We begin by replaying a scene from the Acts 10 Gym.   Starting in mid-October, we showed a series of six short films illustrating our seasonal theme:  Invite, Give & Pray.  The vignettes featured celebrity trainers Hans & Franz, played by Greg Albertson and Adrian Alvarez.    

PLAY VIDEO…
Mandy:  Hello again from The Acts 10 Gym, where our motto is Take Action With Acts 10!  With us today are our head trainers Hans and Franz
Greg: I’m Hans
Adrian: And I’m Franz
Both:  Faith in Jesus Christ has pumped us up
And we want to pump you up!
STOP VIDEO 

 Shift scene to the Banquet Room of the Champions Run Country Club.   After six weeks of trying to pump up St. Andrew’s Church, Adrian Alvarez needed serious pumping up, himself.  No humor in the situation, either.  This was life or death in the most unlikely of circumstance.

 On Friday evening, November 20, St. Andrew’s held our 9th Annual Dinner/Dance/Auction.  The tradition precedes the Reverends Davis and Davis at St. Andrew’s and, frankly, took some getting used to on our part.  /// I’ve come to see the event as a West Omaha version of what rural congregations call a Lord’s Acre Sale.  In a Lord’s Acre sale, people bring pies, produce and other farm products for auction.  The proceeds help the church make ends meet by the end of the year.   
 

At St. Andrew’s, funds raised via the Dinner/Dinner/Auction help this congregation manage the mortgage on our facility:  Debt service and/or reduction.   Four years ago, St. Andrew’s was five million dollars in debt.  Thanks to a hugely successful capital funds campaign, we’ve cut the debt in half, but 2.5 million is still a lot of dollars and the annual event at Champions Run has been a major factor in managing the debt without crippling our ministries. 

The piece de le resistance of any St. Andrew’s auction is the puppy.  A short digression:  35 years ago, I came home from a Lord’s Acre Sale at Heath Chapel, in very rural northwest Missouri, with a little puppy.   It was a lot cheaper than the pups offered for auction at St. Andrew’s, but there was this downside:  I was told I was getting a terrier of some kind; my pup quickly grew into a coon hound, the size of a small horse.  I had the only indoor paper-trained coon hound in the county, maybe in all the state, for all I know.
The puppy at the St. Andrew’s event comes with a pedigree, and there are great items like this year’s Peyton Manning autograph jersey, and vacation stays, and jewelry--most of it donated by St. Andrew’s members, so it’s a double-dose of Gracious Generosity.  And lots of less pricey stuff, too, like a Creighton ball cap I picked up for $5, several auctions ago. But the concept isn’t really so very different from what we were doing at Heath Chapel.
 
 There are multiple levels of bidding, culminating after dinner with an oral auction of the high end stuff.   Last year was the first year I ever raised my hand to bid during the oral auction—and then only under duress.   Nancy had somehow managed to lose her wedding ring.   She saw a ring was coming up for auction, admired it, and I got the message I was supposed to bid on it.  I still don’t understand that.  She was the one who lost the wedding ring.  But I stuck up my hand; and then when the bidding went past my budget, people at my table went to goading me, even throwing their own money into the project, so that I didn’t really have any choice but to keep going. 
 

 This year, Nancy had made eyes at the puppy, but I nipped that in the bud by taking her to the Humane Society and promising we’d get another cat instead--which may have been her strategy all along. 

Midway into this year’s oral auction, the 9th annual event was going great.   It had been a wonderful evening, superbly put together by our hosts Shawna and Corey Rector, a good time had by all, when some diamond earrings came up for bid; and I’ll swan if Nancy’s hand didn’t go up.   In case you’re wondering, her beverage intake for the evening had been limited to sparkling water.  

Adrian Alvarez was serving as our auctioneer.  Per the auctioneer handbook, Adrian was, of course, trying to drive up the bid; I heard him say to someone on the other side of the room, “Sure, it’s okay to bid against Nancy….” and then there was confusion at the front; something about Adrian being down and I assumed he’d tripped over a cord or something, but then I heard someone shout CALL 911, and I figured I’d best get up there and check this out.
 In the few moments it took me to move from my table at the back of the room to the front, it was clear something was terribly wrong.   Pastoral Care 101:  In a medical emergency, let the doctors do their job and move toward the family, in this case Adrian’s wife, Sherri.   Sherri’s reaction told me all I needed to know about the severity of the situation. 
 
