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2000

From Harold Masback, What Then Should We Do" (December 17, 2000) at pages 1-2:

Imagine with me that our congregational meeting house is just one big RV, you know – a giant Winnebago, and you and I are all barreling down the road together. We’ve got a pulpit Bible with the road maps and travel brochures; Simon and Choir provide quadraphonic sound; and we’ve got the Holy Spirit “OnStar” system to guide us. It’s the same road we drive together every year at this time – it’s the American Christmas Highway. There’s a lot of traffic on the road – there always is. We can see other Church RV’s streaming ahead and behind us, but there are plenty of other travelers as well. There are folks who practice Christianity just twice a year, folks who practice other religions, folks who practice no religion at all, all weaving in and out of traffic, all anticipating the lights, the gifts, and the evergreens, and the Santas, the Frostys and the Rudolphs at the end of the Christmas Highway.

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2000

From Harold Masback, Dancing the Divine Two Step" (October 29, 2000) at pages 1-3:

Each year before the Yale Divinity School Forum in New Canaan, we pass out surveys at the churches in town asking what questions about the faith most trouble Christians in New Canaan. This year one of the surveys came back with this question: “Christianity seems like the advice to new alcoholics in AA “Just keep coming, you’ll get it” – but with just two steps: love your God and love your neighbor. Yet many think there is something more “to get.” Why is this so complicated for people to grasp and to make work in their lives?” Why is Christianity so hard to get, to grasp, and to make work in our lives? This morning I want to ask that question in the context of our Bible lesson about blind Bartimaeus. When I first read the question, I thought of a time I was researching a term paper at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. I was taking a break to find a sandwich and walking along a side street, when I passed an elegant old building with a burnished bronze plaque reading “The Explorer’s Club, Founded 1904.” Now, I didn’t have any idea what went on in the Explorer’s Club, but I had this incongruous mental image of an old wood paneled library with explorers sitting around in easy chairs talking about their expeditions. And the image was incongruous because, I mean, what kind of explorer worth his salt would be whiling away his days in an easy chair in midtown Manhattan? I couldn’t believe Columbus, or Lewis and Clark, or Byrd, or Perry could sit around in a room like that for more than about ten minutes without growing so restless they would want to jump out of a window. Right? Being an explorer isn’t a hereditary title you get from your father, or a degree you earn at a university, or even a prize you win like an Olympic medal. You are an explorer if you are nudged, prodded, goaded by your restless nature to go out beyond the well marked boundaries and explore. You are an explorer if and only if exploring is what you do. And in general, you don’t do it in an easy chair.
Christian faith isn’t a conclusion you finally “get” or “grasp;” it’s a relationship. It’s not a destination; it’s a journey. It’s not just an embrace at the end of the road; it’s a dance all along the way.

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2000

From Harold Masback, Pass It On" (June 4, 2000) at pages 2-4:

I want to set before you two alternative scenarios; you might call them dueling parables, for how God might send his love rippling down through history. Let’s call the first scenario, the “Private Ryan” scenario, and let’s call the second scenario, the “Trucker Dave” scenario. Here’s the Private Ryan scenario. Most of you know it already; I’m stealing it directly from Steven Spielberg’s great movie, Saving Private Ryan. Remember? Tom Hanks plays Captain John Miller. Miller has just survived fighting his way ashore on D-Day when he is recruited to lead an 8-man unit behind German lines to find and rescue Private James Ryan. Ryan’s three brothers had all been killed in action and the Army brass had decided that Ryan had to be found and sent home safely. Miller leads his men through the confusion and dangers of the Normandy battles and finds Ryan. Private Ryan is saved, but Miller and all his comrades are killed in the effort. As Captain Miller lies dying, he pulls Ryan close to him and whispers hoarsely into Ryan’s ear, “Earn it.” The movie ends with a scene in a Normandy graveyard 50 years later. As an aging James Ryan kneels before Miller’s grave; Miller’s last words echo in Ryan’s ears, “Earn it.” It is a powerful, inspiring ending.
So that’s the “Private Ryan Scenario.” Here’s the alternative scenario, the “Trucker Dave Scenario.” When I was 19, I caught some rides to California. After wearing out my welcome with a college roommate’s family, I set out to see as much of California as I could in two weeks and with just $80. I rented some camping gear for $40, bought $25 of dehydrated food, and set out hitchhiking from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. I had just $15 in my pocket. Over the next two weeks I worked my way up to San Francisco, across to Sacramento and then Reno, Nevada, down to Yosemite, and then back down toward Los Angeles. By the time I was heading back West through Bakersfield, I was tired, dirty and broke – and really, really sick of dehydrated chicken a la king. I caught a ride with a disabled trucker named Dave driving an old, beat up Oldsmobile. Dave had driven an 18-wheeler for twenty-five years before a ruptured disc in his back forced him to retire. He lived with his wife in a trailer, making due with his meager social security disability check. We were an oddly matched pair driving across the valley. I don’t know what Dave really made of my late-sixties uniform of tangled hair and dirty bell bottoms, but we talked easily for two or three hours. When it came time for me to get out, Dave dug into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here,” he said, pushing the bill into my hand, “this might come in handy.” I was kind of dumbfounded by Dave’s generosity, for it had been evident from our conversation how hard up he was for cash. I pushed the bill back towards him, telling him I couldn’t possibly take it, and lying about how I’d be fine without it. “Listen,” Dave said, “thirty years ago I was hitchhiking across South Dakota, hungry and cold. An old farmer took me in and gave me a warm meal and a bed for the night. When I asked the farmer how I could ever thank him, the farmer told me someone had done the same for him. He told me to just to pass it on someday like he was passing it on to me. So there you go, Dave said, “I’m passing it on to you. Someday you pass it on too.”

