Creating Worship Together

Power and Authority: The Peter Parker Challenge

2012-02-01T21:29:00.000-06:00

Mark 1:21-28

Sunday, January 29

When Peter Parker woke up the morning after he was bitten by a super-spider, he noticed something had changed. When he became more fully aware of the power he suddenly had, he instinctively used it to do what most teenage boys would do with sudden wealth or strength: get the girl. If you haven’t read the comic or seen the movie, I’m talking about Spiderman, before he became a superhero was a super dweeb. He tried to impress Mary Jane by beating up the school bullies, but she was disgusted. He figured she would respect him if he had a muscle car, so he looked for a way to earn some quick cash as a cage fighter “the Human Spider,” and buy the car of his dreams for the girl of his dreams. But it all went badly wrong.

The last words his uncle Ben said to him were, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And after Uncle Ben’s death (in the formula typical of super-heroes) he dedicated himself to using his power to benefit the downtrodden and defeated victims of crime in the city.

In the gospel lesson for today we read of a new power and authority. As the story goes, the people around Jesus are just waking up to the power in their midst. He teaches as one who has authority, not as one of the scribes who just quote the commentaries on the scripture. He teaches as if he has the authority to communicate the will of God. And besides that, he demonstrates a power we have never seen before.

The gospel is teaching us to be aware of the power in our midst. Annie Dillard once wrote:

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”

Are we aware of the power? I think we are. I think we know full well the power of the gospel and the challenge of discipleship. I think it frightens us. Because we are, as a generation, suspicious of power. “Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This we believe as if it were gospel, but it isn’t. It’s Lord Acton, a British historian. We witnessed the truth of the truism in the 20^th century, in the first great war to end all wars, and the second great war to end all wars, and all the wars after that. We witnessed it in politics local and global. We have been trained to challenge authority and beware of power.

But we must remember that we have seen a different kind of power at work in the world as well. The power of nonviolent resistance to violence. The power the united behind Gandhi in India and King in Selma and Birmingham. It’s the same power we see at work in the gospel. The power to cast out the demons of colonial subjugation and racial segregation, the power to cast out the demon of economic, legal and social injustice.

This is the power in our midst and with great power comes great responsibility.

How God’s Mind Changed

2012-01-23T16:54:00.000-06:00

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 (but you should read the whole story)

22 January 2012

“I believe in the New Testament God,” one of our legislators said to a Jewish friend of mine. Would he have said that, had he known she was Jewish? I don’t know. But his statement reflects one of the ridiculous things people say about God. The faith formation class heard me get all hot and bothered about this one a few weeks ago when somebody said, “Why is the God in the Old Testament all mean?”

“Where did you hear that?” I snapped.

“From my history teacher”

“Well your history teacher is an id—I mean your history teacher is sadly misinformed.”

The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same God. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible-- that's the bible that Jesus studied. That’s the bible from which Rabbi Jesus taught. That’s where he got all of his best material! So how can anyone say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of vengeance and the God of the New Testament a God of grace—that’s just messed up, and I won’t stand for it and neither should you and what’s a history teacher doing talking about the bible anyway—doesn’t he (or she) have enough material to cover? And furthermore, we know Jewish people who know that God is compassionate. Saying that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous God as if that were the whole story is not just a slander against God, but a slander against a whole faith community!

And here we have a case in point: the story of Jonah, from what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew bible, one of the books of the prophets. Jonah is distinguished among the prophets by his reluctance, to put it mildly. The story of Jonah is a parody, a send up, a spoof, a comic satire of a prophet’s story. Last week, we read about the call of the prophet Samuel. When Samuel was called, he replied “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” When God called Jonah, he ran away! As if a person could outrun the presence of God! Jonah ran for the coast, and boarded a ship headed for Tarshish, which I believe is Hebrew[1] for “the back of beyond,” or “far, far away.” When a storm came up Jonah hid in the hold, the belly of the ship, and you know how he got from there to the belly of the whale and was spit up on the beach, and there our reading for today took up the story.

The story of Jonah is a story of a man who went to ridiculous lengths to avoid the prophetic call of God. That makes him a sympathetic character, somebody we recognize, somebody we can relate to. He’s not a hero, Jonah is definitely not the hero of this story, he’s just a sympathetic character. We can sympathize with Jonah because honestly, who wants to be a prophet? Oh, we would all like to think we might be like Samuel or like Isaiah, and say “Here I am, Lord, send me.” But we know what happens to prophets. Prophets get to speak the truth to power, and power takes offense. Who wants to be exiled and outlawed, like Elijah, or thrown down a well, like Jeremiah?

The story goes to great lengths to demonstrate that once God has set God’s eye on you, you can’t run and you can’t hide. God will continue to pursue and win the game of hide and seek. There’s no evading God’s attentions. God is a persistent suitor.

When Jonah finally acquiesced, and obeyed God’s summons, we can tell his heart wasn’t really in it. He went to Nineveh—that great city. He didn’t even get to the center of the city, he walked one-third of the distance and he said, “Four days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And then, I suppose, he went out to find a safe place to watch the destruction of the city.

But here’s the strangest part of the story: you know how no one ever believes the prophet? You know how Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “You better let my people go or God will smite your firstborn,” and Pharaoh said, “Yeah, right. I’ll take my chances.” You know how Jeremiah said, if you go making deals with the devil the city will be overrun, and the royal family and all their supporters said, “Oh you be quiet, Jeremiah, you’re upsetting people,” and “Into the mud, prophet!”

Yes, the paradox of Jonah is that the most reluctant prophet ever also proved to be the most effective! The people actually listened, and repented, and when God saw that the people repented, then God repented of the destruction that God had planned—which is how prophecy is supposed to work. The job of the prophet is not to predict the future. That’s not prophecy, that’s fortune telling, a completely different business and not one that God is in. The job of the prophet is to tell the truth about what is happening now, and to show people where it might lead, if things keep on going the way they have been going. The goal of prophetic preaching is repentance.

Maybe the reason people get the idea that God, in the Old Testament, is all about punishment, is because they don’t read the whole story. The whole story is that God is—in Jonah’s own words, where he paraphrases a psalm[2]—merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Whenever and wherever people turn their hearts to God and emulate God’s mercy, forgiveness, and compassion, there is life. That is the whole of the law and the prophets, said Jesus, and so said Rabbi Hillel.

The Hebrew bible does not teach that God is vengeful. The Hebrew bible teaches us that God is mutable. God can change God’s mind. The mind of God is influenced by people, by who we are, by what we do and what we say. God listens, God learns, and God changes. Wherever and whenever people emulate God’s ability to listen and learn and change, there is life.

The gospel of Jonah and the gospel of Jesus is the same gospel, the good news of God’s compassion and mercy. The challenge of Jonah and the challenge of Jesus is the same challenge. We are challenged to respond to God’s call, even if our response is reluctant. We are called to speak the truth to power, even if we are afraid. Power might just surprise us, and respond with repentance, mercy and compassion.

One traditional interpretation of the story of Jonah is that Jonah is Israel. Jonah is a parable about Israel. God made a covenant with Abraham, in the early days, God made a covenant that through Abraham’s children, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Sometimes, Israel, like Jonah, avoided the call to be a blessing to all nations, or fulfilled that call only begrudgingly. Because Israel in the time of exile was so used to being disparaged among nations, Israel returned disparagement in kind. The book of Jonah challenges Israel to entertain the possibility that faithful people can be found in foreign lands. The exaggerated response of the people of Nineveh, who repent on a scale unheard of in Israel, emphasizes the possibility.

Jonah could also be interpreted as a parable about the church. We are called to carry the message of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and God’s abundant mercy, to all the world. We have a message to deliver. A message about justice for the poor and marginalized. A message about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and not doing to others what you would not want done to you. We have a message about the God who is still speaking and about people needing to listen and learn and change.

But, like Jonah, sometimes we would rather run away from the call. Because, we know that no one is going to listen, that people have already made up their minds—that’s what we think we know, anyway. We’ll just tweet the message and run away. People have already made up their minds they aren’t going to change.

Truth is, it is we who have made up our minds about “those people,” the Ninevites, the fundamentalists, whoever we think “they” are. “They” will never change. Except, in the story, they do, they change. People can and do, sometimes, respond and repent. However reluctant, meek, or indifferent the messenger may be, people respond to the message.

Let us listen, and hear what the spirit is saying to the church, to us, today.

[1] Not really. Might have been Tarsus, in what we now call Turkey; or it might have been in Spain. Either one is far, far away.

[2] Several psalms, actually, and the torah. Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18.

The Voice

2012-01-09T16:10:00.000-06:00

January 8, 2012

Mark 1:4-11; Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5

The power of the voice is celebrated in today’s scriptures-- the power of the voice of God to create, destroy, and re-create. It is the voice of God that calls creation into being, the voice of God that strips the forest bare, the voice of God that claims Jesus as “my beloved,” and calls him good.
Before the earth had shape and form the wind of God moved over the waters and God said… and it was so.
When Jesus came up out of the water he saw the Spirit descending on him in the form of a dove and he heard a voice from heaven call out, you are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased. In Mark’s gospel, no one else hears or sees what Jesus hears and sees. Jesus alone hears the voice. It is no wonder that immediately afterward he went into the wilderness for a 40 day retreat. He probably needed some alone time to think about what had just happened to him.
In our faith tradition, we proclaim that God is still speaking. We listen for the voice of God speaking not only through the scriptures, not only through tradition, but also through the world that God created. We listen for the still speaking God when we take our morning walk, and hear God in the silence of snow falling; we listen for God in the dark cold night and hear God in the boom of the ice cracking. We listen for God when we read and we hear God speaking through careful study of the world. We listen for God and hear God speaking in the world in many ways, in many languages, including the languages of mathematics and science. We hear God speaking from the Hubble telescope and we hear God speaking from the depths of the earth at CERN; we hear God speaking from the first spark of creation and we hear God speaking at the forward edge of the universe.
God is still speaking, and the voice of God continues to call the world into being. The voice shouts and the voice whispers in the ear, the voice is universal and intimately personal. The voice of God continues to create and destroy and re-create.
The power to destroy is not a power we like to ascribe to God, not as much as the ancients did anyway. Remember the last time a tornado ripped through the south end of town? The psalm seems to have been written in response to an event like that, the psalmist was awed by the power of the wind. It’s not in the destruction of barns and cattle that we see God at work. But what about the power to remove what needs to be removed, to make way for something better? The power to remove old prejudices, the power to remove accepted customs that we now see as barriers, these are the walls that the voice of God can knock down.
We perceive that God is still speaking. But not everyone seems to hear what we hear. And, other Christians seem to hear things that we don’t hear. What do we do when others don’t seem to hear what we hear? How do we know we aren’t just hearing what we want to hear? What’s the difference between hearing the voice of God and hearing voices?
Part of the work of the church is to discern the voice of God, to discern where God is at work in the world for good. We meet together as the church to help one another discern God’s loving Spirit. We meet together to listen for the voice of God, and to test every revelation through the measure of Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. We test every revelation—the new ones and the old standards—by asking if they measure up to Christ’s compassion and God’s steadfast love. Which sounds simple when put so succinctly, but it gets complicated, we know it does. That is why it is vital that the congregation come together for worship, every week.
We know that “being the church” isn’t just about “going to church.” We know that the mission of the church begins at the doorstep. But it is here, in worship together, that we get our marching orders. It is here that we hear and discern the voice that calls us, and here that we get the inspiration and the power and the energy to be the church in the world. Ideally, that’s what worship is. Worship generates the power and light that fuels the mission.
We meet together to share with one another what we hear the voice of God calling us to do, to encourage one another, and to hold one another accountable.
God calls to you, God calls to each of us, “You are my beloved.” God calls to us as a congregation, “You are my beloved.” How then shall we live?

