Read the Lectionary Texts

It was a hot and humid Saturday afternoon, typical of August in Massachusetts. The bride and groom, kneeling before the altar, were soaked in sweat and looking at me as if to say, “Speed it up, Rev. Make it short and sweet!” And I was doing my best. Out in the congregation, family and friends were either fanning themselves with the printed wedding bulletins or dabbing handkerchiefs against their foreheads. It was hot!

I zoomed through the ceremony – the readings, the vows, the awful solo by the bride’s Aunt Emma that made people reach up and turn off their hearing aids. We got to the ring ceremony, and it was just at that moment – when the groom slipped the ring onto the hand of his bride – that we heard it. A few musical notes wafting through the stifling air of the sanctuary. Sounds that did not belong. I looked at the organist, thinking he might have accidentally hit some keys on the organ, but from the puzzled look on his face, it was clear he didn’t have any idea where the music was coming from. And it was getting louder with the passing of every moment. As the bride took the other ring and placed it on the fourth finger of her beloved’s left hand, the music swelled so loud that it filled the sanctuary and we could not even hear her say the words, “With this ring, I thee wed.”

And now, some people in the congregation were swiveling their heads, half-standing to try and identify the source of the music. It appeared to be a kind of calliope version of the song “The Entertainer.” Da – da- dadadadadada – dada – dadadadadadada….” And as it got louder, it became clear that the music was coming from outside the sanctuary, the noise streaming in through the open stained-glass windows. And joining the happy melody now were the harmonies of children’s voices shouting from the sidewalk outside the church.

And then I knew what it was.

It was an ice cream truck!

And while “The Entertainer” continued blaring away through the speakers atop the truck, and children shouted out their orders for popsicles, fudgicles, and Eskimo pies, I pronounced the couple “husband and wife”, gave them a blessing, signaled for the recessional, and ended the service. And as I watched the bridal party march down the aisle, it struck me that, whenever we gather as a community of faith to do the sacred things we do inside the church, there is always another world just outside. Beyond our stained-glass windows, ice cream trucks blare their songs, children laugh, and people go about their lives.

People who are important to God.

Jesus is preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. He reads some scripture. Offers some comment. Casts a demon out of a man in the congregation. And leaves. There is no record of anything more than that.

And yet, a few hours later, Jesus is at Peter’s house surrounded by throngs of people who never made it to church that day. And Mark tells us that Jesus cured some who were sick and cast out many demons. And the whole countryside – it seemed – came out to him.

Beyond the stained-glass windows of the church there is a whole other world of people. People God cares about. People God loves. People among whom God is at work. The Bible shows us that Jesus seems to have had a special passion for those who live outside the stained-glass windows. All four of the gospelwriters reveal that Jesus spent most of his time, most of his healing power, most of his teaching, most of his attention on those who – for one reason or another – would not or could not step foot in a synagogue. And I would further describe these people as falling into several categories. Jesus’ favorite people seem to have been the unclean, the unforgiven, the unrighteous, and – today’s focus – the unbelievers.

Do you know any unbelievers?

If you do, consider it a privilege!

You see, there is something about unbelievers that will knock your socks off.

Often, people who do not believe are closer to the truth about God than we who DO believe!

My dear late friend and colleague Bob Puckett and I were discussing this once as we drove to Florida to attend a conference. Bob mentioned the fact that, in the course of his ministry, there were times when people expressed that they did not believe in God. So Bob would engage them in a rather interesting way. He would ask these unbelievers to tell him about this God they didn’t believe in.

And they did. They usually said things like they could not believe in a God who causes birth defects in little babies. They could not believe in a God who is content to sit around up there while the world goes to pot down here. They could not believe in a God who causes people to conduct genocide against each other. They could not believe in a God whose primary interest in life seems to be sending people to hell. They could not believe in a God who thinks he’ll get people to love him by threatening to kill them. They could not believe in the God reflected through the lives of some of the churches they’ve known, some of the ministers they’ve known, and even some family-members they’ve known.

Oh, one of the most important questions you can ask an unbeliever is to tell you about the God they don’t believe in.

Bob Puckett says that he found himself often saying, “You know, I don’t believe in that god either. But let me tell you about the God I DO believe in.”

Unbelief, more than anything else, is an expression of a person’s desire that God must be more than what that person has experienced in life, or in the Church, or in Christians.

Take a look at the unbelievers who came out to Jesus that night. They’d given up on the synagogue. And, you know, the synagogue had pretty much given up on them. According to the religious leadership, the reason some of them were sick was because they were under judgment for some sin they must have committed.

Do you remember that burning question the disciples once asked Jesus about a young man who was blind since birth? They asked, “Who sinned, this man, or his parents, that caused him to be born blind?” Oh, a church that suggests that God punishes people for their sins by inflicting illness and disability upon them, soon loses any ability to minister to those people! A church that trivializes the meaning of human suffering, reducing it to a kind of simplistic divine judgment, and that compromises the extent of God’s love for humanity is powerless to really reach people for Christ.

And Mark describes so beautifully the difference between the religious institution of that day and Jesus. While the church found dozens of reasons to find fault with people – to put them outside the stained-glass windows of God’s favor – Mark simply says that Jesus went to where they were, and healed them, and set them free from the powers that oppressed them.

You see, the God that unbelievers so desperately want to discover turns out to be the very God made known in the life and ministry of Jesus.

I wonder if you, in recent times, have given any serious thought to the God you believe in?

In the late Marcus Borg’s intriguing book “The God We Never Knew”, Borg reminisces about meeting God for the first time when he was a small boy growing up in North Dakota. His memories are associated with Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, and much of what Marcus came to think about God had its genesis there. In singing the hymns and reciting the prayers, he came to believe in a God who is out there somewhere, looking down upon the world. He came to visualize God as Pastor Thorson, a big, austere man with wavy gray hair who wore a long black robe with no stoles or other decorative items. Pastor Thorson was a finger-shaker, Borg remembers. He shook his finger when he preached, and sometimes even when pronouncing the forgiveness of sins: Almighty God, our heavenly Father, hath had mercy upon us, and given His only Son to die for us, and for His sake, forgiveth us all our sins. Borg writes, “Those words, accompanied by a chastising finger, carried a message: though told we were forgiven, we knew it was a close call.”

God, the masculine Judge, sitting on a throne in heaven, finding the world guilty of sin, offering a glimmer of hope that the death sentence can be avoided by requiring belief and obedience now for a salvation that will only be realized later, in heaven. That was the God of Dr. Borg’s early life, and its the God many of us first met as children.

But its not the God of Jesus Christ.

Eating supper with tax collectors and sinners.

Having more forgiveness to offer people than there are sins to be committed by people.

Declaring his intention to save not just some, but everyone. 

Never asking people to only believe, but simply to come and follow and see.

Not saving salvation for later, but proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is at hand – and proving it by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, sticking up for the powerless, setting the captives free, and disarming the worldly Powers-That-Be.

The God of Jesus is the God we’ve been looking for all our lives!

So this morning, I want to invite you to begin to do something dangerous.

I want to invite you to step beyond the stained-glass windows. I want to invite you to become an unbeliever. And what I mean by that is to become willing to reexamine what you do and don’t believe about God. And then hold it up to the life and ministry of Jesus. And be willing – when appropriate – to let go of old belief, and take up new belief. And meet God all over again.

And then go and step into the world of other unbelievers – some of Jesus’ favorite people – and show them by word and deed the wondrous, saving, loving God they’ve been looking for all their lives.

The God of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.