The teacher-student relationship is one of the most beneficial ones that has ever existed, and yet it can sometimes break down into an adversarial relationship.  A friend of mine likes to say that most of us have a rather harsh image of God: we think God is like our 8^th Grade algebra teacher who was always out to get us.  If there are teachers who are out to get us, surely there are students who like to make their teacher look bad.  Back in my high school, one of my friends loved to play pranks.  On one occasion, the teacher, Mrs. DeLorme, had to go down to the office, and she told the class to read quietly during her brief absence, but instead the class decided to move across the hall into an empty classroom at the suggestion of my friend, of course!  Soon Mrs. DeLorme returned, and seeing that her class had gone AWOL, she went back down to the office to report this violation of rules.  At this point, the class moved back across the hall, back into the correct classroom.  When Mrs. DeLorme returned with the principal, she was shocked to find the class sitting quietly, reading just as she had instructed them.  She was completely baffled, and the principal just shook his head as he walked away.  I think Mrs. DeLorme retired that year.

Usually, such tricks are played in fun; but with Jesus’ enemies, it was serious business! They were constantly looking for ways to trap Jesus in escape‑proof traps.  They were always trying to make Him look bad in public. They challenged Him when He broke their “Blue Laws” by practicing medicine (healing) on the Sabbath or when He plucked and ate grain on the Sabbath. They tried to get Him to contradict the Law of Moses and they accused Him of so doing when He ate with sinners. They even tried to get Him in trouble with the Romans over tax laws. But no trap was as cleverly laid as the one recorded in John 8.

Let me give you a brief background of this story because it makes serious in‑depth Bible study so fascinating!  The New Testament was written in Greek and later translated into Latin.  Since there were no Kinkos or Xerox machines in those days, copies of the texts had to be made by the hands of scribes.  There are many of these ancient copies of the New Testament books, collected from all over the Middle East.  In the earliest manuscripts of John’s Gospel, John 8:1‑11 is not present at all. In two ancient texts, a blank space exists after John 7 closes.  The story of the woman caught in adultery had a hard time making it into our Bible because nobody knew where to put it. St. Augustine thought that the story was suppressed by the early church in order to avoid a scandal. Judging by the writing style and the choice of words, scholars say that there is no way that John could be the author of this story.  It is more likely to have been written by Luke. Indeed, in some ancient manuscripts, this story is inserted after Luke 21:38.  So, apparently, this is a short story written by Luke.  No one in the early church doubted its authenticity.  This certainly occurred in Jesus’ ministry.  They just didn’t know where to record it, but it was too good to lose!  Finally after the 6th Century A. D., it found its permanent home in John’s gospel.

And as I said, this was the cleverest trap ever set for Jesus. It was a trap with four blocked exits.  First, if Jesus appeared soft on the issue of adultery, His enemies could discredit Him in the eyes of religious people.  He would be guilty of condoning what was considered a heinous sin according to Jewish Law.  Secondly, if Jesus was harsh toward the woman, encouraging people to stone her, an act which was forbidden by Roman Law, Jesus’ opponents could accuse Him before the Roman authorities of illegally inciting others to kill the woman. He would then be arrested and be out of the way.  Thirdly, if Jesus was not merciful to the woman, many of His followers, sinners and outcasts, would abandon Him. He would look bad in the eyes of the sinners who had found new hope in Christ.  The fourth trap was the fact that not only was Jesus’ attitude toward adultery in question; His attitude toward the Law of Moses as a whole, His attitude toward morality, was in question.

What a trap! How would Jesus uphold the integrity of the Law and at the same time hold out mercy to a sinner without being held in violation of Roman and Jewish Law?  Jesus had to think this over!  He stooped down and doodled in the dirt. Perhaps He wished that the earth would swallow Him up!  Now, Jesus’ drawing in the dirt has been the subject of much speculation!  Perhaps Jesus looked down at the ground because of some sense of modesty that resided in His heart, making it difficult for Him to even glance at the improperly clothed (or unclothed) woman.  Some have suggested that while He was drawing in the dirt, perhaps Jesus looked each man in the eye, and since He knew each one’s heart, He wrote each one’s secret sin in the dirt. Facing man #1 Jesus wrote: “You dishonored your parents.”  Facing man #2 Jesus wrote: “You stole money from your neighbor.”  Jesus continued until each one knew that Jesus knew their sin, so that when Jesus said, “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone,” they all knew that they would be hypocrites to hurl the rocks. That is one possibility. Another possibility is given by T.W. Manson and The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible. Manson says that Jesus was acting like a Roman judge who always wrote his sentence before pronouncing it.  My favorite theory is that Jesus was wisely buying time, thinking and praying His way out of this trap. If that is true, He was giving us a good example of what to do when we feel trapped, not knowing which way to turn.  A moment to think and pray would be very helpful to us.  And as Jesus thought, several things must have occurred to Him.

