Romans 5:1-5 Story Number One: I think it must have happened during that fourth grade Sunday School class long ago. “Mr. Grassi, how do you get to heaven?” We must have just heard a Bible story about heaven. And one of us asked that question. “How do you get to heaven?” So Mr. Grassi, an elder in the church, explained it very carefully. “To get to heaven you have to work real hard at being good, boys and girls: tell the truth - don’t tell lies, be generous - don’t steal from others, be peaceful – don’t start fights. Work real hard at being good. That’s how you get to heaven.” It made sense to me: God rewards the good girls and boys, the good women and men, too, with a heavenly reward. It was a lot like home, with my Mom and Dad, to earn my allowance and other privileges and rewards, be good. But heaven, of course, must be a wonderful reward, filled with wonderful things, so that choosing to be good boys and girls, good women and men, would be well worth the hard work it takes to get there. Castles in the clouds, endless parks filled with waterfalls and flowers, beautiful music and rainbows. In his letter, Paul talks about living in the glory of God, and all it takes is being a good boy or girl. Story Number Two: I don’t know how this happened, maybe I grew up in a very healthy family where no one had died, but the first funeral I ever attended was the first funeral I led as a new pastor in Rochester. The room was filled with people dressed in black, there were a million flowers, and the women were weeping loudly. I did not know Mr. Licata, the grandfather who had died. I had only been working at the church for one day when the call came in. So I called a few of the oldest elders, who barely remembered Mr. Licata, long inactive in the church, but they said he was a good man from Sicily who loved children and enjoyed working in his garden. It sounded good enough for me, so I basically told all of the people who gathered in his honor that their father and grandfather was a good man, and surely he was enjoying the love of God in heaven that very day. After I said that, it seemed like a cloud had lifted a bit, and there wasn’t as much sadness, because everyone knew that Mr. Licata, a good man born in Sicily ninety years before, had gone to receive his heavenly reward, to share in the glory of God. Story Number Three: One day I got called in to do another funeral, this was quite a few years after Mr. Licata. Stella had died after a long illness. She was a church member and I knew her well. In fact, I knew her too well, she had told me in detail about every ache, pain or hurt she had ever had. In fact she told me about every ache, pain or hurt many, many times over. If I mentioned the name of a person she knew, she could quickly tell me in great detail exactly how that person had hurt her. Maybe it was only an ill-considered comment, maybe she heard it wrong, but Stella felt every word like it was a sharp knife thrust into her back. End of Story: So there I was at that funeral for Stella, and I was stuck. I couldn’t exactly say that Stella was a good woman because all we ever talked about was how badly she had been hurt. I don’t think we ever got around to the good things she had done. So I was stuck, but it was good to be stuck because it got me thinking in a way that I had never thought before. And I came to a new understanding about how we get to heaven. Before I say more about it, let me say that what I learned in Sunday School about the good girls and boys being rewarded by God with heaven was no longer making as much sense to me as it once did. Even before I got to Stella’s funeral I had done funerals for other people that didn’t quite fit the formula of “good boys and girls go to heaven”. I had done the funeral service of a serious alcoholic, a man who had badly mistreated his own family members for their whole lives. I did a funeral service for a man who was just plain mean and violent, and the people who gathered at the graveside wanted to make sure that he was good and dead. I did a funeral for a woman who had been engaged in prostitution at the time of her murder, another a serious drug addict. I have done services for many people who were probably not Christian at all! So there I was feeling stuck about Stella. I really couldn’t claim that Stella was a good girl, or that Stella was a good woman, because all I had ever heard were stories about how badly she had been hurt by her family and neighbors. But I had this insight that I had never had before. It goes like this, Stella didn’t get to heaven because she earned it, Stella didn’t get to heaven because she deserved it, Stella didn’t get to heaven because she had won the reward. Here it is, are you ready? Stella got to heaven because she needed to be there after a lifetime of endless pain. Now all of you should be waving your hands in outrage, because what I just said conflicts with everything you ever learned about getting to heaven, going all of the way back to Sunday School. How dare I throw out the importance of being a good girl or boy! I am a Christian mostly because of how radical our faith is, how much our