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2000

From Harold Masback, Paths to Transformation" (March 5, 2000) at page 4:

You play in the backyard with a bottle of soap bubbles. You blow a spectacular bubble and chase it across the yard as it dances away in the breeze. You want nothing so much as to grab the bubble and preserve it so your mom can see its lightness, its roundness, and its rainbows. What can you do? What can you do? Well, you can wonder at it, delight in it, savor it, but the one thing you cannot do is grab it and preserve it for your mom. No sooner will your fingers close around it than you will be holding nothing more than soapy fingers. Soap bubbles, like the fragrance of fresh flowers, like the lilting flight of a butterfly, like the beating heart of first love are among the most beautiful mysteries of life, but they are inherently difficult to control and preserve. And what is true of these merely physical phenomena seems even truer of the ultimate mystery, the spiritual experience of God’s presence.

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2000

From Harold Masback, Fight the Good Fight" (February 13, 2000):

Now, I don’t know how each of you are doing with your spiritual hygiene program, but figuring there is always room for improvement, I want to suggest we join generations of Christians in using the season of Lent as a time for spiritual reflection and renewal here in the church. And I want to pass along a five-vitamin spiritual supplement for Lent: vitamins “J” “E” “S” “U” and “S.” Vitamin “J” is for “Joint Rituals.” We all know we do better with our physical regimens when we have a work-out partner or personal trainer. So too, Christianity is better done in groups. Ever since the first disciples, Christians have grown best like grapes: in clusters. So seek out some regular communal ritual: family devotions, graces, prayer breakfasts, study circles, or Bible studies. Find yourself some spiritual workout partners during Lent.
///Take a few moments at the beginning of each day during Lent to sit in silence with God. Find a quiet space, center yourself with a few moments of prayer or meditation or reading a psalm and then offer a short prayer along the following lines. “Lord, a new day is dawning. I might never have lived to see this day. You have given me the opportunity to live this day as an absolute gift. Thank you. Help me to live this day in a way worthy of your grace. Amen.”///Then, at the end of the day, again find a few quiet moments and offer God a short prayer along the following lines. “And now, Lord, the day is done. This day of life was a gift from you to me. Thank you. I did some good with this day, and I made some mistakes. Accept my efforts and forgive my mistakes. Amen.”///I have found that just this simple spiritual exercise transforms the entire day. So often our lives hurtle forward feverishly with one day blurring into the next. This simple exercise breaks the fever and helps us experience each day of life as the miracle that it is.///Vitamin “S” is for “Service.” As Congregationalists we call ourselves a “priesthood of all believers.” Ministry to others through acts of love relieves our self-absorption and opens our soul to the God who bridges the gap when we reach out to one another in love.///Vitamin “U” is for “Unwinding.” Every athlete understands the importance of off days for rest and recovery. The weightlifter that lifts every day grows weaker and weaker. Even God rested on the seventh day, and so should we. Find days during Lent to unwind, to step away from the world for silence, for meditation, for walking quietly with open ears and a closed mouth.///Finally, the second Vitamin “S” is for “Scripture.” The Bible is not simply a book of history or ethics. It is also a source of revelation and refreshment. When you read the bible prayerfully, immersing yourself in God’s words of love and inspiration, you may find that you encounter not only the message but the ultimate author as well.///Now, there are as many different ways of getting your vitamins “J”, “E”, “S”, “U”, and “S” as there are vitamin brands on the shelves at CVS.