Ring in the New

2011-12-30T15:03:00.000-06:00

When I was a child of 12 or so years, I earned the esteemed and highly coveted position of bell-ringer at First Congregational Church in Moline (IL). The position was usually filled by boys, because it was heavy and messy work (it involved climbing crude wooden steps to a dirty, dusty, cobwebby bell tower, not something to be done in “girly clothes”), but my brother held the position before me and I learned the ropes from him. One rope, actually. You had to pull hard but once you got going you could ride the rope up off the ground, and that was exhilarating!

That was just one of several church-related jobs I have held over the years. Another was baby-sitter to the children of our Associate Pastor and his wife, Bob & Julie Ullman, a job I sometimes shared with my sister. One New Years’ Eve when we were babysitting, Bob and Julie returned home before midnight and Bob offered to drive us down to church, to climb the bell tower and ring in the New Year! All along that river city, bells were ringing, from First Congregational and First Presbyterian, and First Lutheran, St. Mary’s… all the churches that still had bells in towers.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

These lines, penned by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, are part of a much longer work, “In Memoriam,” published in 1850. The previous years had not been kind to Tennyson. For more than a decade, he had been mourning the loss of his close friend from college days. The one good thing, the love of his life to whom he had been engaged to be married, was lost to him: her family broke off the engagement when Tennyson lost the fortune he had inherited. Grief, heartbreak, diminished circumstances—no wonder he wrote “Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.”

Of course we know nothing is really dying. We are turning a page, hanging a new calendar on the wall. January 1, 2012 will look very similar to December 31, 2011. But we pause to acknowledge the passing of time, perhaps to shed a tear for missed opportunities, perhaps to raise a parting glass in memory of those whom we have lost. And perhaps we will raise another, to life, to hope, to promise.

What I sense most of all in Tennyson’s verses is release. “In Memoriam” seems to mark the end of grieving, a final relinquishment of mourning. Is it the poet’s declaration of independence from despair? Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is an invitation for hope to enter in.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

So be it. Amen.

You can read more of “Ring Out, Wild Bells” here.

God and Material Engagement Theory

2011-12-12T11:14:00.000-06:00

Here’s how my brain works:

One day last week, while driving from one place to another, I caught a snippet of an opinion piece on the radio. It was about resisting the ludicrous material excesses of the end-of-year holidays—all the time spent shopping and the money spent procuring just the right things to give to our friends and family, things which would be forgotten and possibly discarded before the thawing of the frozen ground. The voice on the radio suggested we cut the number of gifts we give in half. Use some of the money we would have spent on gifts to make a donation to a charitable organization that does some good in the world, like Heifer International. How very Puritan, I thought. Who is this guy, preaching the gospel like he invented it?

I found the answer on the National Public Radio website. This guy is Adam Frank, who authored a book called About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang. A couple of clicks later I was previewing the book on Amazon.com, and I noticed frequent use the phrase “material engagement.” So I “searched inside the book” as Amazon allows and discovered seventy-one results. That seemed significant. That led me to Google “material engagement,” and after I filtered out “fabric” and “weddings” I discovered Lambros Malafouris and Colin Refrew at Keble College, Oxford Univeristy, and soon I was in too deep.

So, paddling back to the shallower pools of Adam Frank (no offense intended), I pondered the phrase “material engagement.” It struck me because even though it is still Advent, my brain has long been contemplating Christmas and Epiphany, and God’s incarnation. Which is, it seems to me, God’s material engagement with the cosmos. The theological leap from the God who could not be seen face-to-face, whose voice could not be heard but through the prophets, who could only be addressed through the rituals the temple, to a God who is present in the person of Jesus—that leap requires a new theory of God. If God who spoke to no one face-to-face could suddenly be present in human form, that means God changed the rules of engagement with God’s creation, from immaterial engagement through dreams and visions, to material engagement in human flesh. What the church calls “incarnation,” God getting fleshy, could also be called God’s praxis of material engagement.

So what? Well let me tell you what. Many people live as if the material world doesn’t matter. Many of these people even consider their point of view to be Christian. What really matters, they say, is what is in your heart, what you believe. As long as you accept Jesus into your heart and believe, really believe, then you are saved. Saved from what? From this dirty world, which will be destroyed. And they proceed to excel the rate of destruction, because their engagement with the world is based on the assumption that mater doesn’t matter, or worse, that mater is evil.

That’s just messed up.

If God created the world, and loved the world enough to become materially engaged in the world, then everything—every last thing—has holy potential. Our own praxis of material engagement should be informed by God’s praxis of material engagement. If God was present in the person of Jesus, then God is potentially present in every person. If God slept in a manger in Bethlehem, then God is potentially present in every barn, every favela, every shanty town and shelter. If God walked the back roads of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, then every country lane from Mississippi to Mozambique to Myanmar and all around the world is highway in the Holy Land; and every city street is potentially a street in the City of God. If God bathed in the Jordan River, then every river… you get the drift, right?

How can we despise anyone who is potentially God? How can we abandon the streets of God’s city? How can we remove the mountain of God’s presence?

If we believe, really believe, or reluctantly believe or even entertain the possibility for a moment, that God is present in the world, then how should we live? Think about it.

Christ of the Carols: Child of God, Love's Pure Light

2011-12-12T11:12:00.000-06:00

December 4, 2011

Text: Silent Night, Holy Night

When I was in elementary school, I remember seeing an educational film about the story of the song, Silent Night. The dramatic recreation of events was set in a small village in Austria and filmed in black and white. You probably know the story as well as I do, how the organ in the village church broke down, and no one could be found to repair it. So the Choir Master, Franz Gruber, and the Pastor, Joseph Mohr, collaborated on a simple hymn which could be accompanied by guitar.

It is a tale of adversity was transformed into advantage. Which is probably why it has become an American favorite. We like our legends of adversity overcome. We like to imagine that if it weren’t for the apparently unfortunate circumstance of the organ that went kaput, the song might never have been written. God works in a mysterious way, wonders to perform.

The thing is, no one can find an account of this story that predates 1965.

The hymn was written in 1818.

So this dramatic account is probably a complete fiction.

And yet, we know this is true: God does work in a mysterious way. God does turn disappointment into blessing, time and time again. And that is why the broken organ story will last. Because whether or not it actually happened that way, it is a true story. The story is not truth, but the story is a container ship of truth. It is the vessel that carries a truth into the future.

And that is why the stories of Christ’s nativity are so precious. They need not be factual to be true. We don’t need to pretend to suspend our disbelief in a virgin birth. We don’t have to pretend to suspend our disbelief that a star could guide travelers to one particular house among many, or that we could call men “wise” who thought that it did. We don’t have to pretend not to notice that Matthew and Luke’s gospel tell completely different stories of Jesus’ birth, and that two of the gospels don’t mention it at all. Because the truth of the story is not in the details. The story holds the truth. And it is a beautiful vessel for the truth. It is a story richly embroidered, lovingly crafted, polished to shine like gold.

The hymns and carols of Christmas similarly vessels of a truth, a faith, a devotion passed from generation to generation. Still nacht, heilege nacht, Alles schlaft, eimsam wacht nur das traute hochheilege Paar, holder Knabe mit lockigen Haar, Schlafen in himmlishe ruh. Silent night, holy night, everyone sleeps, no one is awake except the faithful, holy few. The beautiful boy with the curly hair sleeps in heavenly rest.

Anyone who has spent a night with a newborn knows that the heavenly rest could not have lasted long! But don’t sweat the details, because that is not where the truth is found. The truth is that Jesus, like every baby, is born into a world that, for all its faults, becomes holy to those gathered around for the event. Time seems to stop, and for a moment there is no one in the world except mother and child, looking into one another’s eyes for the first time. The rest of the world might as well be asleep.

The truth is that generations of Christians have found in the person of Jesus a God-presence so powerful, so complete, that their devotion found expression in stories and songs that identify that presence as extending retroactively through childhood and into infancy. And so Jesus, the Man of God, became Jesus the infant Child of God. And our hymn for today is a song of praise to the Child of God, love’s pure light. Let us join with our brothers and sisters in Christ in all ages in this song of praise.

Christ of the Carols: Hail, the Heaven Born Prince of Peace!

2011-11-28T10:44:00.000-06:00

Text: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

To rise up and sing—this is one of the most ancient and most natural forms of worship. According to our scriptures, when the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea from slavery into freedom, once they had made it to the safer shore, Moses’ sister Miriam picked up her drum and began to sing and dance, and all the people joined her. Across cultures, around the world, people express their highest joy and their deepest sorrow in music.

In the New Testament too, possibly the oldest verses are found in the Philippian hymn. Paul’s letters predate the gospels—you know that, right? And within Paul’s letter to the Philippians he quotes a hymn that might represent one of the first hymns of the first Christians, and the first attempt at Christology (which is one big word that stands in for many. Christology is about making sense of who Christ is in relation to God).

In this letter, Paul was trying to correct some bad behavior that resulted from dissention among the church of the Philippians. He said, stop your quarreling. Stop acting all superior. That part is a paraphrase, here is the actual quote:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

And that is possibly the first hymn of the Christian church. Many thousands, or millions more were to follow. Charles Wesley, to whom Hark the Herald Angels Sing is attributed, wrote 6,000 hymns in his lifetime.

Actually, the hymn as it is presented in our hymnal bears only a slight resemblance to the original, by which I do not mean the Pilgrim Hymnal version, because that one too is several contributors and editors removed from Wesley’s original version, “Hark How the Welkin Sings,” published in 1739, almost 300 years ago. But, that was a common problem pre-copyright law. Once published, an author’s work went viral (as we say now); people picked it up and reworked it and published their own versions. Wesley’s hymn was tweaked a bit more a century later to fit with Mendelssohn’s melody. So what we have today is more than just a Wesleyan hymn, it is a hymn of the church. With apologies to ASCAP, and a nod to Wikipedia, sometimes a collaborative effort produces a better product.

So, let’s look not so much at Wesley’s original but at the “canonical version” of the hymn, the version we have before us. The first verse is easy to parse; it is of course a retelling of that bit in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel about the shepherds seeing angels who praise God and say “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to all people!” And then the hymn invites us all to join in with the angel’s song.

The second and third verses are stuffed with Christological references. These verses identify Jesus as the “offspring of the Virgin’s womb,” and “Emmanuel,” and “Prince of Peace,” all references to Isaiah’s prophecy. “Son of Righteousness” like “Son of Man” is another title given by the Hebrew prophets to identify the one who would come to restore the balance of justice, bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly and vindicate all who are oppressed. When we sing these titles we are celebrating the God of the oppressed. This is an invocation calling on the one who comes to destroy the rule of greed and violence, to replace it with a reign of peace. These titles, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, are political titles, and as such, would be as appropriately sung in an Occupy Wall Street rally, as in church. Maybe more so. When we use these titles and sing these verses we are making a political statement. Not a partisan political statement, mind you. God is not a Republican or a Democrat; God transcends all that. But by identifying Christ as the Prince of Peace we are identifying an ideal to which all leaders should be held accountable. All leaders will fail to live up to that ideal, but it is better to aim high and fail then to be aimless.

The concluding lines of the third verse are a reference to the same theme we found in Paul’s Philippian hymn—a confirmation that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, chose to be born in human form and was obedient unto death, and furthermore that somehow that obedience gives us eternal life. Mild, he lays his glory by, born that we no more must die. Born to raise “the sons of earth,” born to give us second birth. The Christ of the carol is one who does not grasp at crowns, but lives to serve, and serves to give life to others.

So let us be of the same mind, as we sing Glory to the newborn king, or as our newest version reads, “Glory to the Christ-child bring.”

The Table as Parable

2011-11-07T10:07:00.005-06:00

Matt. 25:31-46

As we come to the end of the gospel of Matthew, we read parables which contrast the faithful and the wicked, the wise and the foolish, trustworthy and lazy, sheep and goats. These are parables of the Day of Judgment, when the human one will come and bring justice. What justice looks like in the 24^th and 25^th chapters of the gospel of Matthew is informed by what happens to Jesus in the 26^th and 27^th chapters. What justice looks like in the gospel of Matthew is also shaped by what was happening to the first century Christians for whom the gospel was written, and by the memory of Israel in exile, as recorded by the prophets.

