“A Dark Love Song, A Hopeful Future” - November 26, 2023

Text: Isaiah 5:1-7, 11:1-5


I know that a number of you are gardeners.  How many had a vegetable garden this year – even if it was just a couple of plants?  Even if you just used containers?  How many had a flower garden?

We just had a couple of tomato plants and some basil and cilantro.  We won’t talk about the basil and cilantro, but the tomatoes really produced.  We still have a few green tomatoes that we brought in before we had a hard freeze.  That was a few weeks ago if you remember.  We have had a lot of 60 degree days, even a few 70 degree days since then.  So that’s been a while, and those green tomatoes are still ripening on the counter.

But we have had plenty of years when things did not go so well.  A number of years ago we had raspberries – I got some starter canes, as they are called, from Michael and Jill Leininger.  It took a year or two, but they did pretty well for a few seasons, and the raspberries were delicious.  And then the yields were less and less until they hardly produced.  I mean, I was eating a few berries on the spot, as I picked them, and that was it – there weren’t any to put on my cereal, much less make a cobbler.

Growing things can take some work.  Our first scripture this morning is about a vineyard.  The owner takes great pains to prepare the vineyard for the best possible grapes.  It was planted on fertile ground, on a hill.  He cleared the ground of stones.  We can read that and think oh yeah, good idea, but this is serious labor.  Has anybody dug up stones out of a field?  I personally would not sign up for it.  Those stones may have been used for the wall surrounding the vineyard.  The vineyard owner planted choice vines.  He didn’t just pick up what they had on clearance at Wal-Mart, these were quality vines that would produce grapes for fine wine.

The vineyard owner really goes above and beyond.  There was a wall around the vineyard and there was a hedge.  That is even more planting.  And a watch tower is built so that the vineyard could be observed.  Presumably this was to look out for animals who wanted to eat the fruit or mess with the vineyard as well as individuals who might be up to no good - as well as to just get a look at the whole vineyard.  (The watchtower was necessary because they had not invented drones yet.) 

So I hope you have the picture: a great deal of planning and preparation and lots of hard work went into readying and planting and caring for this vineyard.  And the end result, the goal of all this, was not simply the grapes, but to produce wine.  Before there were even any grapes, a wine press is built.  Remember that this was long before refrigeration.  Oil and grain and wine were important commodities – other than what could be sold locally, these were the ways that what was grown were stored and traded.

It is a beautiful picture.  You can just imagine that vineyard on a hill, a winery in the making; maybe there were plans for a little café on site.

Has anybody grown grapes?  I am told that it takes a few years, maybe even 4 or 5 years for vines to really produce grapes.  It just takes time.

So the vineyard owner has invested not only a great deal of effort and financial resources; he has invested time.  He has put so much into this vineyard, and it will be a few years before he even sees and yield.

In time, the vines produced.  I’m sure it was exciting that first year that the vines started putting on grapes.  I’m sure everyone was looking forward to the harvest.

There was so much anticipation, but then when they finally tasted the grapes, they were awful.  They were sour.  They weren’t fit to eat.

The vineyard owner decided to cut his losses.  These vines produced wild grapes and they were good for nothing.  He doesn’t outright destroy the vineyard, but basically says, "I’m done here."  He removed the hedge, removes the wall, and essentially lets nature take its course.  The vineyard becomes overgrown, there are briars and thistles, wildlife invade, and it’s done for.  

The vineyard is a metaphor for the nation of Israel.  We are told that it is a love song - at least that is how it begins.  God loves the house of Israel and has taken great effort to care for it.  The purpose of the vineyard was not just to produce grapes, but wine.  Wine is often a symbol of the good life – of joy and contentment and celebration and fellowship.  But Israel has not produced fruit of justice and righteousness.  That is the fruit God intended, those were the grapes that were expected.

Now it is not that there were no grapes.  It’s not like my raspberries that stopped producing so well.  The grape vines produced, but the grapes weren’t any good.  They tasted awful.  And so the vineyard was useless.

I went to the grocery a couple of weeks ago and Susan put grapes on the list.  I saw some that looked OK and the price wasn’t bad so I got some grapes.  I brought them home – and they hardly had any taste.  They were not what anybody would have in mind when they want grapes.

Our translation says that God “expected justice but saw bloodshed, expected righteousness but heard a cry.”  There is actually a play on words in the Hebrew.  God expected mishpat (justice) but got mishpach (perverted justice), God expected tsedaqah (righteousness) and got tse’aqah (a scream).  

The Hebrew pun is hard to replicate in English.  Maybe God expected justice but got “just us” – as in a complete disregard for others.  Robert Alter tries to capture that Hebrew play on words and translates this as “He hoped for justice and, look, jaundice, for righteousness and, look, wretchedness.”

Israel was not producing the wine of justice and goodness and compassion.  They may have thought they were doing justice; they may have thought they were righteous, but it was a perverted justice and a false righteousness.