I have thought before that if a person is going to have a medical crisis, a gathering of Methodists is a pretty good place to have it, in that there will likely to be a doctor in the house.   In this case, there were multiple physicians in attendance.  They knew what was needed. QUICK:  Get the defibrillator.  Oops.  There’s no defibrillator in the building.  This is bad.
 

 Folks, if you ever need a defibrillator at St. Andrew’s, it’s on the wall in the little alcove between the Rotunda and the gym.  I’m told that you simply take it out of the box and it will literally talk you through the process.  But there was no defibrillator, talking or otherwise, on site this night.  And Adrian wasn’t breathing.   He’s lying on his back and he’s not breathing.  

 My brain was trying to process information.   It felt like I was in one of these disaster movies, maybe The Poseidon Adventure, partygoers having a grand time one moment, and then without warning, in the blink of an eye really, the ship has turned upside down.  In the immediate aftermath, one of our members wrote:

Everyone loves Adrian.  He has one of the personalities that people love being around.  When I think of what a St Andrew’s church member should be, I think of Adrian.

 That’s no overstatement.   Adrian’s probably best known around here for his work with the Reckless Abandon Players/Drama Team.  When I decided I wanted to use Hans and Franz this fall, Adrian was the go-to-guy.  What may be less obvious is his deep compassion for other people.  This picture was taken in Nicaragua; Adrian has been a big part of our ministry down there.   Those children just love Adrian, a norteamericano who speaks their language and interprets for the rest of us.   Words would fail me to tell what this man not breathing on the floor of the Country Club means to St. Andrew’s. 

A key Biblical figure in our Acts 10/We Want To Pump You Up series has been Cornelius, a Roman military officer.  We named our Fitness Program after him; The Cornelius Fitness Plan:  Invite, Give, Pray.  So it was appropriate, I guess, that at a critical moment on November 20, the troops moved in. 
 
 
Did you know Trudy Mallott spent a decade in the United States Navy?   Her service included a stint on the Hospital Ship Mercy during the First Gulf War.  Trudy took charge of this scene, ordering everyone to stand back, screaming at Adrian STAY WITH US, ADRIAN, shouting his name over and over.   Adrian would later say the only thing he remembered was Trudy shouting his name.   The woman clearly knew what she was doing.  

And while there were multiple physicians involved—bless each of your hearts--my mind’s eye focuses on Air Force Captain Dr. Liam Toth performing a series of violent repetitions on Adrian’s chest.   /// One of the doctors was breathing into Adrian’s mouth; Trudy’s shouting, STAY WITH US, ADRIAN; Liam was doing battlefield push ups in the chest area.  All I could see of Adrian was his lower extremities—and nothing’s moving… Then I heard someone say, We’ve got a pulse, and there was leg movement, and I could see the stomach move, visibly breathing in, whereupon I breathed out.  Then the paramedics showed up…  

Liam explained to me later:

I was doing chest compressions which compresses the heart externally against the chest and backbone.  That compression approximates a heartbeat to maintain the blood flow.  So I was basically keeping his heart pushing blood until his own body could take back over.  When the paramedics arrived with a defibrillator, they were able to shock his heart into functioning again. 

 It really was an incredible thing to witness.  You see these little diagrams and it looks like all nice and polite; in real life, it’s nothing like that at all.  I would later compare it to witnessing child birth, with all the pain and glory involved in that.  Our Business Administrator, Heather Doll, was so impressed that she married Liam last weekend. 

The paramedics put Adrian into an ambulance and headed to Lakeside Hospital.  Nancy and I were right behind.  By the time we were allowed back into the emergency room, Sherri reported Adrian was alert and had already cracked his first joke….

If Adrian could crack wise under the circumstance, so could I:  See what happens when you encourage people to bid against Nancy?

An hour earlier, I had felt like we were cast in a disaster movie.  By the time Nancy and I left Lakeside Hospital, I was already beginning to consider the possibility we had witnessed a miracle.   Mike Baber circulated an e-mail that included this information:   

At one point, the doctor came out and briefed us.  He said that the fatality rate for this kind of heart attack (myocardial infarction) is about 98%, and almost always fatal without quick and capable response. He complimented the outstanding effort taken by the people at the scene in keeping him going….