A thread of violence is woven into these parables, and it is troubling to our liberal sensibilities. Usually, we gloss over it, ignore it, as one would politely ignore a flaw in someone else’s dress—a run in the stocking or a stain on the tie. It’s unsightly, you can hardly keep your eyes off it, but it would be rude to point it out. You have to be really good friends with someone to tell her that her bra strap is showing or his fly is open. It’s far too embarrassing to share that observation with a mere acquaintance.

Sometimes it’s like that with the bible too. Some parts of scripture are so embarrassing or so offensive, that we would just rather pretend we didn’t notice. But we are good friends with the scriptures so let’s be honest. Matthew says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, fire, devils, and an eternal lockout. Hey, Matthew, what’s up with that?

We can only imagine the gospel’s answer, but as I said, the context gives us a clue, and the context is a violent world. If you have ever been in exile, if you have ever been in prison, if you have ever been falsely accused, betrayed by friends, beaten and mocked, then you know where the gospel writer is coming from. If you are a veteran of war, if you have been a prisoner of war, or if you have ever been a sole survivor of a battle, maybe you understand. For victims of violence, maybe rescue and relief are just not enough. For victims of violence, maybe justice is incomplete without retribution. It takes a great deal of psychological maturity and spiritual strength not to wish for retribution.

Scripture is a human creation. It is inspired and informed by thousands of years of life experience and a passion for God. Scripture does not speak with a single voice; it is a chorus of voices, sometimes in harmony and sometimes a cacophony. We believe that God is still speaking through the scripture and experience; and we have been given the discretion to sift through the scriptures to find the kernel of wheat among the chaff.

The parables of judgment tell of retributive justice. But other stories tell of another vision of justice. The story of the manna in the wilderness describes a distributive justice. Those who are lazy and those who are industrious, those who are obedient and those who are naughty all have enough to eat. Those who gathered much did not have too much, those who gathered little did not have too little.

The stories of Jesus on the hillside, breaking bread and sharing fish, are stories of distributive justice. Whether they came to hear Jesus or came just to eat, everyone had enough and more was leftover.

Holy Communion is also a parable. The parable of the table that we repeat on the first Sunday of every month is a reenactment of God’s distributive justice. When we come to this table we step into a numinous place: we step into God’s realm, where everyone is welcome, and everyone is fed, and we look forward to the day “when sharing by all will mean scarcity for none.” We rehearse our roles in God’s realm. Here we practice sharing, so that sharing will come naturally. Here we practice joy, so that joy will come naturally. Here we receive the presence of Christ so that we will recognize the presence of Christ when we step away from the table and out into the world.

At this table we embrace a vision of justice that means everyone eats. Everyone gets in, everyone has a place at the table. No one is cast out, no one suffers violence. Everyone has a table prepared in the presence of former enemies who are now friends, everyone’s head is anointed with oil and every cup overflows, and there is one flock, one shepherd and God of all.

Next step: Go and do likewise.

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: An Oddly Informative Sermon Quiz

2011-10-24T08:10:00.002-05:00

23 October 2011

I am not Peter Segel or Carl Kassel. I am not even Paula Poundstone. For three consecutive Sundays we have poked fun at ourselves through a spoof of the NPR news quiz, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. The skits were written by Erik Steen and enacted by our talented troupe of Stewardship Committee members. But today it’s just me, offering you one more opportunity to play the quiz. Whether win or lose, and I assure you, you can’t lose, you will be rewarded.

So, here is your first multiple choice question in a game called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Budget Meeting.” You will play as a group; shout out the answer when you think you know it.

Other churches take their giving very seriously, but for the past three years at First Congregational, we have been celebrating the Stewardship season with comedy. The scriptural basis for this change in philosophy is

A. From the book of Exodus, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass.” Because what could be funnier than that?

B. From the Book of Genesis, “God has brought laughter to me, now everyone who hears will laugh at me,” which is what Sarah said when she found out she was pregnant at age 90.

C. From Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver,” because the word translated cheerful is literally hilarious.

That’s right, it is C. The context of the quote is that apparently the people of the church in Corinth had pledged to make a donation to the church in Jerusalem, which was suffering severe persecution, but they had not yet come through with the gift. Paul reminded them that the people from the much poorer community of Philippi had already made good on their pledge, so don’t let them make you look bad. But no pressure, don’t let me guilt trip you, for the Lord loves a cheerful, or in the Greek language of the day, “hilarious” giver. At First Congregational we have been testing the limits of hilarious by poking fun at our relationship with wealth.

Actually, there is another scriptural basis for this change from somber to silly. It is the first commandment, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me.” We rarely think about the commandment against idolatry as relating to money. But what else threatens to take the place of God in our lives? The pursuit of wealth is a national pastime, if not a national obsession. As the folktale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, reminds us, the best way to upset a pompous ruler is to laugh at him. By laughing about our relationship with wealth, we make profane what wants to be sacred.

Next question: At First Congregational United Church of Christ we encourage members to pledge to the General Fund, which is for all the operating expenses of our local church. We also encourage you to give a “tip” to OCWM; like figuring the tip for your server at Applebees, move the decimal one place to the left and add that on to the bill. Ten percent to OCWM which stands for:

A. Owls, Crows, Wrens and Mallards: a consortium of bird charities.

B. Old Codgers of Wrestle Mania: a retirement fund for Jesse Ventura types.

C. Our Church’s Wider Mission, the basic support for the United Church of Christ.

Too easy, I suppose. The gifts that you give to Our Churches Wider Mission are forwarded to the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ. The Conference keeps a portion for their ministries, and forwards the rest to the national office of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland Ohio. In Minnesota, our Conference provides training and support for clergy and for churches in transition, hosts an annual meeting so we can have fellowship with other United Church of Christ congregations in our state, and brings church members together for cooperative ministries of justice and witness, outdoor ministries, and other ministries that we can do better together.

The Cleveland office coordinates the ministries of Conferences, and provides resources to congregations. We have offices of Communication and Publication, Stewardship, Education, and Global Ministries, to name a few. Our gifts to Our Church’s Wider Mission help share the good news of God’s stillspeaking voice, all around the world.

Final Question: How much should I, personally, pledge to the church?

A. You are our pastor, you give your whole life, we don’t expect you to pledge!

B. Ten percent of your gross income.

C. The national average: 1.5% of your net income.

Or D. Work it out for yourself, prayerfully.

The answer for me and for everyone is D. Being a pastor does not exclude me from the joy of giving. Generosity is a Christian virtue, it is one of the virtues we all must practice, like prayer, and service, and patience and gentleness.

Some churches do expect their members to give ten percent of their income (gross or net, I’m not sure which). But we are not biblical literalists in any other matter, so we certainly aren’t going to be legalistic on this point. Some people may be able to give more than 10%. Others may struggle to reach the nation’s average rate of generosity, 1.5% of their annual income.

Each year, I hope to be able to grow in generosity as well as in other spiritual gifts. We each have to work it out for ourselves, considering our responsibility to care for ourselves, our families, and others.

Well, that’s all for today’s quiz. You are 3 for 3, so you have won a fabulous prize: a pancake breakfast, served by members of the Stewardship committee to thank you for your faithfulness!

Out of the Depths I Cry: The Birth of the Blues

2011-10-21T09:40:00.001-05:00

I got one of those forwards today, that I usually don't read, but I guessed where it was going, and I knew I would have to reply. The email attributed the hymn "Precious Lord" to the big band leader Tommy Dorsey. WRONG! Thomas Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey were both musicians but the similarity ends there. So it must be time to reprint this sermon, from the Wednesday Lenten series on Songs of our Faith. First preached in 2004.

This Lenten Season our Wednesday night services will focus on the music of our faith, the beloved hymns of the church. Tonight, the featured hymn is “Precious Lord Take My Hand,” by Thomas Dorsey, a blues musician who became “the father of Gospel music."

I have included in this service the recitation of a psalm, because the psalms contain the oldest hymns of the faith. The Book of Psalms is the hymnbook of the bible. Psalm 130 is one of many psalms of lament. Psalms of lament are honest, unguarded expressions of grief, and yearning. The psalms of lament, like The Blues, were born of suffering, captivity, enslavement. The people of the psalms were enslaved in Egypt, and held captive in Babylon; the people of the Blues were slaves in these United States, and captives to the laws of segregation. The dehumanizing effects of slavery and deprivation gave birth to the blues. It wasn’t the breeze in the trees singing sweet melodies after all. The Blues was born of suffering.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, music was as segregated as everything else in American society. There were separate washrooms and separate drinking fountains and separate neighborhoods and separate hospitals and separate churches. And folks had their own separate music, and separate places to get together and enjoy music.

In our separate churches, we had our separate music, the churches of black America singing the spirituals in call and response style, songs which came from the merger of the faith of the new land with the rhythm of the homeland. The churches of white America were singing songs of praise to the tunes of classical European composers. Like today, churches then were slow to change, and though folks might sing the blues or listen to country music on Saturday night, they wouldn’t think of singing that same kind of music on Sunday morning. It would be unseemly.

So when “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” was first published (in 1932) by the well-known blues musician, Georgia Tom, folks though it was “too secular” for church, too sensual. Thomas Dorsey, who had been a minister’s son but had strayed from the flock, and sought after the things of the flesh, could not possibly be up to any good. Folks thought this must be his way of trying to lure people into the speak-easies by introducing them to his music in church.

But Thomas Dorsey’s faith was sincere, and the song, which was born of the grief of losing his wife and child, endured, and it has touched the hearts of generations of the faithful. “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” expresses the need we all feel for the Savior’s touch, in times of darkness and doubt and pain. It is a song for the world-weary, sick woman reaching out to touch the hem of his garment. It is a song for and by the prodigal son, wishing to return home, but uncertain of the welcome.

Thomas Dorsey’s return to the faith of his childhood was complete, and it transformed the church. The Blues Musician became the Father of Gospel Music, which is a style bright and hopeful. Gospel is Blues music infused with hope, and lifted by the faith that God will work all things together for good, in time.

“Precious Lord, Take My Hand” became a source of strength when the civil rights movement began. When protesters were jailed and beaten, this song was sung by supporters outside the prison. The song was sung by Mahalia Jackson at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., and by Aretha Franklin at Ms Jackson’s funeral a few years later.

This is the song that I find myself singing, when tired, weak and worn, and it always lifts me up. Thanks be to God for this gift of music. Let us sing.

Love is the Maple Syrup; Gratitude is the Pitcher

2011-10-17T10:44:00.000-05:00

16 October 2011

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Away We Go is a movie about Burt and Verona, two thirty-something professionals who go on a road trip to find home, that is, to find just the right place to raise the daughter they are expecting (Verona is hugely pregnant), staying with friends and family as they go. I stole a line from this movie for my sermon title. In Montreal, Burt and Verona stay with college friends Tom and Munch, and their four children. Late at night, after putting the kids to bed the four are at a diner together talking about life and love and marriage and children, and Tom, to illustrate a point, makes a house of leftover pancakes for sugar cube Burt and Verona and their baby, and he says:

“Look at that, is that a home? Is that a family?”

“Yeah,” Burt replies.

“NO!” Tom counters. “That’s just the raw materials. The people, the walls the furniture, that’s just stuff. That’s not a home. That’s not a family. What binds it all together is this.” And he holds aloft a pitcher of maple syrup.

“This is Love. Your patience, your consideration, your better selves. Man, you just have no idea how good you can be. But you have to use all of it. All of it…. The love, the wisdom, the generosity. The selflessness. The patience. Patience.”

And Tom continues to pour maple syrup all over the pancake house until it fills the platter and overflows onto the table.

Love is the maple syrup, the mortar, the glue, the stuff that transforms people into family, and a house or apartment into a home. Love is the stuff that sticks us together.