faith shakes things up in our own lives and in the world around us, sometimes turning our most cherished beliefs on their head. This time at Stella’s funeral was a time when it was one of MY beliefs that was being turned on its head. It was the day when I realized that we cannot earn our way into heaven. Heaven is the result of God’s grace, not reserved for those who deserve it, but open to those who need it. This is Paul’s message that we have now heard in his Letter to the Romans. We are “put right” with God, “justified” in the old translation, not because of what we are doing to earn it, but because God has already taken action in Jesus Christ. So I said to Stella’s family at that funeral that Stella had been received into heaven, not because she deserved it, but because God knew how badly she needed it after a life of hurt and pain, especially when I reminded everyone there that Jesus is the one who takes away all of the hurts and pains of this world. The picture of heaven that I drew that day made sense to everyone who knew Stella. Everyone there knew, that day, that Stella had finally been received into God’s peace and love, and the aches and pains and hurt would be no more. This isn’t such a radical idea, actually. What if I had said outside of a funeral God’s love is unconditional, God reaches out to us in love, not because we have earned it, because we need it. Most of us would recognize this is the explanation of God’s grace, God takes action to save us. So how could heaven be any different? Now some of you bright young people in the church may have already thought of the tough question that needs answering before I can conclude my message. If you can’t earn your way into heaven by being good boys and girls, and that even deeply troubled people might be welcomed there by God, why should you bother being a good girl or boy? Why bother, if it makes no difference? Your question allows me to get to the best part of my message. Knowing that God’s love is so abundant and generous that it includes you even if your life is filled with aches and pains, how could you live your life as if nothing matters? How would you live your life knowing that God acts in THIS way toward you? Grateful, astounded, amazed? So the life of faith does not consist in meeting impossibly high standards, it is living in the love, grace and peace of God. It is living the reward now that you thought was left for the end of the journey. Now let me emphasize this last point especially to any of you who have long believed that God’s love is earned by working harder … on mission, by praying more, by reading the Bible more. God does love the good choices you make, God loves the ways you share and help and work for a more peaceful world, but more than anything else God wants you to simply absorb all the love offered to you in Jesus Christ. God wants you to enjoy the reward from the start. It turns out that what you thought was the reward at the end of the road is actually the starting point. You thought that the door is something you need to open, but it turns out that God has already opened the door before you even thought to reach for the door knob. God’s grace, God’s love, God’s peace is not the end of the road, it is where God starts, with me and with you. God is putting things right in Jesus Christ.

Acts 2:1-21, John 14:15-20,25-27 Maybe you’ve heard this story before? About that wild day in Jerusalem, when the wind started blowing, fire began to drop out of the sky, and then everyone began to speak in strange languages. Some people call that day Pentecost, but those who were there didn’t care what you called it, because as far as they were concerned it was a day when everything turned upside down. The world got turned on its head, and then it got turned right side up again. They thought Jesus was gone for good, but in the Spirit he had come back. You might want to put on your seatbelts before I get to the next paragraph in my sermon. OK, everyone buckled in. Parents, please make sure that your children are buckled in correctly. Have you ever been on a boat out on the ocean, going up one swell like climbing a hill, and then plunging down the backside of the swell like an accelerating roller coaster? It always feels like your stomach was left behind and then it suddenly catches up when you’re not ready for it. Let’s try it, OK rising up, and then suddenly down. Oooggg. If you haven’t been out on the ocean, you get the same feeling when your car is going fast and you hit a dip in the road, and when the tires touch down again, your stomach is still floating somewhere up above. Let’s try that, too. Or when a passenger plane reaches an air pocket suddenly, and, all of a sudden, the plane drops what feels like a half a mile (it’s really a lot less than that), but the same feeling .. your stomach is still up there in the clouds but diving down to catch up to you. We won’t try this one, because we forgot to put those helpful little bags in each seat this morning. So on the first Pentecost I think it wasn’t just what they saw and heard, the wind and fire and the confusing voices; it was deeper than that, and