At Lake Junaluska, there is an excellent continuing education center known as “The Intentional Growth Center” that I have often visited for various workshops.  I have always been intrigued by that name: “The Intentional Growth Center.”  It reminds us that people can choose to set their intentions on spiritual and intellectual growth.  I have joked that I ought to start a similar center called “The Unintentional Growth Center” in recognition of the fact that sometimes growth comes to us by accident.  Life throws us into a place where we have to learn, like it or not!  That has often been my story.

There are some folks who intentionally set out on spiritual quests to find faith in God, and that is so exciting because we are promised that those who seek will find.  But there are others of us who aren’t seeking God.  We might even be running away from God or anything having to do with God.  Some of us run so far from God that we bump right into God!  We experience unintentional growth!  That is Moses’ story.

Moses, set adrift in a baby basket so that Pharaoh wouldn’t kill him, rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, raised in Pharaoh’s house with his own mother as his nanny, grew up to discover his true identity as an Israelite.  Although he was a child of privilege, he began to feel the plight of his kinsmen who were enslaved by the Egyptians.  Witnessing an especially brutal whipping of an Israelite – probably resulting in the death of that slave – Moses looked all around him and, seeing that the coast was clear, killed the Egyptian – an eye for an eye – and buried him in the sand.  Somehow the word got out among both his people and the Egyptians, and soon Pharaoh was determined to capture and kill Moses. So Moses ran into the desert to hide from Pharaoh and from God, becoming a shepherd, marrying and having a child.

As far as we can tell, Moses was not looking for God in that desert, but God was looking for him! One of the lessons in this story is that God comes looking for His lost sheep whether or not they are looking for Him!  We might say “I found God” but the truth of the matter is that God found us!  We are like the little boy who got separated from his parents in the mall and sat down and cried.  Finally his parents found him, and the little boy said, “Thank goodness I found you!”  If God didn’t initiate the search and make Himself available, we would never find Him.  Moses, tending sheep, saw a burning bush and, knowing that something mysterious and otherworldly was happening, turned aside to see what it meant, and in so doing, bumped right into God.

Some of the most influential Christians were those who bumped into God even while trying to run away from Him.  Saul of Tarsus, Lew Wallace (the writer of Ben Hur), and C. S. Lewis are just three Christians who were very opposed to Christ at one time, who became changed people after an unexpected encounter with God.

I rejoice every time parents express concern to me over the fact that their young adult child isn’t going to church and doubts God existence.  Something inside me says, “Hot dog!”  You don’t wave a red flag in front of a bull without getting charged by that bull, and you don’t run away from God without inciting God to run after you!  It is hard not to run into God!  Child of God, you might try to escape from God, but His love is relentless!

The Bible says that what Moses discovered in the burning bush was an angel of God.  In our day, we think of an angel as a personal being, a servant of God.  But in the days of Moses, the term “angel” meant someone or something that embodied God, a manifestation of God.  The flaming aspect of the bush meant that it was God’s presence.  So the meaning of this encounter with the angel in the burning bush was that Moses was visited by the living God.

There were several things that Moses learned very quickly from God.  First, God knew Moses’ name, even though Moses did not know God’s name.  God’s love for us is very personal.  Secondly, Moses discovered that God is holy.  Holy means to stand apart from the usual and to be the same throughout.  God is not wishy-washy or capricious.  We can count on His unchangeableness of heart and purpose. God’s presence makes that place holy ground, and Moses takes off his shoes in awareness of God’s holiness and his own sinfulness.  Then Moses learned that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the chosen people.  This is the same God his ancestors had told their children about, the God who had called Abraham and given him the land across the Jordan, who had promised to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens but who were now enslaved in Egypt.  “Those are my people,” says God. It is very likely that the Hebrew slaves had forgotten about God, but God had not forgotten about them because God never forgets about us, no matter how forgetful we get.

Then Moses learned that God feels a kindred connection to people who suffer oppression.  He identifies with them.  We dare not ever look down upon the downtrodden because they have God’s favor and concern.  “Blessed are the poor,” Jesus said.  Several of you remind me of this from time to time.  When someone who is down on their luck comes by the church, you have said to me, “That is the type of individual Jesus spent the majority of His time with.”  If you want to find some holy ground and put yourself in a place where you are likely to encounter God, reach out in love and service to the downtrodden.  God is there with them!

One of the reasons I am grateful to you for sending our youth on mission trips is that they are likely to bump into God while serving the disadvantaged.  I remember working with a team down in Charleston after Hurricane Hugo hit.  The blank stares of the men and women is the thing I will never forget.  These people were numb.  First, the storm hit their houses, then the price gougers arrived, making shoddy repairs for exorbitant prices.  These people couldn’t believe it when we offered to put a plastic tarp on their roofs for free, just so they could live in a bit more comfort until honest carpenters could make permanent repairs.  Sometimes one of us would just visit with the people while others on our team repaired the roof.  These folks were in so much need of hope!  We bumped into God several times while helping these neighbors.  We must always remember when we see people in need, people suffering from poverty or the ravages of war, that God says of these people, “These are my people and I see their suffering.  I am going to do something about it!”

The call of Moses is something we preachers like to talk about and study because Moses squirmed and tried to get out of doing what God was calling him to do.  That is such a normal, human reaction to the call of God.  We see the task and we know it is too big for us.  “Who am I to take on Pharaoh?” we wonder.  Who was Moses?  He was the new Pharaoh’s sister’s adopted son, a member of a slave-nation, a man who had taken the law into his own hands and killed an abusive taskmaster, a man who was a wanted man, living under a death-threat from the Pharaoh, and a man with a speech impediment.  “Lord, you’ve got the wrong person!”  Everybody that God calls feels that way!  God tells us the same thing He told Moses, “I will be with you.”  Nothing else matters.  Your past doesn’t matter; neither do your mistakes or your deficiencies.  If God calls you, God goes with you, and that is enough.