But what holds the love? What keeps it from dissipating into thin air or spilling all over the floor? Love is like a liquid; it takes the shape of its container—a pitcher, a bottle, a thimble—a person. A person who cannot communicate love is like a pitcher without a spout or a corked bottle that can’t be opened. There may be goodness inside, but, it has to come out somehow to do any good.

Don’t be like Olie, who loved Lena so much, he almost told her. (Ba-da-bump, cha!)

A man named Gary Chapman wrote a book several years ago expounding on five languages of love, and they aren’t English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. No, they are the languages of physical touch, acts of service, giving and receiving gifts, the language of presence, and words of affirmation. Some of us are more conversant in one of these languages; of course it is best to be multi-lingual in love.

The apostle Paul was particularly good at speaking the love language of affirmation, by expressing his gratitude for the people to whom he wrote his letters. “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, remembering your faithfulness.” (I Thes)

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you….” (Philippians)

“I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” (Ephesians)

The bonds of love between the apostle and the congregation were strengthened by these words of gratitude. Each was reminded of the other’s faithfulness. Gratitude is the pitcher or the spout through which the love flows. Love builds up the church, strengthens the body of Christ, and cements the relationships of brotherly and sisterly affection between members. Paul was writing about the church, but of course, the same is true for families.

I know that I often take my family for granted. I was reminded of this by my Korean foreign exchange student, fifteen-year-old Min Young, whom we hosted several years ago. After dinner, every evening, as he stood to clear his plate, he offered a courtly little bow and thanked me for the delicious supper. Even when Richard did the cooking, he thanked me. It is probably something his mother and father insisted he do, and it was very sweet. It made me realize, however, how many times I had risen from the table without thanking anyone.

How simple it is to say “thank you.” Each word of gratitude is like a dollop of love, sweet goodness, sticking us together. A word of gratitude says: I see you; I know you; my life is better because of you. It’s not simply good manners: expressing gratitude is a spiritual discipline, which opens our eyes to the goodness and Godliness all around us.

Love is the maple syrup, gratitude is the pitcher with the spout that lets the love pour out over us, to stick us together. Love sticks us together and makes us family. Love sticks us together and builds us into the body of Christ, the church.

Because God has poured love over us, we have love to share, a pitcher that is never empty. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Blessings Overflow

2011-10-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

Sunday, October 9
Psalm 23; Luke 6:27-38

About 10 years ago, when looking for ways to economize, I convinced my husband to let me cancel the cable. I knew this would be harder for him than it would be for me. I wasn’t sure what he would do on Sunday afternoons without the Golf Channel. I was looking forward to weekday afternoons without the struggle to unplug my 10 year old from Digimon and plug her into her math homework. I was expecting tears, I was prepared for arguments, I was looking forward to saving $50/month.

What I wasn’t expecting was immeasurable blessing, from one so-called sacrifice. After the adjustment, after the tears and the arguments, came an unanticipated peace that was more than the absence of noise. It was contentment. Without television, we were no longer reminded of what we lacked; we were no longer driven by images of what we should want. It’s not just the advertising, it’s the programming itself, the glittering images that cannot compare with unpolished, unproduced reality. In the absence of screen entertainment we discovered blessings all around.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We are so familiar with the Psalm that we fail to recognize the radical message, the counter-cultural world it proposes. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. I shall not need. I have it all, already. Green pastures, still waters, restoration for the soul. A banquet table, a luxuriant anointing, an overflowing cup. Goodness and mercy. This is abundant blessing.

The beatitudes of Jesus, “Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who mourn,” might be a sermon on Psalm 23, a meditation on God’s faithfulness. In the gospel of Luke, the beatitudes are followed by this promise of abundance: the measure you give will be the measure you get, pressed down, shaken together, running over… running over, like that cup in the psalm. Cups running over, grain spilling into your lap.

Sometimes, our preoccupation with our wants robs us of our sight. We become blind to the blessings that overflow. So now, I want to lead you in an exercise (adapted from David Lose, “Dear Working Preacher” Oct. 2, 2011) which I hope will help the scales fall from our eyes.

1. Take your pink bulletin insert. Turn it over. On the blank side, divide the sheet into two columns.

2. Write down in one column five to ten blessings for which you are most grateful.

3. In the other column, write down five to ten things you want or lack.

4. I don’t think God is insensitive to our wants. But we like children, sometimes want things inappropriately-- like the 14 year old who wants a car, or like the five year old who wants a horse. Sometimes we want impatiently, and sometimes we want magically. What we want may be exactly what we need; and if that is the case I am confident that in time, all will be supplied.

Bearing all that in mind, consider the question: If you could have everything on one list and nothing on the other, which would you choose? Have you any doubt now, that the Lord is your shepherd, you shall not want?

“A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap….” Thanks be to God.

Count Yourself Blessed

2011-10-10T10:18:00.003-05:00

Sunday, October 2, 2011

I was a very quiet child. I liked the luxury of solitude. For the youngest of three children, solitude was a luxury. I enjoyed those wonderful days when I got to go to grandma’s house by myself, without my brother or sister and without my cousins, when I was left on my own to discover the wonders of Aunt Gerry’s room or grandma’s pantry. Sometimes grandma’s friends or neighbors would stop by and because I was such a quiet child, they sometimes forgot I was there. And they got to talking as if there wasn’t a child in the house.

I overheard a lot of things I wasn’t meant to hear, much of it unintelligible and mostly boring. One thing I learned about grown-ups is that they were not very happy most of the time. Or maybe, it just seemed that way because in Grandma’s parlor, or at her kitchen table, people felt free to tell her how they really felt. Sometimes, when someone finished their litany of complaints against the world, a long pause was followed by a sigh and someone would say, “Well, count your blessings.” Oftentimes, that was followed by a chuckle, and sometimes a confusing—to a five-year-old anyway—blend of laughter and tears together. And a little more hot water for your tea.

When I was a teenager, I was old enough to sit at the table in grandma’s kitchen and recite my own litany—my list of disappointments, my case against my parents, my sister, Ronald Reagan, the universe, and everything. When I was finished, grandma would say. “Debbie (she’s the only person in the world allowed to call me Debbie so don’t even try it), you have to count your blessings. Now would you like some more hot water for that tea bag?”

But I was too young and far too earnest to laugh. The injustice of the world was too great to be eased by a little gospel, that’s what I thought at the time anyway.

But the truth is, Jesus and grandma were right. All things must pass away… and all things have, including my parents, my sister, Ronald Reagan and grandma, and I miss (almost) all of them dearly.

The apostle Paul wrote to the church: I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. (Philippians 4:12)

And the secret is in counting ourselves blessed, in any and all circumstances.

Blessed are you who who are poor, for all God’s creation is yours. ‘Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will eat and be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep and mourn, for the time will come again when you will laugh. (Luke 6:20-21, paraphrased).

Blessed are you when you are confused, for all things will become clear. Blessed are you when you are lost, for you will be found. Blessed are you broken hearted, for your heart will be mended. Blessed are you who have sorrow now, for you will rejoice.

And I say to all who live and breathe: Count yourself blessed. Amen.

We Have Known Rivers; Rivers Have Known Us Too.

2011-09-26T18:49:00.000-05:00

25 September 2011

Ezekiel 1:1-3 (by the Chebar the heavens were opened); Psalm 137:1-6 (by the rivers of Babylon)

Rev. 22: 1-5 (the river of the water of life); Matthew 3:13-17 (in the Jordan the heavens were opened) and

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes

When God began to create, the story goes, there was water, “the deep,” and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. Water is the basic element from which all else emerges. According to another story, the second thing God created was a garden, which was watered by a river, which flowed out from Eden in four directions and gave life to all the nations.

Anthropologists have taught us, through our school books, that rivers created civilization: In the fertile crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates people farmed. They no longer had to spend every waking moment hunting and gathering food, wandering ceaselessly. They could stay in one place, grow their food, domesticate their prey, build cities, make art, tell stories, sing songs. Rivers made us who we are today.

We have known rivers. Our people have known rivers. By the Nile the Hebrew slaves built the storehouses of Pharaoh and called out to God in their agony. Moses turned that river to blood to demonstrate the power of God. The Jordan River stopped to let the children of those slaves cross through it, to enter into their promised land, and soon after that same river carried the blood of Jericho’s dead. By the rivers of Babylon our people sat down and wept when their tormentors demanded entertainment; and the rivers of Babylon heard their call for vengeance. Rivers have seen us at our worst. And still rivers brought us life, the water of life, fed us and washed us and watered our fields and our cattle.

Rivers have also witnessed our communion with God. It was by the river Chebar in Babylon that Ezekiel saw the heavens opened; and in the Jordan River Jesus saw the heavens opened, and the hand of God was upon each in his own time and place.

In our call to worship I mentioned two other rivers that witnessed our faith history. It was on the Humber River, near Hull, that the Pilgrim congregation waited for the opportunity to cross the North Sea to Holland; and it was in Leiden, on the Rheine they found refuge.

Consider the river which runs through our town. We are here in this place because of that river, because the men of the northern railroad decided here was a good place to build a crossing. We’ll need a town there. It will need churches. And because they were New Englanders, they said amongst themselves, let’s establish both kinds of churches—Congregational and Episcopalian. And here we are to this day, worshipping on the same lot given to our people one hundred and almost forty years ago, by the men who decided that here was a good place for the railroad to cross the river.

If that river could talk, what would it say about how we have treated it, and each other, over the years? We owe that river our life, but we hardly notice it, as we cross over it in our cars day in day out. Like God, in a way. The mater and matrix-- mother and medium-- of life, God provides the gift of life and witnesses the best and worst of our aspirations and misdeeds, and we live and move in God hardly noticing how precious and precarious is life, until we do.

The river gives us a clue once or twice in a lifetime or so, that we shouldn’t take its power for granted. When it floods its banks, or runs dry, then we notice, then we realize, that what we do to the river we do to ourselves. Then we realize that our actions have ultimate consequences, for us and for generations after us. Then we realize that we owe the river our life.

And the river is a metaphor for God, a flowing, living, life-giving metaphor for the one who gives us life, who carries us along in our little bulrush baskets, who receives our tears and absorbs our blood and cleanses our wounds and quenches our thirst and waters our fields and receives our dead and gives us life and repeats the cycle endlessly, from creation to new creation, eternally flowing, never spent. Blessed be the river, the water of life, and the source, now and evermore, Amen.

Bread in the Desert

2011-09-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

18 September 2011

Exodus 16:2-15; Matthew 15:29-38

Last week I mentioned briefly how the gospel of Matthew is a value-added gospel. I mean that the author or authors of the gospel elaborated on the source material that they had received, as they set it down in writing for a particular community of Christians in a particular time and place. For the other gospel writers, one miraculous feeding was sufficient, but not for Matthew’s gospel. The story I just read is the second feeding miracle in the gospel: a reprise of the feeding of the 5,000, this one set not on a hillside beside the sea but in the desert wilderness.

All of the additions to this gospel had a purpose. It wasn’t just to pad the gospel, to make it longer than all the other gospels; there was a theological purpose to the additional material. Like Matthew’s stories about Jesus’ birth, the feeding miracle was retold “to fulfill the scripture”—to connect Jesus to the prophets of the Hebrew scripture. The change in venue is significant-- bread in the desert—when was the last time the children of Israel received bread in the desert? This retelling casts Jesus as a prophet like Moses, the greatest prophet of all.

As Moses himself had promised: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people….” (Deut. 18:15) Moses provided bread in the desert, Jesus provides bread in the desert, therefore, Jesus is a prophet like Moses. “Never since has there arisen a prophet like Moses,” (Deut. 34:10) until now.

The manna story itself has an underlying purpose. The reason the story of the manna was told and retold and set in writing is because it said something true about God, something that was not simply true at the time, but something eternally true about the nature of God. In the desert wilderness, God provides.