First, Jesus must have perceived that the real issue here wasn’t adultery or marriage.  If that was the issue, Jesus wouldn’t have hesitated to teach as He had in Matthew 19. Jesus knew that the real issue here was “trying to trap the teacher.”  Secondly, it was clear that this poor woman had been entrapped.  An undercover agent (if you’ll pardon the phrase) had been hired to lure this woman into sin.  How else would she be caught in the very act of her sin? Thirdly, not only had they plotted to catch this woman, now they were using her for their evil purposes. They were belittling her in public for their evil scheme.  How it must have angered Jesus to see people entrap a weak, tender child of God and use her as their pawn!  It must also anger Him today when people slander others to make themselves look good or when we use people as if they were things.  Fourthly, it occurred to Jesus that they were delighting in condemning her. Often it seems that self-righteous people find comfort in condemning others, thinking they will feel more righteous by comparison.  And, what is it about the guilt we feel over our own sin that makes us want to see others suffer for theirs?  Do we think we will thereby feel cleaner?  Perhaps misery loves company!

Jesus was troubled by their attitude.  They were rejoicing over her sin when they should be weeping! And we should also weep each time a child of God has to go to prison and each time a child of God is executed because it means that someone has failed another human being and God. We failed to teach them the right way to live.

I heard about a fire and brimstone church that ran off their preacher and got a new one.  Someone in town asked them what their new pastor preached about, and they replied, “He tells us each week that we are going to hell.”  The man then said, “Well, that’s what you complained about with your old preacher.  You said that you got tired of him telling you that week after week.”  The church member said, “Well, this new preacher is different.  He seems genuinely sorry that we might end up in hell, but our old preacher seemed almost happy at that prospect.”

As Jesus stooped and drew in the dirt, He must have wondered which is the worse sin: a woman swept up by passion or the men who tricked, trapped, and used this woman with such delight. It was clear to Jesus.  A sin of passion was one thing, but a cold, calculating, dehumanizing sin was worse!  This woman knew her sin; these men must be made to see theirs! “Look into your hearts,” Jesus said, “and if you find no sin there, then cast a stone.” One by one, these men had to admit that if they were going to judge a person so strictly by the Law, they had to be that strict on themselves, too, and they couldn’t stand up under such scrutiny either. One by one they slunk away, leaving just Jesus and the woman.

In one of the movies about the life of Christ, this story is beautifully done. Jesus picks up a large stone and tries to hand it to each person in the crowd. As He hands the rock to each one, the person turns away in shame.  As Jesus turns to the woman and says, “Woman, where are your accusers?”  He still has the stone in His hand.  The woman replies, “No one accuses me.” Jesus raises the rock up over His head like He was about to throw it. The woman cowers, expecting Jesus to hurl the stone at her. After all, He was the only one in the crowd who was without sin. Then Jesus throws the rock straight down at His feet, and as it rolls away from the woman, Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn thee!”

What wonderful words of comfort this should be to all of us!  For someday, each of us will stand in Christ’s presence, one to one, eyeball to eyeball.  Our lives and our sin will be examined by the One Who is the Judge of the living and the dead. Then we will hear Jesus say, “I don’t condemn thee. I gave my life for you.” “For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world but to save it.” But why wait until Judgment Day? Today we can all hear Jesus say to us  “I do not condemn you; I have saved you.”

So Jesus has been merciful to the woman; only one thing remained to be done: the Law must be upheld; sin must be shown to be wrong because it hurts us. Ultimately Jesus would die to uphold the law and at the same time lift up the sinner. But for the present Jesus upholds the law by warning the woman, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”  Jesus says to us when we are on the verge of messing up our lives, “Don’t do that to yourself ‑ I love you too much to see you injure yourself!”  But I don’t think that Jesus had to worry too much about that woman. She had been scared almost to death; now she felt loved and forgiven.  She was a new creation ‑ the old had passed away.  In the words of Paul, she had experienced the depths of God’s love!

The central message of this story is “The one who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”  This is a reminder that each of us has a full time job keeping our own lives straight without meddling in others’ lives! And if we are tempted to judge and condemn others, there is plenty in ourselves to judge and condemn!  It therefore behooves us to be merciful to one another even as we would want to receive mercy.  Or said another way, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Well, once again Jesus was trapped and He escaped by thinking and praying before He spoke and by a display of His unique wisdom. He upheld the moral code.  He upheld one who needed grace, who had failed to keep the law.  He upheld civil law by seeing that Roman law was not broken.  He sends us out to uphold moral integrity and to extend mercy to those who fail, to offer them God’s forgiveness and pardon!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

The most popular month for weddings is coming to a close.  In June of 2008 there were over 213,000 weddings in the United States alone.  That’s a lot of anxious couples.  I have been to a lot of weddings, and participating in quite a few of those.  I have seen some disastrous weddings, and I have seen some very moving and exciting ceremonies.   I’ve even been to one wedding where the lighter for the unity candle wasn’t working, and a lighter was tossed from the bride’s father to the happy couple so that they could light the candles.  Weddings are usually happy occasions, even if the relationship to follow isn’t filled with that same happiness.  The sad truth, is that statistically, 106,500 of those couples married in June of last year will get a divorce.

