the one about inviting Angie

Come and see.  In the gospel of John these are words of personal invitation to step into a new life, a life with Jesus.  They are unexpected by the recipient, Nathaniel. Because he does not yet believe that Jesus is a rabbi worth following.  But Jesus promises that he is inviting them into a world in which the heavens are opened up, the veil between heaven and earth is pulled back, the distance between them and God is removed.  God’s world is being revealed in the flesh of Jesus, if they will come and see.

Come and see.  When have you heard these words or uttered them yourself?  They are spoken with some anticipation.  Come and see the baby.  Come and see the new house.  Come and see the puppy.  Come and see the flower garden project I completed.  Or a plea for companionship. Come and see me when you get a chance.  I am invited to come and see people in their homes quite often.  It is a way that we give people access to our lives. No?  Think of a time that you were invited to come and see or a time you invited others.  What was the meaning of the invitation?  With these words we let people into some part of our lives that has meaning for us.  

At Peter’s Porch, I go with a mission every month.  I pray about it.  I pray that God would make me open to see someone who needs to be seen and give me the courage to step into their world.  Show me a person or family that needs connection.  I look for the one person.  This month it was Angie.  Angie is 27, engaged, with four kids.  She lives in Ephrata.  She actually knows to people in this church.  She was going to LCBC, but they lack transportation.  She wants to become more than a consumer of feel-good religion.  She wants to contribute to other people.  She has empathy, the power to step into another person’s world, look around with them, and stay with them even if it’s dark in there.  I like these people.  She’s also starting over.  She was recently released from Lanc. Co. prison.  And I think she has the potential to become a person with faith, whose story may change lives, positively influence others, and serve God’s will.  But, baby steps.  I invited her to dinner church.  Actually I called her.  I told her that I prayed for guidance in my conversations and that God led me to her and her mom.  She confirmed it by saying that she was recently told by another minister that she would get connected to a place where she could help others.  So, I invited her to come and see.  I told her about us. She said yes.  Gave me her number.  Now, I was no pick up artist.  I basically got lucky once and she married me and she’s still married to me.  I’m no charmer.  I’m open and willing to speak the words; come and see.  I used those actual words.  And she said yes.  She needs a way to get here tonight, but she intends to come and see what we are doing here.  I hope some of you will come and see, too.  So that Angie can experience a community of believers, seeking Jesus together.

Actually I invite folks to come and see what we’re doing a lot.  Not because I think we are doing special things, per se.  People ask me if this is a big church.  It’s there way of saying, “Could anything good happen at little Zion on Main Street in Akron?”  The assumption is always "bigger is better".  I tell them we do big things. It’s not flashy entertainment here.  It’s real.  And personal.  And Jesus is the one who invites us in.  When we gather in community here, our intention is to show the love of Christ.  Disciples are people who are willing to give others access to their lives, their hearts, their minds, so that others might experience Jesus in them.  Because nothing matters more to me than what Jesus has done for me, for us, for the world.  My hope in the future of this world is in Jesus, in the gospel.  Disciples are people who have experienced the grace, love, and peace of Jesus and are called to share it.  When people come and see, do they see Jesus in us?  I hope they do.  Every time.    Amen.  

Post-script.  Angie did come to dinner church with her four children.  I picked them up in my minivan.  We ate together and talked about their life situation. We prayed together. We shared the Lord's supper. I took them home.  She has a written journal that she would like to share sometime, a sort of testimony of how God's grace has saved her.  I hope she can do that with us soon.  When we invite people into our lives, it is often our own eyes and hearts and minds that are opened.      

the one about kairos time

Based on Gospel of Mark. 1:14-20. 

Time, money, friends, material goods, land.  In this list of resources, which do you feel you possess the least?  If you could have more of any one of these which would you choose?  If you were to pray to God for any of these things, which would you pray about?  Who among us today wishes to expand their real estate? Show of hands.   Other items?  Friends?  Money?  Time?

Time is a real bugger.  At the end of the day, you run out of it.  We cannot add more of it, can we?  It’s a fixed economy, in some ways.  24 hours a day.  7 days a week.  356 days a year.  But what is the span of a lifetime?  Unknown, right?  You could live to be 107 or die tomorrow.  Pleasant, I know. But that’s the hard truth about time.  We can plan for tomorrow, but we have to live in the immediate NOW.  And time speeds up as you age, doesn’t it?  Does it seem like a year goes by faster to you than it once did?  Is that real? What is that?  We lose time.  We waste time. We spend time.  Time goes by and we don’t get it back.  When our dog died last month, we did not say “That was the exact right amount of time with her.”  No, we wished for more time, good time, walk and play time with her.  BUT, we also discovered that the timing of her death was right for our family and our life.  And that’s the other bit about time.  It is not always fixed by the clock.  Last week, we went to the farm show in HBG.  We weren’t there five minutes when we ran into one of our oldest and best college friends and his wife and daughter. Jake and I experienced God’s calling in our lives through prayer in a little chapel at SU.  He is a reminder to me that God called us to public ministry.  Later, we ran into Jim Dunlop, the son of our Bishop.  He and I are Facebook friends who have never met.  When he saw me, he recognized me and we stopped to talk for a few minutes.  What do we make of these chance encounters?  If we weren’t somehow dialed in or alert and aware, we would not experience them.  And though seemingly random, they might mean something else.  I’ve been thinking about Jake and Jim since.