The wilderness is a scary place, if you are lost and alone with no provisions. The wilderness is even scarier when you are lost, and not alone, but you are there with people who are dependent on you. Some of you saw a new profile picture on my Facebook page, which Richard of me took when I was out in the Badlands with the youth group. In the picture I appear to be in a posture of meditation, and in fact I was, and some of my friends commented that I looked very peaceful. But I was not. Actually I was praying that I would not faint dead away out there, and spoil the trip for the children in my care. We were taken for a hike in the Badlands in the middle of the afternoon, in August, when no people in their right minds would go out there. But we went because it was on the program, and we trusted our guides, the staff at Re-member. When we arrived at this great cavernous bowl of dust, and I had already drank all my water, I thought, O my God they have brought us out here to kill us. Who are these people, really? What do we know about them? I am going to die here and my youth group is going to have to carry my body out. And that will just ruin their week.

Though at the time I questioned the value of that trip into the wilderness, I really should be grateful for the insight into the states of mind of the Hebrew people in the wilderness. Who is this Moses? What do we know about him, really? Maybe he is a glassy-eyed megalomaniac, who brought us and our children out here in this wilderness to die. Pharaoh wasn’t so bad. Yes, we have the scars of the overseer’s whip on our backs, but we also had bread, and fruit, and water, and our children were safe. Pharaoh’s bread was better than no bread at all.

Pharaoh’s bread was better, until there was bread from heaven. Moses sent the people out to gather up bread from heaven, every day, just enough for that day and no more. Every day except for the Sabbath, God’s day of rest, the people gathered bread from heaven.

Eventually, forty years later so the story goes, the people entered the promised land, and they ate the bread of the land of Canaan that year, they ate the bread of the land that God had promised to their ancestors. All the manna ceased on that day, because manna is only for the wilderness.

Many generations later, the descendants of the Hebrew slaves once again found themselves eating Pharaoh’s bread. Not Pharaoh’s, literally, actually it was Caesar’s bread. The wheat may have grown in their promised land, Caesar claimed it as his own. Caesar requisitioned it and redistributed it under his own brand name, so to speak, in the imperial bread dole. As long as conquered people remained loyal to Caesar, they could eat his bread. Rebel, and the bread dole ceases. Thus the empire was held under Caesar’s power, through bread, and the legions, bread and the sword.

Jesus came like Moses to lead the people to freedom: to demonstrate that God still had the power and the will to provide bread in the desert, to make a way in the wilderness.

This is true, and can be trusted. This is a story for our time. When people at the bread of their own land, when everyone had, so to speak, their own vineyards and their own fig trees, when we were self-sufficient, perhaps then we didn’t need this story so much. But now, we live in a land of foreclosures. We live in a land of broken homes and broken dreams. We are afraid that we might watch our children suffer. We are afraid that our children might see us suffer. We are shadows of our former selves, we are exiled from the land of plenty in which we used to live and we pine for the days of plenty. But the way forward is not backward. We step tentatively into an unknown future.

And we bless bread, and break it, and share it with one another to remind ourselves and each other, that we don’t need pharaoh’s bread, or Caesar’s bread. We bless bread and we break it to tell each other something true about God: God provides bread in the desert, fountains in the wilderness. God provides. This is true, and can be trusted. Amen.

And Mercy, More Than Life

2011-09-12T11:55:00.000-05:00

September 11, 2011
Matthew 18:21-35

How many times must I forgive a brother or sister? Peter asked Jesus. As many as seven times? That’s a lot. No, Jesus said, not seven times, and you can almost hear Peter begin to say “Whew.” Not seven times but seventy seven times, or seven times 70 times, or a bazillion times. Why? Because God’s forgiveness knows no limit. We forgive, because God has forgiven us.

Because, Jesus said, God is like this—and then he told a story. He told a story because people remember stories. We carry stories around inside ourselves. Sometimes we might forget a story until some clue calls it to mind, and we think to ourselves, gee, I haven’t thought of that story for years. But there it is. Like a lot of rabbis and prophets before him Jesus taught in stories. And here’s the story.

A king, or maybe we could say a banker, decided to call in his loans. One of his debtors owed him 10,000 talents, which in modern currency would be like you or I owing the bank a bazillion dollars. 10,000 talents is like 30 lifetimes of income-- an impossible amount. The debtor begged his creditor, have patience with me and I’ll pay you back every cent. This was a desperate lie. There was no way that he could pay the debt, unless he lived for about 2000 years.

In the prophetic tradition of parable-preaching, the king is and isn’t God—that’s the way it is with parables, it’s not a strict allegory. So the king is—and isn’t-- God, the servant is—and isn’t-- Israel, or we could say the church or the nation or all of us together. Everything we are, we owe to God. We could not possibly begin to repay God for the gift of life, for the earth our home, for the land and sky and sea and all the riches that we put to use as if they were our own. If God were to require payment, we would be in deep trouble. We could whine, plead, and try to make some desperate kind of deal, but really, we could never, ever pay for all that God has given us.

Fortunately, God doesn’t demand payment. Life is a gift. We are all benefactors of a generous God, a benevolent ruler, a merciful judge.

In the parable, after having been forgiven of this enormous, impossible, unpayable debt, after being saved from slavery along with his wife and children, the debtor, we’ll call him debtor #1, runs into a guy, we’ll call him debtor #2, who owes him some money-- a lot of money, but not a ridiculous amount. 100 denari=100 days pay, so whatever 100 days pay is for you, we’ll say he owed that much. Debtor #2 begs for mercy, promises to pay the debt, which he could do. But the one who was shown mercy does not emulate his former creditor. Debtor #1 seems to forget immediately the mercy that he received, his brain is like a sieve, the memory of desperation and mercy and relief was there and then gone. Rather than forgive as he was forgiven, the unforgiving servant has debtor #2 thrown into prison.

I believe this is where Jesus ended the parable. But the author of the Gospel of Matthew seems to have been uneasy with open endings, and was always adding material, expanding and explaining parables. What’s the point of telling a parable if you’re going to explain it? But the author is a literary artist. Matthew’s conclusion to this passage puts a beautiful literary parentheses around the parable, frames the parable with these two phrases about forgiveness: Peter’s question “If a brother or sister sins against me” opens the parentheses and “if you do not forgive a brother or sister” closes it. Thus the parable is framed by our relationship to each other, as brothers and sisters, and by sin and forgiveness.

Every Sunday we pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” As if God’s forgiveness was conditioned upon our forgiving others. But according to the parable, it’s actually the other way around. God forgives us first. God has forgiven us our debt. We couldn’t begin to pay it anyway, but the least we can do in response to God’s mercy is to show mercy to others.

The quality of God’s mercy is not strained, as Portia testified in The Merchant of Venice. It pours down from heaven as the gentle rain. It is twice blessed, it blesses the one who gives as well as the one who receives. On earth as it is in heaven, earthly power is most like God’s “when mercy seasons justice.” When mercy seasons justice. I love that phrase.

As I remember 9/11/2001, the worst terrorist attack in the United States immediately inspired grace and mercy. I remember how strangers—even in New York, of all places (I like a lot of Midwesterners, had the idea that New York City is the last place on earth to look for kindness)-- helped each other find their way to safety. I remember that as some people ran from the cloud of dust as the towers fell, others ran toward it. I remember the generous expressions of sympathy from people all over the world.

But, I also remember how, in the days after 9/11, the cry for justice became a call to vengeance, and I remember how, as a nation, we disagreed over the measures of mercy and justice. We still disagree to this day, I know. Ten years later we still argue how things might have been different if only, if only…. Until we learn to forgive as we have been forgiven, to give as we have received from God, to show mercy as we have seen mercy, until then we live in a kind of hell of our own making. We torture ourselves.

On this tenth anniversary, I remember, and I hope that we can move into the future as better people, as people who have learned from the past and are ready to repent, as people who are ready to excel in showing mercy.

It is from the third verse of the hymn “America the Beautiful” that I take the title for this sermon, and it is my sincere hope that we may prove heroic in loving, and generous with mercy.

“O Beautiful, for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their county loved, and mercy, more than life. America, America, may God thy gold refine, ‘til all success be nobleness and every gain, divine.” May it be so. Amen.

Pulling Up Stakes

2011-09-09T06:47:00.000-05:00

28 August 2011

Matthew 16:21-28

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Anyone who has attempted to make themselves understood in a second, acquired language knows the difficulty, and the importance of culture and context in making oneself understood. How many American exchange students in Germany have blundered, in an effort to communicate to their host family that their room is too warm, said: “I am hot—Ich bin heiss,” only to later realize that what they actually said was “I am enflamed with passion.” That would explain the Teutonic laughter.

When we read scripture what we are actually reading is a translation of a transcript, which was itself translated and transmitted orally, so it is always possible that we have lost something in translation.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The idea of “taking up the cross,” and the phrase “my cross to bear,” have become commonplace in our language. So much so that we hardly give the phrase a thought. We think we know what it means: to endure something unpleasant, because God apparently requires suffering.

As in, yes, my husband beats me, but that’s just my cross to bear.”

Yes, I have an addiction, but that’s just my cross to bear.”

As if there is something singularly redemptive in enduring suffering, and something selfish and sinful in standing up and casting it off.

Well, I think that’s just messed up.

The actual Greek phrase could mean take up your cross, and considering the death that Jesus died, in hindsight that translation seemed to make sense. But literally, it says “take up your stick,” or “pull up your stake” as in, “strike camp.” Pull up stakes, get ready to go, don’t get comfortable here. Get moving!

Considering Israel’s history as a migrant people, following flocks and herds across the land, and considering that Jesus frequently used pastoral images, this interpretation seems just as likely as the traditional. And, even more so, considering how the Hebrew Scriptures emphasize the preservation of life. God moves to preserve life. When Joseph was reunited with his brothers in Egypt, he reflected how God was at work in his story, to preserve not only his life, but his brother’s lives, to save their lives and preserve their future. Throughout the arc of scripture, God intervenes to save life. But often saving life requires letting go of everything else, even, in Joseph’s case, freedom.

I think “taking up your cross,” or pulling up stakes, is more about preserving life than losing it. Or rather, more about preserving life that is real life, casting off a half-life or a living death. It’s about being ready to give up certitude for truth, and comfortable slavery for untested freedom.

What it looks like, in practice, is cutting the ties that bind us to abusive relationships, and stepping up and out into a new life. Abuse is no one’s cross to bear.

What it might look like, in practice, for the one who suffers from addiction is confronting that addiction, which is not an essential part of who you are, but a demon to be vanquished or a parasite to be purged from your system. Addiction is no one’s cross to bear.

What “pulling up stakes” looks like for each of us, we have to work out for ourselves, by asking, “What is it that holds me down? What is it that holds me back from life that is really life?” Ask not “What am I willing to die for,” but ask “What am I willing to live for until I die?”

So let us contemplate what the Spirit is telling the church, about how to live. Amen.

Jesus Has a Problem with Authority

2011-08-15T16:54:00.001-05:00

Text: Matthew 15:1-28

14 August 2011

I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
--Ani Difranco, from “Not a Pretty Girl”

When I first heard Ani Difranco sing these lyrics, about ten years ago I guess, I thought she had summed up my entire academic and professional career. Because, the men who taught feminist theology honored women with their speeches and lectures, but, rarely did the radical reassessment of culture actually cause a change in the institutions of the seminary or the church.

For example, when I went to Eden Seminary, the ladies’ room still had urinals. Because there didn’t used to be a ladies’ room, it was a seminary, a school for men; and though there had been a steady stream of women students since at least the 1950’s, it apparently never occurred to anyone to adjust the restroom fixtures accordingly. Someone did, however, put some plastic ferns in the ladies’ room urinals to disguise them, but it was not a very good disguise. When we complained, the administration responded with, “What’s the big deal? Why are you so angry?”

We weren’t angry. We were just doing what they taught us to do. We were applying a feminist hermeneutic of suspicion to the institution. We were pointing out the disconnect between what the institution said, “We welcome all students,” and what they did, or failed to do, which gave a distinctly different message, that message being “but in case this doesn’t work out we’ll still be able to use this as a men’s room.” Every day, every time we walked into the ladies’ toilet, we were reminded, “You really don’t belong here.”