went right to the gut, it was what they felt. There were powerful physical feelings, only it wasn’t their stomach catching up with the rest of their bodies, it was the Spirit of God catching up with them, touching the lives of those people like never before. Those who were there, they never forgot it, and, in fact, their lives were turned upside down because they were there. We have a program in the Presbyterian Church USA called Volunteers in Mission, it’s sort of like the Peace Corps, where people of all ages, just out of college, in retirement, or in between give up a year or more to volunteer in some place where their skills are needed. It might be Africa or Asia, or Appalachia, or Alaska. People who become VIMs will tell you that their lives were never the same again after that time of volunteering. Other churches have volunteer programs, too, just like our Presbyterian Volunteer in Mission program. One time I became acquainted with something similar in the Catholic Church, called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. You can ask me later how I got mixed up in that, but I’ll simply report that I went to the gathering of the volunteers at the end of their year of service. I wasn’t one of the volunteers, but I had worked with some of them in Rochester, so I was there for that final gathering. It seems that they had first met together the previous summer for what was called ORIENTATION, which meant that they were getting themselves ready, mentally and spiritually for the coming year of volunteering. OK, ORIENTATION, that makes sense, but the gathering at the end of their volunteer year, the next summer, was called DISORIENTATION. That was an odd name, I thought, so I asked why DISORIENTATION was used to describe their gathering. Here’s the answer. These were young people who spent a year in places they had never dreamed of being, in poor neighborhoods, working in poor churches, working in soup kitchens, clothing closets, and children’s programs. They not only helped people in poverty but they became their friends, too. So what they thought they would experience was nothing like what they actually experienced. They thought that they would gain good experience helping people in need, but what they hadn’t planned was how much each encounter with a person in poverty touched their hearts and transformed their souls. In effect, what had happened to them that year was DISORIENTATION, the same physical DISORIENTATION felt on that day of Pentecost long ago, but also the spiritual DISORIENTATION that those first followers of Jesus went through, turning them completely upside down, and then right side up again. And so DISORIENTATION for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps was not just congratulating all of the volunteers for a job well-done, it turned into a time of reflection as each volunteer pondered what they would do next in life to build on the incredible experience of the past year, now that the Spirit of God had gotten their attention, grabbed a hold of their lives, and now pulling them in new directions. Maybe you have had an experience of disorientation, too, not the kind I started talking about on a boat or plane of in a car, but a spiritual disorientation, in which your life has been turned on its head, and you realize that it’s more than your stomach twisting and turning, it’s the Spirit of God trying to get your attention, grabbing a hold of you, and pulling you in a new direction? Maybe in the hospital, maybe on a wilderness adventure, maybe in the birth of a child, maybe in a crisis, maybe a time of loss, maybe on a mission trip. Has it happened to you? I know it’s happened to me in all of those ways and more. There is one more thing about DISORIENTATION. Disorientation is not the final result, the upside down of Pentecost turns right side up again. Those followers of Jesus did not walk around in circles for the rest of their lives, spouting gibberish. They found a new direction and began to move forward. We hear Jesus speak of this in John’s Gospel, when he says, “I will not leave you orphaned; I’m coming back.” The rest of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles is all about how each of those disciples moved forward. The Jesus who welcomed our birth, who has watched us grow in love and faith doesn’t leave us. Those first disciples felt lost and powerless after the cross and resurrection. Even the news that Jesus was alive seemed only a distant rumor to most of them. Pentecost was what they needed, the touch of God’s Spirit, a powerful assurance that resurrection and new life are not an old story, but a new reality. He comes back, he always comes back, when we need him most, offering the Spirit of truth, of wisdom, of peace. Strong winds, fire dropping down from the sky, all those confusing languages. While you might think of this as a story from long ago, with all kinds of exaggerated special effects, it is a story for today, for people who sometimes lose their direction, whose faith has fizzled, who worry that Jesus is too far away to make a difference. “I will not leave you orphaned; I’m coming back.” Amen!