Because timing matters.  It is a way that God speaks to us, according to Jesus.  He says, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news."  The word for time here is Kairos.  It's like when fruit ripens.  It's a moment.  Kairos is the encounter that interrupts, the experience that breaks into the routine.  A Kairos moment is an unexpected moment that gives us pause and transcends the schedule.  A Kairos will blow your plans, your schedule, your calendar totally away.  Illness, death, surgery, incarceration are all Kairos experiences. But so might be an opportunity or idea or or encounter or invitation into something new.  And in Jesus’ own life, he was experiencing a Kairos moment.  Mark says, "After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming."  His public ministry began, not on a Monday at 9 am.  Or a Sunday at 9:30; not immediately after his 33^rd birthday.   It began after John was arrested.  Timing is everything. The Kairos for Jesus is the arrest of John. Does John’s arrest foreshadow Jesus’?  John was arrested for his public ministry, a voice crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord.  Now Jesus begins a public ministry with the same message as his predecessor.  Except that Jesus is also claiming that the Kairos moment of John’s arrest and his inauguration into public ministry is the Kairos moment for all of us.  It is the moment when everything changes.  It is the moment when God comes near.  

And as a sign of it, he begins to invite people to follow him.  First four fishermen.  And they immediately go after him.  Why?  What is it that compels them to so hastily drop their nets and go after this man?  His invitation is not filled with promises and promotions.  It is simple.  Come and I will make you fish for people.  What does that mean anyway?  Casting a net to capture people?  How? Why?  For what purpose?  None of this is clear and they go anyway.

Because they are experiencing a Kairos.  It is more than a chance encounter with a preacher on the beach.  It has significance for them.  They may not know what it means, yet.  But they know that they have been summoned, called, invited into something they cannot ignore.  A Kairos is like the ripening of fruit.  These people were ready for action, ready to go, ready for a call.  They were fishermen with dreams and hopes and needs beyond their boats and nets.  They were eager to follow a teacher, a leader, a guide into a new and better way of life.  What if they had said, we don’t have time now.  We have three hours to mend our nets before dusk and fishing time. Clock time can be a powerful tool of resistance.  We are often too busy to notice a Kairos or when they happen we choose to keep our schedule and routine instead.  I can’t.  I have to do this. But these men respond. Jesus breaks into their world and they leave it behind and go. Why? They are disciples. And the first characteristic of a disciple, a learner, a follower of Jesus is this:  Be open to Kairos. God can call you any time.  Maybe this is a time in your life when you have questions or are seeking a way to see, know, hear, trust, and love God, yourself and others.  Maybe something is happening with you and you are struggling with a challenge or an issue for which you cannot see a positive resolution.  Maybe you have experienced something you don’t understand.  A Kairos demands attention and action.  What is God saying and what am I going to do about it?  Jesus’ commands to repent and believe are the faithful response of a disciple experiencing Kairos.  To repent is to stop and turn around.  To get reoriented.  To believe is to take up a new direction without knowing the destination.  It is to trust God to reorder your life in a way that will please God, serve others, and give you life.  I am here to help you mine out a Kairos experience and move in the direction God is calling you to.  Next week, we will honor two people who have demonstrated discipleship in 2014.  And we will welcome three people into church leadership, all who have had Kairos experiences in their lives that prepare them to enter public ministry as servants of Jesus.  Be open to Kairos time and a call to discipleship this week.  Jesus is still inviting you to follow him.  Amen.      

       

the one about the smelly man in the tattered coat

There’s a small congregation like this one and one Sunday the Pastor is ready to begin worship with a prayer and a new hymn when a man walks in the back and starts down the aisle. He is a visitor, never been in there before.  He sits down about halfway up next to an older couple.  He sits down, but says excuse me in a normal speaking voice. This draws the attention of about 80% of the gathered congregation.  He’s wearing dirty boots, sweat pants, an old brown sweater, and---despite the frigid temps outside--a windbreaker with a hole in the back about 3” round, looks like a burn hole.  He looks to be about 40 or 50.  He settles in.  He seems fidgety and uncertain, maybe a little anxious.  He coughs.  A lot. The kind of coughing that makes you want to get out of the way.   He takes out the hymnal and bible in his pew and thumbs through them, not looking for anything at all.  He looks at the bulletin.  The couple next to him slide down and smile when he looks their way.

Also, they notice right away, he smells bad.  Like cigarettes and liquor and body odor.  His hair is dirty but combed.  But the odor is foul and distracting. And not just to the people sharing a pew. Behind him and across the aisle, he is noticeable.  The pastor notices, too.  But worship begins.  He stands when the people stand and sits when they sit.  He doesn’t look in a hymnal or read the bulletin at all.  He just stands and sits, stands and sits. He stays for about half of the service, gets up, walks out, uses the bathroom, and exits the building.  No one speaks to him. He speaks with no one.  He comes and he goes.  What remains is the odor.  And the concern of others in the congregation.  Who was he?  What did he want?  Why was he there?  Would he come back?  What should they do if he does?  Was he homeless?  Drunk?  Did they have a policy about how to handle such occasions? The pastor did not know this man either.   His visit disrupted, startled, confused, and concerned a few people.  Afterward, there were conversations heard about those people hanging around.  And safety concerns for the church building.  And what they should do if he comes again. He seemed needy.  But he didn’t ask for assistance. They don’t want to seem unwelcoming or unfriendly, but his presence was a distraction from worship.  Even for the Pastor, who wondered about the smelly man in the tattered coat.