Today’s sermon is something new for me:  it is based upon today’s Old Testament reading from 1 Kings.  Normally, I preach on the New Testament passage and more specifically, I almost always preach from the gospel, as opposed to the epistle reading.  A combination of factors came together to cause this change.  First, and perhaps foremost is the fact that, last week, I chose to expand the lectionary reading from the Gospel of Matthew beyond the parable of the wheat and the weeds and the subsequent explanation of that parable.  Last week I added the section that falls in between the parable and its explanation and which includes the short parables about the woman with the leaven and the one about the mustard seed.  Lo and behold, I looked at the lectionary for this week and it has those two parables that I had added last week.  I did not wish to repeat.  That was one reason.  Another reason is that I really love the passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans that was our epistle reading this morning.  I didn’t want to see that go by without getting a chance to at least READ it to you, even if I was not sure about whether or not I would preach about it.  The final reason was that the passage from 1 Kings I found really thought provoking. 

As is my practice, I went back several chapters before the lectionary reading to refresh my memory on the storyline and to put the reading in its proper context.  I will admit that it had been many, many years since I had read extensively from 1 Kings and I had, quite frankly, forgotten how much that historical drama reminded me of the screenplay from the movie, “The Godfather”.  As David lays on his deathbed, he calls his younger son Solomon – borne of Bathsheba who is the star in an R rated story out of the soap operas all by herself – and David basically tells Solomon to whack a bunch of his enemies for him when he is gone.  Literally.  David names off a bunch of folks who had dishonored his throne during the later years of his rule, and he directs Solomon to have them, in Mafia parlance, “sleep with the fishes”,  so to speak.  The actual euphemistic phrase that David uses is, “Now you must act wisely and not permit his grey head to go down to the grave peacefully”.   

And, immediately after David’s death, Solomon obeys.  In rapid succession, Solomon sends his hitman, Benaiah, son of Jehoiada  and whacks Adonijah, his half brother and David’s son with his first wife Haggith…he whacks Joab, the son of Zeruiah… Joab being the priest who had supported Adonijah… he whacks Shimei, the son of Gera simply because he had sworn at his father, King David  once… and then, after all that apparently necessary bloodletting, he went off to Gibeon, a sleepy  little town about five miles north of Jerusalem where there was a great high place…and he made thousands of burnt offerings to God and he spent the night there in prayer… and God appeared to him in his dream and basically gave him carte blanche to ask for whatever it was that he wanted. 

And Solomon…young Solomon, still new to this king business, asked God in his dream simply for an observant mind.  That is how the New Revised Standard Version puts it, in any case.  There are many different translations of that phrase in Hebrew.  Some versions say understanding heart, some say understanding mind, some say discerning heart.  I actually happen to like the ones with “heart” in them more than I do the ones with “mind” primarily because I think it more accurately reflects the Hebrew meaning of “heart” as the center of thought and will.    But whatever version you like better, it really boils down to a synonym for WISDOM .  Solomon asked only for WISDOM.  And what was God’s reply?  “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.”And the standard lectionary reading ends there…but the story takes on another twist.  As you heard earlier, God THEN says in the succeeding verses which follow the lectionary text and which I added for your benefit this morning, “I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.” Then Solomon awoke; it had been a dream. He came to Jerusalem where he stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. He offered up burnt offerings and offerings of well-being, and provided a feast for all his servants.” 

And God DID give Solomon wisdom along with riches and honor and long life.  And he used it.  The very first story out of the box about Solomon’s wisdom is not part of the lectionary reading this morning… but, even though it is familiar, I want to read it to you now:  Later, two women who were prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. The one woman said, “Please, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. We were together; there was no one else with us in the house, only the two of us were in the house. Then this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your servant slept. She laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, I saw that he was dead; but when I looked at him closely in the morning, clearly it was not the son I had borne.” But the other woman said, “No, the living son is mine, and the dead son is yours.” The first said, “No, the dead son is yours, and the living son is mine.” So they argued before the king. Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; while the other says, ‘Not so! Your son is dead, and my son is the living one.’” So the king said, “Bring me a sword,” and they brought a sword before the king. The king said, “Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other.” But the woman whose son was alive said to the king—because compassion for her son burned within her—“Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him!” The other said, “It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it.” Then the king responded: “Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother.” All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered; and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to execute justice.   Solomon used the gift of wisdom given to him by God to brilliantly determine the truth of the matter between these two women.  Solomon used the gifts of God that he had prayed for and received to try to be a good king to his people and to do God’s will.    