Despite what you may be thinking, I am not going to be speaking about marriage this morning.  At least not marriage as we usually think of it.  Our text for today comes from the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon.  This text is usually overlooked.  Many consider it taboo because of its explicit nature.  It is filled with some, umm…, interesting similes relating to the intimate physical relationship between a man and his wife.  But it is also filled with some intense imagery regarding the emotions of two people very deeply in love. I challenge you husbands and wives out there to sit down and read the Song of Songs out loud together.  It is only 8 chapters long, and you can do it very easily within a week’s time.

History and most scholars consider this song to be about Solomon and his wife.  The title and first verse do indicate that it is written by Solomon, so that is a safe assumption I believe.  However, its graphic nature nearly excluded it from both the Jewish and Christian Bible. The reason we have it in our Bibles is because in addition to its humanly love story, it is a picture of Christ and his bride the church.

I know you have heard that the church is Christ’s bride.  Revelation refers to the multitude of believers as the bride, the wife of the lamb, Jesus Christ.  Paul compares the relationship between Christ and the church with the relationship between a husband and wife.  So, today, I want us to look at the Song of Songs with this in mind.  Not only is the book about the relationship between a man and wife, it is also a book about the relationship between believers and Christ.

Let me give you a brief overview of the book before we get to our selected text for today.  The Song of Songs describes Solomon’s courtship, wedding, and continued marriage to a non-traditional beauty.  If you read through the book, it is easy to see the correlation to our relationship with Christ.  The song has three speakers, the woman, often referred to as the beloved, Solomon, referred to as the Lover, and others, sometimes referred to as friends.

Solomon falls in love with someone who is not traditionally beautiful.  She is a woman from a nomadic tribe;  her skin is darkened by her hard work, helping her family make ends meet as they wandered around the wilderness in Palestine.  She is amazed that he considers her beautiful.  Her dark skin is looked down upon by Solomon’s peers.  Yet he considers her very beautiful because of her sun-darkened skin.  You can see the similarities already.  Do we not feel at times that we are undesirable? And yet Christ loves us anyway.  He sees beauty where we see ugliness.  The more this woman begins to realize Solomon’s love for her, the better she feels about herself.  Yet more similarities; it is only when we feel the love of Christ that we can see our true worth through his eyes.  They get married, and begin their happy life together, much like the joy of the first time we place our faith in Christ’s saving power; the first time we experience oneness with Christ.  Their relationship continues to grow, yet they do have their hardships and struggles, even their arguments.  Isn’t that true of our relationship with Christ as well?

Solomon always returns to her side, and they foster a very loving, healthy, and mature relationship throughout the Song.  Now I am skipping over some very provocative passages regarding their physical relationship in order to keep this at least PG.  But I assure you that in the context of marriage there is nothing wrong with the intimacy expressed between these two young lovers, and we would do well to realize the importance of all the gifts God has provided for the covenant of marriage.  On two occasions, the young bride wakes up to find that her husband is not in the bed beside her, and those will be the focus of our time together today.

3: ¹ All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but did not find him.

² I will get up now and go about the city,
through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
So I looked for him but did not find him.

³ The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
“Have you seen the one my heart loves?”

⁴ Scarcely had I passed them
when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go

I think the spiritual allusions in this particular passage are important to us today.  Like the new wife who cannot find her loving husband, do we not also feel at times like we cannot find Christ.  Life seems to get us so down at times that we cannot find the joy of our savior anywhere.  We feel lost and alone, yes, even us who know Christ, who know his love, and love him in return, just want to hold him; to know that he is close.  If you will allow me this indulgence, I would like to also suggest that perhaps the watchmen in this passage are mature Christians who are the watchmen over God’s people.  And isn’t it true that, it isn’t long after being found by these people in our lives, whether they are church members, friends or family, we soon find our Savior and embrace him even tighter than before.  In the same way that these watchmen perhaps lead our young bride to her lover, our Christian mentors and friends lead us in the same way into the arms of our savior.

Now, to the second passage which presents a little bit different picture:  At this point, some time had passed since the wedding night, and I think many of the similarities in this passage can go without saying.

^5:2 I slept but my heart was awake.
Listen! My lover is knocking:
“Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one.
My head is drenched with dew,
my hair with the dampness of the night.”

³ I have taken off my robe—
must I put it on again?
I have washed my feet—
must I soil them again?

⁴ My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening;
my heart began to pound for him.

⁵ I arose to open for my lover,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with flowing myrrh,
on the handles of the lock.

⁶ I opened for my lover,
but my lover had left; he was gone.
My heart sank at his departure. ^[a]
I looked for him but did not find him.
I called him but he did not answer.

⁷ The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
They beat me, they bruised me;
they took away my cloak,
those watchmen of the walls!