If you and I hear and heed the call of God, we travel with God.  How does our work succeed?  It isn’t because of our abilities and skills.  If we depend on these, we will fail.  When we depend on God’s presence and power, we will succeed.  Those whom God calls, He empowers.

I find a touch of humor is one of Moses’ questions and God’s answer to it.  Moses wanted some sign that he was supposed to go back to Egypt and lead the people to freedom.  What sign would God give?  God replied, “This will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”  In other words, the sign Moses was looking for wouldn’t be given until he had succeeded in his task, and his success would be the sign of God’s call upon his life.  Isn’t that interesting?  “God, how do I know you want me to do this?” we ask, and God answers, “You will know after you do it successfully.”  That isn’t a sign, but it is a promise.

Methodist founder John Wesley thought that it was silly for Christians to pray and ask God whether or not God wanted them to do some good deed to a person in need.  That was as silly as asking God if God wanted us to take another breath or just turn blue instead.  “Do all the good you can,” said Wesley, “by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”  But God, how do we know that you are calling us to help our neighbor?  You will know after you do it.

But who are you, God?  What’s your name?  Somebody down in Egypt is bound to ask me, “What is the name of this God who has sent you?”  God’s answer to Moses was to become the most famous Tetragrammaton (four-letter word) of history: “YHWH.”  For a period of time, it was thought that the correct translation and pronunciation was “Jehovah” but more recent scholarship has led us to pronounce the name “Yahweh.”  But just as “Adam” actually means “the man” and “Eve” literally means “the source of life,” Yahweh isn’t so much a proper name as it is a puzzling description of God.  It could be translated “I am” or “I am who I am” or “I will be” or “I will be who I will be.”  Another possible meaning is “I am because I am.”  The point is that there is only one God who “is.”  All other gods “aren’t.”  They don’t exist.  The word “idol” literally means “a thing whose main characteristic is that it is not.”  The one God, creator of the universe, the only God who is, that is the God who is sending Moses to Egypt.

Parenthetically but importantly, Jesus once used the title YHWH for Himself and almost got stoned for so doing.  He said that Abraham anticipated Jesus’ coming, and the religious people responded by saying that Jesus was much too young to have ever had any contact with Abraham.  To this Jesus replied, “Before Abraham was, Yahweh – I am.”  Jesus was thereby claiming a oneness with the God who appeared to Moses, and Christians do believe that Jesus, God, and the Spirit make up the one Trinitarian God.

Moses was chosen by God for several key tasks.  He led the people out of bondage and formed them into God’s covenant people.  He revealed God’s laws to them, especially the Ten Commandments.  But perhaps his most important contribution to faith development is found in the fact that God chose Moses to reveal Himself to humanity as the one God who is – Yahweh – and that He will find us even when we are running away from Him, and that He completely identifies with the suffering of His people.  Be expecting to bump into God in the most unusual places!  Be expecting to hear Him call you into service to His people.  Be expecting God to give you the power to do His will.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

I’ve been really lucky in recent years because I haven’t been bitten by the “new car” bug.  I find shopping for a car to be a very confusing proposition!  Just when I’ve figured out the monthly payments, I discover that some “unexpecteds” are being added to the cost: license, tax, title, dealer prep, and destination charges.  That easily adds another $1500 to the cost of the car, making me rework my monthly budget.  What really matters is not the price on the sticker; it is the bottom line, the final cost, after all the extras.  The bottom line, where the buck stops, is all that is really necessary and important.

The Christian faith also has a bottom line, the one thing that is essential and important to believe.  Christians often disagree about beliefs and practices of lesser importance, but there is a bottom line to faith that must be agreed upon by all or else there is no Christian faith left at all.  Faith’s bottom line was expressed by the Apostle Peter when he was the first to say to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The bottom line of the Christian faith is the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.

Centuries of Christian faith development have clarified this to mean that Jesus is the God‑Man, divinity clothed in humanity, and that He is the way of salvation for all people.  Further, we have come to understand faith as trusting in Christ and in Christ alone for our redemption and not mere intellectual agreement with facts.  Along with our words, we are to show that we believe by the way we act.  So, faith’s bottom line is that Jesus is the Son of God, the way of salvation which is ours through faith in Him.

That defines Christianity.  That is the bottom line.  This is where all Christians can find unity, but if we forget the bottom line, then we will find numerous ways to find strife! The mistake Christians often make is when they draw the line elsewhere, making something else the bottom line, adding to that one essential belief.  This has caused Christians to divide ourselves into hundreds of different denominations.  We made a human leader or the color of our skin or the native language the bottom line.  We have insisted that a particular form of church government or a particular belief about the Bible was the bottom line.  I know that many of you have had the experience of being made to feel inferior or even un-Christian by a zealous coworker who insists that his or her brand of Christianity is the only right one.  You just happen to go to the wrong brand of church!

I once heard about a four-year-old Methodist boy and his neighbor, a four-year-old Baptist girl, who were all dressed up, ready to go to church.  While waiting for their parents to come out to the car, they spotted a mud puddle.  The little girl suggested that they remove their clothes to keep them from getting soiled, so they “skinny dipped” in the mud puddle.  As they were about to jump into the puddle, the little boy looked at the little girl and exclaimed, “My! I never knew that there was such a difference between Baptists and Methodists!”