I think that this story of Solomon’s dream is an excellent primer that might guide us to learning how to more effectively pray, and a reading we might use as a model for what we should pray for…and how God responds to our prayers.  Remember that Solomon only asked for wisdom but God gave him much more.  It makes me think of those Rolling Stones lyrics:  You can’t always get what you want.  You can’t always get what you want.  You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well you just might find… You get what you need.  Solomon did not pray for what he wanted, he prayed for what he truly needed.  And again:  BECAUSE Solomon only asked for the tools he needed, God was so pleased at his humility and his selflessness, God gave him a boatload of other stuff as well.  Why would we think that God will deal with selfless prayers from us any differently?

Think about what YOU pray for.   My guess is that most of us don’t pray for what we need as much as we pray for what we want.  We pray for good health, we pray for the health of our friends and family.  We pray for peace.  We pray for good weather.  We pray for God to miraculously cure our banana slice on the golf course.  We pray for good grades or a new job.  We pray for a raise.  We pray that our children get scholarships.  We pray for a winning megabucks ticket.  We pray for THINGS.  We pray that God will GIVE us THINGS or FIX THINGS or DO THINGS for us and for our friends and family and even for our community and for our nation and for our world, but nonetheless, we pray for God to do it for us…on our behalf.   If WE are hungry, we pray for God to give us a fish.  Conversely… If Solomon had been hungry, he would have prayed that God teach him HOW to fish.  We pray for results.  Solomon prayed for tools so that he could use them to achieve results. We pray that God may cause his will to be done here on earth.  Solomon prayed to God to give him the WISDOM so that HE could be an effective instrument OF God’s will here on earth.    We pray for what we want.  Solomon prayed for what he NEEDED to be a good king and a good servant of the Lord. Do you see the difference? 

I have this sneaking suspicion that, if all of you are anything like me, there is a lot less praying going on each week than there really ought to be.  And if you all are anything like me, there are a lot of prayers for results and not very many prayers for the tools for us to achieve results.  Instead of praying for God to bring about world peace, try praying for COMPASSION so that you can BE an instrument of peace all by yourself.  Instead of praying for God to bring health for you and for others, pray for ENERGY and FOCUS and ASSERTIVENESS so that you might work on your own diet and exercise regimen and then be a strong advocate for healthy living to those around you.  Instead of praying for God to bring social justice to our nation, pray for COURAGE to stand up to social injustice yourself.  Instead of praying for God to end world hunger, pray for COMMITMENT so that you can reprioritize you life a bit and find the time to work on community suppers or  volunteer at soup kitchens and food banks  and actually help to end hunger in our community.  Instead of praying for God to PLEASE make those whiny little brats sitting in the pew behind you be quiet, try praying for PATIENCE so that you can hear their voices as the bubbling streams that are the headwaters of this church’s revival – PATIENCE so that you might even consider serving as a Sunday School teacher to make sure those bubbling streams of youthful energy are channeled in the right direction like you promised you’d do for them when they were baptized. 

Those are just a few examples to whet your appetite and get your own creative juices flowing.  God said to Solomon:  Ask what I should give to you.  Solomon asked for a discerning heart so that he might be a wise king and do God’s will.  Consider what tools YOU are lacking or what tools YOU have that could stand a little “divine sharpening”.  Pray for THOSE tools.  I believe that God will give us the tools we need to be able to better bring about his Kingdom here on earth, and I also believe that God will reward us for our selfless devotion to the tasks those tools should be used for by giving us many other blessings.  He’s been doing just that for a long, long time.  Just as God gave Solomon what HE needed when HE asked for it and much, much more, God will give YOU what YOU need if you ask for it, and your whole life will be richer just for the asking. 

Amen. 

Before I get started, I just wanted to know if any of you caught the connection between the passage from John that Joanne read and the anthem the choir just got done singing?  You need to know that those sorts of connections don’t just happen by accident.  If you believe, as I do, that when our liturgical music is relevant to the rest of the worship service, it helps in making that worship experience more meaningful, then we should ensure that we make note of that in any profiles and communications that will be used in our search for our next settled minister… worship works best when everyone is on the same page.