Okay, in this passage, the husband is found returning to his bride’s chambers. Now it must be noted that during that time, she would have kept a separate bedroom than her husband.  However, she basically says she is in her pajamas; she has already taken a bath.  She was well on her way to a peaceful night’s sleep.  And here comes hubby, knocking on the bedroom door. Insert your own joke here.  The point for us today, is that in our relationship with Christ, we often get so focused on ourselves and what we have going on that we neglect our relationship with our Savior. Perhaps even sins we have committed, even great sins cause us to become cold towards our savior.  We forget to spend some alone time with Him, we lose the desire for him we once had.  The husband in the passage tries to force himself into her room, her heart beats, she now begins to remember the thrill of her lover.  In the same way, we may be in a bit of a slump in our relationship with Christ, but then he shows up to work on our relationship and we are strangely excited.  However, like Solomon’s bride, we too tend to take our sweet time getting to the door.  By the time we get there, the opportunity may have passed.  The young wife begins to see the error of her ways. Perhaps she begins to imagine him hurt by her actions, and rightly so.  We too know we have sinned and selfishly neglected our savior.  We begin to look about for our savior as we have done before.  This time the woman meets the watchmen, and is abused and exposed.  So sad, but true is the fact that there are those in the Church who are supposed to be watchmen who abuse and expose those who have seen the error of their ways and are seeking to be with Christ once again.  Many a repentant child of God is hard-pressed to find his love again because we, in the church, are poor watchmen and beat them up about their failures, leaving them exposed and ultimately discouraged.  Let this be a warning to us in this congregation.  If someone is here at memorial on any given Sunday, then God is at work in their lives, and we are not to judge them, exclude them, abuse them, or discourage them in any way.  Instead let us lead them to Christ, for we too have been where this young woman has been.

So, what happens to the young bride?

In the next chapter, she finds her lover.  And she declares as she does many times in this song:

“I am my lover’s and my lover is mine!”

And that is true for us as well.  We are Christ’s and He is ours.  No amount of sins or selfishness can change this fact.

Although this song depicts the ups and downs of a couple madly in love, we should remember that it is a story about our relationship with Christ.  No, it is not perfect, and when it is bad, it is sometimes really bad, but when it is good, it is mysteriously exciting.  Today, you may find yourself in on one of the peaks in your relationship with Christ, and that is great, that is part of knowing the love of our savior.  But some may also be in a dark valley, and that is okay too, it is part of the journey, and through it, your relationship will have a chance to grow; much like the faithquakes Arthur talked about last week.  But remember this, your relationship with Christ is a journey, and like the marriage covenant, when carried out the way God intended is ecstatic in nature.  So whether you are on the mountain top or in the valley, always remember you can say to your savior “I am Yours, and You are mine.”  Amen.

Andy Watson

Have any of you ever experienced an earthquake?  I have!  It was a small one, but it was big enough for me!  In 1969 I was in a dormitory at Wofford College, reading while lying on a bed that was permanently attached to two walls when the bed moved.  The wall moved away from the bed for one brief moment and then snapped back into place.  Down the hall, one of my friends was in an old-timey phone booth, and it danced with him in it, scaring him half to death.  It was a small quake, just a 2.5 on the Richter Scale, which translates into a 7.5 on Arthur Holt scale (meaning that you could hear me scream from 7.5 miles away).  Aren’t we lucky to live in an area that doesn’t experience many earthquakes?  Someone once asked me why it is that California has earthquakes while the only disasters South Carolina has are Clemson and Carolina!  The answer was “California got to choose first!”

As devastating as earthquakes are to structures on earth, so destructive are faithquakes to Christians.  Things happen to us which cause our faith in God to be shaken, to quake and quiver.  Sometimes the faithquake lasts for only a few seconds, but some faithquakes last so long and are so destructive that we wonder if we will survive with any faith at all remaining.  Sometimes it is a major even like 9-11 that shakes our faith; sometimes it is a host of little events which taken together shake our faith.  My mentor Jim Nates used to say that most of us are like Jonah; we can survive being swallowed by a whale, but being nibbled to death by minnows is just too much for us to endure!  J. Richard Peck once wrote that he has seen many ministers lose faith and leave the ministry, not because the task of preaching is too difficult but because they grew tired of spending their days dealing with trivial matters.^[1]

Faithquakes come to us as a result of things like a death of a loved one, a tragedy or an accident, financial troubles, being betrayed by a friend, or a failure.  In the Old Testament, Job is an excellent example of a faithquake.  He faithfully worshiped God and was faithful to God.  He was a good man who was careful to do no evil.  He was the beloved father of 10 children and he was the wealthiest man in the area.  But he lost everything in one day – his wealth, his family, and finally his health.  Eventually his faith in God quaked.

John the Baptizer is another good example.  John was very strict on himself, living as an Essene, separating himself from earthly comforts which might soften his dedication to God.  He lived in the desert, strictly faithful to God.  He didn’t fail to point out injustice and sin, even calling King Herod into account for adultery with his brother’s wife.  John had been so close to God that God had chosen him to reveal Christ to the people.  “Behold the Lamb of God,” he proclaimed.  On that great day when John baptized Jesus, he had been there to see the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus, and he had been there when God said, “This one is my beloved Son.”

