May the boldness of God’s Spirit transform us, may the gentleness of God’s Spirit lead us,

may the gifts of God’s Spirit equip us to serve and worship you now and always.

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Despite my protest, Dad refused to reshuffle the order of cars in the driveway, so we rolled up in an old farm truck, with a huge dent in the bed and non-functioning air horns across the cab. I was a ninth grader, new to my school and heading to my first party with the popular crowd.  Dad turned off the main road onto a gravel road and stopped in front of a big bonfire.  He looked out and saw 50 teenagers he did not know and said. “Paul… Remember who you are. A lot of things may happen tonight. Remember who you are.”

In her book, In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit, Dean Yolanda Pierce writes. “A child cannot fully know how they are being cared for and blessed, fed, and nurtured. I simply trusted that my grandmother and the church mothers wanted the best for me, wanted more for me than they wanted for themselves. I had no way to express my gratitude when I was a child because I was unaware of the gifts of love, mercy, and grace that were extended to me. It was only on the way to my own adult life that I began to grasp the profound wisdom I learned around dinner tables, in small Sunday-school classrooms, and in church basements.” 

September 29, 2024

As the waiter placed the meal on our table, my friend asked if I would offer the blessing.  When I said, “Amen” my friend said “You forgot to say ‘the hands that provided it’.”  I’m not sure anyone had critiqued my prayer aloud since seminary, so it took me a minute to figure out what my friend meant by “and the hands that provided it.”    I had remembered to give thanks to God, but had forgotten the human hands that provided for us: our waiter, barista, chef, delivery drivers, grocers, and farmers. You could go deeper in gratitude and remember those who taught culinary arts, ran utility lines, engineered the grid, made the table, washed the dishes, and hauled away our trash.  Recounting his own morning routine, Rev Dr Martin Luther King made connections all sound the world concluding, “all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… This is the way our universe is structured, this is (our world’s) interrelated quality.”  “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” Dr King thought remembering our deep interconnectivity is essential for finding peace.  Such prayer can draw us deeply into our human interconnectivity and might help us love our neighbors as ourselves.  

The Bible begins with two stories: the Creation Hymn and the Garden of Eden story. The stories just appear without introduction, named author, source, origin, or timestamp. The Book of Isaiah begins “in the days of Judah’s kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah”. (Isaiah 1).  Matthew presents a long genealogy. Revelation notes that John’s vision came “through God’s angel.”  The creation stories read like Jesus’ parables. A parable like the Good Samaritan is not true because a robbery occurred along an ancient highway, parables are true because they are  true. Matthew, as editor, explains Jesus' use of parables quoting Psalm 78, “I will use stories to speak my message and to explain things hidden since the creation of the world.”  (13:35) Stories invite us into truths bigger than facts and figures.

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My mother, a fourth grade teacher and Senior High Sunday School Teacher, upheld language rules. When I was in middle school, one of dad‘s younger brothers came to visit and cursed at the table. Mom joked about needing to wash out his mouth with soap. Uncle Dave, feeling himself, smiled and repeated the foul word three or four times. Mom laughed and seemingly let it go. I wondered if cursing was okay now? When Mom came around with dessert, she asked “David, would you like ice cream with your pie?” and when he turned and answered, Mom deftly slid a tiny bar of soap into his open mouth. I suppose this could have gone a number of ways, but uncle David spit out the soap laughing at being bested by my mother.

Mom was fun, but not to be trifled with.  If we ever cursed, mom would look over her glasses and with a soul-level sigh and say,  “Paul Robert, I really thought you had a more extensive  vocabulary and did not need to reduce yourself to such guttural language!” My dad, even with 13 years in the army, abided by my mother's language rules. Once while putting a transmission in my truck Dad’s finger got smashed up.  Dad shouted “fiddly diddly ding dang day.”  There was no arguing for the therapeutic release of generalized non-human directed cussing. However, I did challenge one of Mom’s catch-phrase rules: “We don’t say that, that is ugly!” . As a high schooler, I was telling some tale when mom interjected, “Oh Paul that is ugly.” I countered, “It is funny.”  Mom said “that is not funny- it is ugly.” I parried “If it is not funny then why is dad laughing?”  Dad muffled a laugh and cut his eyes away to say that I was on my own. “What does that even mean, “that is ugly”?” Mom frowned and shook her head in disappointment and defeat. I had won, until one day twenty years later, when one of my children said something and out of nowhere I said, “That is ugly.”  Mom won the long game.

I recently read an online comment that began, “Speaking as a Christian…” and proceeded to tell the metaverse exactly what they believed. Now, “as a Christian,” I disagreed with almost everything that particular Christian said. I imagine they would disagree with me. What struck me was the phrase, “as a Christian.”  When my doctor says, “Paul, as your physician… ” or when my engineer son explains the difficulty of reusing metal after it returns from outer space, or when my mechanic preaches about the power of routine maintenance, or when Paul Franklin talks about translating the Hebrew Bible, I listen. I listen because these friends hold specialized experience, training and knowledge that I lack.  But I have been wondering, does simply being a Christian qualify anyone to be a spokesperson for Christianity?  More than that, I wonder if  speaking “like” a Christian matters more than “speaking as a Christian”?