You may have noticed that there was no Old Testament reading this morning.  The reason for that was that I really liked BOTH the reading from Acts AND the reading from John in the UCC Lectionary.  I couldn’t decide which one to preach on so I just decided to do both of them.

First, to the passage from Acts.  Let me set the stage a bit:  Paul has been shipped off south down the Aegean Sea to Athens to avoid the vengeful agitations from a horde of angry Jews from Thessalonica who he previously stirred up and who had followed him to Berea.  True to form, as soon as Paul gets to Athens, he begins telling everyone who will listen about the good news of the Risen Jesus…and he attracts the attention of the epicurean and stoic philosophers of the city, and they ”took hold of him” and brought him to the Areopagus… which was a hill with shrines to Aries, the Greek God of War.  In the Roman era, the hill was known as Mars Hill because Mars is the Roman God of War… and the town of Mars Hill in northern Maine, by the way, is named after that very spot.  The Areopagus had been the site of the Athenian council of elders in the Greek era and served as sort of a court house in the Roman era. 

As a brief aside, I can vividly remember visiting Athens as a port of call while in the Navy and on a crisp and sunny fall day taking a guided tour of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, which dominates the skyline of Athens.  I recall looking down from the Acropolis and seeing this large flat topped white stone hill a bit to the north and our guide telling us it was the place where Paul had preached.   Walking in the very footsteps of the characters from the Bible is a moving experience and I highly recommend it whether it is in Athens or Rome or Egypt or Israel. – end of the brief aside. 

The Areopagus was always a place where philosophers came to philosophize, and the Athenians, therefore, wanted to hear what Paul had to say in that venue… and preach he did.  Perhaps it was because of the non-Jewish audience, or because Paul was far away from home, but whatever the reason, Paul struck a much more conciliatory tone with the Athenians than he had with the Jews from Thessalonica.  He actually tried to schmooze the Athenians a bit, don’t you think?  Listen again to how he addressed them: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.”   What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said,
“For we too are his offspring.”
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

The Book of Acts goes on to say that after hearing Paul speak, some of the Athenians scoffed, while others said, “We shall hear you again about this.”  And thus Paul began to convert believers in Athens just as he would wherever he went across the region.  It is a powerful story… one we all believe…or do we, really?

What would Paul find if he walked around OUR homes and yards?  How many altars are their in OUR homes or in OUR yards or in OUR lives to that “unknown god”?  How many altars are there to Jesus?  Or would Paul find all those “other altars” like he did in Athens?  Would Paul find the altar to the new SUV with all the bells and whistles? Or would he find the altar to the weed-free manicured lawn?  How about the altar to the perfect complexion or the perfect hair style or the perfect tan?  How about the altar equipped with the brand new High Definition wide screen television where we can worship the Red Sox or the Bruins or the Celtics or Tiger Woods or the Next American Idol or the Next Top Chef?  My guess is we ALL have a lot of altars in our lives where we worship a lot of other gods.   Somewhere, however, in your home or in your heart, you DO have an altar to that unknown god of whom Paul spoke… or chances are, you wouldn’t be here.  And please, don’t think for a minute that I am trying to be sanctimonious or preach at you about this.  I have all sorts of altars to all sorts of other gods in my life that I visit more often than I should and I know I spend a lot less time reading my bible and praying than I should…I spend a lot less time doing God’s work here on earth than I know I should…and I believe that probably goes for most if not all of us.

But we have help available to us.  The passage from John that we heard this morning is but a small segment of the lengthy discourse between Jesus and his disciples held in the Upper Room during the Last Supper.  It is written after Easter, after Pentecost, about an incredibly important night that happened before both events.  The author of the Gospel of John does a great job in portraying the bewilderment, and fear that the disciples were feeling that night.  Most of us have heard the stories of Jesus and holy week and the Last Supper all our lives and even we have a hard time comprehending it.  These twelve uneducated farmers and fisherman were REALLY clueless about what was about to happen to Jesus, and to them… and to the world.  Throughout the meal, they seem to almost compete with one another to see who can ask Jesus the most stupid question.  After accompanying Jesus on three years of ministry, listening to three years of Him speaking in all sorts of unconventional venues across the region, you would think they would have an inkling of what he was talking about… but they don’t.  And Jesus wisely and gently and PATIENTLY answers every one of their clueless questions.  Jesus tries to calm them and assuage their fears of impending abandonment.  He tells them He will not leave them alone.  They will not be orphans.  The way he tells it, he is heading off to a family reunion with his father that no one else is invited to, and he is leaving them in charge while he is gone… but that he’ll only be gone for a little while.   Remember that Paul told the Athenians that God had “fixed a day on which he will have the world judged”.  Clearly, from the mortal perspective of the disciples and the apostles, they didn’t think that they’d be orphans for very long.  

