A week ago Wednesday word came that Ed Crow had suffered a massive stroke and wasn’t expected to live.  I dropped everything and made my way to Presbyterian Hospital.  Three hours after I left his bedside, Ed died and I felt that palatable void we always feel when someone who once touched our lives deeply is gone.  When I moved to Dallas in 1993, there were only three or four people in this city I knew by name.  Ed was one of them.  He had come to Dallas in the late seventies, after the death of his marriage, and started a sermon publishing business.  But, before that, he had been my pastor when I was growing up in Brownfield and had baptized me twice, once when I was eight and once again when I was fourteen. 

Looking back, I believe my eight year-old baptism took.  Childlike faith, remember?  But, at fourteen, I wasn’t sure I’d gotten it right.  That’s not unusual, really, especially for people who grow up in faith traditions where too much emphasis is often placed on “getting it right” instead of simply trusting.  Anyway, in a rather serendipitous turn of events, I found myself back in Ed Crow’s life eight years ago.  Nearly every Monday night for one whole year, Ed and his wife Gene took me into their home for dinner.  They listened as I shared my story and the questions and fear that went with it.  I listened as they shared their personal pilgrimage in the mercy of God and the hope toward which it led them.  Those Monday night dinners played a key role in my ability to find my way again.  Oddly enough, the man who had been my pastor at the initiation of my faith experience became my pastor once again when I needed to find my way back to mercy and hope, when, once again, I wasn’t sure I’d gotten it right. 

Maybe that’s why John the Baptist was sending his disciples to ask Jesus, “‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’”  Odd question, don’t you think?  John was there at the initiation of Jesus’ faith walk into public ministry.  He had introduced Jesus to the crowds and even baptized him, just once.  Now, he’s asking Jesus if he is the true Messiah, the one he can trust.  Sounds like John wants to know if he got it right. 

Maybe we would too, if we were where John was.  John had gotten himself in a pickle by confronting King Herod over the immorality of marrying his sister-in-law, Herodias.  When Herodias heard about it, she lost her head.  Shortly after that, John lost his.  To appease Herodias, his new sister-in-law-wife, Herod had John arrested but didn’t intend to do more.  Shortly, however, Herodias’ daughter danced for her new uncle-step-dad and his guests at Herod’s birthday party.  (Where is Jerry Springer when you need him?)  She danced so well that, probably in a drunken stupor, Herod promised his niece-stepdaughter anything she wanted.  She could have had half his kingdom; she only asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.  Wonder where she got that idea?  Mommy dearest, maybe?  Anyway, Herod, being a man of his word even if he had no honor, gave her what she wanted.  He had John’s head brought to the girl, literally, on a platter (Mark 6). 

That’s where we find John, just before, in prison, wondering if he’d gotten it right.  Maybe he knew his prospects weren’t good.  Maybe he knew he’d never see daylight again.  Maybe.  Whatever he did or didn’t know, he wanted to be sure, as far as Jesus was concerned, that he’d gotten it right.  So, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one I can trust?” 

By the way, if you haven’t learned this already, it’s o.k. to ask Jesus anything.  Our questions never threaten God.  Indeed, we’ll never make it in our faith journeys if we don’t have some place we can go and someone to whom we can turn when we have questions.  Ed Crow gave me a place to go where I could ask questions, any questions, when nothing made sense to me and I wondered if I’d gotten it right.  The more I mature in faith, the more I appreciate that we can go straight to Jesus, like John did, with our questions.  We can ask him anything.  We just shouldn’t put any restrictions on how he chooses to answer.  Jesus said, “‘Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’” 

Jesus was eventually crucified partly because he had not met the expectations of some as to who the Messiah should be.  It’s so human, so Herodias-like, to destroy others who don’t meet up to our expectations, especially those who represent God to us.  In Jesus’ case, he was too human to fit the preconceived notions of some as to how God should present himself.  But, Jesus’ empty tomb teaches us that, in the end, we can’t kill God.  We can only choose to trust him for his mercy or stumble over it on the way to somewhere else.  Where might that be?  What else could hell be except that place we end up when we just can’t accept God’s mercy for us? 

You know, this thing called Christmas shopping is a bear.  Not just because some of us aren’t genetically wired for it.  It’s that tough question, “What should I get her this year?”  It’s not that I don’t want to give my wife nice things.  I’m just so tempted to give her what I want.  I’ve actually thought about getting Nancy a really nice driver for my golf bag.  But, if loving someone means letting them have what they choose, not so much what we would choose for them, then maybe that is why God even allows for the possibility of stumbling over his mercy instead of accepting it.  I believe it was C.S. Lewis who once said that, faith is what happens when we surrender ourselves to the purposes of God and say to him, “Thy will be done.”  Hell is what happens when, refusing to surrender ourselves to God’s mercy, he says to us, “Thy will be done.”  Jesus said to John, and we’d do well to listen in, “‘Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.’”