John 5:1-9 (from a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Brockport, while Rev. Aaron Doll preached at Byron) What a wonderful opportunity this is to worship with my friends at the First Presbyterian Church of Brockport. Over the years that I have been a pastor I have had many opportunities to work closely with some of you in the work of our presbytery. To my friends, it’s good to see you again. To those who I haven’t met yet, I hope we will be friends after today! Thank you for inviting me to preach from the Word of God today. And, of course, my church in Byron is in great hands with Aaron leading worship there. Has anyone here ever had to wait for something? When I was a little boy, waiting for the school bus on a cold winter day was hard. Even five minutes seemed too long when my toes were starting to freeze! The biggest wait, though, was that it seemed like it took almost forever for my birthday or for Christmas to arrive each year. What are some of the things you remember waiting for in your life? One friend, in the 7th month of her pregnancy told me she had waited enough; she wanted to have the baby right now, because even seven months had been too long time to wait. But that’s nothing. In today’s story we meet a man who has been waiting for 38 years. 38 years! Waiting, waiting, waiting. I think he was pretty miserable about all of that waiting. What made it most difficult was that what he was waiting for was right in front of him, as close as I am to the first row of seats in the church from where I am standing. It would be like having to wait all year long for Christmas, but with all of the beautiful, wonderful gifts, spread out right in front of you. It would drive you crazy to see all of those gifts, but not be able to touch them. And now multiply that feeling by 38 years and you get the idea of how desperate the man was. Here’s what he was waiting for – a miracle, a healing, a cure! You see there was something terribly wrong with his legs. It doesn’t say exactly what was wrong, but we can guess that his legs didn’t work, he couldn’t stand on them, he couldn’t walk on them. And maybe they hurt all of the time, too. It meant that he couldn’t work and had no money. He was probably a beggar. His only hope was for a miracle to happen. In those times, there were no doctors like there are today, and especially not for poor people. But there was one chance he had to get cured, for his legs to work again, and that was to go to this special pool in Jerusalem, the pool of Bethsaida. People who would enter the water of the pool could feel that soothing, healing water, and whatever didn’t work in their bodies would be fixed. Can you imagine what it would be like to jump into a pool like that – all your aches and pains washed away? Aaaahhhh! But the problem was that only one person at a time could be healed at the Pool of Bethsaida: the first one to get into the water when the time was right. At certain times, you see, little bubbles would rise up out of the water, which everyone believed happened because it was Almighty God stirring up the water. So everyone looking for healing would sit on the edge of the pool waiting for the bubbles to rise, proof that God was close by and ready to do a miracle. And when the bubbles appeared, the first one in was cured. (jump!) Yippee-dippee! Now our man who had been waiting for 38 years had a big problem. In all of those 38 years, because his legs didn’t work, he was never fast enough to get into the water first. No one would help him get to the water, and no one would carry him to the edge of the pool. How would you feel if you were that man? (at font) I’ve been working with members of your church’s Stewardship Committee – not for 38 years, only two. We’ve been working on a strategy called Natural Church Development. In case you haven’t heard of Natural Church Development, the simple purpose of it is to help your church, and my church, and all of our churches get healthier in our ministry. So this story about the man lying by the side of the pool relates to my situation and to yours. He wanted to get healthier and we want to get healthier, too. In your case I’m not talking about all of your aches and pains as individuals, I’m talking about becoming a healthier church that is more eager to be immersed in the word of God, more excited about diving into mission, more enthusiastic about inviting others to jump in, soaking up even more of God’s love, and to splash it into the lives of others. That’s what a healthier church would be, it’s what my church hopes for, and what your church hopes for. A couple of years ago some of the leaders of your church took a survey that revealed the strengths of your ministry, but the survey also revealed your weakness. In your church and in my church the weakness, is the same: Passionate Spirituality is in low supply. To get healthier, we have to address this weakness. I don’t mean that this congregation lacks spirituality, it only means that our spirituality is more hidden than it should be. More hidden to the world around us and even to our own selves. So your Stewardship Committee has been working on ways to allow the spirituality of this congregation to become more visible to yourselves and to the wider world. Next Saturday, a retreat has been planned by the Stewardship Committee that you are invited to attend. I am looking forward to it, because it promises to be an experience like that of the man at the pool, whose wait will soon be over. The retreat will be a day when we help each other get our toes in the water. Not really, of course, because it’s still a little chilly yet for swimming in May! But we will talk about water a lot. Come to the water, the water that cleanses and renews as the flood came in the time of Noah. Come to the water, the water that relieves thirst as the Israelites wandered in the desert. Come to the water, the living water that Jesus offered the woman at the well, the spiritual water Jesus offered to Nicodemus in the night. Come to the water, the saving water of baptism that an unlikely man from Ethiopia discovered. As we touch the water, as we touch God in Jesus Christ, our spiritual health grows. So there’s that poor man on the edge of the pool, unable to get into the water on time. Everything changes when Jesus arrives. I love how this conversation unfolds. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be healed?”. You’d think he would give a quick answer: “Yes!” But he doesn’t say “Yes”, instead he gives all of the reasons why he can’t get to the water fast enough when God stirs up the bubbles. He’s a lot like us, when Jesus offers us a way forward, we think of all the reasons why we can’t - the water’s too cold, too deep, too far away, too many waves, my bathing suit doesn’t fit, I’m not ready, I’m scared, I’d rather hug the shore where it’s safe and then wonder why God hasn’t been helping . Of course, we’re not really talking about water at all, we’re talking about all of the ways that God invites us to be passionately spiritual people, and how easy it is for us to hold back. God, you are so patient with us, but we hope and pray you will give us the pull or the push we need to experience more fully the hope and joy you have prepared for us in Jesus Christ. Move our toe to touch the water, move our legs to wade in, move our lungs to take a deep breath, and draw us more deeply into your love. Jesus told us all about this, and now we’re ready. This is a day to say yes to what Jesus offers, and it works whether you’ve been waiting 38 minutes, 38 weeks, 38 months, or 38 years! So let’s practice, using the question Jesus asked the man at the pool. Do you want to be healed? Yes! Yes! Yes! Friends, this is the hope and the power of the Gospel, the water of life, long promised to you. Amen!