Not only have we divided ourselves into separate denominations, we are also divided within our denominations into various theological camps.  This is especially true of us United Methodists because we have worked so diligently on being inclusive of everybody.  It has been noted that both George Bush and Hillary Clinton are United Methodist.  So were George Wallace and George McGovern.  The Good News caucus and the Confessing Movement are two factions within our Church which are very conservative while the Methodist Federation for Social Action is a very liberal faction.  A few years ago, at the national level, the United Methodist Women and the United Methodist Men took opposite sides on several issues.  We are a very diverse people!

Some years ago I heard a wonderful sermon entitled The Bottom Line and Our Brands, delivered my friend by Dr. James Nates.  Not only have I borrowed the title from him but I will also borrow some of his ideas to illustrate how important it is for us to remember what the bottom line of our faith is.  The bottom line is the place where Christians can find unity and agreement. Our brands are based on the favorite aspects of our faith, and emphasizing these can divide us. There are many brands of Christianity among us:  Fundamentalists, Conservatives, Liberals, Existentialists, Evangelicals, Charismatic, to name just a few.  Rather than dividing us, the different brands have much to teach us; they offer us opportunities to share and grow.  John Wesley strove for unity among Christians saying, “If your heart is as my heart, then give me your hand.”  By this he meant that if our hearts are in agreement on the bottom line, then we could walk hand in hand, even if we are of different brands.

I want to look briefly at some of these brands for several reasons.  First, it might be helpful for you to see what brand you belong to.  Secondly, it might help you to understand a Christian friend who thinks differently from you.  Then it might be helpful to know the strengths and weaknesses of each brand.

I.  I will begin with Theological Liberalism.  Now, don’t let that term “Liberalism” throw you for a loop because most of you are “Theological Liberals” even if you are political conservatives!  This brand has probably left its mark on United Methodism more than any other group we will look at today.  It was born in the 1800′s as an attempt to adapt Christianity to modern, well-educated people.  It saw the need to separate the Gospel message from First Century world-view and culture.  It tried to make room for modern physical and social science within Christianity.  For this brand, the meaning of the Bible is most important; consequently, it is a very practical approach to Christianity, enabling us to apply the message to our daily lives.

Theological Liberalism gave us our method of Biblical study: it examined the text to find out when and why each book was written.  Was the book written by one writer or several?  What type of literature is it?  Is it story or poetry?  How does the type of literature aid us in understanding the text?  Theological liberalism, with its practical application, was interested in building the Kingdom of God on earth, and it is from this school that we got that wonderful phrase, “The brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of God” (or as a friend  in another church states this in a politically correct fashion, “The siblinghood of persons under the parentage of God”).

Liberalism has several strengths: 1) It helps us understand the origins of the Bible. 2) It gave us “Progressive Revelation,” the idea that as we advance from Genesis on into later books of the Old Testament, the picture of God gets clearer.  This explains why God seems so warlike and vengeful in the early O.T.  and so loving by the time we get to Jesus.  God didn’t change ‑ it was our understanding of God that changed.  3) The third strength of liberalism was its practicality, making Christianity applicable to daily life.

But it has its weaknesses also.  It tends to make modern science and the modern world-view the bottom line, and it forces this interpretation on the Bible.  Since everything must be understandable, there is little room for God’s supernatural revelations or His interference with the natural order of things (i.e., miracles).  And at times their emphasis on social action has been to the neglect of the dimension of personal salvation.

II.  Fundamentalism:  On the opposite end of the theological spectrum is Fundamentalism.  It is a fairly new brand, having been born around 1900 in reaction to liberalism and scientific challenges to faith.  In general, this group distrusts all education.  They do not want the Bible examined or questioned at all, believing that if you question any statement in the Bible, you have started a chain of dominoes to fall which will lead to the denial of God and the loss of morality.  As to Biblical interpretation, Fundamentalists are extreme literalists.  They believe that the Bible was verbally inspired ‑ meaning that every word was chosen by God and dictated to humans.  They also have a doctrine known as Biblical inerrancy, meaning that they believe that the Bible is without any factual inconsistencies.

III.  Closely akin to Fundamentalists are the Conservatives.  Conservatives are not literalists but rather “naturalists” in Biblical interpretation, taking literally those passages that they say are meant to be taken literally, and taking symbolically other passages.  Conservatives want a rational faith, so they are more open to education.  These two groups have been fighting for control of the Southern Baptist Church for the past 25 years.

Fundamentalist and Conservatives have their strengths and weaknesses.  One strength is that they remind us of just how important the Bible is to our faith and how we ought to revere it.  But their weakness is that they draw the line in the sand at the wrong place.  They make the Bible rather than Jesus the Bottom Line.  Their insistence on verbal inspiration and inerrancy of scripture is divisive, indefensible, and unnecessary.  Jesus is the Bottom Line, not any doctrine about the Bible.  The Bible is our authority on matters of faith, but nowhere does it claim to be the authority on science or history, nor does it claim for itself inerrancy.

IV.  Evangelicalism.  Evangelicals interpret all scripture in light of the Great Commission and in the knowledge that all have sinned and, therefore, need salvation.  They focus attention on passages that call for repentance and rebirth.  Their strength is that they remind us of the purpose of the Church: to make disciples for Christ.  And they keep alive the missionary vision of the Church.  As to weaknesses, they tend to place too much emphasis on new birth and not enough emphasis on spiritual growth.  They have been criticized for having very little interest in social issues like homelessness and the environment.  Recently their leaders have been working to address these deficiencies.  At times they defeat their own purpose by coming on too strong or by using methods that are not well received by the very people they hope to reach.