And since that time whenever I’ve pointed out the dissonance between mission and action, the response is always something sounding of irritation masked as concern: “Do you have a problem with authority?” I remember when the Iowa Conference, after declaring a conference-wide priority to encourage young families to be more involved at the conference level, then announced that they would no longer provide childcare at the annual meeting because it was not profitable. More recently, we read that our Conference Board of Directors imagines that in the future we will “grow younger” as a conference. This is the same Board that announced the plan to close our church camp, a significant place for ministry to children, youth and families. Remember how hard we had to work to make our voices heard? And remember how the board of directors responded with a patronizing attitude, saying something to the effect of, “If you only understood what we understand about our Conference finances you would make the same decision.” This is another way of saying, “Do you have a problem with authority? Don’t you trust the process?”

No. I don’t trust the process. And yes, I have a problem with authority, like my Lord Jesus.

When Jesus criticized the Pharisees, they probably thought something like this: “Well he would say that being as he’s from Galilee. It’s a reflection on his class and his race (he’s practically a Samaritan!); it’s not a reflection on us. He’s got a problem with authority. Probably relates to some childhood or adolescent trauma.”

“Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear.”

Interesting thing about this gospel lesson, even though Jesus could recognize hypocrisy in others, he couldn’t see it in himself, not right away, anyway. He criticized the Pharisees with one breath and in the next he cursed a woman who came to him for help, calling her a dog, and calling her child a dog. But she stood up for herself and she challenged him, and taught Jesus a lesson.

Thank God Jesus didn’t turn on her and say, “Girl, you have a problem with authority. Get back where you belong!”

Jesus realized truth when he heard it. Jesus was not too full of himself to learn something from that woman, something about the righteous use of his own authority. Not to Lord it over her, but to serve and to heal. And that is what he taught his disciples, that the greatest of all must be the servant of all. Wonder where he learned that.

So here is the challenge: Not just to apply the hermeneutic of suspicion to those we perceive as being above us, but to listen to those we think below us, and to apply the hermeneutic of suspicion to ourselves. When somebody says something we find hard to hear, why do we chalk it up to their anger, and never our own fear?

I just returned from the Pine Ridge reservation, with the faith formation class. All week, we heard things that were hard to hear; things they never told us in high school history class. Not only about the massacre at Wounded Knee, not only about the small pox blankets and the decimation of the buffalo herds and the forced relocation and short rations. We also learned a lot about the consequences of doing what we think is right, without asking the people for whom we are ostensibly doing it-- the missions, the boarding schools, the housing clusters, the FEMA trailers. It seems like every time we try to intervene for good, we do bad, because we don’t know what we’re doing and we don’t bother to ask the people.

I hope we are beginning to learn from our mistakes. I hope we are beginning to have a problem with our own authority. I hope we are learning to listen to those who we thought had nothing to teach us.

We just returned from Pine Ridge. I believe we caught a glimpse of a new world, while we were there, working side by side with Lakota people. I hope we can share some idea of what the next world might look like, if we learn to listen to each other. Watch this.

Building a Straw-Bale House Youtube Video

God’s Place

2011-07-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

24 July 2011

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

The kingdom of heaven as if someone should blow on a dandelion flower. A single seed floats on the breeze and takes root in the corner of the garden, and before you know it the whole lawn is covered in a Roundup resistant variety.

The kingdom of heaven is like Eurasian milfoil. By the time you notice it, the plant has taken over the lake. And the more you cut it, the more it grows.

The kingdom of heaven is like a zebra mussel….

When Jesus told these parables, the listeners knew that Jesus was comparing God’s kingdom to things which were noxious weeds, invasive species, and ritually unclean. We don’t really have a “ritually unclean” equivalent in modern society, but I think the hated zebra mussel comes the closest. Poor zebra mussel. It never meant to take over our lakes. It’s not as if some terrorist zebra mussel organization—the ZMLO-- planned an invasion…. A mussel’s got to do what a mussel’s got to do… whatever that is.

Same with milfoil and dandelions. It is in their nature to grow, to resist attack, to persist in growing and spreading abroad. Floating on the air, drifting through the water, as innocent as it is unstoppable.

Jesus was speaking to a people who were as weeds to the empire. Families, whole villages, were plucked up from their land forced to move elsewhere, or be crushed. Their ancestral lands were given to those who were deemed more appropriate: Roman settlers, soldiers and officers, the Vichy government or whatever its equivalent was—those who collaborated in their own country’s colonization.

So when they heard Jesus evoking the kingdom of God, not in the Holy temple or the ritually consecrated furnishings associated with it, but in the common, the base, the untouchable, the ritually unclean…. They knew he was talking about them.

The kingdom of God is not like the priests; the kingdom of God is not like the legions, the kingdom of God is like you. The presence of God is among you, the despised, the forgotten, the plucked up and the crushed. But like the yeast you rise. Like the weeds, you grow tall and strong. God is at work in you.

It was a scandalous joy! The way Jesus talked, it was a scandalous joy! Here is a rabbi talking about God among us. Scandalous! Joy!

Do you understand? Jesus asked. “Ye-es” the disciples said, but did they really? And do we? The church began as an underground movement. Small, poor, despised, afflicted, but growing, in spite of persecutions, it continued to grow. Because Christians saw the presence of God in the despised of the earth, and they reached out and cared for those who had no one else to care for them.

But as the church grew, and received the patronage of the empire that crucified Jesus, it began to emulate the empire, rather than God’s kingdom.

So we must tell each other these stories again and again, to remind ourselves of God’s place in the world. God is found in the last place we would look.

As a church, we do a lot of good things. We go to the soup kitchen and feed people, we go out to the ends of the earth to bring health care and build shelter and serve. But never forget, that wherever we go, we do not “bring God;” God is already there. God has always been there. Among the weeds. Among the displaced. Among the uprooted, downtrodden and crushed, there is God. If we pay attention, we might see the kingdom of God in our midst.

Oh Yes, God Is In This Place

2011-07-18T10:10:00.002-05:00

17 July 2011

Genesis 28:10-19a

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

When I was a child, I was under the impression that the characters mentioned in Bible stories were all good. Except for the ones who were obviously all bad, of course. Goliath was bad, David was good. Delilah was bad, Samson was good. There were heroes who were all good, and villains who were all bad. And the lesson was, be good. Obey your parents, stand up to bullies, be good as all God’s heroes are good.

So when I started to read the actual bible, not the children’s story bible, I was surprised to see what scoundrels my former heroes could be. Take the story of Isaac’s family. This family is worthy of its own reality show on MTV. Isaac seems to be in his own world, completely unaware or unconcerned with the relationship of people around him. Isaac and his oldest son Esau are tightly bound, share a love of blood sport and red meat. Manly men. Isaac’s wife Rebecca and their younger son Jacob have a bond that seems to be built on their mutual jealousy of the relationship that Isaac and Esau have with each other. Rebecca devises a plan and Jacob carries it out, to rob Esau of his father’s blessing.

When our story begins, it is the end of the day that Jacob ran for his life. His mother invented an excuse for his departure, to give him time to get as far away from his justifiably angry brother as possible. After deceiving his father and disinheriting his brother and running away from his home, Jacob lies down for a fitful night of sleep.

And that is when he meets his God.

Which goes against everything I learned in Sunday school, which was that if you are very, very good, you will get to see God one day in heaven. And this is how to be good: Honor your father and mother, don’t lie cheat or steal.

Jacob made a fool out of his father, impersonated his brother, stole his father’s blessing and swindled his brother out of his inheritance. And then he saw God. It just doesn’t make sense. And more than that, it’s not fair.

The lesson is not “Be a jerk and see God.”

But perhaps the lesson is, “If you think you know God, watch out.”

Perhaps the lesson is, “No matter how far you run, God will find you.”

“You hem me in, behind and before…. If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea…” there you are, God.

“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away,” begins a story by Margaret Wise Brown. I read it many times to my children.

“So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’

"'If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’”

And the story goes on. The little bunny shares his plans to become a boat and sail far far away, and the mother bunny responds, If you become a boat, I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go. The little bunny says, Then I will become a crocus in a hidden garden; and the mother says she will become the gardener, and so on. Finally the little bunny says, in that case, I’ll just stay here and be your little bunny.

“Have a carrot,” says the mother.

I can’t help but think of Psalm 139 as “The Runaway Bunny Psalm.”

No matter how ornery, contrary, and mean we become, God is our mother and our father. God will seek us out.

No matter how far we run from our home, God will be there.

Maybe we don’t notice God’s presence so much when we are at home with God, when we are “being good.” When we are living in Christ, loving our neighbor, God’s presence so permeates our lives that God is as the air we breathe. Essentially present, mostly, unnoticed.

It is when we become lost to ourselves that we find God’s presence so surprising. When we find ourselves as strangers in a strange land, a land of grief, a land of need and uncertainty, that we find God’s presence so surprising.

Remember when Joey and Sue came back from Haiti, after the earthquake, and we were so surprised to see all the smiling faces, all the happiness and joy in the midst of such devastation? Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

Remember the last time you lost someone you loved, and you wandered in the land of grief and misery, and then, one day, you woke up and realized you were going to live? Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

Remember the last time you were truly lost on unmapped roads, roads your GPS didn’t recognize and Rand McNally never heard of, and then you found a landmark, and suddenly knew where you were? Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

No matter how far we run, no matter how lost we become, no matter how low or high we go… Surely God is in this place, whether we know it or not. Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Church that Celebrates and Honors All Creation

2011-06-20T11:22:00.001-05:00

19 June 2011

Genesis 1, Psalm 8

How beautiful is the literature of the Old Testament. The scriptures appointed for today demonstrate a balance and parallelism worthy of study by any aspiring writers, poets, or lyricists.

Take, for example, this first account of creation: in six acts, the first three parallel to the second three:

1. Light 4. Sun, moon and stars

2. Sea and Sky 5. Birds and fish

3. Earth, and plants 6. Animals, and everything

that creeps and crawls

and walks and stalks

upon the earth.

And people. It is fascinating coincidence to me that the first chapter of Genesis agrees with the modern scientific account in this respect: we are the latecomers. The second chapter’s creation story is different, but we’re not going there today. Let’s just remember that there is no conflict between science and religion, there never has been, really, until the early twentieth century when a small minority decided to take offense at Darwin. For most of Christian history, and for most Christians, both science and religion are approaches to understanding the universe. They ask different kinds of questions, and yet, often come to similar conclusions.

The choral response to each act of the creation story is , “it was good.” Before there was a concept of original sin, there was original blessing. Original blessing takes canonical precedence.

In Friday book group we are reading a book called Saving Paradise which talks about how Christians, for the first thousand years held that paradise was not some distant heaven above, that paradise was here on earth. It is this understanding that we lost, somewhere along the line. We lost, and the earth lost as a consequence. Hold that thought while we consider the psalm.

Psalm 8 is also a beautifully crafted piece of literature, built upon the framework of the first creation story. It’s a riff on the creation story. A riff, as I understand in musical terms is a musician’s take on a particular melody. Think jazz. Think of how the musicians take the solo in turns: the bassist, the keyboards, the saxophone, even the drums. Each has his or her own take on the melody. This psalm is somebody’s riff on the creation story. It moves in along in a similar groove, from the heavens, downward to the individual, and embellishes the personal implications of the general story.

What does it mean to be a little lower than God? What does it mean to be given dominion? The question remains unanswered, it echoes down through the ages and invites us to consider for ourselves, our place in the universe. What are the moral implications of dominion?

Some people seem to think that dominion is like being given the keys to mom and dad’s house, when they go away for the weekend, so they can have a party. They invite all their friends over, and then they trash the place! They can do whatever they want, right? Except, they seem to forget that mom and dad are coming home, eventually. And mom and dad are not going to be OK with this.

Actually, that metaphor can work, if we remember that mom and dad gave us the keys, because they trust us. They trust us to feed the fish, and look after the lawn. So if we find that our friends are digging up the lawn looking for treasure, if we find that our friends our mucking up the koi pond and killing the fish, it is our responsibility, as trusted caretakers, to do something about it.

