paper.” Chad really wanted to get together with his friends while his parents were gone. After all, his parents weren’t using the car, so why shouldn’t he be able to? It didn’t seem fair. He only wanted to be out for an hour or so. There would still be time to work on his history paper, he reasoned.

The phone rang. It was Todd. “Hey, come on over,” he said. “All the guys are here.” Chad decided that he could go to Todd’s and get back early enough so that his parents would never know. He just had to be sure to put some gas in the car so nothing would look suspicious. He could work fast on his history paper when he returned. On the way to Todd’s, however, he got a flat tire and he had never changed a tire before.
He got out the jack and the wrench and went to work. He went to the tire, and began to loosen the lug nuts. But all of the lug nuts on the wheel were stuck. He couldn’t get the tire off. He turned the wrench as hard as he could, but nothing moved. Chad finally gave up and walked to the nearest gas station. It was after ten o’clock when the gas station attendant finally put the hydraulic wrench on the lug nuts and removed the tire. Chad couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t he get those lug nuts off? Why were they on there so tight? Life wasn’t fair! Now he was going to be put on restriction for the rest of his life! “Which way were you turning them?” asked the gas station attendant. Chad thought it was a stupid question. He knew how to unscrew a nut. You turn it counterclockwise. “Well,” said the attendant, “the threads on this side of the car are reversed. To get them off, you turn them clockwise.” Suddenly Chad felt like a fool.

Today’s world can be a frustrating place to live in. Many people have a hard time finding happiness and fulfillment. They are like Chad, working in the wrong direction. Life doesn’t seem to get better. It only gets worse. As we’ve worked our way through the Lord’s Prayer this winter, we discovered that Jesus teaches Christians to live like a reverse thread – to believe and act the opposite of what the world teaches. The world says, “Take care of yourself,” but Jesus invites us to ask God for our daily bread. The powers of the world hold grudges and take revenge on enemies. Jesus teaches us to forgive others as God forgives us. The world entices to indulge ourselves and make ourselves happy, even at the expense of another’s happiness. Jesus tells us to pray for resistance to temptation. Today we examine the last phrase of the Lord’s Prayer. Listen to how Jesus goes against the common wisdom of his age and teaches followers to live like a reverse thread.

Luke 17:20-24
One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?” Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see the day when the Son of Man returns, but you won’t see it. People will tell you, ‘Look, there is the Son of Man,’ or, ‘Here he is,’ but don’t go out and follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so it will be on the day when the Son of Man comes.


The Pharisees have a bad reputation. We always read about how they try to blame Jesus, or trip him up, or catch him preaching heresy so that they can kill him. Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on the Pharisees, though – at least not without first examining ourselves. Like the Pharisees, we who live in these frustrating times also yearn to see a sign from God. Our troubled hearts want God to fill them with meaning. We need to see or hear or feel some evidence that God has not abandoned the world. We yearn to meet somebody – anybody – in whom we may find some trace of the presence of God. I picture the Pharisees with this same yearning as they ask Jesus when the Kingdom of God is coming. They must have ached for the Messiah to announce himself with a powerful and stunning miracle. The Pharisees are religious leaders who see their people defenseless and exposed to the brutal empires of the world. From their perspective, it seems as if God forgot them. The Messiah has not shown up as expected. They anticipate a mighty political warrior or general like King David of old who will come and wipe away all oppression. They wait for their Messiah to bring freedom and establish a new kingdom – a new order. So they ask Jesus, “Where is this Messiah? When will the kingdom of God come? Give us some facts. Tell us the details so we will know what to expect. We’re not going to stake our lives on something that’s not real. Jesus, our people are waiting and willing to follow if you will just give us something tangible to hold on to. Tell us, Jesus of Nazareth, where is your kingdom?”

Jesus responds with one of his unsatisfying and vague answers. “The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting days on a calendar. You can’t say, ‘Look, there it is!’ The Kingdom of God is already among you.”

Like the Pharisees of old, we need to see God’s kingdom at work in this world. Especially in the church. There are people who go to church faithfully who only see Jesus as an historical figure – a moral decent person, even a role model. But they do not see signs of his presence among us. There are some in the church who see Jesus as person who know all about Jesus, but they know nothing about his desire to establish God’s Kingdom in our hearts. Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is already among you.” The question is, how do we recognize his presence in our lives?