And even with Easter, and Pentecost, and centuries of faith between that Upper Room and us, from where WE sit it has been so long that some of us might sometimes wonder if we have not been orphaned after all.  We need to listen again to what he tells the disciples and what he tells us. He tells them that He has asked the Father to send them a helper… an advocate.  That helper is the Holy Spirit.  That helper will burst onto the scene with tongues of fire a few weeks hence at Pentecost, but at the Last Supper is where the Holy Spirit is introduced to the disciples and in this passage from John is where that helper, that advocate, is first introduced to us.  We do not have to wait for Jesus to return and revoke our status as orphans. That advocate is not waiting for us in Heaven…that advocate is here on earth, in this place, at this time in our lives to intercede for us and advocate for us and strengthen us and comfort us and  inspire us and HELP us to do God’s will.   What does he ask in return?    To keep his commandments.  What is his greatest commandment:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

If you love Jesus, keep his commandments…and his most important commandment is to love him…and love your neighbor as yourself.

We can all think that we are loving ourselves by building altars to all those other gods that give us temporary pleasure… but I doubt that many of us love our neighbors as much as all that. 

We have a world full of neighbors that need our love.  There are sick ones, old ones, young ones, hungry ones, cold ones, naked ones, homeless ones, ones who are different colors, ones who are attracted to folks differently than we are, ones who have different political beliefs than we do, ones who have different FAITHS than we do.  That doesn’t matter to Jesus.  He didn’t say we got to pick and chose our neighbors and only love the ones that we feel are like us or are somehow worthy of our kindness or our attention or our largesse.

Everybody has altars to other gods…to material things, to beauty, to security, to fame, to acceptance, to diversions.  We all need to clear off that altar to that “unknown god”, don’t we?  We all need to remember that Jesus said, If you love me, keep MY commandments.  And we all need to just close our eyes, and pray and ask that Holy Spirit, that comforter, that advocate to strengthen us, and  guide us and help us do the good work of God and spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