How could John’s faith ever falter after all that?  But it did!  John’s faithfulness to God was rewarded by humans with imprisonment in the fortress of Machaerus, an impregnable fortress and sinful pleasure house built by Herod up in Moab’s savage cliffs.  We know that John’s faith quaked because he has a question, and faithquakes are always marked by questions.  John who had recently heard God say “This is my Son” sends this question to Jesus: “Are you?  Are you the one who was to come or should I be looking for another?”  John’s faith was really quaking.  He was on the verge of turning away from Jesus.

We should all take heart from this story about John’s faithquake because it assures us that quaking is possible to the firmest faith!  Only one person has lived whose faith remained at a constant high water mark, and that was Jesus.  The rest of us experience high and low tides of faith.  We need to remember that it is a normal part of faith development to have doubts and questions and to experience times when our faith seems to be shaken apart.  But we usually feel so guilty and frightened when this occurs, ashamed to admit to anyone that we are shakeable because we think that Christians should never doubt.  But we do, and really, it is good that we do.  Probably the most serious faithquake I have experienced in my adult life was when my best friend from college died at age 33.  Jimmy played first base while I was the second baseman on our undefeated college intramural softball team.  He lived next door in the dorm.  We double-dated often because he was such a fun guy.  One day he just collapsed at home and was on life-support within an hour, suffering from an aneurism.  After his death, there were many Sundays when I preached what I wasn’t sure I believed any longer, and I lived that way for several years until faith returned.  If my experience was in any way normal, then I can assure you that faithquakes are normal.  We all have them – preachers, too.

The reason that faithquakes are part of our faith development is that things which can be shaken must be so that the unshakable is left standing.  Let me say that again: things which can be shaken must be so that the unshakable is left standing.  As harmful as earthquakes are, the earth needs them in order to settle down.  An earthquake occurs when the earth is moving from a point of instability to a point of being settled and stronger. All of us carry around with us beliefs and expectations which are incorrect and unstable.  Faithquakes cause us to shake loose from those incorrect assumptions so that we can arrive at stronger and more mature faith.

For example, Job may have worshiped God for all the wrong reasons, for the blessings he had received instead of worshiping God for Who God is.  Job might have been very self-righteous, too, feeling like he deserved God’s blessings.  After his faithquake, a much more humble Job tells God, “I know, Lord, that you are all‑powerful; that you can do everything you want. You ask how I dare question your wisdom when I am so very ignorant. I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know. You told me to listen while you spoke and to try to answer your questions. In the past I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. So I am ashamed of all I have said and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42, Good News Bible).

John also had some bad fruit on his faith tree, and a faithquake shook some of those wrong beliefs loose.  Jesus didn’t meet up with John’s expectations of what the Messiah should be doing.  Where was the ax that was supposed to be laid at the root of the trees or the fan that was to winnow out the chaff?  Jesus the gentle healer was not the fiery judge that John was expecting.  Jesus was nurturing the barren trees, not cutting them down.  So John’s incorrect expectations had to be shaken so that he might see God’s will being accomplished in Jesus’ life.

We have wrong expectations that must be shaken loose, too.  I was wrong to assume that 33-year-old men couldn’t die of an aneurism or that tragedy couldn’t knock on our door.  Some preachers were wrong in 2001 when they assumed that God wouldn’t allow terrorists to fly airplanes into tall buildings.  We are wrong when we expect every prayer to be answered with a swift “yes,” or perhaps we are like Job and we think we have earned God’s blessings.  Perhaps we worship the gifts instead of the Giver.  In those cases, faithquakes help us by shaking away those things that can be shaken, leaving us on ground that is more solid.

That is the final point to see in these stories.  Faithquakes end up giving us more solid faith and greater hope.  After an earthquake, the earth settles back down and becomes much more stable than it has been in a long while.  After a faithquake, our faith can settle back down on firmer footing.  Job had his fortunes restored, and he was given a new family.  John had a new understanding of what the Messiah must do and he better understood the love of God after he received Jesus’ response to his questions (which was a quote from Isaiah 35 and 61).  After our faith has been shaken, we come to a new point of view, and from that new place we can see that our stumbling blocks have become stepping stones to greater faith.  After that two year journey following my Wofford friend’s death, and after I had asked pastors a million questions during that time, I did finally emerge from my faithquake to a stronger faith.  I came to a greater understanding of God’s work in our world.

The book of James, first chapter, tells us, “My brothers and sisters, consider yourselves fortunate when all kinds of trials come your way, for you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the result is the ability to endure” (Good News Bible).  Some of the strongest faith I’ve run into has resided in those who have had the most struggles in life.  I remember Mrs. Kate, a 94-year-old woman in a nursing home that I used to go visit.  I would ask her, “Mrs. Kate, how do you feel?”  and she would respond, “With my hands.”  If I asked her “How are you doing today,” her response was always, “As I please.”   As I got to know her, I learned that her joy was in spite of her many hardships and tragedies.  Her youngest daughter had been killed in an automobile accident shortly before I arrived at her church.   When I confided in her that I was a bit anxious about the safe birth of our first child, Mrs. Kate told me that she had lost her first three babies, either at birth or shortly thereafter.  I asked her how she had endured such hardship and she replied, “That wasn’t unusual back in those days.  My husband would not let me cry and I would not let him be sad.”  They eventually did have four children and a good life together, and her faith was rock solid, even when she was confined to a wheelchair and a nursing home.  When she talked about God, I knew to listen because she had paid the price for deep faith.