Who are we as a church, to challenge Monsanto? Who are we to go after Big Oil, or Coal? We are the church, that’s who we are. We are a church that celebrates, and honors, all creation. We are a people called to care for creation.

Let us not forget that this is the paradise that God has created, and declared good; and to this paradise, to the fish and the birds and the beasts and all cattle, God has given us, for caretakers. So let us contemplate together, our identity as a church that celebrates paradise, and honors and protects all God’s creation. Amen.

I would like to acknowledge Rev. Linda Jaramillo, Executive Minister for Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ, for providing inspiration for this sermon, in her address to the Minnesota Conference Annual Meeting last weekend. Thank you.

Christ and Culture, Revisited: H. Richard Niebuhr Shapes the Church

2011-05-31T10:28:00.002-05:00

29 May 2011

Last week, I promised a series on church identity. We will be contemplating our collective identity, who we are as a church, a congregation of a particular tradition in this particular place and time. Our state legislature’s decision, to have a state-wide discussion on the meaning of marriage, brings a religious war to our state. Those who want us to pass a constitutional amendment to define marriage claim that they have God on their side. We will be challenged to defend our identity as Christians, as people of faith.

I think it will be helpful for us to revisit H Richard Niebuhr’s 1951 work, Christ and Culture, in which Niebuhr describes five distinct ways churches view the relationship between their God and the world in which they live.

                1. Christ Against Culture
                2. Christ Of Culture
                3. Christ Above Culture
                4. Christ and Culture In Paradox
                5. Christ Transforming Culture

The first is to see the arch of history as a sure steady march toward the kingdom of God. This is one of the “Christendom” models. One example of Christ against Culture might be the dogged determination of late 19^th century Americans to conquer and Christianize the west. Ignoring the genocide of the first nations, they saw only good in the spread of military outposts, white settlement, railroads, and protestant missions in the west. It was believed to be the nation’s “manifest destiny,” as inevitable as the march of time.

The second way of viewing the relationship between Christ and Culture, the Christ of Culture, is very like the first. If the Church with a big C can do no wrong, then as long as the Government (big G) is Christian, it can also do no wrong. Christ and Culture are one; or, Christ and the agents that govern and order culture are one. I believe the so-called “Christian Identity” movement belongs to this model. (King James I of England, among other monarchs, was devoted to this model of seeing the world. That’s why our people had to leave!)

Christ above Culture (the third way) is pretty much the straight Lutheran “two kingdoms” way of seeing the world. It is a dualism: this world is a fallen world, marred by sin, prone to wickedness, and the Christian is called to live in the fallen world but not to be of the world. The church and her people must obey the worldly authorities, even if they are wrong; and trust in God to receive the church into the perfected kingdom of God when this world has passed away. Unfortunately, this makes a false idol out of obedience, and renders the church impotent against injustice. If you have ever wondered why so many good Germans did nothing to stop Hitler, consider the power of believing that obedience to earthly authority is required by God.

Christ and Culture in paradox describes the way many minority sects see their place in the world, including those who were disappointed last weekend when they were not taken up in the rapture. This is a model of belief common to Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other minority religionists: They believe that they alone are God’s chosen, they alone are pure, they alone will be saved. Their lot in life is to endure this world while Christ and Satan battle it out, to preserve themselves and as many as they can reach (which is why they feel no regret in knocking on your door and interrupting your dinner—they are doing this to save you), to remain pure, and to persevere in the faith.

Saving the best for last (what author would lead with the climax?), Niebuhr describes another way, seeing the role of Christ, and therefore the church, as the transformer of culture. The world is created by God and it is good, but incomplete, and through Christ and the church God is transforming this world from one glory to the next. Culture is not something to be for or against, culture can be a means for positive transformation, or stasis, or regression.

Niebuhr is one of ours, by the way. A United Church of Christ theologian, who was raised in the German Evangelical antecedent church; who, like me, was a graduate of Elmhurst College and Eden Seminary.

Seeing Christ as the transformer of culture invites the church to be the same. Just as Jesus challenged the way the Pharisees and the Romans saw the world, we are invited into a critical analysis of our ways of seeing the world. And just as Jesus stood against domination, we are invited to challenge the dominant belief systems that oppress some and elevate others falsely.

God is great, and we are not. God is God, and we are not. Throughout the ages, people have tried their best to understand God, but our understanding is limited by our relatively short span of life and our relatively tiny brains. But over the vast expanse of time we have learned, as a people, we have grown in understanding. God is at work through wisdom, through understanding.

The more we know about the world, the more we learn about each other, the more we learn about God.

H. Richard Niebuhr, 1894-1962, helped to shape the church that we have become, and helped us to see who we are in relation to others, to our predecessors in the faith and to those with whom we share our journey now. He helps us to give voice to our identity as a transformed and transformative church.

As we prepare for our statewide discussion on marriage (a statewide discussion on God, the universe and everything), I hope Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture will help us understand where others are coming from, when they talk about their understanding of God. And I hope this provides all of us with the courage to be who we are as a church, and to stand up for what we believe to be true and just. There is much transformative work to be done.

Thanks be to God, who is still speaking, still transforming the world with love and justice. Let us join in this transformational work.

We are the We, We Think They See: Building, Sharing, and Celebrating Our Identity

2011-05-23T11:34:00.001-05:00

This is a long title for a short sermon. It’s a spin-off of a memorable couplet from a study of human development, which typifies the adolescent stage of self-consciousness:

“I see you, seeing me. I see the me I think you see.”

In some sense, we never leave adolescence. Even as adults, we often consider what others might see when they look at us. (I see the me I think you see.) Every morning, each one of us selects clothing to put on, to give others a clue about who we are. Sometimes in a formal way, if I put on a nurse’s scrubs, or a police officer’s uniform. Sometimes more subtly, as when I put on a necklace made by our children. Perhaps a macaroni necklace that shouts out “I am a mom.” I put on my identity every day.

You can see that as individuals, we each seek to cultivate an identity. But we also seek to build communal identities. David Crum has been helping us think about our identities as families. In our family wellness program last week we talked some about how we identify what we value, as a family. We may not think of it in psycho-social terms, but we do have a folk expression that confirms that we tend to see families as identifiable units: “The apple never falls far from the tree.”

We also have an identity as a congregation. During worship this summer, I will invite us to think about our identity as a congregation. We will be building, sharing and celebrating our identity within the context of worship, in order to share our identity beyond this building and these grounds. I hope that we can help each other build a positive self-identity as a congregation, as a church community.

Today, we take an important step toward building our identity. Expressing gratitude for one another is an identity builder. Our gratitude identifies our values. We give thanks for that which we value. Today we identify ourselves as a congregation that values individual achievement and individual service. We value music, we value the dedication of those who show up for rehearsal every week. We value the years of study and practice that are the making of musicians.

We identify ourselves as a people who value education. We value those who teach, and those who learn. We value the sacrifices that families make for their children’s education.

We identify ourselves as a congregation that honors the rhythms and seasons of life. In recognizing our teachers and musicians at the end of the Church school term, we release them from service, for a time of “Sabbath,” a sabbatical season of rest, that they may return to their labors refreshed, or, that they may return to a different field of service.

A sabbatical is not the same as a vacation. Jan Kurtz is about to go on sabbatical from Central Lakes College. But we know she won’t be using the time to sleep in, wear her pajama’s all day and watch old movies on TV. At least not for long. Sabbatical is a time to be renewed by a change in routine. It is a time to turn one’s attention to something new.

As we approach the summer season, I ask that it not be a vacation from attending church, please. But let it be a season of entering church with a light heart. Knowing that you don’t have to come early for choir practice or stay late to teach or attend Sunday school or Forum. Come to be refreshed and inspired. Come to be renewed. Come to look and see one another and God and the earth in a new way. Come to help each other build, and celebrate, and share who we are as a congregation. Come, and build one another up in love.

God to Earth: It Gets Better

2011-05-16T11:22:00.002-05:00

15 May 2011

Psalm 23

The 23^rd psalm is the one we read for comfort. It’s often read at funerals, gravesides, or bedsides of those who have died. Dwelling in the house of the Lord “forever” as the old Revised Standard Version reads, is often thought of as “going to heaven when you die.” But in the new version it reads “my whole life long.” What’s up with that?

What’s up with that is access to older manuscripts, and further study of the language and the context. What’s up is a maturing of the interpretation.

It is not for the next life only that we hope. God assures us, time and again in scriptures, that it gets better. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. (In another psalm.) Joseph is betrayed by his own brothers, sold into slavery, sent to prison on a bad rap, but God uses it all for good. He is freed, enriched, and he lives to make peace with his brothers.

Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth are widowed, childless, and impoverished, but they persevere in faith and become grandmother and mother to the royal house of David.

Israel is led into exile, but God restores and returns their children to the land.

That is the gospel, the good news that carries through the Hebrew scriptures and into the Greek New Testament. The life of the apostles as recorded in the book of Acts is not without danger, not without suffering, but time and again there is rescue and restoration.

These have been discouraging times. It’s was a hard winter. So many of our friends have been ill. There is so much pain. Natural and unnatural disasters; and nasty, wedge politics. But I have found strength in music. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t sing along with the collection of tunes on my laptop that I have entitled “Good for the Soul”-- a mix of blues and Motown and roots music. In order to share the solace of music with others, I have begun posting an occasional “Song of the Day” on my Facebook page.

While looking for a new “song of the day” for my Facebook page, I came across Broadway’s response to the Trevor Project. In response to last year’s suicides of young gay Americans, the Trevor Project seeks to promote a message of hope.

It gets better, better better… It gets better, better, better, The pain will let up, let up, let up, If you fall just get up, get up, get up, Oh, cause there's another way. It gets better, better, better, The world gets lighter, lighter, lighter, So be a fighter, fighter, fighter, Oh, just live to see that day.

God works in mysterious ways. The message of the gospel bubbles to the surface in all kinds of places. This is the message that God has been trying to get through to us for millennia: It gets better. This is the message immortalized in the stories of scripture and the songs and psalms of the faith: it gets better. This is the message of resurrected Christ: It gets better.

God knows life is hard. Jesus knows, life is hard. Look what Jesus went through (that’s what Peter wrote in his letter), look what Jesus went through. Look what lengths the powers that were in charge went to, to silence the word of hope: they crucified him. But even death cannot stop the word.

Do not be weary. Don’t give up. It get’s better. Amen.

Some Astounding Women

2011-05-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

8 May 2011

Today’s gospel: Luke 24:13-35

Mother’s day is not a church holiday. But, growing up in Illinois, almost Iowa (right on the border), it was a big church-going holiday. It was the day you pinned an orchid corsage on your mom, and your grandma, and you brought them to church, and then took them out to brunch. It was second only to Easter Sunday in attendance. I know, it’s hard to believe, here in Minnesota, where mother’s day is usually eclipsed by the Sunday of Fishing Opener.

Because my expectations of the day were shaped by geography, when I first came to Minnesota I had a bit of a culture shock. My first year in Fergus Falls, I suggested to the Christian Education Committee that the Sunday School children could sing to their mothers in church on Mothers’ Day. “Why?” the chairperson responded, “Nobody’s going to be there.”

They were as puzzled with me as I was with them. They were astonished that I could be so clueless.

Which is seems to be the attitude that the disciples took, when they spoke to the stranger on the road to Emmaus. You are coming from Jerusalem, and yet you haven’t heard about what happened? What’s the matter with you?

They seemed to have the same dismissive, incredulous attitude toward the women disciples. They reported that the women had ASTOUNDED them. The women went to the tomb, but the body wasn’t there, so they came back with this wild claim that they had seen angels, who told them that Jesus was alive. Naturally some men went to verify the claim, but they didn’t see any angels, or Jesus.

Those astounding women. Talking crazy-talk!

So I’ve been thinking about astounding women this week.