It’s taken so long (I’m not all the way there yet) to understand that “getting it right” doesn’t mean getting our act together so God will find us acceptable.  It doesn’t mean having answers to all of our faith questions before we answer the question faith asks, “Will we accept God’s mercy or just stumble over it?”  I had to get baptized twice because I wasn’t sure I’d said the right words to the preacher when I walked the aisle the first time.  Then, of all things, on the way home after my second baptism, I started doubting yet again.  Somewhere in all my fumbling attempts to get it right, I finally realized I was never going to get it right enough. 

I was like Clark Griswald in Christmas Vacation.  You remember?  He’d spent hours stapling so many lights to his house that, when they finally came on, they drew so much power that all the other lights in the city dimmed.  But, at first, when he made the final connection, nothing happened.  The lights stayed dark.  He didn’t know that his wife had disconnected him from the power in the utility closet.  It wasn’t until she reconnected his power that the lights came on.  I’d spent forever trying to make sure I had everything laid out just so.  But, when I’d go to plug it in nothing worked.  The lights wouldn’t come on.  Everything was still in darkness until someone else turned the switch. 

Life is a “batteries not included” kind of experience.  At birth, we’re given to do so very much.  But, we stumble in moral and spiritual darkness until God turns on the light.  In Jesus, “the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world (John 1:9).”  Light means moral awakening.  Light means conscience.  Light means the capacity to see a God we can’t see.  Without light, we stumble.  Jesus came, in mercy, to give us God’s light.

When I was in seminary chapel was held four times a week.  We got to hear some of the best preachers around.  Chapel wasn’t required.  But, I was in school full time and also serving my first church as pastor, a little rural congregation.  I learned very quickly that, if I was going to have anything meaningful to say on Sunday, it helped if I went to chapel.  I felt guilty about that until once when Cecil Sherman was preaching.  To all of us preacher boys he said, “Unless something as fundamental as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west has changed, you’ve come to chapel today because you need something for this Sunday.  So, I’m going to give something you can use.”  And, he did more that.  He set me free.  Up until then, I’d thought I had to have totally original ideas every time I preached.  I thought it had to come from me.  Cecil Sherman helped me understand that nothing comes from us.  Sin is the moral plagiarism of failing to give God credit as our source.  Like John, we are not the Light.  We can only to bear witness to the Light that has a source beyond ourselves (John 1:8).

A step up from Clark Griswald, George Mason put it this way.  “Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, the one constant in the universe.  Because of the distance between the sun and the earth, the light we see comes to us about 8 minutes and 20 seconds after it leaves the sun.  We can never outrace the light to get to its source; we are always living in its shining.”  (George Mason, No Time Like the End Time, The Wilshire Pulpit, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, December 2, 2001).  Nothing comes from us.  It’s all gift.  The light to see the sparkle in the eyes of those we love.  The strength to hold them close and love them.  From the first breath we draw when the doctor slaps our bottom until the last breath we draw and every one in between, it’s all gift.  We can either accept the gift of God’s mercy, like the air we breathe, we can either accept his gracious acceptance of us even though we can’t get it right, or we can stumble over it on the way to somewhere else.  And, stumble we will.

John the Baptist’s ministry had been so focused on judgment, on demanding that people get it right.  Jesus didn’t come to correct John’s message.  He came to finish it.  Confession and repentance were the heart of John’s sermon.  Jesus just gave John’s sermon an invitation.  Confession and repentance only started the sentence that Jesus ended with mercy.  A mercy that caused the “‘blind (to) receive sight, the lame (to) walk, those who have leprosy (to be) cured, the deaf (to) hear, the dead (to be) raised, and the good news (to be) preached to the poor.  We don’t have to understand his mercy to accept it any more than we have to understand how fast light can travel before we live in its shining and life-giving warmth.

Ed Crow’s first marriage had ended in divorce thirty years ago and that also ended his pastoral ministry.  In that day, if you didn’t get marriage right not much else mattered to many people no matter what the circumstances or what other contributions you might have to make.  It was truly scandalous.  Until the day he died, some who knew him as pastor never really forgave him for not getting it right.  Long after Ed had come to find the mercy of God, they had none to extend.  It was like, when it came to mercy, they just stumbled all over it.  To them, judgment was the beginning and the end of the conversation. 

But, when I came back into Ed’s life, I didn’t find him bitter and angry.  I found a man very much at peace in the mercy and grace of Jesus.  He was, truly, one of the most giving, and forgiving, people I’ve ever known.  When Jess Fletcher, his good friend and camping buddy, eulogized Ed he said that he had learned to travel light.  There just wasn’t room for much of what we would call “proper” religion in his backpack.  He faithfully taught a Sunday School class at Park Cities Baptist Church for fifteen years and cranked out thousands of sermons heard in pulpits literally all over the world.  But, he had also slowly but surely discarded all the useless legalism we falsely tend to associate with getting it right. 

At their last camping trip just one year ago, Jess asked Ed, “After all these years, what confession of faith have you finally come to?”  John the Baptist had also asked the question we all eventually have to ask for ourselves, “Jesus, are you the one?”  How will we answer the confession question?  Ed answered his good friend, “This is my confession,” he said.  “In Jesus, I have found a God I can trust.”