Faithquakes come to us all.  They shake loose the imperfections of our faith and settle the ground beneath us until we are left standing on the Rock of Ages.  Thanks be unto God for faithquakes that help us grow!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

^[1] J. Richard Peck, Trivial Pursuit, Circuit Rider, Feb., 1984.

It is an occupational hazard! We preachers tend to see sermon illustrations all around us. Whereas you may read a book or see a movie and just enjoy it, we preachers process these things in our sermon mill, grinding out sermon illustrations which will help us convey the Good News to our churches. Sometimes I find myself diagnosing the psychological problems of the characters in the movie, thinking about counselors who could help them.

Back in 1991, I saw the movie about Peter Pan called Hook. In that movie, Peter Pan is in a mid-life crisis. He has gotten so busy providing for his family that he has lost his childlike playfulness and is unable to relate to his two children. I sat there in the movie theater, holding back tears, thinking about how busy I was in my ministry, often too busy to have time to be playful with my 9-year-old daughter and my 6-year-old son. You see, when God calls a person into ministry, that call affects all aspects of one’s life, not just one’s time at work. God calls us to be ministers, not just to do ministry.

Preacher Jesus was a master of seeing sermons all around Him. Most of His parables were drawn from scenes from everyday life. On one occasion, He observed a farmer at work and He celebrated how well creation worked. The earth was rich in minerals. The clouds were rich in water. Sunlight was abundant. The seeds that God had created had the ability of automatically spring to life once they were sown into the fertile, moist soil. Jesus noticed that the farmer had very little to do with the process except for choosing where to plant the seeds. The farmer went to bed and arose each day, not even understanding how the seeds produce crops. “That is how my Kingdom works!” exclaimed Jesus.

Jesus spoke this parable to a group of disciples who might have been a little anxious or discouraged about their work. They had labored so hard and yet they saw such little results. No one in authority, civilian or religious, were becoming followers of Jesus, and the Kingdom had not come upon the earth suddenly as they had expected. Here Jesus is teaching them that the Kingdom would not be coming suddenly. Instead it would come in the way that a crop is harvested. “Remember,” says Jesus, “that the seed lies under the ground for a while. Then comes a little sprout, then the ear, then the full head. So it shall be with the Kingdom. You just be like that farmer! Keep sowing the seeds and let God take care of the rest of the process. Some seeds will sprout in the rich soil of human hearts. If the public gives you a frosty reception, re-sow the seeds.” And then Jesus added, “Remember, even the tiniest little mustard seed produces the biggest shrub bushes.” With these words, Jesus expressed such a contagious confidence that His followers took courage.

Jesus has been so accurate in His prophetic analogy. From such humble beginnings, Christianity has now grown to be a worldwide movement. Outlawed and opposed by the Roman Empire for 300 years, Christianity eventually conquered the Roman Emperor himself, without fighting even one battle. Lost in a corrupt medieval church, Christianity emerged even stronger than ever after the Protestant Reformation. The seeds of the Gospel even survived a 70-year long winter in Russia, and now the Orthodox Church in Russia is thriving once again. The June 16 issue of The Christian Century magazine states that in Moscow the number of Orthodox Churches has grown from 40 to 872 since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. The magazine also reported that the first thing that the new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did after his inauguration was to go to a nearby church to receive a blessing from Patriarch Aleksy II. Medvedev and Vladimir Putin both attended the service on February 1where Patriarch Kirill was installed as the new head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Meanwhile, Communist China has been unable to destroy the Church there because the Gospel’s seeds are so hearty. And now President Obama has continued the call to all nations that his predecessors began, a call to allow freedom of religion all countries. As in 2005, President Bush said to the government of China, “My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly,” so now has President Obama said in Cairo, “I’m a Christian… People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul… All of us have a responsibility to work for the day…when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together.”

I am confident that the hearty seeds of the Gospel will take root and produce a harvest all over the world in the coming years! The fastest growth right now is in Africa. Let us take courage in the fact that we are the harvest of the seeds that Jesus sowed, and now we are called on to be the sowers of those powerful miracle seeds. We must never stop sowing the seeds, confident that when we do, God will produce the harvest in His good time.