Think about it.  If this had happened most any other place, under most any other circumstance, it would have likely had a very different ending.   You might say, “Well, maybe if Adrian hadn’t been auctioneering, he wouldn’t have gotten excited and had the heart attack in the first place.  That doesn’t work.  I say this in love:  Adrian’s always enthusiastic about something….   
Even if this had happened earlier in the evening, when people were spread out across the club, bidding on things, the ending might been different.  As it was, it happened smack dab in the middle of the auction process, with all the people necessary to save his life in one place, eyes on Adrian.  
Furthermore, I’ve wondered if there had been a prayer-o-meter in the room, what that might have registered.  With Adrian on the floor, we did not organize an immediate prayer circle.  Again, I’m a big believer in getting out of the way and letting the medical people do their thing.   In the dizzying shock of the moment, I was praying in the temple of the self, quietly asking God to please pull Adrian through this, and I know many others in the room were doing the same. 
 

As the paramedics took Adrian to the ambulance, that’s when we started forming circles of prayer, me in one room, Nancy in another; I know Joe Scahill was praying with people after Nancy and I left for the hospital.  And I can’t help but think of the acronym that started this whole We Want To Pump You Up theme:  /// Prayer Ultimately Matters, so Pray.  

It’s interesting how Invite, Give and Pray worked out that evening.   One of the people Adrian and Sherri had invited from their FRANZ list (remember:  Friends, Relatives, Neighbors) was a cardiologist, who in turn played a pivotal role in saving Adrian!  

I know the suggestion of answered prayer will cause some consternation.  Someone will ask:  How can you suggest God answered prayer for Adrian when the prayers for others, say your prematurely-born-grand-nephew, seemed to go unanswered?  I share Nancy’s faith that no prayer goes unanswered (just maybe not the answer we hoped for).  I am a huge believer in Thy Will Be Done.  But this prayer was answered exactly as we hoped it would be, very best case outcome, and if we’re going to pray such prayer, the very least we can do is praise God and be abundantly thankful when we get what we asked for. 
I wonder if God gets weary of answering prayer in the affirmative and then having the very people who lifted the prayer in the first place rationalize it away.     

With things having stabilized at the hospital, Nancy and I drove back to Champions.  The formal part of the evening had come to a halt when Adrian collapsed, but lots of people were still there, quietly gathered around tables.   Nancy and I reported on Adrian’s condition.  We said one last prayer with the group, then went home. We weren’t two steps in the door before my sweetheart threw her arms around me in embrace, her head on my chest, saying something like, “Don’t ever leave me.”  That’s when I started hearing my own heart beat.   
 
Before there was GRAY’S ANATOMY and E.R., there was MARCUS WELBY M.D.   Marcus Welby was a television doctor played by Robert Young, whose resume included the title role in FATHER KNOWS BEST.   The show aired from 1969-1976 and this was a recognized medical/social phenomena:  Whatever disease Marcus Welby was fighting any given week, the next week, doctors’ offices would see a spike in patients convinced they were suffering from the same thing.
In the days after Adrian’s heart-attack, I went through a modified version of Marcus Welby-ism, myself.  Not that I thought that I was having a heart-attack, but I seemed to be conscious of every breath, every heart-beat.   I wrote this sermon, in part, to work my way through it.

I did some reading on the subject.  I got this off the Yale-New Haven Web site:  How The Heart Works

It’s small, a little larger than a clenched fist.  Relatively simple in function, your heart’s primary purpose is to pump…24 hours a day, 70 to 80 times a minute.

 (If just hearing this makes your heart speed up—which is the
effect it has on me—take a deep breath right now.  Remember, there is a defibrillator on site.)   Reading on: 

         With each beat, the heart pumps blood that delivers life-
sustaining oxygen and nutrients to 300 trillion cells.  Each day
the average heart “beats” (or expands and contracts) 100,000 times and pumps about 200,000 gallons of blood.  In a 70-year lifetime, an average human heart beats more than 2.5 billion times, pumping approximately 1 million barrels of blood.

The heart is the depot of a much larger “circulatory
system.”  Did you know (and this hard to believe, but I’m just reading from the article, and I suppose the people at Yale University Medical ought to know) that if you laid all the component parts of your circulatory system end-to-end, “they would extend for about 60,000 miles—far enough to encircle the earth more than twice”?  
 

I think on such things and a phrase of scripture bubbles to
consciousness, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.”  That’s from Psalm 139.  The Psalmist sings to the Lord:

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.  In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.  How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I awake—I am still with you.

 We spent six weeks with this as our theme:  We Want To Pump You Up.  Think about this “weighty thought” and marvel:  Our Maker literally pumps us up 100,000 times each and every day. 