Amen

I want to talk today about faith and belief and doubts… and Thomas.  SO… let’s recap the scene again from this Gospel reading from John which is the only gospel that contains this story about Thomas.  As we read, the disciples have locked themselves in an upper room, presumably somewhere near Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem, trying to lay low and stay out of sight of the Jews who were still somewhat stirred up about this whole crucifixion, moved stone, disappearing body chain of events.  Thomas, one of the remaining eleven disciples, is out on some errand when - POOF! - there Jesus is, standing amongst them.  He breathes the Holy Spirit into them and charges them with preaching the Gospel and forgiving sins… and then – POOF! - He is gone again.  Thomas then gets back to the room and hears the news and has a hard time believing it.  That’s why they call him “Doubting Thomas”.  We all can relate to “Doubting Thomas”, can’t we?  He loved Jesus, he had followed Jesus.  He was a disciple of Jesus.  He had listened to everything that Jesus had preached.  He just couldn’t quite buy this whole “Jesus has come back from the dead” stuff.  He had his doubts.  Don’t we all?  But then, a week later, in the same upper room… with the door again locked… and this time with Thomas in attendance – POOF – Jesus appears once again and challenges Thomas to examine his wounds to verify his identity.  When confronted with the undeniable physical presence of the risen, Jesus – wounds and all… Thomas then admits the depth and completeness of his belief.  And what was Jesus’ response?  I would guess one might describe it as mildly rebuking…. He says:  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”   How did Thomas respond to that mild rebuke?  Well… I did some studying about Thomas in preparation for this sermon.  It turns out that Thomas left that locked room and that confrontation with Jesus and went on to be a very productive and adventurous disciple.  It seems that Thomas headed east to spread the good news of Jesus and made it as far as India where today, there are over three and a half million St. Thomas Christians in the Malabar region of the western coast of the Indian subcontinent.  He certainly made his mark there. Legend has it he even stopped off for a visit with the Magi from that first Christmas on his way to India.   According to “The Passing of Mary”, which is a text attributed to Joseph of Arimathea, Thomas was the only witness of the Assumption of Mary witnessing her bodily assumption into heaven, from which she dropped her girdle. In an inversion of the story of Thomas’s doubts, the other apostles are skeptical of Thomas’s story until they see Mary’s empty tomb and the girdle. Thomas’s receipt of the girdle is commonly depicted in medieval and Renaissance art.The “Acts of Thomas” is one of the most widely read of the New Testament apocryphal texts.   Thomas was clearly a guy who may have had his DOUBTS about the resurrection of Jesus, but certainly believed in what Jesus was trying to teach, and certainly went out into the world and did what Jesus had asked him to do.  Belief…  faith… doubt… present in Thomas… present in all of us. When I was eighteen years old, I was a pretty big fish in a pretty small pond.  I was the first guy in anyone’s memory from my high school in Illinois to be appointed to one of our nation’s military service academies.  Suddenly, girls who hadn’t paid much attention to me were letting it be known that they’d love to go to the movies with me…. Suddenly, my mother gained enormous bragging rights at her bridge club and PEO meetings… Suddenly, my father was no longer predicting a life for me of selling ties on street corners because of my less than top shelf academic performance.  Suddenly I had gone from relative anonymity – some would say notoriety – to local fame.  Yet I was secretly torn with doubts.  I wondered whether or not I had the right stuff to be able to survive four years at Annapolis.  I wondered whether volunteering to be in the military in the middle of a war was really a wise, long term life decision.  I wondered - after all that hoopla - how I could ever come back to my hometown if I didn’t make it…  After about 24 hours at Annapolis in the hot summer of 1968 with hordes of upperclassmen screaming at me at the top of their lungs and after having done more pushups in that one day than I had previously done in my entire lifetime, those doubts were intensely magnified, and resided, front and center, in my consciousness, for the next eleven months.  And even after I had successfully weathered plebe year, I still had my doubts as to whether I would be able to endure and to prevail in the rigorous academic environment in which I found myself. I always believed in myself.  I always had faith in my own abilities, but I honestly doubted, from time to time, whether they would be sufficient to accomplish the task.  Faith, belief and doubt… I had all three. How many of you follow Red Sox baseball?  I grew up as a Red Sox fan – even though I grew up in Cubs territory – because I had been a huge fan of Ted Williams. I was a fan throughout all those lean years…I was a fan in 1967 and had faith in the Impossible Dream…but I had my doubts.  I was a fan in 1975 and watched on TV as Carleton Fisk wave his homerun fair in game 6…I believed… but I always had doubts.  1986 was a bit different.  I was taking the wire basket off the bottle of champagne… when suddenly everything came unglued…  and Billy Buckner broke my heart and sent me into a dark and brooding baseball funk that lasted for several years. But I survived…but laden with a heavy load of newer, stronger, more resilient doubts.  Who among you who were Red Sox fans in 2004 had faith during that season that they could win the World Series?. Who among you had doubts when they were down three games to none and losing in the ninth inning in game four of the ALCS?  