I see applications for this parable on the individual level and also on the church level. Just as the First Century Disciples thought that the Kingdom of God had to come suddenly, so do we tend to expect a sudden conversion resulting in instant maturity! I rejoice that conversion can come suddenly to a person or slowly over many years, but either way, Christian maturity takes a very long time. Sanctification does not come suddenly. Maturity of faith comes through planting seeds and watering them, and then we see first the blade, then the ear, then the fullness of the grain. Even the great Apostle Paul, after his conversion, studied for years in Arabia before reaching a level of maturity that allowed him to be ready to go out on his missionary journeys. How patient we need to be with ourselves and others. God is not done with any of us yet.

I used to hear children sing a little song that said,

God’s still working on me to make me what I ought to be.
It took Him a week to make the earth and the sun,
The moon and the stars and Jupiter and Mars.
How loving and how patient He must be!
He’s still working on me.

Don’t quit! Keep sowing those Gospel seeds into your life. It isn’t overnight, but it is certain if we just keep planting those seeds. The church has often told us that these are some helpful ways to sow seeds into our lives: Bible study, prayer, worship, fellowship, and service to others. I’ve never known a mature saint who didn’t have a worn out Bible, knees calloused from praying, church attendance awards, many Christian friends, and actions that displayed their faith.

How does this parable apply to Memorial United Methodist Church? In 1881, our ancestors sowed seeds for our church in this community. My great-grandfather Rev. Alston B. Earle was one of the farmers who came to work with your ancestors in that garden. God blessed their work and a church was born. Across the years you have been faithful in sowing the seeds of the Gospel in the lives of folks who moved to Greer, and that is why you have kept growing and growing. If a church is not growing, it is dying! But you have been growing. We will continue to grow just as long as we want to, as long as we make that our priority. The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church reminds us that our purpose is to make disciples for Jesus Christ and we do this by faithfully sowing seeds of love into the lives of others.

For a short while back in the 1970′s, I sold insurance. Actually, I didn’t sell insurance, but I tried! My trainer told me that success in the insurance business came from telling the story to enough people. My trainer sold one policy per six people he contacted. After he would be turned down, he would say to be, “I am one-sixth of the way to a sale!” And then he would busy himself in finding another person to tell, another place to sow those seeds. Church consultant Lyle Schaller discovered that at one church, one out of every twenty people who visited the church joined it. Therefore, if that church really wanted to grow, it would have to get busy inviting people, increasing the number of visitors. Growth for them was a simple matter of getting enough people to visit their church. That is what Jesus was trying to tell us. Sow those seeds and expect God to do the rest! That was the farmer’s attitude.

As individuals, we can do something to grow spiritually. Our hearts are like fertile soil that God waters with His love and warms with His Son. If we will faithfully sow those seeds of the Gospel into our hearts, then we can expect God to do the rest and we will reap an abundant spiritual harvest. As a church, we can do some things to help the Kingdom of God grow. All we have to do is to continue sowing the seeds of the Gospel into people’s lives, even when we are met with failure. We just keep doing our part and God will do the rest. Some of those seeds will produce a harvest for God’s Kingdom because those seeds of the Gospel are miracle seeds! Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Do you ever take the time to read the warning labels that are included with your medications and personal care items? If you paid close attention to the warnings that come with these medications, you wouldn’t take any of them! I recently tried a new shampoo that warned that it had the potential of making my hair turn orange, a very frightful prospect for this Gamecock fan. One of my prescriptions warns that I shouldn’t take it if I am pregnant or planning to be, or if I am a nursing mother. I might be safe there. Another medication has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory rats; it has been a while since anyone accused me of being a lab rat, but it has happened. Other medications will curl your toenails and cause you to grow facial hair; I hope it is never prescribed to you women! I shouldn’t operate a motor vehicle while taking some medications, and I should take great care to avoid all alcoholic beverages. Doggone it!

Just as there are no perfectly harmless medications, there are no perfect doctrines in any religion. There are realities that we experience; putting those realities into words that capture the truth without overly limiting God or excluding those who disagree with us is a real challenge. The early church debated the nature of God and of Christ for four centuries before formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. I don’t believe that it is possible to express the triune nature of the One God without trespassing the border between truth and heresy. Even my sermon title, Three Faces of God, is heretical but true.

As difficult as it is to proclaim, the doctrine of the Trinity is very important. It is one of the defining doctrines of the Church Universal. To deny the Trinity will separate a church body from the rest of Christianity. Even the National Council of Churches requires member bodies to agree on this doctrine, and if one looks at cults in our world today, one will see that they err somewhere in their doctrines about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Although this doctrine is very important to our understanding of God, it is nowhere clearly laid out in the Bible. The word “Trinity” is conspicuously absent from our Bibles. Yet in many passages we see references to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let’s look at some of the questions in the early church that gave birth to this doctrine.