We begin to recognize God’s kingdom when we see the inside view. Have you ever walked around the outside of the church and tried to look inside through the stained glass windows? From the outside, you only see dull, muted colors. From the outside, you can’t tell if stained glass windows are pieces of junk or works of art. The moment you enter the sanctuary, the windows shine and the symbols are seen clearly. It’s the same way with knowing Christ. You can see him from the outside. You can know all about him. But you can’t see him clearly until you get a new perspective – an insider’s perspective. The true nature of Christ’s kingdom does come through research and analysis. We see it when we ask Jesus to let his kingdom form in our lives. The true nature of the kingdom can only be seen when we are in it.
We can’t get inside the kingdom until we obliterate the self-made boundaries that keep us out. You would think that everyone would want a life-transforming relationship with Jesus, but we’ve all heard excuses. Have you heard any of these before?
« The church is full of hypocrites and I don’t want to be with those people.
« Religion is a crutch for the weak – for those who afraid to face reality.
« I get serious about my faith later.
« I’ll have to think about it.
« It costs too much. I’ll have to give too much up.
« You can’t expect me to believe that stuff in the Bible actually happened.
« I’m not going to stake my life on something that’s not real
« Jesus, if you are real, prove yourself to me.

The Pharisees struggled with these same problems. They needed Jesus to speak to their struggles in pre-determined ways. They thought Jesus had it backwards. They waited for a Messiah to enter their world and act according to their rules. And then Jesus the Messiah, God Made Flesh, entered their world and said, “I’m not going to follow your rules and expectations. That’s not how God works. Come, be part of God’s kingdom, and I’ll teach you how to do it God’s way instead of your own.” Most of them could not handle it. They decided to turn against the One who came to bring them a new and transformed life in God’s kingdom.
I’m afraid the same is true for many of us. We say, “Jesus, prove yourself. Follow our rules and expectations. Do it my way or don’t do it at all.” Jesus says, “If you want to see God’s kingdom, you have to go against common sense, against your will and desires, and follow me.”
Friends, let’s not be so filled with ourselves that we think we can dictate the terms to God in a war of wills. Let’s not be the ones who expect God to only show up at the times and places that are convenient for us. Let’s open ourselves to the possibility that God wants to do something very different in our lives than what we expect. Let’s eliminate the word ‘should’ from our religious vocabulary. The Kingdom of God is in the hearts of those who can give up their expectations of what God should do or who God should be. The kingdom of God belongs to those who believe, and follow, and experience Christ for who he really is.

Who is Jesus to you? In the context of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is the one who demonstrates the kingdom, the power, and the glory of God forever and ever. His is the power of love – demonstrated on the cross. His is a love that calls us to leave our failed expectations and disappointments behind as we come to Jesus Christ in faith. He is the one who holds us in love and promises to change our lives. That’s the real power of the Kingdom – that Jesus can take faithless, doubt-filled, sinful people, clean them up, and make their lives that is more Christ-like.

Christian author Brennan Manning tells the story of an old man who was dying of cancer. The man’s daughter asked the local priest to come and pray with her father. When the priest arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows and an empty chair beside his bed. The priest assumed that the old man was waiting for his visit. “I guess you were expecting me,” The priest said.

“No, who are you?” the old man replied.

“I’m the new associate at your parish,” the priest answered. “When I saw the empty chair, I figured you knew I was going to show up.”

"Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden man. “Would you mind closing the door?” Puzzled, the priest shut the door. “I’ve never told anyone this, not even my daughter,” said the man. “But all of my life I have never known how to pray. At the Sunday Mass I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it always went right over my head… I abandoned any attempt at prayer until one day about four years ago my best friend said to me, ‘Joe, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here’s what I suggest. Place an empty chair in front of you, and in faith see Jesus on the chair. Then just speak to him and listen in the same way you’re doing with me right now.’ So, Father, I tried it and I’ve liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day. I’m careful, though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she’d either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm.”

The priest was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old man to continue on the journey. Then he prayed with him, anointed him with oil, and returned to the rectory. Two nights later, the daughter called to tell the priest that her dad died that afternoon. The priest asked, “Did he seem to die in peace?”

“Yes, when I left the house around two o’clock, he called me over to his bedside, told me one of his corny jokes, and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back from the store an hour later, I found him dead. But there was something strange, Father. In fact, beyond strange—kind of weird. Apparently, just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on a chair beside the bed.”

Are you and Jesus so close that you can talk with him as you would with a friend? Do you know that he loves you passionately, and that he’s interested in you, and he wants to listen to everything you have to say? Can you lay your head on him, hear his heartbeat, and know that everything will be all right? That’s the kind of relationship Jesus wants to have with you. That’s the power and the glory of God’s kingdom at work – God’s transforming, intimate love made known to us in Jesus Christ.

If you don’t know the power and glory of God’s love in your life, it’s not too late. It involves forsaking your expectations of Jesus, turning away from the old ways of doing things, repenting of sin and asking God to forgive. If involves following Christ where he goes instead of commanding God to follow your lead. Believe, repent, and follow. When that happens in your life, these words will mean more than they ever did: Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and the power, and glory forever. Amen.”