We can say all the right things.  We can put on an air of niceness.  Now don’t get me wrong, I prefer that to an air of meanness, but true justice is seen in the way we act.  It is seen in our living and it is seen in the way we demonstrate our values.  The nation of Judah was falling far short, talking justice but neglecting the poor and the widow and the stranger.

Rosalynn Carter died this past week.  To me, she is an example of someone whose life reflected a true concern for justice.  You probably remember those images of Rosalynn alongside Jimmy, swinging a hammer working on building a Habitat for Humanity House.  

Rosalyn was an equal partner with Jimmy in founding the Carter Center after Jimmy left office.  Through the Carter Center, she continued her long advocacy for people with mental illness, working to combat stigma and discrimination and to promote better mental health care in the United States and abroad.  

She helped campaign to end guinea worm disease, a terrible tropical disease that has now nearly been eradicated.  

And she saw how being a caregiver to others can take a toll.  She founded the Rosalyn Carter Center for Caregivers to support those who selflessly cared for others.  She said that “there are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers.”

President Jimmy Carter was instrumental in founding the New Baptist Covenant in 2007.  It was an effort to bring together diverse Baptist groups, especially both predominantly white and black Baptist denominations, to work together especially around issues of justice.  Several of us were there at that first gathering in Atlanta – I remember Wayne and Irene Shireman and Bob and Jenna McCarley and Jere Maddux and Michael Thompson and myself, along with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.  Working for justice, trying to make a difference.  Mrs. Carter said, “Do what you can to show you care about others, and you will make our world a better place.”

Now I am not trying to do a eulogy for Rosalynn Carter, but it just struck me this week that she was about producing good fruit, fruit of the spirit.  Isaiah prophesied in a time when Israel was failing to produce goodness and justice and righteousness.  And it led to a bleak future.

This is purportedly a love song, but it is a pretty dark love song.  Fortunately it is not the end of the story.  We continued reading in Isaiah with chapter 11.  This is a familiar passage – often an Advent text.  Advent begins next Sunday so we are getting a little bit of a head start here.

We first read about a vineyard that was overrun.  There was destruction, and indeed the metaphor was accurate: the temple in Jerusalem was eventually destroyed and the nation of Judah taken into captivity in Babylon.

But that was not the end of the story.  From the stump of Jesse, a shoot would grow.  A branch would grow from the roots.  

We also know what that is like.  We have a pagoda dogwood in our backyard.  It is a small multi-stem tree – it had 3 trunks.  I say had because the largest of the three was injured and starting to die.  It had to be cut off.  But a new shoot started to grow from the roots, and today that new shoot is the tallest of the three trunks.

The nation of Israel was a mess, and the future looked bleak.  The turn away from justice brought disastrous consequences.  But that was not the end of the story.

Isaiah foresees a new leader, a shoot from the stump of Jesse.  Jesse was the father of King David, so this would be someone in the line of David.  He would rule with justice and equity.  He would have a spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and power and defend the poor and the humble.

When things look bleak, when we are discouraging and despairing, it is hard to see light.  It is hard to hold onto hope.  But those despairing moments are not the whole picture.  They are not the complete story.  And the future is not set in stone.  There are possibilities.  There can be wonderful possibilities.  Things can be different.  Things can be better.  Things can be made right.  The life we long for and the world we long for are possible.

I know, this can sound naïve.  Sometimes it can look like the world in a going to hell in a handbasket, and I can be discouraged as well as the next person.  But in the midst of a desperate time, Isaiah holds out the possibility, holds out the vision of a just and peaceful future, and that vision is as needed today as it was then.

Having dreams and visions, seeing another way, can be a counter-cultural act of defiance.  The conventional wisdom may be that the poor may always be with us, don’t worry about it; but it is an act of defiance to believe that things can be better, that the world can be more fair, more equitable.

The conventional wisdom may be that people of different races and ethnicities and faiths cannot peacefully coexist.  It is an act of defiance to live with and work with and befriend those who are different.  The conventional wisdom may say it’s a dog-eat-dog world, only the strong survive, you have to look out for #1.  It is an act of defiance to put other values, like compassion and love and family and making a real difference, ahead of simply “getting ahead.”

King Hezekiah was a leader to come who helped to restore, at least for a time, a commitment to justice in the nation of Judah.  That commitment did not outlive his reign.  But ultimately, we believe this prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus, born in the line of Jesse, who brought hope and showed us the way to peace and justice and righteousness.  

How do we tap into that?  Jesus showed us the way.  He said, “I am the vine and you are the branches.”  As we stay connected to Jesus and as we follow in the way of Jesus, we are led to peace and hope and love.  And as we share that with those around us, the world becomes a little more hopeful, a little more just, and little more fair and equitable.  And the vineyard starts to produce good fruit.

May it be so.  Amen.

“When God Is Silent” - August 13, 2023

Text: Psalm 13, 1 Kings 19:11-13


This summer, we have been looking at questions and topics that were suggested by the congregation.  One person submitted this:

“I often think about how to be faithful and patient when God is silent.  Am I praying for the right thing and in the right way?”

