WHEN THINGS CHANGE

Well, hello again. This is Dick Foth, for known stories to make sense of it all. It's this time when we look at people's stories and incidents in life that make things work and help us understand what life is about. So on a spring morning, late April, with the soft hum of lawn mowers in the background here in the neighborhood, let me just talk to you about what what we do when change happens. These moments we call transitions. I mean, for example, this is graduation season in a few days, tens of thousands of students in middle school and high school universities across the country and deed around the world will be graduating. It's interesting because it's a it's a moment of leaving. It's a moment of achieving in completion. But the word we use to describe it is commencement because we celebrate the achievement and look forward. Life our lives are full of changes, transitions. I mean, as I'm speaking to you, your body is changing literally. Red blood cells are dying and being reproduced in your body by the gazillions. That may be a little overstatement, but a lot of them just while you're listening to this podcast. So change is something that is inherent in life and who we are as human beings. Six weeks from now, Ruth and I hopefully will be in California for the graduation of our grandson, Jack. Jack is graduating near San Francisco going off to university and it's a big moment. It's a big moment for him, for his family. And when I look back at my own life, I can sort of frame my own life in 14 year increments in terms of my adult life. But I started college way back in the dark ages in 1959. 440 some of us graduated Fremont High School in June of 59. And 38 of us, that was in Oakland, California. And 38 of us went to Cal Berkeley. I bought this 150 CC Vespa motor scooter for $400. I had car payments. I put that in quotes of $20 a month for some time. And I rode that thing. I loved it. I rode that 10 miles up over Warren Freeway to Berkeley campus for that first year. The next year, I transferred to a private college, stayed there for the next three years, married the girl I met there, Ruth Blakely. The summer after graduation went off to grad school, lived in Wheaton, Illinois for two years. Transitions right left and center worked in Chicago Post Office, this huge post office that spanned the Eisenhower Expressway at the entrance to the downtown area of Chicago, worked the graveyard shift from 11 o'clock to seven in the morning at Christmas time. It was a job, but it wasn't a career job. Then when I left grad school, I had my first career job in California, then came back to Illinois and Ruth and I spent 12 years there pioneering a congregation, also we had four kids. Every time we had a child, the center of the universe changed. You talk about transition, talk about change, then came back to California for a college presidency. Life is just full of that. A couple of years back, I was chatting with a university graduate that I had known when he was a senior. Now he'd been out of school. He was in the marketplace and the workforce. And I said to him, John, how you doing with being in the workforce? And he just looked at me and said, Dick, this adulting thing is not easy. In my head, I chuckled and thought to myself, my friend, you haven't seen anything yet. I love that moment in time when the commencement speaker is waxing eloquent because you have these scores of students. They spent four years and tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars to get there. And that speaker is the only thing that stands between them and their diplomas. But I saw this one one time where the speaker said, look, you're going to have a diploma in your hand in just a few minutes and you need to understand something. There are lots of options out there. But that diploma cost you a lot of money. So I have two words for you. And that is do something. Well, the something, if you're younger, that you will do will take various forms. If you're younger, you're going to have lots of transitions coming up. Stats show that you'll probably hold 12 to 15 jobs in your lifetime. Well, on the one hand, that's good news. On the other hand, that's a lot of change. So I want to come back to talking about transition in a more particular sense, having to do with the life of this person called Jesus of Nazareth in just a moment, because I see him as a prototype for transition. So the Jesus story, and you know, I'm big on that, the Jesus story is a prototype for life, for mission, pain, joy, tragedy, family, reward, sacrifice, leadership, friendship, achievement, change, and almost any word you put in there, he's a model for how to approach some things. So here we are. I'm recording this the week after Easter, 2019. Easter is big on the Christian calendar, if you will. It's resurrection day. But Easter was more than just a morning. That day, that first day of the week when Jesus rose from the dead, two of the gospel writers record some specific things about what happened after the women went to the empty tomb, or went to the tomb and found it empty, if you will. They went back and reported to some of the other disciples in Jerusalem. But in Luke the 24th chapter, this is what it says. Now that same day, two of them, two of his followers, were going to a village called Amaius, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. Well, I guess so. That's a fourth thing right there. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, what are you discussing together as you walk along? They stood still, their faces downcast. And one of them, named Cleopas, asked him, are you only a visitor to Jerusalem? Do not know the things that have happened here, happened there in these days? What things he asked about Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful and word indeed before God and all the people. And then they go on to tell him how he was crucified. And now they can't find his body. And some of our companions, they say, went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they didn't see. He said to them, how foolish you are, how slow of heart to believe, all the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory. And it says, beginning with Moses, he goes on to describe himself, if you will, from the Old Testament, from Torah and the prophets. As they approached the village, so they'd walked along, they'd gone seven miles, to which they were going. Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, stay with us for it's nearly evening. The day is almost over. So he went into stay with them. When he was at table with them, at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight. And they asked each other, we're not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us. It says, they got up, returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the 11 and those with them assembled together and saying, it's true. The Lord has risen. He's appeared to Simon. Then the two told what had happened on the way and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. Now just as a point of reference, this is Sunday night. Thursday night before that at Passover, it says that he blessed the bread, broke it, gave thanks, and gave it to them. So they had that experience at Passover. Just a couple of three days later, they have the same experience and it was in seeing that that they recognized him. John records it this way with the group that's in Jerusalem. So you got these two guys who have gone the seven mile walk, if you will. Jesus disappears. I bet they ran seven miles. I don't know, but they went all the way back to Jerusalem. And this is what John says on the evening of that first day of the week when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. So here's the deal. You got the two guys in the afternoon on the road to the village of Emmaus. And you got these other folks in Jerusalem. They've locked the doors because they don't want the same thing to happen to them that happened to Jesus. I'm guessing and Jesus shows up and says, peace be with you. Now the doors are locked. He doesn't knock on the door. He just shows up. So that had scared the bejeevers out of you just to have somebody show up like that. After he said this, he showed them his hands inside. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. And again, Jesus said, peace be with you. As the Father sent me, I'm sending you and then this very interesting combination of things. With that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone, his sins, they're forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they're not forgiven. So here's the deal. This is a transition from a supernatural moment, i.e. the resurrection of Jesus who is the Christ to everyday life. It's been a roller coaster. Think about it. It's been a roller coaster week. I mean, just this is Sunday. The Sunday before they came into Jerusalem. People were shouting, this is the Messiah, big deal, leader of the world, king of the universe, whatever. And within five days, they're crucifying him. They've been up and down in sideways over the last week. And in the last 72 hours, it's even been crazier. Jesus has been arrested in the in the garden of Gethsemane. He's had a trial that wasn't legit. He's been beaten and flagged and spit on and crucified. And here they are. Apparently, they're scared out of their minds. I think I would be. You talk about transitions. It was a wild time. So Jesus now is back and he shows up. He's going to be around for about six weeks, talking about his rule in their lives. It's called the kingdom of God. But let me just note three things real quickly, just reflections on that time. When he talks to the disciples both there, and also there being on the road to Emmaus, and also in the upper room in Jerusalem. He reflects on the past. He says, let me tell you who the Messiah is from Old Testament scriptures. He's saying, let me say it to you one more time. Let me give you a context for who I am and what I'm about. They say in sales that you have to hear it at least seven times before you buy. Well, they'd heard bits and pieces of this for three years, 24, seven. But it's so preposterous. You know, I mean, it's a crazy story, isn't it? I mean, here's the God man who comes and gives his life and redeems us and takes away our sins and our shame and our guilt and all of that. So they might have to hear it more than seven times. But he sets a context by taking them to the past in the Old Testament scriptures. That's the first thing. Second thing, you know, you have to think that if you're one of those followers, you're saying the stress is just too much. I'm just hallucinating here. This is an apparition. Or as the scots would say, this is a wee ghosty. I, you know, who is this person? The thing that changed that was when he ate with them. When he sat at table and broke the bang, they recognized him. He goes and he sees them in the, in the account by John and he says, is there anything here for me to eat? To, I think he's using eating as the mechanism by which he shows that he's real, that he's not a ghost. He's not an apparition. He's not just some little smoky thing. But in the fact, this is really the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And then he says this very strange in some ways thing, these, this couplet. It says that he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. And then said, I want you to go and forgive sins, whomever you forgive, they're forgiven. If you don't forgive them, they're not forgiven. And I'm thinking to myself, what is that about? Well, the breathing on them to receive the Holy Spirit, I would say that's a precursor to what would be the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is given to all of these people in real power. It's sort of a down payment from my perspective. And it's like he's saying, I'm going to give you two things. I'm going to give you my presence, another one just like me. And I'm going to give you a message. And the message is forgiveness. And you're going to model it. There's this interesting passage back in an earlier time in Jesus' life in Mark 2, where a layman has let down through a roof. His friends are so concerned for him that they tear the flat roof off his Palestinian home, drop him down into the middle of the crowd in Jesus' heels him. And when he heels him, he says to the guy on the stretcher or the palate that they let down through the roof. He says to him, your sins are forgiven. And some religious leaders are thinking, it's only God that forgives sins. How can a human being forgive sins? So when I read this passage in John, when I read these words, I got to confess to you, that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, I thought only God can forgive sins. What are you talking about that I should forgive sin? This is my take. I don't think it's a radical. It's my take, okay? That I think forgiveness is the essence of the kingdom of God. Think about it. There are wars being fought today that are based in hurts and wounds and things that happened centuries ago. And families and cultures are still at war over it because nobody was willing to forgive. At the very least, I think what he's saying to the disciples is, look, this was my whole thing. This is why I came. This is why I died. This is why I rose again to forgive you for the things that you can't handle yourself, to take care of those things that hold you back, that shame you, that make you guilty. And I think it has to work something like this. You're at work, somebody does something to you, and it's wrong. They wronged you. They took your stuff, they stole your idea, they did whatever. And you have a choice. You can either be mad and hold a grudge and try to get back at them or you can forgive them. What would happen at your school or in the marketplace, at your place of work? If somebody wronged you and you went to them and say, and you say, Harry Susan, I know you did this and I just want you to know that it's okay. I forgive you. I would bet nine times out of ten that it would just throw that person so off that they'd hardly know how to respond. But they might say something like, what are you talking about? I did that thing, but why are you forgiving me? Where did you get that? And then you get the chance to say, well, I learned it from my father. That's what he does. Would you like to meet him? I believe human forgiveness for temporal sins or things where people wrong us or cross us. I think when we forgive somebody, it is so different. It is so antithetical to who we are as human beings that it becomes a window on the world which our father inhabits that father who forgives us eternally forever. When I forgive you in the moment, when you forgive me in the moment, that's a window on a larger world where I can be forgiven for everything forever. I can't do that by myself. That's why I need the work of the spirit in my life. And I think that's why that couplet brought guys back to earth. You had this supernatural moment on Resurrection morning, but on Resurrection evening, we find the place where the rubber hits the road. We find the place where it works day to day. So transitions. Got to love them. I would say when you're in transition of any kind, go be with friends. Eat something. Reflect on things that count and last forever. So those are my reflections on transition and change. That's it. I'm out. Embrace the in-between times. It's a huge learning curve. Till next time, I'm Dick Fothe with stories to make sense of it.