I don’t know about any of you, but I may have had BIG doubts, but I NEVER lost all my faith.  I NEVER lost all my belief.  And, as it turned out,  Dave Roberts DID steal second and Bill Mueller DID single him home to tie the game and  David Ortiz DID hit the walk off homerun in extra innings to keep the dream alive… and the Red Sox DID go on to win the next seven games in a row and win the World Series for the first time in my lifetime.  Faith and belief triumphed over doubt.  Other examples:  The US Olympic Hockey Team in 1980… were there doubts?  YOU bet!  Faith?  Belief?  They obviously had it.  Harry Truman versus Thomas Dewey in 1948… doubts?  The Chicago Sun Times Headline, “Dewey Beats Truman” would suggest that many doubted Truman. Faith and belief?  Harry sure had them.  And we could go on and on…but enough of the light hearted and humorous secular analogies… let’s look to Jesus himself.  Ten days ago on the church calendar was Maundy Thursday…. We had a lovely service here that night – I saw some of you here…some I did not.  It was a joint service with Old South Congregational Church in Hallowell.  Put it on your calendars for next year so that you won’t have any scheduling conflicts – we hope to make periodic joint services like that one part of our church calendar every year.  Maundy Thursday relives the night of the Last Supper…Maundy Thursday relives the night of Jesus’ betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane.  The events of Maundy Thursday took place less than 24 hours before Jesus would die on the cross, and less than three days before he would ascend into heaven as a DIVINE member of the Holy Trinity.  And listen to what Jesus had to say to HIS father that night:  From the Gospel of Matthew:  “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”.   From the Gospel of Mark, “Father, all things are possible with you…remove this cup from me”.  From the Gospel of Luke, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me”…. Jesus, the Son of God… soon to be completely divine in nature, had doubts - HAD DOUBTS - about His heavenly father’s plans for Him.  If God can patiently listen to His OWN SON express doubts about His plans, don’t you think He will patiently listen to ours?    Doubt and belief and faith - can and do co-exist.  Doubting one’s faith is entirely different than denying it, or abandoning it.  Questioning one’s beliefs is entirely different than not believing in the first place.  Thomas LOVED Jesus.  Thomas was a disciple of Jesus.  Thomas had some doubts about the resurrected Jesus… that did not mean that Thomas did not BELIEVE in Jesus or have FAITH in Jesus. Listen again to what Jesus said to Thomas:  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”   Who is Jesus really talking about there?  Realize: The first time Jesus appears inside the locked room is the evening of the very day He was resurrected.  The second time is a week later.  Clearly, the disciples had been cowering behind locked doors for much of that week.  How many people had come to believe about the risen Jesus in that week’s time? I would suggest ZERO.    Jesus would go ahead of the disciples to Galilee.  He would speak to them on a handful of other occasions – but only to them.  He would cook them breakfast at a little campfire on the shores of the Sea of Galilee…but He would not make any grandiose appearances as the risen Lord before large crowds of people.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”.   For those whose English grammar classes are distant specks in the rear view mirror of life, Jesus uses the present perfect tenses of the verbs “to see” and “to believe”.  Present perfect is used to describe actions which happened at some unknown time in the past… or actions which happened in the past, but have an effect in the present… or, actions which started in the past and are still continuing. Now I realize that Jesus actually spoke in Aramaic and the nuances of English verb conjugations used in translation are the products of English translators dating back to John Wycliffe and his followers from the 13^th century who first translated the Bible – at great peril – from Latin and Greek into English, but clearly, they tried to translate a sentence that made little sense unless that unfinished nature was somehow included.  I think that those folks who translated the Gospel of John into English would have been much less cryptic if they had translated that sentence as, “Blessed are those who will never have the opportunity to see Me and yet will still come to believe in Me sight unseen”. Jesus wasn’t talking about anyone who had already not seen yet had come to believe, Jesus was talking about an event that had not yet finished.  He was talking about us!!!  WE are the ones who ARE blessed for believing in Jesus having never seen Him and He was speaking directly to us when He said it.   We ARE blessed, by Jesus himself, even IF we have our doubts from time to time.  We can ALL be like Doubting Thomas… we can ALL question our faith and our belief… everyone does… but we can ALL be like Doubting Thomas and stand up and put our doubts behind us… and reach beyond our comfortable insular existences and spread the good news of Jesus Christ – even if we DO have doubts.  We can all acknowledge our doubts and STILL stand up tall and strong and do God’s work here on Earth.  The Triune God may be omnipotent, but He doesn’t have any hands.  He doesn’t have any hands!  WE must all take a deep breath, acknowledge our doubts and our fears and step forward and BE the strong hands and the strong arms and the strong backs and the strong voices of God…here…. now… in this place in this time.    For if we don’t, who will?   Doubt all you want, but have faith in God.  Believe in the power of Jesus’ love. Doubt all you want, but be brave and DO God’s will anyway.  Deep down inside, we ALL KNOW we can…  We all know we can. AND…  SO…  DOES…  GOD!  Amen.