This is a question that at some point or other, every one of us can relate to.  How do we get through those times when God is silent?  When it seems like God is not there?  

Silence, in the first place, is difficult for many of us.  We are so used to constant sound.  We are so used to talk, to chatter, to tv, to music, to muscle cars gunning their engine down the street.

I ride my bike on some of the bike paths and multi-use trails around town.  When you come up behind someone walking and you are going to pass, you call out, “On your left.”  It’s just common courtesy and it is a safety issue.  The problem is that sometimes people have earbuds or headphones and they are playing the music so loud they are oblivious.

We are used to sound.  For some of us, silence can be uncomfortable.  

When it comes to silence, context can be everything.  If you walk into a room where another person is sitting and no one says anything, it may be because you don’t know each other.  Or it may be that you know each other so well that words are not necessary.  It may be that there has been some conflict between the two of you and there is an awkward silence.  It could mean that you are both too sad to speak.  It might mean that you both know the room is bugged.  It might be that the other person is sleeping.  There are many reasons for silence.

Our dog Rudy died almost 3 months ago now, but it is still hard.  And I know of several families in our church who have lost a pet just this year.  One of the ongoing painful reminders of the loss is that the house is so quiet.  

We live in a culture that is not especially comfortable with silence.  

Quite a few years ago we had a church retreat at Dayton Oaks – some of you will remember this.  We all took something called the Spiritual Type Inventory.  You answer a bunch of questions and then find what your spiritual type is - you could be head, heart, mystic, or activist.  It was very interesting (to me at least!), and the point was not to pigeonhole people but to think about the various ways we are wired spiritually and live out our spiritual lives.

This was part of a doctoral project I was working on. My hypothesis was that in a university-type congregation such as ours, members would tend to have a “head” spirituality – a focus on thinking and intellect and rational faith.  As it turned out, we did have more people in the head group but it was a good mix.  Another church in a university community had more people in the heart group and another had more in the activist group.  So much for my hypothesis.

At any rate, one of the things we did was to have the head spirituality people gather in a group, and the mystics over there, and activists over there, and so forth.  There were questions for each group to discuss and then we all talked about them in the larger group.

One of the questions was, “What part of the worship service is most meaningful to you?”  Folks with different spiritual types might be drawn to different parts of the service.  One person in the mystical group said that the time of silence after the sermon was the most meaningful part of the service to them.  It was very meaningful to that person, but some in the other groups hadn’t really noticed that that was part of the service at all.  

For some, silence is an opportunity to “be still and know that I am God.”  For some others, silence can be uncomfortable.  Some of us are moved by the quiet and the meditative nature of a Taizé service.  For others, it’s just not their thing.

However we feel about silence, when it comes to God, we want a God who speaks to us.  We want a God that keeps in touch.

As we think about our question this morning, we need to ask: what do we mean by God’s silence?  This might mean different things to different people, but I think it can mean something like spiritual dryness – a time when we may feel far from God.  It may come about in the midst of difficult circumstances.  Maybe we are feeling kind of beaten down by life.  Maybe we have tried to do the right thing and got nothing but grief for it.  Maybe we are filled with worry for a loved one.  

Or maybe we are trying to make a decision and unsure of what we should do.  We may pray and pray but don’t find much of an answer.  We may pray for clarity and don’t get any.  And after a while, maybe we stop praying.  It may feel like God isn’t there, or that God isn’t paying attention.

To think about God’s silence, we might ask about the flip side of that.  What is it like when God is talkative?   When God is communicating?

It is interesting the way that God speaks in the Bible.  After creation, God speaks to the man and woman in the garden, just like we might speak to each other.  God spoke audibly to Abraham.  God spoke to Moses regularly.  God spoke to the prophets.  But over time, God spoke less and less directly.  

When the boy Samuel was serving in the temple with the priest Eli, we read from 1 Samuel: “Now the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”  Which sounds not unlike our day.

God seemed to give up audible words and went to speaking through dreams.  Angels appeared less and less.  And the seemed to pay less and less attention.  Until finally, God spoke to a young woman named Mary.  And God came to us in Jesus.  He revealed who God was.  He spoke God’s words.  Jesus was God’s Word. He showed us how to live.

So how does God speak to us today?  In a time when the Word of the Lord is rare and visions are not widespread?  We do not expect to hear the audible voice of God.  We do not expect the shrubbery to catch fire and begin speaking to us – we don’t expect burning bushes.  We do not look for angels to appear or expect vivid and unmistakable visions.  

I suppose the way God speaks is a little different for each person – maybe depending on those spiritual types – but it may be through the words of scripture – as the words we read become God’s word to us.  It may come as we seek to follow Jesus, knowing that Jesus is God’s Word.  

It may be through a growing conviction, a sense of what is right.  It may come as we take in the beauty of God’s creation and spend time in nature.  It may come through other people who help us, who encourage us, who inspire us.  

Sometimes it involves taking one step forward and finding some confirmation that this is the way to go, and then taking another step.  God may speak to us as we follow that part of God’s will we know to be true, as we follow the light, and we receive more light.  It may come as we work for justice, work to make things right and bring healing in God’s world and we find God’s strength and power.  