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1999

From Harold Masback, What are We Waiting For" (December 12, 1999) at pages 1-3:

We may each have our personal kairos moments even as civilizations may have their larger kairos moments. The kairos moment in my kid brother’s life came on Saturday, June 3, 1978. Craig always loved to run. He loved everything about track and field. His hero was Sir Roger Bannister, the great Oxford miler who broke the mythic four minute mile barrier on Oxford’s Iffley Road track in 1954. While Craig was growing up he probably read the account of Bannister’s first sub-four minute mile more than two hundred times. Craig became the high school national champion in the half-mile and then a four-time All-American running the mile at Princeton. But his dream of emulating his hero by breaking four minutes seemed to recede. He finished his college career with a best mile time of 4:01.8 and accepted a scholarship to Oxford for the fall of 1977.
In the spring of 1978, Craig ran for the Oxford track team, but his best time was 4:04.6. It was an impressive enough mark at Oxford, where no one had broken four minutes since Bannister, but Craig’s dream was slipping away. There was only one meet remaining, the annual match at Iffley Road between the combined teams of Oxford and Cambridge and combined teams from the Ivy League. In retrospect, you can almost see God drawing the threads of a personal kairos moment together. The traditional meet took on added luster when the aging groundskeeper at Iffley Road, the same groundskeeper who had raked the track for Bannister’s race, announced that he would retire after the England vs. America match. Oxford organized a retirement party for him around the event and invited Sir Roger and all the athletes and groundskeepers who had been present for Bannister’s historic run. Craig’s great rival from Penn sidled up to him during a warm-up and said, “I know you’d love to break the four minute mile tomorrow. If you want, I’ll sacrifice my race to run as your rabbit, your pacemaker.”The rest, as they say, is history. During the next 12 months Craig’s times dropped to 3:58, 3:56, 3:54 and finally 3:52, making him the third fastest American in history. Today, just as Sir Roger headed the British Sports Council, so Craig now heads Track and Field, USA.

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1999

From Harold Masback, What Kind of Messiah" (August 29, 1999) at pages 3-10:

One day God and Satan organized a chess game. It was, like all chess games, a metaphor for war, in this case the eternal struggle between them for humanity’s soul. The game would be over when either God or Satan attracted the allegiance, the obedience of the humans spread out on the board before them. It was pretty much a no-holds-barred struggle except for one unvarying rule: neither God nor Satan could deprive humanity of our defining characteristics as humans. Satan could not turn us all into rabbits and lure us over with carrots – God could not turn us all into angels and lure us over with harps. They called this the “Psalm 8 Rule,” after the passage in Psalm 8 that reads: “. . . what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than Gods, and crowned them with glory and honor.” We are just a little lower than Gods, because God has fashioned us in God’s image – with an ability to envision the infinite, the ability to imagine a world of infinite love and peace. But we are definitely lower than Gods, for we can never accomplish all that we can envision: mired in finite, mortal existence, our vision always exceeds our grasp. We are crowned with glory and honor because, unlike the rest of creation, we have a measure of freedom, but it is a freedom we can use either to turn to or to turn away from God. It was this measure of freedom that was really the crux of the Psalm 8 Rule, and it was clearly understood that if either God or Satan turned us into automatons or diminished our freedom to choose, they would forfeit the game. Now while the game objective was the same for God and Satan, it will come as no surprise to you that their strategies were as different as their fundamental natures. As 1 John teaches, “God is love,” and God’s fundamental game plan was based on love: a plan to pour out on us an insistent, persistent, eternal love that would speak to the love in our hearts and slowly draw us back to the source of love which is God. Satan countered with a far baser strategy of fear: he would assault our hearts with fear until we scurried to his altars for protection.
Satan responded with a move that was, well, devilish. He countered God’s move with a sense of guilt. If God had given us a sense that things down here were short of the mark, now, thanks to Satan, we blamed ourselves and our neighbors for our shortcomings, for our separation from God. We felt unworthy of God’s love and cringed at the thought of his punishment.God countered by making covenants with us and giving us a great commandment. The covenants reassured us that God would never, ever forsake us and the great commandment laid out a simple road map home: love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds.It was a brilliant move, and our guilt began to melt away even as love began to swell in our hearts. Watching in horror as we began to turn back to God, Satan made his greatest move, inflaming our fear of death. The death itself wasn’t new, all life had always been defined by its finitude, by the fact that death must someday come. But as man’s consciousness evolved, he became, alone among life forms, the creature that could contemplate, could fear, his own death.I say it was Satan’s greatest move because the fear of death is such a wide spreading and devastating poison. To be sure, the event of death is a source of great pain and bewilderment when it occurs, fully capable of shadowing our last hours and casting loved ones into mourning. But the fear of death is a toxin that can spread back to poison the whole of life. If death is a tomb waiting at the end of our days, the fear of death is a vine whose tendrils can grow out into every corner of our being, choking the vitality out of life decades before our death.And it was Satan’s greatest move because it eroded our freedom without violating the Psalm 8 Rule. Satan doesn’t take our freedom away – he doesn’t have to! We rush to give our freedom away as our hearts sicken with fear of death, sometimes not even realizing the fear that drives us into bondage. Some withdraw from life, sacrificing life and love in a vain search for safety in solitude. Some build mighty ramparts against death: urgent exercise, starvation diets, and high walled fortresses. Some string curtains of denial, walling off the parts of their mind, walling off the parts of reality, that bring death back to consciousness. Some feverishly construct towers of achievement, or wealth, or fame, hoping to cheat death with monuments that will both justify and survive their days on earth. Some turn to hedonism, hoping that if they bank enough pleasure, they can laugh when their turn comes.So many different ploys and so many different motives on the surface: but they each share these common factors: first, each shares a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of the freedom to pursue what we truly love so we can pursue that which assuages our fears. Second, each shares a turn from the love of God. When avoiding fear becomes more important than loving God, fear has become our god, and Satan, the puppeteer of fear has become our master. And finally, each shares a diminution of our love for one another. All the energy we expend defending against fear is now unavailable for loving one another.As God watched his children sicken with fear, he shuddered and wept. He reached for his beaker of courage, his antidote to fear, and splashed it across the board. For some it sufficed, and for some it didn’t. As courage battled fear, God and Satan fell into a familiar and monotonous pattern. Satan would stimulate fear by sending warfare and disease, God would counter by sending peacemakers and healers. God would cast faith in his providence, Satan would sow doubt.The battle surged back and forth: in some centuries God held the upper hand, in others Satan, until suddenly God rose majestically from the table and roared, “Enough of this, Satan, I’m going down there myself, and I’m going to end this struggle once and for all.”Satan cringed in mock terror, but if you looked very closely you could see a victorious smirk breaking out at the corners of his mouth. See, Satan knew all along he could never best God’s power. His greatest hope was that he could goad God into violating the Psalm 8 Rule, into taking such pity on humanity that he would overwhelm our freedom and finitude, banish death and suffering, and simply carry us all to his side, thereby, of course, forfeiting the game.By the time God had reached the door, Satan was already practicing a little victory jig. But, he figured if the old man was going to jump down here, he better come along too to keep an eye on the proceedings.When Satan arrived, he didn’t like what he saw one bit, for he arrived just in time catch God slipping into the manger at Bethlehem. Satan had hoped and expected to see God bursting into the world in power and majesty, but instead, there he was gurgling in the humility and weakness of baby Jesus. Satan was plenty smart enough to realize what a serious threat this posed, for if Jesus of Nazareth could unhorse the fear of death, there was no telling how quickly his courage might ripple through his human brothers and sisters.Satan raced for his copy of scripture, God’s playbook, frantically thumbing the pages to figure out God’s plan. It was clear enough that God was fulfilling a messianic prophecy, but which one? What kind of messiah? And what did it mean? If Jesus was a messiah emerging in overwhelming power in glory, Satan could still hope to trigger a Psalm 8 violation; but if Jesus stayed true to the suffering servant path, Satan was in big trouble. There seemed to be only two tactics left that might work, and Satan decided he better try both: either he had to persuade Jesus to abandon his mission, or he had to persuade him to change gears and go for the overwhelming power and glory stroke.Satan waited for Jesus in the wilderness, tempting the hungry and tired man with food and power if he would only throw in with him against God. But even in his weakened state, Jesus remained true to his calling, chasing Satan off with an “Away with you Satan!’ For it is written worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” and embarking on his Galilean ministry.As Jesus concluded his Galilean ministry and gathered his followers about him, Satan struck again – but this time through the disciples. They were really the weak link in Jesus’ operation, and Satan knew that he could count on them to plead for the Power and Glory scenario. What human would opt for suffering and death if given a choice? Sure enough, just as Jesus began showing the disciples what it meant to be a suffering servant, bold Peter sprang up to dissuade him, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” It probably took Jesus only a second to turn back to Peter, but it must have been a long second for God and Satan – their entire struggle hung in the balance. They looked at each other, and then down at Jesus, at each other again, and then back again to Jesus. Finally, Jesus’ answer came, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”With those immortal words, Jesus showed his disciples the only way back to life in a mortal world hedged about with fear. Instead of surrendering themselves to their fear, they could surrender themselves to God. They could deny the panic stricken voice deep inside, – the one that kept whispering to play it safe, and listen for that other voice instead, the one that says, “Wake up, Follow me. Do not fear.” and “Behold, I am with you unto the end of the age.” That voice has never offered freedom from pain, freedom from death, freedom from suffering. But it has always offered freedom from fear. It has always offered abundant life.Jesus has now shown us the way: not by taking our freedom away, but by giving us our freedom back, not by banishing death, but by passing through death to the resurrection. Because Jesus lives, we too may live: free from fear of the past and free from fear of the future. Where Christ has gone, we need not fear to go ourselves. Christ went to his cross; we need not fear our cross. Christ went to his grave; we need not fear our grave. Christ has gone into his future; we need not fear our future. Because Christ lives, with us and for us, we too may live.