 Of course, there are some who look at exactly the same evidence and come to a very different conclusion.   Human life is random cosmic accident; we’re just clots of blood, formed to no purpose.   I guess you can see it that way.   I can only say that doesn’t jibe with the evidence in front of me.  Have I shown you pictures of my granddaughter, lately?   If you want to deny the miracle of human life, I have no need to quarrel with you.   Here’s all the proof I need.  Living Proof, so far as I’m concerned!

 I mentioned before, it’s not unusual to find a healthy percentage of physicians in a United Methodist congregation, St. Andrew’s certainly being no exception.   Methodists are typically science-friendly people, having little patience for those who want to pit religion versus science or vise versa.  I’m a big believer that God works in and through the sciences.  
 

I’m thrilled to report Adrian Alvarez underwent successful heart surgery this week.  His health outlook is outstanding!!!  I count that as a miracle in its own right, performed via physicians using their God-given gifts of healing.   I rejoice in the many relationships I’ve shared, past and present, with Christian physicians, whose work has reinforced their sense of the majesty of both creation and Creator.     

The Christian Church is making ready now for our annual Festival of Life, otherwise known as Christmas.    I’ve read that the alleged killer at Fort Hood posted entries on a web site, picking up the terrorist mantra, “We love death more than you love life.”  I’ve thought about that in the context of the Christmas message.  How can Christians not be big on life?   It’s our story that the one who in the beginning made the heavens and the earth has been revealed to us in a child formed in the womb of woman, a little heart beating inside his tiny chest.  
It’s interesting that the first accounts of Jesus’ ministry do NOT include stories of his birth.  But then some started saying, Jesus wasn’t really human, you know.  Human flesh is inherently wicked, sinful; Jesus was divine and therefore only appeared to be human.  NO, insists the church.  The Word of God is born of flesh and blood, fully human, head to wiggling little toes, and, yes, the heart.  
This is not an insignificant theological abstraction.  If God values human life enough to be born to it Himself, how can believers not value life, across the board.  Grownup Jesus would teach we should value even the lives of our enemies!

I want to move us toward communion with a very short meditation on The Sacred Heart.  A thousand years ago, monks were meditating on the Five Wounds of the crucified Christ, the penultimate being from the sword that pierced his chest, to confirm he was in fact dead.
 
  
In the 17th century, a French nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque received visions of the Christ, appearing radiant with love, inviting her to rest her head against his heart.   The Sister had been chosen to make known the wonders of his love.  It’s said that Margaret Mary heard Jesus saying, “Behold the Heart that has so loved men… instead of gratitude I receive from the greater part (of humanity) only ingratitude.”  The desired gratitude included Holy Communion.  Our Catholic friends institutionalized the experience into what’s known as The Feast Of the Sacred Heart.  

The whole point of this sort of thing was as an exercise in spiritual meditation.   Methodists typically aren’t so good at meditating, but I invite you to take a deep breath, focus on the imagery, and maybe listen to your own heart….

Let’s join together in a litany of the Sacred Heart

Lord, have mercy on us
CHRIST HAVE MERCY ON US
Lord, have mercy on us. Christ hear us.
CHRIST, GRACIOUSLY HEAR US.

God the Father of Heaven
HAVE MERCY ON US
God the Son, Redeemer of the world
HAVE MERCY ON US
God the Holy Ghost
HAVE MERCY ON US

Heart of Jesus, of infinite majesty.
HEART OF JESUS, HOLY TEMPLE OF GOD.
Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity.
HEART OF JESUS, FULL OF GOODNESS AND LOVE

Heart of Jesus, in whom art all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
HEART OF JESUS, IN WHOM THE FATHER WAS WELL PLEASED
Heart of Jesus, patient and rich in mercy
HEART OF JESUS, FOUNT OF LIFE AND HOLINESS

Heart of Jesus, bruised for our iniquities.
HEART OF JESUS, OBEDEIENT UNTO DEATH
Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance
HEART OF JESUS, VICTIM FOR OUR SINS

Heart of Jesus, salvation for those who hope in Thee
HEART OF JESUS, HOPE OF THOSE WHO DIE IN THEE
Jesus, meek and humble of heart
MAKE OUR HEARTS LIKE UNTO THINE

 Let us pray
Almighty and everlasting God, look upon the Heart of your well-beloved Son and upon the acts of praise and satisfaction which He renders unto you in the name of sinners.  In your great goodness, grant pardon to them who seek your mercy, in the name of the your Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, world without end.

BRD