Last Sunday, I mentioned how much I enjoyed watching the episode of “Glee” where one of the characters thinks he sees the image of Jesus’ face in a grilled cheese sandwich which he then begins to worship! After the service last week, I discovered that a lot of you enjoyed that episode of “Glee”, too!

But, as bizarre as it may seem to worship a grilled cheese sandwich, I dare say that’s got to be a lot safer than handling snakes. Snake-handling religion, you know, is unique to southern Appalachia. You can read all about it in a fascinating book called, Salvation on Sand Mountain. Read about it. But please, don’t try this at home – or here at the Community Church!

But even snake-handling in Appalachia has to be better than what happened in Rancho Santa Fe, California on March 24^th, 25^th and 26^th in 1997. That’s when Marshall Applewhite and 39 other members of the Heaven’s Gate church committed suicide in order to fly up to a spaceship they believed was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. We don’t know if they ever made it to the spaceship, but I – for one – am a skeptic.

In today’s reading from 2 Timothy, Christians are warned about the dangers of religious stupidity. “The days are coming,” the author writes, “when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

And then the author offers some wonderful advice to you and me as we live in this world of stupid religious ideas: “KEEP YOUR HEAD…!”

But how do you do that? How do you keep your head in a world that serves up one crazy religious idea after another? And the examples I’ve offered represent the extremes. But you and I live in a world where false religion is much more common, looks much less bizarre, and sometimes is very subtle. And it powerfully sucks us in and grips peoples’ lives: “God can’t accept me because I’ve sinned” – “God hates homosexuals” – “9/11 was God’s punishment on America” - “God wants you to be rich and prosperous” –  “if the King James bible was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!”

How do you keep your head in a world overflowing with religious mumbo-jumbo that ends up hurting people and oftentimes driving them away from God?

Well, here is what the author of 2 Timothy advises:

“Preach the Word.”

Use whatever verb you want – PREACH the Word, LIVE the Word, TEACH the Word, CLING to the Word, PROCLAIM the Word. But, whatever you do, don’t let go of the verb’s object – the WORD.

I know that right away, some will think that the author of 2 Timothy is referring to the Bible. Preach, Live, Teach, Cling to, Proclaim…the Bible. But…at the time 2 Timothy was written – sometime around 150 AD – there WAS no Bible! Not even the Old Testament was in its final form, and the New Testament as we know it would not be compiled for another 150 years or so! So, if not the bible, what does 2^nd Timothy mean by “the Word?”

We get a clue in the first chapter of John’s Gospel about what the New Testament authors meant by the term, “the Word.”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him; without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

The Gospel of John was describing Jesus. Jesus is “the Word.”

And St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 1:23, tells us what the object of Christian preaching was way back then, and should be now: “We preach Christ crucified…”

So how do you keep your head about you in confusing times?

Well, preach, live, teach, proclaim, and cling to…Jesus!

Last week at WednesdayChurch! I shared the story about Elisabeth Leach, and I want to tell you the story today. Betty was married to one of my seminary professors, but it was not her first marriage. As a young woman she had fallen in love with and married a dashing fellow by the name of Jim Elliot. Together they entered missionary work with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. They served in Ecuador for some time, learning the indigenous languages of some of the native tribes and bringing them medical help and other assistance. One of those tribes, the Auca, was very primitive, and known for their fierce infighting and hatred of outsiders. They lived in a very remote area of Ecuador that was being infringed upon by oil development companies. Already there had been clashes between the developers and the tribe, and the Auca had killed a number of the workers. Now, the oil developers were arming themselves and pressing deeper into Auca territory. Confrontation was inevitable, and the question was not WOULD the Auca be contacted, but WHO would contact them and with what intentions? Would the contact group take medicines and food and go to live among the people? Or would the contact group bring weapons, and poisoned food, and booby traps?