V.  Charismatics:  This brand of Christianity emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, especially in the gifts of the Spirit.  They interpret the Bible in light of their special experience with the Holy Spirit.  As to the strengths of this brand, they help us all rediscover the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and make us aware of the work of the Third Person of the Trinity in our midst.  Theirs is a very personal faith.  But like the others, they have their weaknesses also.  They have tended to emphasize the gifts rather than the giver.  They have demanded a certain experience before one can be sure of the Holy Spirit’s presence in one’s life, and they make their experience with the Holy Spirit the Bottom Line. Sometimes they place so much attention on the Holy Spirit that God the Father and Jesus are overlooked.

VI.  Existentialists begin with questions that arise from our human existence: Is there life after birth? What is the meaning of life?  Why is there evil in the world?  What are we afraid of?  What does it mean to be Christian?  From these and other questions they go to the Christian faith and the Bible in search of answers. Their strength is that they begin where we live our lives each day and try to make our faith relevant to real life.  Their weakness is that they are selective in their use of the scriptures, and they tend to use the social sciences (psychology, sociology, etc.) to the neglect of the Bible.  They also make human existence the Bottom Line.

With all these brands of Christianity around, you ought to try to be a pastor!  I feel called to relate to all people as pastor, and I find that I don’t fit neatly into any of these brands of faith and I find something in all of them I like.  How are we to survive, surrounded by such a sea of diversity? Let me share with you some principles that guide me and might help you also.

1.  Emphasize the Bottom Line.  Stress that which unites us.  It is easier to divide up, to join a brand and declare everyone else to be a heretic!  But God would have us united in Christ.

2.  Avoid the “holier than thou” attitude that says, “I’ve got it and you don’t!”  Paul said we are one body, and the eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you.”  Each brand has something to teach me if I will let it.  We need to learn that a good cake has many different ingredients.

3.  Learn the art of disagreeing agreeably.  Learn to say, “You know, I don’t think that we are going to agree about that, are we?”

4.  Develop a “cafeteria” attitude.  Pick out those things that feed your spirit now and leave the rest for another time when other needs and hungers might be present.

The Bottom Line of Faith is “Jesus is the Christ.”  Let us remember that we have been sent out by God to preach Christ and not our favorite brand!  We are sent out to tell a hungry world about a loving God who sent His only Son to be our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

When I was ten, I was playing backyard baseball with my friends.  Eric, a 7-year-old boy was on third base (which I think was the dog house…  First base was the gutter at the corner of the house).  Anyway, Eric was on third when the batter got a base hit.  I yelled at him, “Run home, Eric! Run home!”  A few minutes later, someone asked, “Where did Eric go?”  He had run home to his Mama.  That is what he thought I was telling him to do.

Human communication is a very interesting thing!  The origin of the word “communication” means “to make common,” that is to share ideas in such a way that two people share the identical, common understanding of something.  Only 7% of communication is accomplished by words because words can be understood differently by different people.  A speaker can choose the wrong word to express his idea and the hearer might not even hear the word correctly or he might have a different definition of the word.  We color our language with colloquialisms.  We beat around the bush, paint the town, and know more than one way to skin the cat.  Often we use our words metaphorically rather than literally. When we have only written words, we have only two dimensional thought.  We don’t know if we have the same, the common, understanding with the writer of what is written.

Words that we hear are a bit more helpful because 38% of human communication occurs in voice tone and inflection.  My grandfather was John Burns Cannon, Sr.  His son was John Jr. and his grandson was John the Third.  Still, my grandfather said he could always tell who my grandmother was talking to by her voice tone!  Johhhhnnnn, John? and JOHN!  A friend of mine who works at the Pentagon is married to a beautiful lady from China.  He says that the same Chinese word can mean “life” or “death” depending on the voice inflection used, and so it is important in a family argument to be very careful which voice inflection is used!

Seven percent of communication depends on words.  Thirty-eight percent depends on voice tone and inflection.  That leaves a void of 55%.  Three-dimensional communication depends on knowing the person you are talking to, their attitudes and beliefs.  It helps if we can see the speaker and their body language.  This helps us judge the trustworthiness of the speaker and to be able to discern the meaning of their words.  But we really need to get to know the speaker very well or else we will believe those ten second sound-bites that one candidate throws up on TV to make their opponent look foolish.

Don’t you know that it was absolutely essential for my children to really get to know me so that they could understand the meaning of my words?  By the time John was ten, he knew that I was just joking and that I meant that I was too busy to play with him at that moment when I would say to him, “Why don’t you go play outside on the Interstate highway?”  Thank goodness he understood my humor!  Thank goodness he understood my words figuratively and not literally.

All this is an introduction to the story about Jesus and the Canaanite woman, but my words are also an introduction to understanding any Bible passage.  It isn’t enough just to know the words or to memorize them.  That is only 7% of the message!  It is important to so immerse ourselves in the Bible and in Christian fellowship so that we get to know the God who inspired the Bible and the Lord who gave His life for us.  The Bible needs to become a three-dimensional document to us whereby we understand the voice inflection and the attitude of the God who is behind the words.  One of our hymn writers said this so very well: “Beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord; my spirit pants for thee, O Living Word!”  To properly understand the Bible, one has to form a relationship with God.  That is where Christian fellowship is so important!  I get to know what the Father is like when I get to know His children.

There are many Christian people whose harsh, unforgiving, ungracious attitudes show that they have spent lots of time examining the Bible like one would examine a code of law, applying it legalistically to their lives.  Their harsh attitudes also show that they haven’t taken the time to get to know Christ, the living Word.  You know when you are in the presence of someone who knows both the words and heart of God.  All of life and all of the Bible need to be viewed through the prism of Jesus’ life.