Christianity came out of Judaism which vigorously taught that there was One God: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is One.” I am reminded of the story of the child who heard the confession, “the LORD our God is one,” and the little child said, “I sure thought God was older than that!” God revealed Himself to the Hebrews, not as a god or chief of gods but as the only God. Early Christians were monotheists. Jesus taught that there was One God. God alone is the Creator; all else is the created. But here is the problem: Who is Jesus, Creator or created? If we draw a line and say that everything above the line is Creator and everything below the line is the created, where do you put Jesus, above or below the line? There were those in the early church that said that Jesus was only a human being – created. Others said that He was only a divine apparition, a ghost who only appeared to be human. But the Apostles proclaimed that Jesus was the divine Son in human flesh, both really human and fully God. Pentecost further complicated the issue! Was the Holy Spirit Creator or created? As the church wrestled with this issue, it was criticized for returning to paganism because it sounded like they were proclaiming 3 gods. Can you begin to grasp the dilemma of the Church fathers?

Further complicating the issue were questions concerned how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were related to each other. Was there a heavenly hierarchy where God was King, Jesus was second in command and the Holy Spirit in third place? Is the Father alone eternal, or are Jesus and the Spirit also eternal? These questions divided the church as church leaders literally fought among themselves, excommunicating one another. Origen who lived from 185 to 254 AD was the first theologian to use the word Trinity in His theology about the Godhead. That’s right! The origin of the word “Trinity” to describe God can be traced to Origen! Finally after the Roman Empire became officially Christian in 313 AD, Emperor Constantine was worried that this question might do what invading armies had not been able to do for centuries – divide the empire – and so he paid the expenses of the various church bishops to attend a summit meeting now known as the Council of Nicea in 325. That council settled part of the conflict but it took other councils to finally settle it. It was not until the Council meeting in Constantinople in 381 that the issue was settled and the questions put away. These answers are expressed in the Nicene Creed: there is One God, the Father Creator, the only-begotten Son – begotten, not made (that is, Christ is not a created being or a lesser God but eternal God) – true God from true God, of one Being or substance with the Father – and Holy Spirit, who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified.

At last the issues were mostly settled by the Trinitarian Formula! There is only One God who has come to us in three distinct relationships. There is no inferiority or superiority in the Godhead. Father, Son, and Spirit are equal and co-eternal. God has been the Trinity always. By the way, you might be interested that this issue is what led to the split between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church in 1054 AD. We in the West say that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son while our Eastern brethren say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, so even today this issue divides the Church along an east-west theological iron curtain.

For those of you still awake, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that the distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is in function or job in relationship with us and not in nature. Each person of the Trinity has a different role in our lives, a different task. In some ways I am also a Trinitarian personality! I am a father, I was a son, and I am a husband. I am one person, but my function in the family has been based on my relationship to children, parents, and a wife. That helps me understand God better.

To call God Father is not to say that God is male but rather to say that God’s love for us is parental in nature. Our daughter Hillary was born a feminist! One time when she was about three, I told her to sit down in the grocery buggy because they don’t let little girls stand up in them. She responded, “What about little boys?” When I told her that they didn’t allow little boys to stand in buggies either, she sat down. Another time I was telling her that God is our Heavenly Father, and she looked at her Mother and said, “You just think that because you are a boy!” To call God “Father” is to recognize that we are God’s children, not God’s pets.

What is it that our parents do for us? Our mothers give birth to us, our fathers claim us by giving us their last names, and together they give us discipline, ordering our lives, and they love us sacrificially. To call God Father is to recognize that God gave us life by making us, that we are given the name “child of God,” that God has given us commandments for guidance and discipline, that God loves us sacrificially as demonstrated by Christ, and that God made all that is. The orderly creation speaks to us of an orderly Creator.

A little boy was seen at the bottom of an escalator, looking down at the ever-moving first step. An adult asked, “Son, are you afraid to get on?” The boy said, “No. I’m just waiting for my chewing gum to come back around.” Seasons come around in an orderly fashion, comets fly back by earth in predictable cycles. The orderly creation speaks to us of an orderly Creator.

To call God “the Son” is to celebrate the fact that God came to be one of us here on earth. Perhaps God came as a child to us because even the hardest of hearts will warm up to a child. Paul called Jesus “our elder brother.” It is true that sometimes it is easier to talk to a big brother or sister than to our parents. Perhaps by becoming our big brother, God was assuring us that we can talk freely with Him about anything. He understands because God the Son has been with us in the flesh.

Whereas the Father is our Creator and the Son is our Savior, the Holy Spirit is the sustainer of our lives. The Spirit is the presence of God that we experience in our daily lives. He is the strength to live the Christian life. What water is to fish and air is to humans, the Spirit is to Christians. He is the atmosphere in which we live and grow as Christians. In Him we live and move and have our being. The Spirit is best seen by what He does in us. The Spirit convict us of sin, leads us to faith in Christ, assures us that we are God’s children, causes us to remember spiritual lessons, conveys God’s will to us, empowers our lives, and fills us with God’s goodness, growing the fruit of the Spirit within us.

The doctrine of the Trinity is difficult to understand, and perhaps that is good. God always should be somewhat of a mystery to us, beyond our comprehension. But that same doctrine assures us that God loves us so very much that He gave life to us in the beginning, that He redeemed us when we went off the right path, and that He sustains us daily with His presence, making His home in us. He is an awesome God! He is one God in three persons, blessed Trinity! Amen.

Arthur H. Holt