Or maybe we find a sign of some kind – that might be different for different folks – but some sign of God’s leading us.  Sometimes we have a powerful experience of God’s presence.

Maybe none of that is happening for you.  Maybe it feels like it is complete radio silence from God.  If that is the case, know that you are absolutely not alone.

Many of the Psalms speak of a sense of profound sense of God’s silence.  Susan read for us Psalm 13.  And then we sang it.  There is a reason we tend to sing happier, more joyful hymns than singing Psalm 13.  But it is honest and true to our experience, just as the joy is true to our experience.  There are those times when Psalm 13 describes our lives.

What does Jesus cry out from the cross?  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus felt God’s silence, God’s absence.  When he said that, he was quoting from Psalm 22.  Some would say, “Oh, he was just quoting from the Psalms.”  What do you mean just quoting?  There is a strength that comes from knowing that others have gone before you and that they have been there too.  There is power in knowing you are not alone.

Yet after speaking of God’s silence, Psalm 13 concludes:

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
   my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
   because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Where does that come from?  It seems to come out of nowhere.  It seems like a sudden departure.  But it comes from knowing that God had been there before.  It comes from knowing that others had experienced this same sense of God’s silence - and yet God had always proven faithful.

Martin Marty is the dean of American church historians, a longtime professor at the University of Chicago.  A group from our church went to hear him speak at Drake together with Bill Moyers – this was 22 years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11.  He was already long retired even then, and today he is 95.

Years ago, after the death of his wife, he wrote a moving book reflecting on the Psalms.  He said that there is a summery kind of spirituality, a spirituality of joy and praise and thanksgiving.  But Marty wrote about those times when God seems silent.  Roughly half of the Psalms reflect a wintry sort of spirituality.  The title of that book is A Cry of Absence.

Marty wrote, 

Winterless climates there may be, but winterless souls are hard to picture.  A person can count on winter in January in intemperate northern climates, or in July in their southern counterparts.  Near the equator, winter is unfelt.  As for the heart, however, where can one escape the chill?  When death comes, when absence creates pain – then anyone can anticipate the season of cold.  Winter can also blow into surprising regions of the heart when it is least expected.  Such frigid assaults can overtake the spirit with the persistence of an ice age, the chronic cutting of an Arctic wind.

We can all experience those times when God seems absent, when it seems like God has gone silent.  We can all face those winter times of the soul – and in time, we all will.

How do we get through those times?  How do we stay faithful when God is silent?  

I don’t presume to have the answer.  I think one of our problems is that we talk way too much, maybe to cover up the fact that we don’t have answers.  I could have actually taken a number of the questions that came in for sermons this summer and preached the “I Don’t Know” sermon series.

So let me just suggest a few things.

The example from the Psalms is helpful.  Even though God is silent, the Psalmist continues to cry out to God, and there is a confidence in God’s goodness and care.  The Psalm actually ends with praise.  So keep on praying.  You can cry out to God, you can even complain to God.  God can handle it.  And we can depend on God’s love.

And then we can sometimes think of prayer as primarily asking for God’s blessing for ourselves and those we care about.  As we grow in our understanding of prayer, we can see the larger picture that at the heart of it, prayer is not about telling God what needs to happen but building a relationship with God.  And we can maybe focus our praying there.

That means that prayer is not just our talking to God, but listening to God.  It may be that sometimes we can’t hear God because we are too busy talking.  We read from the story from Elijah.  He was fearful and running for his life.  There are all kinds of pyrotechnics in Elijah’s story, but we find that the Lord was not in the mighty wind, and the Lord was not in the earthquake, and the Lord was not in the fire.  The Lord was in the silence.

God may speak to us out of the silence.  In the midst of the silence.  But we have to listen.  We have to “be still and know that I am God.”

There are those times when we are too numb with grief or too filled with pain or too distracted by the crises around us to really be able to listen.  To really be able to pray.  And I think that is where the community comes in.

We can pray for one another.  And with one another.  And when you are too hurt or too tired or too discouraged to even pray, the community can hold you up and pray for you.  And when others are too hurt or too tired or too discouraged to even pray, you can pray for them.

And we can trust that in time, we will "sing to the Lord, for God has dealt bountifully with us."  Amen.

“A Scientist (?) Looks at Life from a Faith Perspective” - July 23, 2023

Text: Genesis 1:1-28, 31

On your Summer Sermon Request line, the request for today is “A favorite from the archives – for those of us who missed it the first time.”   

Well, the archives go back pretty far.  I could have chosen a sermon from 25 years ago, but the sermon that came to mind was more recent - it was actually from the time I asked for sermon suggestions a few years ago.  Back then, the suggestion slip read “A scientist (chemist) looks at life from a faith perspective.”  It was signed simply Borgen, but I knew it wasn’t from Dianne.  This was Fred’s doing.

As most of you know, Fred is a psychologist and much of his professional work focused on personality and vocation.  I have watched Fred countless times talking to students after the service.  He was especially interested in their majors and more than that, where their lives were heading.  