In the story of the Canaanite woman, Jesus has traveled to the border between Syria and Galilee.  It was also the border between Jew and Gentile, between saint and sinner.  Canaanites were descendants of the pagan tribes that had occupied the Promised Land before the Israelites had arrived.  They were considered “unclean” by the religious folk from Jerusalem because they didn’t eat right or live right.  A very desperate woman approached Jesus because her daughter was severely mentally ill or perhaps a victim of epilepsy.  This made her an outcast even among her own people because it was believed in those days that such illnesses were caused by demon-possession.  The woman came to Jesus because she had heard all about Him, about how He could perform healing miracles, how He was a man of grace and compassion who didn’t judge people on the basis of their race or past mistakes.  Jesus was her last hope.  We can see just how desperate she was by the fact that she was creating quite a commotion, repeatedly yelling, “Lord, Son of David!  Have mercy on me.  Lord, Son of David!  Have mercy on me.”  But Jesus ignores her completely.

Based upon our relationship with Jesus – our personal knowledge of Him – how are we supposed to understand His silence toward her?  He absolutely ignores her, continuing walking away from her as she persistently pursues Him.  It would be a mistake to assume that He doesn’t care for her.  It is a mistake when we think God doesn’t care about us!  It would be a mistake to assume that He didn’t consider her worthy of His help, just as it is a mistake when we think we or any other human beings are unworthy of God’s love.  It would also be a mistake to take Jesus’ words literally when He finally speaks and says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.  It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”  Let me explain why.

First of all, here Jesus is, traveling outside of Israel, preaching and teaching.  Hadn’t anybody noticed that He had already broadened His mission to include more than just the lost sheep of Israel?  He had already healed the servant of a Roman centurion, an enemy soldier occupying Israel.  If Jesus’ mission was limited to Israel’s lost sheep, then what is He doing up there with the Canaanite people?  By the truth of His actions and the absurdity of His words, Jesus was trying to teach His Disciples and others just how all-encompassing His love is.

Secondly, do you really think that Jesus thought that this Canaanite woman was just a dog or that He would be so rude as to call her that to her face?  How are we to understand His words in light of the Christ we have come to know, the One who loves everybody?  If Jesus didn’t really mean these words to be taken literally, then why did He say them?  It seems obvious to me that Jesus the Teacher was using this opportunity to teach those around Him.

Jesus didn’t consider the woman to be a dog, less than human who was unworthy of God’s time and love, but there were plenty of people there who did think of her in those terms!  This woman was a nuisance to the Disciples.  They wanted Jesus to send her away, to get rid of her.  The people who had followed Jesus from the land of Judah to the border area with Syria did consider this woman to be an unclean, mangy dog, worthless.  Dr. R.C. Hoeffler at seminary told us that Jesus heard people complaining about this woman, and He heard what they were calling her.  So when Jesus called her a dog, he was only repeating the word that He had heard whispered by that crowd that day.  Perhaps Jesus was attempting to shock the crowd into seeing their hypocrisy and self-righteousness by daring to use a slanderous word that they didn’t think He had heard them utter!  It is very possible that Jesus the Teacher was looking at the crowd and not the woman when He said, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”  If this is true, then Jesus had just challenged those who thought that God’s arm reached no further than to the righteous ones of Israel.

The woman seemed to understand what Jesus was really doing.  She knew that the Jesus she had heard about would not harbor such harsh attitudes toward her.  Her response showed both faith and humility: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  She had grown accustomed to being treated like a dog by the good, saintly people, and so she is not offended.  She doesn’t ask for a higher place in society; she is content with her humble situation and she still trusts in Jesus’ goodness.  “I’ll gladly accept the scraps that fall from my Master’s table.”  What a faith-filled response!

When you and I humbly come before the Lord, kneeling before Him, not claiming to deserve anything from Him because, after all, we tend to treat Him and each other like dogs, and when we are content to receive even the scraps from His table, Jesus responds to our needs.  This woman might have been a foreigner and a person of poor reputation, but she loved her child and would do anything for her; therefore, she understood the love that God feels for His children.  She knew that she could count on Jesus, not because she deserved it but rather because of God’s grace.  She knew how to see life and God through the eyes of Jesus.

Jesus is the prism through which life, love, God, and scripture can be rightly understood.  The most important use of our time is in fellowshipping with Christ and His followers so that we might know Him.  As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

“Beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord; my spirit pants for thee, O Living Word!” Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Anyone who has ever dealt with the public knows that this can be an exhausting business.  Back when Daylight Savings Time was first instituted in our state, a Spartanburg radio station allowed people to express their opinions about it.  The D.J. who suggested this was getting near his wits’ end over the lame reasons people were either for or against Daylight Savings Time. Then a lady called who put him over the edge.  Explaining that she was against the time change, she said, “My tomatoes can’t stand another hour of summer sun.” Anyone who deals with the public might echo the words of Lucy to Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comic strip: “I do so love the human race!  Its people I can’t stand!”

Jesus found dealing with the public to be an exhausting business, too.  He didn’t go seeking popularity but it found Him, and since He was genuinely concerned about people, He found it difficult to walk away from the crowds of needy people. Only exhaustion could make Him withdraw for a while to rest.  One day Jesus taught and healed people all day and when evening came, He was worn out! He had given of Himself until He was “give out” as we in the South say.  The Bible says that the disciples took Jesus as He was in the boat.  Isn’t that an interesting choice of words: “As He was”?  He was not really prepared for a boat trip, but His fatigue made them take Him as He was. You can see how tired He was by the fact that He could sleep on the wooden floor, with His head on the hard leather or wooden seat usually used by the steersman.  Some pillow!  He was so tired that even the storm didn’t awaken Him!