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1999

From Harold Masback, Who Do You Say That I Am" (August 22, 1999) at pages 4-5:

Third, until we grasp Christ’s hand and accept him as our Christ, we’ll never know what life can be with his help. There is a story about a mother who wanted to encourage her young son’s progress on the piano so she took him to hear the great Polish pianist, Paderewski. They found their seats near the front of the hall, and the mother fell into a conversation with the person on her right. She never even noticed that her son had slipped away. When the house lights dimmed and the spotlights came up on the Steinway, the mother’s jaw dropped as she spotted her son sitting on the piano bench, plinking away at a rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The audience roared, the mother bolted from her seat, but before she could rescue her son, Paderewski himself appeared and moved quickly towards the keyboard. “No, don’t quit, keep on playing,” he whispered to the boy. And reaching past him with his left hand, the Master began improvising a bass part, and then with his right hand, he reached around on the other side of the boy to add a running obbligato. The crowd was spellbound, and the piece concluded to thunderous applause as the boy whispered to Paderewski, “I didn’t know I could do that.”

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1999

From Harold Masback, Listen" (August 15, 1999) at page 9:

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1999

From Harold Masback, Good News, Better News, Best News" (August 8, 1999) at pages 2-3:

Did you ever think there was a monster under your bed? I know I sometimes did. In fact I can still remember that the monster and I had very clearly understood rules of engagement. The monster would not bother me as long as I did not put a foot down on the floor and, even more importantly, the monster would not bother me as long as I didn’t actually look under the bed to confirm that he was there. Now, it’s easy to smile at childhood fears from the somewhat more secure ramparts of adulthood, but in some ways our childhood perspectives have an advantage over our oh-so-realistic views of maturity. Certainly, the Bible has a healthy respect for forces of chaos that lie just below the surface, just below our figurative bed. The very essence of the creation story is that God brought order, creation, life itself out of chaos. [Genesis 1:1-10] Isaiah was alluding to God’s victory over the forces of chaos when he wrote, “Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?” [Isaiah 51:9-10] And the Psalmists wrote painfully of moments in life when it seems chaos is about to overwhelm our carefully tended bulwarks of stability: “Save me , O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me.” [Psalm 69: 1-3]. When you think about it, even if we’re kind of smug on the monster issue, don’t we still harbor a certain fear, sometimes an almost morbid obsession with the threat of chaos lurking under the placid surface of life.

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