Maineman’s post on his heart attack led me to share what is to come. Some of you are aware that I’ve had a stressful time for a bit. My dad died at the end of August, that ended 8 years of having my parents living with me due to my mom’s poor health, (she died 3 years ago), I inherited my dad. Well the day after his funeral, we found out my nephew had a brain tumor, thankfully benign, but due to a cyst that had formed around it, requiring emergency surgery. Luckily the surgery caused minimal brain damage, but could not eliminate the total tumor, so we’ll see. He did get married at the end of September and after therapy has resumed work in January.

Well in October I had a problem with bronchitis and strep, at the time it was noted my blood pressure was elevated to 153/78. I’ve always had low blood pressure; I think the highest reading before that was 98/70. They suggested seeing a primary doctor to address this. I asked if it couldn’t wait for January, when the deductible would kick in, as that emergency visit was my first of the past 10 years? Yeah, I know. Even worse, the last time I was dealing with my primary doctor was in cardiology intensive care for a week. It ended up being a relatively benign problem, myocardial valve prolapse, but for some reason they had trouble fingering it.

I meant to address the problem in January, it was among my resolutions, but well…Then I started having lower back and abdomen pains, chucked it up to ‘women’s issues’ for about a week. Then they got worse. Suffered through and worked for 2 days at school, then looked forward to the three-day weekend, unfortunately that Sunday was supposed to be at school for the ‘kick off’ of Catholic Schools Week. Well that Thursday and Friday I’d come home and gone to bed. I spent all of Saturday in bed, getting up just to eat a bit. At 6 am I woke on Sunday, hobbled to the shower and nearly passed out. Went back to bed, called the principal and said I wasn’t making that kick off.

I went to the clinic, seems I had a kidney infection, pretty bad one. Had to argue my way out of hospitalization, even with the again apparent high blood pressure. This time I took a referral card. I wasn’t thrilled with the doctor I’d had, 10 years previously. Got my antibiotic, missed a week of school. Went to the doc. Surprise, the blood pressure wasn’t down, but miracle of miracles, he said it might have to do with such a serious infection. He wasn’t going to rush to meds. He put down the chart and asked what has been going on in my life for the past year or so?

He won me over with that. Problem was 2 weeks later; blood pressure was still in 150 range. He recommended meds. I said, “Ok, but what if I make life changes? Can I get off?” He said, “It’s possible, happens about 1 in 100 though.” I liked that too. I let them do a CBC then, cholesterol was high. Like the blood pressure, not exceedingly so, but ‘borderline.’ They called me last week with the results. My next appointment is 3/22, I’ve already lost 6 pounds and have been nutty with my diet.

Problem is like Jim; I love my cigs and coffee. I’m considering how to approach these; I’m not good at failing. I’ve returned to my health club, which sort of went by the wayside after my dad and nephew. Yesterday I worked out about 45 minutes; today I worked out a bit over 90 minutes. I did a lot of shopping in the morning, including buying a jump rope for home. While I’ll concentrate on cardio exercise, I also want to address strength training to help ward off osteoporosis, which my mother suffered from. I’ve been very good at including yogurt or cottage cheese at every meal, now low fat. Periodically I’ll update, as I’m hoping to avoid MM’ experience, as lucky as that was.

The Background
October of ’05 was my annual physical.   My doctor told me my cholesterol was too high and my blood pressure was too high as well.  It was time to take stock.  I had spent the majority of my life smoking too much, drinking a bit too much, and exercising a bit too infrequently, and it had caught up with me.  My wife is an echocardiographer who deals with the consequences of those excesses so she quickly laid down the law:  strict diet and increased exercise.  I really had no choice but to comply.  A year of healthy eating and a year of starting every morning with a half hour on our treadmill had me feeling pretty confident that I was well on the way to great health.

The Voices
It was the morning of October 11th, 2006.  5:00 AM.   I got on the treadmill and began trotting along with the incline setting steep as usual, when my triceps began to ache ever so slightly.  I initially figured that it was because I hold on to the arm rests while going uphill.  In any case, I slowed down and eventually stopped my jog about ten minutes early.  My alert wife heard the treadmill stop earlier than expected and she immediately came in from our adjacent bedroom.  By then, I was off the treadmill and the dull ache in my arms had subsided.  I brushed it all off as nothing to worry about but she grilled me for a few minutes before reluctantly letting me proceed to the shower.  I shaved, got dressed and was headed for the door when she again questioned me about how I was feeling.  I was fine.  I hopped in the car and headed to pick up the school teacher that carpooled with me.  Her home is about three miles from mine and the drive there was uneventful until I arrived at the turn at the base of the big hill atop which she lived.  As I made the turn, I began to hear a veritable cacophony of voices in my head, all speaking at once:  “This could be serious”…  “You’d better get this checked out”…” It would be no big deal if you missed work today”… “Better safe than sorry”…  “Don’t be foolish”…”Come on - go back home”… “Don’t take a chance”… and the voices continued until I was a couple hundred feet from her dooryard, when I said, out loud “You’re RIGHT!”  When I got to her house, I rolled down the window and told her that I wasn’t feeling all that well and that I was going to stay home from work that day… and I drove back home.  My wife was still getting ready for work when I walked back in the house and after a few moments of discussion during which I admitted that, maybe, that pain in my arms had not completely gone away, we were off to the Emergency Room.  It was now about 7:15 AM.