My friends, we serve a Lord who never knows when to stop helping those He loves.  He still works tirelessly on your behalf, guiding you by His Spirit, keeping you keeping on.  The Lord who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

Have you ever gotten tired when doing God’s will?  Sure, we get tired while doing God’s work! Why does it strike us as odd that working for God is exhausting business?  We need to learn to do what Jesus did and take time for ourselves to rest when we have given ourselves to the point of exhaustion.

But while Jesus rested, life went on for the Disciples.  One of life’s storms arose and the waves were about to swamp the boat.  Think about this: the Disciples were doing what Jesus told them to do.  It was His idea to go for a boat ride.  It was precisely because they were obeying the Lord that they got into troubled waters.  Think also about this: Jesus was right there with them, and still they got into a perilous situation.  Has trouble ever found you, in spite of the fact that you were obeying the Lord and that He was with you?

Trouble has found our denomination at times when we were doing God’s will, when Jesus was with us.  That fact is shown in our history.  One time was when there was a movement within our church to bring about the end of slavery, resulting in a split in the Methodist Church in 1844, seventeen years before that issue split our nation.  Another time became obvious to us a few years ago at our Annual Conference when we celebrated 25 years since the merger of the formerly all-white and the formerly all-black branches of the South Carolina United Methodist Conference.

For those of you new to Methodism, we had two Methodist Conferences in SC for many years, one known as the 1784 Conference for white people only and the other known as the 1866 Conference for black people only.  During the late 1960′s, both Conferences became convinced that our unity in beliefs but division due to race was displeasing to Jesus, and in 1972 both Conferences voted to merge into one Annual Conference.  At the Conference in 1999 we celebrated the fact that the past 25 years have been great years for our denomination in South Carolina.  But not everyone was ready to take this walk with us in 1972.  We lost a lot of members who were not ready for a racially inclusive church.  We did the right thing, but to some extent we got into trouble.  We still haven’t recovered completely from this. But I am so proud to be a United Methodist!  We are so far ahead of so many other denominations.  One of our sister denominations took the other route during the 1960′s and fought against integrated churches.  It wasn’t until 1998 that they voted at their Convention to ask forgiveness for their actions during the 60′s,  and only then did they voted to open their membership to all persons of all races.  Sometimes, Jesus leads us into difficult waters for His glory.

Has trouble ever found you, in spite of the fact that you were obeying the Lord?  You were doing your best to be faithful to God.  You were attending church, you were giving your tithe, you were faithfully praying and reading your Bible but still trouble came your way.  We feel so all alone at these times.  We wonder where God is.  One of the messages in this story is that storms come to everyone’s life.  Sometimes the troubles come because of the fact that we are obeying Christ.  But we are never alone.  Jesus is right there with us, just like He was with His friends then.

The Disciples, finding their boat about to sink, awaken Jesus saying, “Don’t you even care that we are about to drown?”  When troubles flood our lives, we also wonder “Lord, do you even care?”  I think we’ve had the wrong idea about faith as it relates to problems in life.  We’ve made the mistake of thinking that if we had enough faith, then problems wouldn’t come our way.  What we haven’t understood is that faith is there, not to shelter us from trouble but to sustain us through troubles.

Dr.  Norman Vincent Peale often said,  “The only people who do not have problems are those in the cemeteries.”  Then with a twinkle in his eye he added, “and some of them really have problems.”  If you have problems, he said, it simply means you are alive and the more problems you have the more alive you are.  He even jokingly suggested that if you don’t have adult-sized problems, you should get on your knees and ask God to “trust” you with a few.

Have you recently read what Paul listed as his credentials, his credits in 2 Corinthians 6?  My ordination as a United Methodist pastor is backed up by two diplomas from schools of higher education and two ordination papers.  Paul listed problems that his faith had endured as his credentials, the things that would commend him as a Christian.  Listen to his list as translated by J. B. Phillips: “we want to prove ourselves genuine ministers of God whatever we have to go through ‑ patient endurance of troubles or even disasters, being flogged or imprisoned; being mobbed, having to work like slaves, having to go without food or sleep. All this we want to meet with sincerity, with insight and patience; by sheer kindness and the Holy Spirit; with genuine love, speaking the plain truth, and living by the power of God. Our sole defense, our only weapon, is a life of integrity, whether we meet honor or dishonor, praise or blame. Called ‘impostors’ we must be true, called ‘nobodies’ we must be in the public eye.  Never far from death, yet here we are alive, always ‘going through it’ yet never ‘going under.’ We know sorrow, yet our joy is inextinguishable. We have ‘nothing to bless ourselves with’ yet we bless many others with true riches. We are penniless, and yet in reality we have everything worth having.” Enduring troubles with grace and faith is how we show the world that we are serious about being Jesus’ followers.

Just about every county has codes for buildings.  These codes make sure that buildings are not just designed for normal, everyday life.  They are designed for the unexpected: high winds and storms, extreme heat and cold.  In California, codes require all structures to be able to withstand fairly strong earthquakes, something that doesn’t happen every day.  The strength of the structure isn’t seen until it has to stand up against a raging storm or violent quake. Our lives have to be built to certain codes also. We have to grow strong enough, not just to withstand daily life but those extraordinary storms that come our way.  Paul showed the sincerity of his faith, not just by his faithfulness day by day but in the most difficult days of his life.

How is it that we make it through the storms of life?  We make it through because Jesus is with us!  He is by very nature peace and calmness.  That evening on the lake, when the boat was about the be swamped by the waves,  Jesus was there to speak to the wind, the waves, and the disciples: “Peace! Be still!” Immediately the wind died down and the seas calmed!  The Disciples marveled at His power, that even the wind and the waves obeyed Him. Jesus still stills the storms of life. When we find ourselves being swamped by the winds and waves of life, Jesus is with us to speak to us and the storm around us: “Peace! Be still.” Sometimes He stills the storm; sometimes He stills us.