My undergraduate degree is in chemistry, and when Fred suggested this topic, he was really giving me more respect than I deserve.  I would not describe myself as a chemist or a scientist – that’s where the question mark in the title comes from.  I took Fred’s suggestion as really asking for both something about my personal experience – of the journey from chemistry to ministry, and something about the relationship between the two – between science and faith.

Gerald Kirkman was my high school chemistry teacher.  He was a big athletic guy with a sharp mind and a great sense of humor.  He played college football at Indiana State and was a PE major, not taking the academic side of things too seriously, until one day an assistant coach pulled him aside and said, “Kirkman, you are a decent player but you are not going to make a career of this.  You are a smart guy and you need to find yourself another major.”  (No offense to any PE majors out there.)  That assistant football coach was also Indiana State’s head basketball coach – that’s the way things worked back then.  His name was John Wooden.  Yes, the John Wooden who coached UCLA to 10 NCAA basketball championships.

I can say that Johnny Wooden had an influence on my life, because Mr. Kirkman decided to become a chemistry teacher.  He was a great teacher and was elected president of the National Science Teachers Association.  North High School offered a second year of chemistry, Advanced Chemistry.  We had to come in an hour early, before school started, to have time for the labs.  Mr. Kirkman was a great guy and I loved it.    

I went to college in my hometown, at Evansville, and majored in chemistry.  I was president of the American Chemical Society student affiliate.  I worked two summers in the research division at Mead Johnson, a pharmaceutical and nutritional manufacturer in town.

But other things were happening in my life through those years.  I became involved in the Baptist Student Union and began to feel a call to ministry.  And eventually that was the path I took.

I don’t think it really occurred to me that the scientific approach to life, if there is such a thing, could not mesh with a spiritual approach to life.  And in fact, I felt like I was better prepared for seminary than some of the students who had gone to Christian colleges and majored in religion.  

A background in chemistry helped me to think analytically.  It helped me to ask questions, to consider possibilities.  And if someone were so inclined I would encourage them as a pre-theology student to major in chemistry or biology or a similar field as a good preparation for seminary – and to take some psychology and sociology and religion courses along the way.

I also remember as a seminary student coming home and preaching at my home church.  Sitting there in the congregation was my chemistry professor and research advisor Dr. Beckman.  Some of the chemistry faculty felt like I had squandered a promising career and they kind of disowned me the spring of my senior year, after I had applied to seminary.  I think this was Dr. Beckman’s way of giving her blessing on the choice I made.  A progressive Presbyterian who came to hear me preach as a then-Southern Baptist seminary student, she had this sense that faith and ministry and science could all be toward the end of making for a better world.

Years later, after coming to this church, I earned a Doctor of Ministry degree at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities.  My thesis project involved university congregations.  Basically what I was doing was Sociology of Religion – a scientific approach to a question about faith communities.

It strikes me that my background is similar to many of you.  I think about our church – in recent years we have we had professionals and undergraduates and grad students in agronomy, soil science, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, plant science, forestry, food science, nutrition,  animal science, veterinary science, computer science, and other sciences – I’m sure I’m leaving somebody out - along with just all kinds of engineers.  And then we have plenty of social science people in our church, including Dr. Borgen.

With all of these sciences represented, the question may be, which is the highest science?  Which is the most “sciencey” science?  You might think of a progression from less exact to more exact sciences – from biology to chemistry to physics to mathematics.   But centuries ago, one science stood above all others.  Do you know what it was?  It was Theology.  Theology was known as the Queen of the Sciences because it dealt with ultimate matters.  And sciences – discovering natural phenomena, solving mathematical equations, working out the laws of physics – science was understood as thinking God’s thoughts after God.  

Well, it has been a long time since theology has been thought of as the Queen of the Sciences.  But some today go so far as to see faith and science as opposed to one another.  This view comes both from secularists who see no place for matters of the spirit and from religious fundamentalists who see science as the enemy.  

The Tom Troeger hymn we sang, “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning,” speaks of the way that science and faith need each other and complement each other.  The hymn ends, “Blend, O God our faith and learning till they carve a single course; till they join as one, returning praise and thanks to you, the Source.”

I know that plenty of you are more qualified than me to speak on “A Scientist Looks at Life From a Faith Perspective.”  (We have actual chemists here in the sanctuary and on Zoom.)  I think about Bob McCarley.  Bob was a chemistry professor and chair of the department at Iowa State.  He also served as our moderator and trustee and Sunday School teacher here at First Baptist.  Nine years ago, on the Sunday before school started, I sat with Bob and Jenna at a table during fellowship time.  I remember Bob having this engaging conversation with a new student here for the first time.  And then, two days later, Bob was gone.  

I remember a story I told at Bob’s funeral.  His family was on one of those epic family trips.  They made a palette in the back of the station wagon and the four kids would lie down and go to sleep, but one was supposed to ride shotgun and keep Bob awake.  One night Bob and Jenna’s daughter Kyanne was riding shotgun.  It was a beautiful night, the sky was filled with stars, and Bob talked to her about his work.  He described the intricacy of molecules and the beauty of the way things worked and fit together in the universe.  He said that the world was so beautiful and so amazing, there had to be a higher power.