The ER
Processed… triaged… taken to a little cubicle behind a curtain…hooked up to an EKG Machine….zip zip zip.  A doctor came in, read the EKG strip and said that it appeared normal.  I explained that I had this very dull, non-specific aching in my triceps and an even less noticeable ache across the top of my chest.  He gave me a nitroglycerine pill and the pain immediately subsided.  That development concerned him.  He said, with a normal EKG, that shouldn’t have happened.  He recommended that I be admitted and have a series of tests the next morning, so off I went in the gurney to a hospital room and off my wife went to work.  It was now about 9:00 AM.

The Hospital Room
I had the far bed by the window… my roommate was an elderly man fast asleep.   I watched CNN on the little flat screen TV that rotated down in front of me… I got bored… and I fell asleep.  I awoke for lunch, if you could call it that… went back to the TV, and back to sleep.  I awoke about 2:30 PM with those same strange pains in my triceps.  I buzzed the nurse who suggested another nitroglycerine pill which sounded wonderful to me.  As he headed out of the room, he bumped into a cardiologist with whom my wife works.  The nurse headed toward the medicine chest, and the doctor headed towards my bed.  He was surprised to see me as he had not been in his office yet that day– where my wife would have told him of my situation.  He asked me to bring him up to speed and as I was just about finished with my tale, the nurse arrived with the nitroglycerine.  The doctor said, “No Nitro!  Get me an EKG on this patient STAT!”  And then, a minute or so later, as the EKG strip rolled off and the doctor read it, he said “Well [manfrommaine], you are getting ready to have a heart attack any minute!” It was now about 2:45 PM and things started happening very fast.

The Trip
I was rushed downstairs to a Cardiac Care station near the ambulance entrance.  Since the hospital in our town was not equipped for heart surgery, they were prepping me for the ride to Portland, Maine…over an hour away.  They hooked me up to IV’s and started all sorts of blood thinners and there were nurses and doctors running all around.  Within a few minutes, my wife and another cardiologist from their office arrived.  My poor wife looked ghastly with anxiety so I can imagine I looked much worse.  The ambulance came and off we went - me strapped into a gurney, an EMT and a cardiac nurse.  My wife was following behind in our car.  I was a bit frightened, but the three of us passed the time chatting and telling jokes – the one about “acute angina” sticks in my mind given how topical it was.  I think we were approaching Portland city limits when I lost consciousness.  I was only out for a short time because I vaguely remember them wheeling me out of the ambulance and into the hospital.  It was now nearly 5:00PM.

The OR
A full cardiac surgery team affiliated with our cardiac group was standing by, ready for me.  They flipped me onto an operating table.  They removed my slacks, and cut into my femoral artery… things get a bit fuzzy again but I do have vague recollections of activity and commotion around me.  After a time – not very much time, really – the surgeon said, “[mainfrommaine], do you want to see what we did?” He directed my attention to a big TV monitor and said, “Here is your heart before.  See how that black line is pulsing there and then it narrows and stops altogether?  That was your blocked Right Coronary Artery.  We put in a stent and opened it back up and now here it is.” and the monitor then showed the artery full sized and pulsing through its entire length.  I asked him what had actually happened to me, and he said, “You had a heart attack in the ambulance as you were approaching the hospital.  We were able to open your coronary artery almost immediately.  You are a very lucky man.”  I thanked him and was wheeled out of the OR and up to Cardiac Intensive Care.  It was 6:00 PM on October 11th, 2006.

The Aftermath
Blood tests done after the surgery revealed that, due to the rapid surgical response, I had not sustained any damage to any part of my heart muscle.  I was home from the hospital in three days and back to work in a little over a week.  If I had not listened to the cacophony of voices in my head, I would have driven to my office in a rural office park and had my heart attack at my desk, far from any ambulance and far from the nearly instantaneous, fortuitous responses of the cardiologists from my wife’s practice.  I would have died.  Whose were those voices?  There were many different ones – men, women, child-like voices… I hadn’t recognized any of them, but collectively, they had sounded so concerned… so full of care. They saved my life.    I have to believe they did so for some greater purpose.  I have to believe they were angels.