In 1873, Chicago lawyer Horatio G.  Spafford  sent his wife and 4 daughters on a European trip, planning to join them later.  Their ship was struck by another ship and sank.  Mrs.  Spafford survived, but the 4 daughters perished.  Spafford sailed to meet his wife, and as he approached the site of his daughter’s deaths, he wrote the hymn, “It is Well with my Soul.”

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

when sorrows like sea billows roll;

whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it well with my soul.”

Jesus had come to Spafford and said, “Peace, be still.”

The famous blind songwriter Fanny Crosby wrote more than 8,000 songs. When Crosby was only 6 weeks old, a minor eye inflammation developed.  The doctor who treated the case was careless, though, and she became totally and permanently blind.  Fanny Crosby harbored no bitterness against the physician.  In fact, she once said of him,  “If I could meet him now, I would say thank you, over and over again for making me blind.” She felt that her blindness was a gift from God to help her write the hymns that flowed from her pen.  In her blindness, she helped others see because Jesus said to her storm: “Peace, be still.”

A vacationer watched with curiosity as a lumberman occasionally jabbed his sharp hook into a log, separating it from the others that were floating down a mountain stream. When asked why he did this, the worker replied,  “These may all look alike to you, but a few of them are quite different.  The ones I let pass are from trees that grew in a valley where they were always protected from the storms.  Their grain is coarse.  The ones I’ve hooked and kept apart from the rest came from high up on the mountains.  From the time they were small, they were beaten by strong winds.  This toughens the trees and gives them  a fine and beautiful grain.  We save them for choice work.  They’re too good to make into plain lumber.”

God often allows some of His dearest saints to be bent by trial or buffeted by the winds of adversity so that they may be strengthened for His service and prepared to fulfill His highest purposes.  In those times of trial, Jesus stands with us saying,  “Peace! Be still.”  He still stills the storms.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Seventeenth Century author William Congreve is given credit for the oft-quoted saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”  King Herod didn’t take kindly to John the Baptizer’s criticism of his illicit love affair with his brother’s wife Herodias and had John thrown in jail.  But it was Herodias who plotted against her own new husband to trick him into having John executed or else he would break his word.  The news of John’s death really hit Jesus hard.  We see a very human Jesus here, withdrawing from the crowd, going off by Himself to mourn and to pray.  He might have been just a bit frightened by this news, because if Herod would execute someone as popular as John, what would he do to Jesus!  As someone has written, “The shadow of the cross now crept across Jesus’ path.”

But Jesus didn’t get the time in solitude that He so desperately needed because there was a crowd of people who needed Him.  Someone knew where Jesus and His disciples were headed by boat and told all the others, and they traveled on foot to the place where Jesus was.  It was His love for the people that overcame all other emotions He was feeling – fatigue, fear, sorrow – and Jesus greeted the people with love and healed their illnesses of body, soul, and spirit.

It was a huge crowd that found Jesus in that remote place that day.  There were 5000 men plus women and children.  Since it was common in that day to use numbers symbolically rather than literally – like we would say millions and millions today to indicate a number too big to count – all we really know about the number present was that it was a huge number of people, too big to accurately count.

As shadows lengthened and the day began to turn toward night, the disciples were thrown into a panic!  Here is this huge crowd of people and there are no food vendors around to feed them.  “Lord, you’d better send these folks into local villages to find food!  A hungry crowd can turn into an angry mob!”  Perhaps the disciples felt responsible to provide their guests with food as we would also feel if guests came by our home at mealtime.  “Send them away, Lord.”

Have you ever felt like the disciples did as you looked out at the host of problems facing the human community and the Church in our day?  A tsunami in the far east and an earthquake in China kills hundreds of thousands and makes at least that many people homeless.  We can’t even take care of our citizens and yet hundreds of aliens – some legal and others illegal – pour into our nation each day.  We can’t afford fuel for our cars or healthcare for our families, and yet the world looks to us to help everybody.  They may claim that they don’t like us, but they all expect us to take the lead in solving all of the problems in the human family.  “Lord, there are too many problems and too many people needing our help.  Give us a break!  Send them away.”  But Jesus replies now as He did back then, “They do not need to go away. You do something about it.  You give them something to eat.”  In saying this, Jesus is reminding us that the world is our parish.

In feeding the 5000, Jesus uses both ordinary and extraordinary means.  His ordinary tactic is simple organization.  The crowd had been in chaos, sitting in disarray and walking around, and so Jesus asks the people to sit down.  In the versions of this story in Mark and Luke, Jesus asks the people to sit down in groups or companies.  The Greek word used here is a farming word meaning to get in orderly rows like a row of vegetables.  “Make like a row of vegetables,” we might say.  (Some of you look like vegetables during my sermons…).  So Jesus helped the disciples get organized for ministry.

Some of us have personalities that prefer and appreciate organization while others of us don’t.  I am one who prefers to just “wing it” whenever I can, and I am married to someone who makes a list of things to do before she gets out of bed!  My idea of a relaxing vacation is one with no structure or plans.  Guess what?  Nothing gets done when we follow my unstructured ways.  But when we vacationed with our young children at Disney World some years ago, Penny had that vacation planned with so many details that I doubt any other children ever saw as much of Disney or rode as many rides as our children did.  Those of us who prefer “winging it” are lucky to have help from good organizers.  One of Jesus’ methods of tending to the needs of the world is simple organization.  When we organize prayerfully, our organizations can be channels through which God’s blessings can flow to others.  When faith takes on a task the size of the world, efficient organization becomes a necessity.