That is a chemist looking at life from a faith perspective.  For Bob, science actually pointed toward faith.  

His views were captured by the Psalmist who wrote, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.”  If the ancient world had known what we know, the writer could have just as easily written, “The atoms are declaring the glory of God and the molecules proclaim God’s handiwork.”

Our bulletin cover artwork this morning is Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.  It captures the wonder and awe of the stars in the sky.  At its best, science and art and faith all involve wonder.  Science is about being open to new possibilities.  There was an article some time ago in the Des Moines Register about Parkinson’s Disease, which I took note of because of Elizabeth Stegemöller’s research.  It is especially timely as RAGBRAI starts today.  

Dr. Jay Alberts of the Cleveland Clinic was participating in RAGBRAI.  For anybody out of town on Zoom who may be unfamiliar with RAGBRAI, it involves riding your bike across Iowa for a week along with thousands of other people and eating lots of pie.  Alberts was on a tandem bike with Cathy, a Parkinson’s patient.  The ride was intended to bring attention to the need for more Parkinson’s research.  But Alberts and Cathy stumbled onto an important finding: Cathy’s physical abilities improved after a day of pedaling, and then improved more after another day.

Alberts knew exercise was important, but how important was driven home to him on RAGBRAI.  On a tandem, Cathy was forced to go at his speed, which was significantly faster than hers.  On the bike, Cathy didn’t feel as stiff.  She was pedaling faster, and her brain function was better.  As she wrote postcards and mailed them to her family from across Iowa, her handwriting became more legible.  “It was a serendipitous discovery,” Alberts said. “Science can happen anywhere, even in the cornfields of Iowa.”

Science is about trial and error, about experimentation and observation.  It is about paying attention.  And it involves being willing to change your assumptions.  Basically, if you are doing science right, you have to have humility.

There is something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  Heisenberg was a physicist looking at subatomic particles, and the Uncertainty Principle says that both the position and the velocity of an object cannot be measured at the same time.  You can know exactly where something is, or you can know how fast it is going, but you can’t know both exactly.

I think it is awesome that science has a principle about uncertainty.  Isn’t that beautiful?  And my goodness, that certainly translates to faith.  There is plenty that we don’t know.  There is plenty we are not quite certain about.  An approach of humility is essential in faith, as in science.  The notion that the way I interpret the Bible, the way I understand the world, the way I think about life and about God might need to change, that the spirit might speak to me, that God might lead me in a new way, is essential to faith.  

Our scripture this morning is the story of creation.  God painstakingly creates the world, working all day, calling it quits for the day, looking over what had been created and calling it good.  The light, the dark, the waters, the plants, the trees, the sun, the moon, the stars, fish and sea life, wild animals and cattle and creeping things of every kinds, and finally human beings.  Human beings, created in the image of God.  And then God said that it was very good.

It is a wonderful, powerful account of creation.  It is beautiful and poetic.  God takes great care with this creation and God regards it all as good.  It tells us that the universe and this planet and all that is in it is created by God and loved by God.  It gives us a sense of our place and our value in this world.

It would be ludicrous to read this and understand this as a 21st century science text.  Instead it inspires wonder and joy and gratitude and a sense of belonging in God’s world.

Science can answer the question of how, but we need faith to answer the question of why.  Science can collect data and tell us what is, but faith has something to say about what should be.  And so science and faith need one another.

Faith that ignores the world out there is shallow.  We need the very best scientific understanding, just as we need the guidance of spiritual understanding.  When faith tries to control what is true in the realm of science, it is never a good thing.  The earth is not flat and the sun does not revolve around the earth, but there were times when the Church condemned people who did not believe those things, based on its understanding of scripture.

The world of science also needs the influence of faith.  We need sensitivity and concern.  We need compassion and integrity toward the end of applying science to help build a better world.

I think about some of the issues this world is facing:
•    Clean water and equitable water distribution
•    Medicine and new therapies and bio-medical ethics
•    Artificial intelligience
•    Cybersecurity and information systems and privacy
•    Genetics
•    All kinds of public health issues
•    And looming over all of these, global climate change, which exacerbates other issues like extreme weather and habitat destruction and income inequality and so much more

In each instance, science and faith need one another to address difficult issues.  We don’t inhabit a world of the spirit, with another natural world out there.  It is all one world.  It is all God’s world.  And God said that it is good.

Too much religion is concerned solely with individual salvation.  Which is important - and very much a part of our Baptist tradition.  We need lives committed to Jesus Christ.  But when we are committed to the way of Jesus, we will be concerned about the world out there – the world that God loves.

The word religion literally means to bring back together – re–ligio (think ligaments).  Re-ligamentize.  Your religion is the way you make connections with God and people and the world out there – the way it all holds together.  At its best, our religion brings together scientific understanding and the power and understanding of our faith as we love God, love our neighbor, and love God’s world.  May it be so.  Amen.