Revelation 21:1-6 “A new car!” Let me try that again, “a new car! ” Who did I just sound like? Whose voice was I trying to imitate? Did I sound like Bob Barker? You know who Bob Barker is don’t you? A famous TV game show host. “A new car!” Bob Barker is retired now, but you remember what would happen when he said that. It was during the last segment of the show, when the one remaining contestant was given a chance to win the fabulous prize of a new car. When the brand new car was revealed behind door number one or behind the blue curtain, the happy contestant was overwhelmed with joy, wobbly in the knees, tears of joy, hands clutched together in wild hope with that new car so close to being theirs! “A new car!” Anyone want to try the Bob Barker voice? In our reading from the Book of Revelation, a heavenly voice addresses the faithful with this ringing promise, “Behold, I make all things new!” Not just a new car, or a new dining room set, or a new billiard table, or any of those other fabulous prizes, God’s promise is that everything will be new in this season of the resurrection. “All things new!” What new thing would you like to find when the heavenly door opens, or the heavenly curtain is raised? I think we’re all thoughtful enough to know that the answer to our problems is not a new car, or a new dining room set, or a new billiard table, but a different kind of new: new love, new life, new peace, new hope, even a new church. (repeat) A new church. Do we need a new church? Possibly. Our building was constructed about 190 years ago. That’s a long time. Back before there was electricity or oil heat. Way back then, volunteers had to come in before dawn to load up the coal furnace. And for light, a chandelier was lowered from the ceiling by a hand crank, and then volunteers had to light all the candles. Many of you, had you been living back then, would have been the volunteers to shovel the coal or to light those candles. 190 years. That’s a long time. A lot of things have happened over that time. I wonder when people started driving cars to church instead of riding a horse-drawn carriage? I wonder what kind of hats they wore? I wonder if they had an organ to accompany the singing? I wonder when women were first elected to the office of elder or pastor? I wonder if they always had a Sunday School here? Sunday School probably began around the year 1890 or so, that’s when Sunday School was first invented. Before that children just worshipped with their parents. But some people with foresight came to understand that young children would benefit from a specialized program geared to their young minds. And ever since, for more than 100 years there has been a Sunday School here. Sunday School. Did you know that our youth program is envied by a lot of churches in our Presbytery? It’s true. For a small church we have an incredibly active youth ministry – faith journaling, mission projects, summer camp, and the national Presbyterian Youth Triennium. I am very proud of the ministry that we have here with middle and high school youth. But we have a big problem with youth ministry. Have you spotted it? The problem is that there are almost no active children under the age of 6th grade. This is a serious matter, something worth talking about as a church. I think we all need to be talking about this. Let me tell you that when a church one day looks around and sees almost no children involved, it is very hard to revive a Sunday School or youth ministry. There needs to be a critical mass of young children. So if we are concerned about the participation of children into the future, the time to act is now. Let’s name some of the things we could do to revitalize our ministry with young children, things we could do to inv younger children and their families into the life of our church. [ ] Invite children you know, your children, your grand-children, your neighbors. We could purchase ads on billboards, arrange for newspaper and radio ads, but the best outreach is always church folks inviting the people they know. [ ] There are some children we know who have been missing? What can be done to invite them back? [ ] Create some special outreach programs over the course of the summer. Terrific Tuesdays. [ ] Hand out fliers on Memorial Day. What else could we do? What can YOU do? Because we will only succeed in this if everyone here, including you, understands the importance of acting on this important matter. All things new. New love, new life, new peace, new hope, a new church. These are things offered to the faithful in the hope and power of the resurrection. Not a new car, or a new house, or a new dining room set, or a new billiard table. All things new, the things that really matter. Can we open our hands and hearts to these new things, can we multiply all that God has given for the sake of those who follow?