But organization by itself is not enough.  There is no way that organization by itself can solve all of the world’s problems.  We need Jesus!  Whenever Jesus is around, extraordinary things happen!  John’s account of this miracle tells us that the only food items to be found that day, a few fish and a few loaves of bread, were supplied by a young boy.  There is something wonderful about children!  They don’t understand the limitations of time and space and so they quite easily believe that Santa has no trouble getting to every home in the world in just one night.  Adults might have kept the loaves and fish to themselves because they know that there is no way that a multitude could dine on so little food.  But childlike faith says, “Jesus, I don’t have much, but what I have is all yours.”  That kind of faith coupled with that kind of giving is the recipe for miracles every time!  “Jesus, I don’t have much, but what I have is all yours.”  Jesus took those two fish and five loaves of bread from the child, and somehow in Jesus’ hands it was enough.

I don’t begin to understand how in the world Jesus accomplished this miracle, but this is one miracle I have seen Jesus perform again and again.  Some of the best pastors I have known didn’t have that much to offer Jesus when He called them, but whatever they did have was given without reservation to the Master, and God helped them gain the skills they needed to be successful pastors.  If I told you what little I had to give to Jesus when He called me, you would accuse me of false modesty, but God and I know the truth!  His sufficiency has more than compensated for my deficiencies.  I am still awe-struck whenever something I say or do helps someone else, and I know that it is not me but Christ in me who is doing the work.  That is the exciting and surprising part of ministry for me.

Summer reruns are on television, and we have gotten used to expecting to see old favorite shows one more time before the new season begins, and so I hope you don’t mind my repeating a story I told you three or four years ago.  I never tire of telling it!

When I was the pastor of Gassaway United Methodist Church in Saluda, I met Willie Lee Buffington, an ordained United Methodist pastor in the North Georgia Annual Conference and a retired professor from Paine College in Augusta.  I never will forget his appearance or the way he made me shake in my boots.  He was a huge man with a very long beard and a walking cane, and  when he got upset about something, he would shake that cane in the air and utter big words like “Mendacity!  Utter mendacity!”  You can look that big word up for yourselves!  I remember the time he complimented me on the way I had conducted his wife’s funeral, and I am not good at receiving compliments.  I mumbled something about how I was just doing my job.  He looked at me and shook his cane in my face and said, “When you have just buried a man’s wife, don’t say ‘I was just doing my job!’” I threw my arms around him and hugged him as he wept.

Willie Lee was always in the roll of “the teacher” with me.  He would sit on the third pew, close his eyes, and listen intently to every word I said. Whenever he cracked a smile, I knew that it was because he had just caught me in some error of fact or grammar, and the good professor would be calling to tell me about it!  I had been his pastor for several years before I learned his story, a story that has been published in a 1962 volume called Lives that Inspire.  I was amazed at what Jesus and Willie Lee did together.

When Willie Lee was a little boy back during the time of the Great Depression, he was sitting in his yard, crying over his squashed mud pie that some older kid had just stepped in when the teacher at the segregated school for black children walked by.  The teacher who was known as Professor Simpkins spoke to Willie Lee, telling him to stop crying and “Be a man. The world needs men!”  Like the disciples who left their boats and immediately followed Jesus, so Willie Lee left his mud pie and immediately followed Professor Simpkins, walking with him each day, listening and learning.  A lifelong friendship developed between these two, one a little white boy and the other an old black man.

One day, Professor Simpkins told Willie Lee that there were no books for children to read at his school.  This greatly troubled young Buffington.  The all-white school nearby that had plenty of books.  He prayed, “God what can I do about this?”  He had one thin dime in his pocket, and he offered that to Jesus.  With his dime, Willie Lee bought 5 two‑cent stamps and mailed 5 letters to the writers of his Methodist Sunday School book.  His letter simply said, “The [black children] here have no books.  Good books will help them more than anything else.  I want to start a library for them. Could you send a book for it?  Or if you have none to spare, then please give me a stamp so that I can write someone else.”  Four of those letters drew no responses, but one letter resulted in a boxcar load of books being shipped from a Methodist Church in New York to Saluda, SC!

Now this created another problem!  He had too many book for the little school.  The answer was for neighbors to get together and build a little log cabin, “The Faith Cabin Library,” to house the books.  I can take you to the place where that library once existed.

But this is not the end of the story.  The national division of the Methodist Women got involved, making this one of their projects.  You know what happens with the Methodist Women get involved with a project!  The story of the Faith Cabin Library was published in Guideposts, the Christian Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and other publications.  Willie Lee continued his work during his high school years, while a student at Furman, and later when he was in seminary in Pennsylvania.  Trainloads of books continued to pile into towns throughout the South, and before this work ended, 130 Faith Cabin Libraries full of books had been built in cotton fields in South Carolina and Georgia so that young black children in the Old Segregated South could be lifted out of poverty of body, mind, and soul through education!  And old Professor Simpkins?  He was given an honorary degree in recognition of his great influence upon Willie Lee, and Willie Lee repaid his friend by becoming a professor at Paine College, a black college founded by the Methodist Church. Can you believe what Jesus and Willie Lee Buffington did with one thin dime?

You see, the feeding of the 5000 wasn’t just one isolated event!  Jesus still multiplies loaves and fish or whatever we give Him and miraculously cares for His children every day.  The only tragedy in the continuing story is that so very often we give Him nothing to multiply, and zero times anything is still zero!  We have a part in Jesus’ ministry and in His miracles.  Our part is to give Him what we have and who we are.  I am convinced that Jesus will feed the 5000 again today and every day if we will give Him the little that we have, for in His hands a little is more than enough!  “Jesus, I don’t have much, but what I have is all yours.”

Arthur H. Holt