“Just a Little Talk with Jesus” - July 9, 2023

Text: Hebrews 4:14-16, Philippians 4:4-7

There were a lot of suggestions turned in for sermons for this summer, and the suggestion that I am following today was kind of a fun one, a little different one.  “I’d like you to use ‘Just a Little Talk with Jesus’ as the background for a sermon.”

I was familiar with “Just a Little Talk with Jesus.”  Our men’s group did a wonderful job singing that.  It is no doubt one of the funner gospel songs to sing, especially if you are a bass.  A lot of hymns, a lot of music period, has a pretty predictable and not overly exciting bass line.  Some of the choir anthems we sing – Mindy, I have to be honest - it’s like the composer didn’t trust the basses to do very much, but “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” is one where the basses actually get to shine.  

And the notion of the song – to have a little talk with Jesus – is very appealing.  It’s a great song.  So I decided to go with this suggestion – it seemed like a good idea with a lot of possibility.  And the fact that our beloved moderator suggested it didn’t hurt.

The first thing I did was to learn a bit about who wrote it and some of the history behind this song.  Interestingly, it is not in all that many hymnals.  I’m not sure why that is.  I’ve got 10 or 12 hymnals and this song wasn’t in any of them.  Maybe it’s because it really takes 4 parts to sing it as it should be sung and most of the music in hymnals is kind of just sing-a-long style – in most hymns, everybody at least sings the same words at the same time.  Just a Little Talk with Jesus tends to be found more in chorus-type books and in some African-American church hymnals, like the National Baptist hymnal and the AME hymnal.

Well, let me share some things I learned.  The song is written by Cleavant Derricks.  He was born in 1910 in Chattanooga.  He developed an early aptitude for music and took lessons at the Cadek Conservatory of Music, run by Joseph Cadek, a violinist.  He had two years of college at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College, a historically black college in Nashville that is now Tennessee State.  Some years later, he felt called to ministry and attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, another historically black institution.

Cleavant Derricks was a Baptist pastor, choir director, musician, and composer with over 300 songs to his credit.  He served churches in Dayton, Knoxville, and Jackson, Tennessee; Beloit, Wisconsin; and Washington, D.C.  He was known to everyone simply as Rev.  He and his wife had twin sons who are both musicians and actors who appeared in movies and TV shows and on Broadway; one of his sons won a Tony award.  And in 1984 Cleavant was inducted posthumously into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

I could take most of my time to talk about Cleavant Derricks, but let me mention one more thing.  Rev. Cleavant Derricks himself did not record “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” until late in his life.  In 1975, he made a visit to Canaanland Music in Nashville and asked for the opportunity to publish some new songs and record some of his material, which they were happy to do. The head of Canaanland, Aaron Brown, learned how Derricks had never properly been paid for his work.  Brown explained the situation in an interview:

For the first time in his life, Rev. became a licensed songwriter.  What I’m trying to say is he has virtually never been paid for his songs or their performances.  If he had become affiliated with one of the three song licensing agencies, he would be a millionaire by now.  No doubt about it.  Instead, what Rev. did was to sell his songs to the Stamps-Baxter publishing company in Texas.  He would sell them for almost nothing.  In return the company would furnish him songbooks for his songs.  He would sell those to make some money.

It’s disheartening to realize he made $5 for “Just a little talk with Jesus.”  I would say every gospel singer and every gospel group in the country has recorded “Just a little talk with Jesus.”

He wasn’t kidding.  Elvis, Dolly Parton, the Oak Ridge Boys, the Statler Brothers and all kind of gospel quartets, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Andy Griffin, Bill Monroe, Willie Nelson, Gladys Knight, Charlie Daniels, even Veggie Tales included it in their big hit  “O Veggie, Where art Thou,” and countless more.  

Derricks did not seem bitter about the fact that he had essentially given away the rights to what turned out to be an extremely valuable song.  But at the very end of his life, he recorded some of his music and received some of the recognition that had been lacking for so many years.

That is some of the background.  Now let’s think about the song itself, and its message.

For me, “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” is powerful because it connects us with the love and the welcome and the compassion of Jesus.  “I once was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in.”  There are no hoops to jump through, there are no qualifications, we don’t have to get things cleaned up before we are acceptable.  “I once was lost in sin, but Jesus took me in.  And then a little light from heaven filled my soul.”

Now you can sing this song and feel the joy and the liveliness and think, wow, this is just the opposite of Psalm 88, our text from last week - a Psalm just filled with despair and crying out to God.  But I don’t think that is the case.  

Sometimes my path seems drear without a ray of cheer…
The mists of sin may rise and hide the starry skies…
I may have doubts and fears, my eyes be filled with tears…

One of the reasons this is such a beloved song is that it takes seriously the difficulties of life.  I mean, this was written during the depression.  There is confession of our own sinfulness, but also expression of just how hard life can be.  