Jim Elliott and his friend Nate Saint had been praying that God would open a door to allow them to contact the Auca. Nate was a pilot with the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service – the aviation wing of Wycliffe. As the outside world pressed in on the tribe, the two men began feeling an urgency to be the first to engage the Auca – not violently, but peacefully. Nate and Jim, and three other men began overflying the remote jungle where the Auca lived to familiarize the tribe with the aircraft before attempting to land. For thirteen weeks they did this, dropping gifts from the plane to let the Auca know they came in peace and friendship. Then, they made the decision to land the plane on a little 650-foot long sandbar in the middle of the river. One-by-one, Nate Saint flew the missionaries in to the sandbar base camp that they named, “Palm Beach.”

After three days of waiting at Palm Beach, a couple of Auca women emerged from the jungle. The men knew enough language of other nearby tribes to have something of a conversation with the women – telling them they came as friends, in peace. It was a good start.

But, a few days later, on January 8, 1956, the families of the men back at base camp – including Betty Elliot and her three-month old daughter Valerie – became alarmed that a scheduled radio call was not received. They waited anxiously by the radio for an hour, two hours… There was no contact at all with the men. A search was begun. What the search turned up were five dead missionaries, brutally speared to death. It was learned later that the men had innocently walked into a fierce inter-family dispute, and somehow a group of young men led by an older man named Gikita decided to take out their rage on the missionaries. Although the five men carried guns to protect themselves against wild animals in the jungle, they had made a scared vow to never use them against another human being. From their wounds and the position of their bodies, it was clear that Jim Elliot, Nate Saint and the other three had not defended themselves.

In the days and weeks following the tragedy, members of the Auca tribe were troubled. Why had these men allowed themselves to be killed without fighting back and killing Auca in return? It was not the way of their tribe or their world. This burning question is probably what caused the tribe to allow Elisabeth Elliot – with her three-month old daughter – and Nate Saint’s sister Rachel – to come live with them. For two years, Betty and Rachel, stayed with the tribe, helping them to understand WHY the men had wanted to make contact in the first place, and telling them the story of another man – Jesus – who freely allowed his own death to benefit all people – including the Auca.

One of those who came to believe was Gikita, the man who instigated the attack. In his old age, he was known to say that his great wish now is to go to heaven and live peacefully with the five men who came to tell him about Jesus.

“Preach the Word,” the author of 2 Timothy intones. Our faith is not about religious rite or ritual. Our faith is not about dogma. Our faith is not about denominationalism. Our faith is not about icons burned into grilled cheese sandwiches, or about making it to some place “up there.” Our faith is not even about the scriptures, but the scriptures point to the One our faith is all about.

Jesus.

If you can make Jesus the center of your faith – the filter through which you see yourself and others – the model of how life is to be lived – you will be set free.

Free from guilt over past mistakes, because Jesus took your sins upon himself and you are forgiven already. All you have to do is accept it!

Free from the snare of addiction and other self-destructive behaviors, because Jesus promises to help you and strengthen you through the battle.

Free from feeling like your life has no real meaning, because Jesus says your life MATTERS.

Free from despair because Jesus has HOPE for you even if you don’t have hope for yourself.

Free to love again, even after you’ve been hurt; free to love others who are different than you; free to love yourself even though you may not even like yourself very much!

If I were going to prescribe some medicine to help you overcome the problems, struggles, deficiencies and broken things of your life right now, I would prescribe…Jesus!

But, the call to “preach the Word” is more than just you receiving Jesus. It must lead you to PREACHING Jesus!

The world does not need more Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, atheists, agnostics, or even Community Church people.

What the world needs is Jesus Christ!

All around us are people who need Jesus – people who need a better way for resolving disputes without violence as we have witnessed in our community – people who are lonely and need a true friend – people who have tremendous gifts but don’t know how to use them to make the world a better place – people who are judgmental who need to learn grace, who are critical and need to learn to speak healing words, who always see the glass of life as half-empty and need to learn a new way of looking at life, and who think life is all about them and need to learn that life is all about ALL OF US together in the love of God. People all around us NEED Jesus!

And as you and I prepare to open a new Sanctuary in just a few weeks – a Sanctuary whose doors are wide open to welcome the people all around us, I want you to join me in making a sacred commitment:

That more important than anything else we do, we will “Preach the Word.”