And yet we can sing, “I go to him in prayer, he knows my every care.”  Again, the real power of this hymn is Jesus knows us and understands us and is there for us and with us through all the storms of life.

How does Jesus understand?  Because he has been there.

Have you been misunderstood?  Even by your own family?  Have friends let you down?  Even betrayed you?  Jesus experienced all of that.

Have you tried to do the right thing and got nothing but grief for it?  Have people ever questioned your choice of friends?  Have you ever felt unwelcome by people in the religious community?  Jesus experienced all of that.

Have you ever had to flee for your own safety?  Have you ever been wrongly accused?  Have you ever suffered unjustly?  Jesus did.

Have you ever had questions about your vocation?  Have you ever been the object of insults?  Has your family struggled financially?  Have you ever felt alone?  Have you ever worked hard and had seemingly little to show for it?

My point is, Jesus understands.    

One interesting thing about this song is that we repeatedly find the word “little.”  Did you notice that?  It’s all over the place.

“Then a little,” “just a little,” “have a little,” “feel a little,” “know a little.”  “You will find a little talk with Jesus makes it right.”

There is a way of expressing things with the word “little” to where everybody knows this is not a small thing at all – this is actually a big thing.  Calling something “little” is underselling it, maybe purposely downplaying things to call attention that this is actually a big deal.

Think of all the song titles or phrases that include the word “little.”

Crazy Little Thing Called Love
With a Little Help from My Friends
Put a Little Love in Your Heart
Try a Little Kindness
Give Me Just a Little More Time
With a Little Luck
Hey big spender, spend a little time with me.

(I was going to add Little Old Lady from Pasadena, but that doesn’t quite fit this motif.)

What I’m saying is that a little talk with Jesus is not a small thing at all.  This is important.  This is huge.

Now one part of the song that may raise a question: “When you feel a little prayer wheel turning.”  What is a prayer wheel?   Hymn scholar C. Michael Hawn notes:

A prayer wheel is a cylindrical container, perhaps made of wood, metal, or some other substance.  Inside are inscribed the words of a prayer; or prayers may be written on a piece of paper and placed inside.  Prayer wheels are commonly used in Tibetan Buddhism, and practitioners believe that as the prayer wheel is turned or spun around, each rotation results in the prayers inside being somehow prayed, even if not spoken.

But as it turns out, prayer wheels are not exclusive to Buddhism.  Hawn believed Cleavant Derricks encountered prayer wheels himself.  They have a history of being used by some charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, and they were used by some African American worshipers before and after the Civil War.  From the time and place that Derricks grew up, prayer wheels may have been used in his religious community.  The idea of a prayer wheel is of continuous prayer.

And that gets us to the message of this song, and the message of our scripture this morning, which Ann and Jim read so well all of the way from Keene, New Hampshire, about 1250 miles away:

“Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

“The Lord is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

These familiar scriptures are encouraging exactly what Rev. Derricks is encouraging in his hymn.  “Now let us have a little talk with Jesus, tell him all about our troubles.”  The take home message is: don’t hesitate.  Don’t make Jesus your last resort.  Jesus will listen. Jesus will understand.

Praying about everything, the idea of continuing in prayer, like a prayer wheel, or praying “without ceasing,” as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians – how do we do that?  

For me, prayer is not just a “little talk” every now and then but more of an ongoing conversation.  And when we have a little talk with Jesus, that doesn’t mean that we are the ones doing all the talking.  

Taking time to be reflective, to listen, to be aware, taking time to just be with God, is a spiritual practice that can take discipline, and it won’t necessarily look the same for everybody.

I got an electric bike last summer and for me it has been great.  I have been riding my bike both to commute to church and just for fun, and one of the by-products of this is enjoying life at a slower pace.  Being out in nature, having time to enjoy the natural world, time to reflect a bit.  Riding out on an open stretch out by yourself can be a time to pray.  

Some people have that kind of experience when they walk or hike or walk the dog or maybe while they knit or crochet.  Maybe it can happen on your commute.  Or maybe you just take some time each day to be quiet, to reflect, to pray, to listen, to “be still and know that I am God.”  Maybe you take time at the end of each day to review the day and have a little talk with Jesus.

There isn’t one way and there certainly isn’t a particular technique to “Have a Little Talk with Jesus,” but the point of both our scriptures and this song is that it is so important to do that.  Jesus cares, Jesus understands, Jesus welcomes us and loves us.  Have a little talk with Jesus, and Jesus will make things right.

Now, Jesus doesn’t make things right in an automatic way.  It’s not we ask, we put in our order, and Jesus delivers.  And we don’t necessarily get the answer we want or in the way that we expect.

“He will hear our faintest cry and he will answer by and by.”

Sometimes it seems more like by and by and by and by.  The answer we want, the resolution we want, doesn’t always come quickly and it may never come at all.  But pouring our hearts out to God, telling Jesus all about our troubles – that in itself makes a difference, and we can give our burdens to Jesus.  And in God’s time there may come peace and wisdom and strength and even joy we would not have expected.

And we find a little talk with Jesus makes it right.  It makes it right.  Amen.