I received an e-mail notice about a union gathering this week, and that made me thing of an astounding woman named Mother Jones.[1] It’s not just a magazine, you know. The magazine was named for an actual person, Mary Harris Jones. She was a mother, once. But her husband and four children all died of yellow fever, in Memphis, in 1867. Then she moved to Chicago where, four years later, she lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire.

But from the ashes of her grief, she was reborn. She got involved in the labor movement, and worked for the abolition of child labor. She organized the United Mine Workers. Coal miners and their families called her “the miner’s angel” She called the miners as “her boys.” This bereaved mother became the mother of multitudes, she became ‘Mother’ Jones. Her detractors called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” which is hard to believe. In her photo, she looks more like Granny Clampit than, well, anyone who could be called “dangerous.”

She perhaps is best known for, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” It is one of my favorite quotations, because it really sums up the Jesus message. Following Jesus is not about the next life, it’s about sharing with God in the creation of the Kingdom, where justice and righteousness reigns. Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living. That’s one astounding woman.

Of course, being a UCC clergywoman, another astounding woman that comes to mind is Antoinette Brown Blackwell,[2] the first woman ordained by a major denomination in the United States, in 1853. When she nine years old, she joined the Congregational Church, and as a young woman began to feel that she was called to be a minister. So she went to Oberlin College, in Ohio, one of the few colleges that would admit women. She wasn’t allowed to earn a degree, but she was allowed to attend classes. After completing the coursework, she was called to be a pastor of a small church in South Butler, New York.

She didn’t stay in parish ministry long, but became part of the lecture circuit, preaching against slavery and for women’s suffrage. She married the brother of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell the first women physicians in the United States, and she became the mother of five daughters. While raising her children she continued to write and publish articles on the cause of women’s rights.

Some astounding women are not famous at all. I have become familiar with one astounding woman through the writings of her son Ron Buford, a regular contributor to the Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, which you can have delivered to your e-mail box every day. Ron Buford is the guy who took the Gracie Allen quote, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma,” and built a promotional campaign around it.

[After Gracie’s death, her husband, George Burns, found a letter in her desk, that said, “Dear George, never place a period where God has placed a comma, Love, Gracie.”]

Ron has written several devotionals in which his mother “Queen Dorothy,” features prominently, and I want to share part of one with you. Ron wrote:

As a kid, I remember coming home one weekday evening to the smell of fried chicken, fried corn, greens, cornbread, candied yams, homemade peach cobbler. Oh my! The best china and silver were stacked on the table. I asked Momma (whom we affectionately called Queen Dorothy behind her back):

“Who’s coming?”

“Just us,” she said.

“Why the food and fine china?” I asked.

And as only Queen Dorothy could say, “Because we are the most important people to ever sit at this table. . . . Now set the table, boy.”

Wow! Momma knew Jesus’ sense of “now.” Even in those improving but still-troubling times of lynchings, church bombings, riots, marches, student protests, assassinations of our political leaders, my Dad’s humiliations as a Black man, and our not being able to live or go just anywhere in town.

That evening, we said grace over an extravagant meal in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who said, “I may not get there with you, but I’ve been to the mountaintop and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord.” Past, present, and future sat at our table that night, and when I remember it, I taste all three . . . . seasoned with Momma’s lesson from Jesus: Love the people in your life . . . right now.[3]

I’m sure we can all remember some astounding women in our lives. Women who delivered good news to us. Women who worked tirelessly to create a little paradise on earth. Astounding women, through whom we have come to know the grace of God.

Let us give thanks to God, for all these astounding women. Amen!

[1] http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Mother_Jones.php

[2] Barbara Brown Zickmund’s article on ABB can be found at ucc.org

[3] Stillspeaking Daily Devotional for January 19, 2011. Read the whole devotional, and sign up for a daily e-mail at ucc.org.

Let's Talk About Justice

2011-05-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

Introducing to his intent to co-sponsor an amendment to our state’s constitution, our state senator said to his interviewer: “We want Minnesota to have a conversation on this.”

We at First Congregational had the conversation, when we were preparing to become an “Open and Affirming” church. In November, 2000, we approved our Statement of Openness and Affirmation which includes a pledge to support “relationships and families based on the Christian principles of love, justice, fidelity, trust, and mutual care.”

We have celebrated the marriages of several couples whose unions are not recognized by the State of Minnesota, and in our eyes, as well as in our church records, these couples are married. We look forward to the day when all our families can live without fear of discrimination.

The introduction of an anti-marriage amendment (and I believe that is the only proper description of an amendment that would seek to shrink the definition of marriage) threatens our families. Once again, some of our families will be placed in the spotlight, and required to defend their right to be who they are. I can only imagine how dispiriting the prospect of being under such constant pressure.

Again, remember our Statement of Openness and Affirmation:

We commit ourselves to oppose discrimination and prejudice in our attitudes, our personal relationships, and our congregation. We will seek justice and advocate redress of the wrongs committed against sexual minorities in our local community and in society at large.

It is not enough to be a safe haven, a sanctuary for GLBT folk and their families. With all our might, and with faith that God will provide us “courage in the struggle for justice and peace,” we can participate in the transformation of our society. We can change the things that must be changed.

Our state senator has called us out. He wants us to have a conversation about marriage. Let’s give him a conversation. Every day, every night, let’s give him a conversation. Let it be patient, and kind, and persistent. Let our hearts be aligned with Jesus’ heart.

Jesus is the one who stood between a woman who was about to be stoned to death, and the men who held the stones and had “the law” on their side. Jesus is the one who disregarded the boundaries that were supposed to separate him, a good Jewish rabbi, from “the unclean”—children and women and sinners and tax collectors. Jesus is the one who looked out at a hungry crowd and told his disciples, “You give them something to eat.”

“Wait” you might be thinking, “Should the church be involved in politics?”

I absolutely agree that the church shouldn’t be a tool of any king, party, or candidate. But living the faith has social, economic, and political consequences. Having decided to follow Jesus, we must be ready to accept the consequences. The consequences may include irritating our relatives who disagree with us. Some of us can avoid the consequences by being silent, others do not have that luxury.

But the rewards of discipleship are far greater than the consequences. Because when we follow, we receive the joy of being part of the body of Christ, transforming the world.

Minnesota is going to have a conversation about this. We must be ready to talk about justice.

Jesus Without Borders

2011-05-02T17:52:00.000-05:00

Text: John 20:19-31

“Do not be afraid!” That is what we heard last week, when we read the Easter gospel, “do not be afraid!” Do not be afraid, the angel said to the women at the tomb, I know you are seeking Jesus, who was crucified, he is not here, he has been raised, as he said he would be. Now go, and tell his disciples.

And as the women named Mary ran to tell the disciples, Jesus himself met them, and said to them, “Do not be afraid!”

It is the gospel message again and again: the scripture resounds with the message: Fear Not! For I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine. You shall not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day. Do not be anxious about what you will eat or drink or wear, or about where you will sleep. The Lord is your God. No fear! Do not fear, even death cannot harm you.

On that Easter day, where were the twelve? Hiding. For Fear.

Fear has a terrible effect upon the body, mind and soul. Fear triggers that fight or flight syndrome, and the disciples, apparently, chose flight. The brain chemistry of fear is pretty simple: in preparation for flight or fight, the body redirects its energy from the cerebral cortex, where we do our reasoning, to the brainstem, the center of the autonomic processes—to keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing.

William Sloane Coffin once said: "As I see it, the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight....You can't think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart's a stone, you can't have decent thoughts--either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind."

A heart full of love has a limbering effect on the mind.

A head full of fear has a hardening effect on the heart.

Those twelve disciples, filled with fear, set a boundary around themselves and the rest of Jerusalem. They hid behind the walls of the house, hid behind locked doors, for fear. They didn’t get the message, that Jesus lives, because their hearts were hardened and their minds closed by fear.

But the good news is, Jesus knows no boundaries. He never did in his lifetime. He was always crossing the boundaries. People complained that he didn’t respect the boundaries that they saw, between the righteous and sinners, between Jews and Samaritans, between men and women and children. In his resurrection, he certainly wasn’t going to let any wall keep him from his people. He came to save them from their fear. He came to send them out from their hiding places, with his message of forgiveness.

In the United Church of Christ, we believe that God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship. One of the joys of discipleship is knowing that we are God’s beloved children forgiven, loved and free-- and so is everyone else. Among the costs of discipleship are the consequences of living that truth. It is not enough to pray for a world in which children live in peace and safety, and everyone has enough to eat. We are called to live the way we pray. Sometimes, that means putting our bodies between the victim and the perpetrator of violence. Sometimes that means ignoring the boundaries that are supposed to divide us. Sometimes that means literally giving people something to eat.

Not everyone can do that. Not alone, anyway. That is why we have Justice and Witness Ministries in the United Church of Christ. Justice and Witness Ministries helps local congregations by keeping us aware of the poor, the hungry, those who are victimized around the world. This Sunday, Justice and Witness Ministries is calling “Immigrant Rights Sunday,” to draw our attention to the struggles of immigrant families and to the human rights crisis on our southern border.

Even though we don’t live on that border, we can listen and learn, and advocate for justice. So I encourage you to listen and think with an open heart and mind. Do not give in to fear. So much of our political dialogue is frenzied with fear. Listen with love, listen with faith that banishes fear.

[Sermon preached May 1, 2011.]

Fearless!

2011-04-24T12:27:00.000-05:00

Easter Sunday, 24 April 2011

Matthew 28:1-10

This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. And a beautiful morning it is. New life blooms where hopes lie buried, in fact as well as figuratively. Those crocus bulbs we planted in the fall have bloomed and blown, and hyacinth are emerging, and daffodils and tulips soon to come. It is a festival of spring, new life emerging.

Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the spring festival with his disciples-- the spring festival of Passover, which is also a festival of new life. We were once slaves in Egypt, and God brought us out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and led us across the Red Sea waters, and through the wilderness, and brought us across the flowing Jordan, to the promised land. The festival of Passover and the festival of the Resurrection, Easter, are both about the power of God to raise a people up, from death to life.

Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover, a celebration of freedom for a people who were, at the time, not so free as their oppressors would like them to imagine. Yes, they were in their promised land, the land that was given to their ancestors, but it wasn’t theirs anymore. It was an outpost of the Empire, and the people were, in a sense, exiles in their own land.

The good news of Jesus, according to Matthew, began with an angel’s announcement. “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary as your wife, because the child she will bear will be Emmanuel, God-with-us.” Here we are in the final chapter of the gospel according to Matthew, and it ends as it began: Do not be afraid!

Do not be afraid, the angel said to the women at the tomb. Do not be afraid when the earth quakes. Do not be afraid when the tomb is empty. Do not be afraid, because God is doing what God always does, making a way out of no way, bringing freedom to the oppressed, and courage to people who seem to have the least reason to be courageous.

Look at the contrast between the women at the tomb, and the armed guards at the tomb. For fear of them, the guards shook and became like dead men. The angel’s message brought courage to women, and brought the brut squad to their knees. Beautiful!

And then Jesus appeared to the women with the same message, a command, “Do not be afraid!” Fear is for Herod, who was frightened, and all of Jerusalem with him, when he heard of Jesus birth. Fear is for religious authorities who would have arrested Jesus sooner, but for their fear of the crowds who followed him. Fear is for the mighty. You, who follow Jesus, do not fear!

Between the first and last chapters of Matthew’s gospel, between the beginning and the end of the story, Jesus said it over and over again. Do not be afraid for what you will eat or what you will wear. Do not be afraid when people mock you and slander you. Be not afraid!

Jesus was repeating the lessons he learned as a student of the Hebrew scriptures: Do not fear, is what the Israelites learned in the wilderness, when God provided bread from heaven. Do not fear, Joseph learned when he was sold into slavery in Egypt. Do not fear, is what God said to David when he was hiding from Saul and to Elijah when he was hiding from Ahab. Do not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine. The message circles round through the scriptures.

Do not be afraid. Unless you are Herod. If you are a Herod, be afraid, be very afraid. Do not be afraid, unless you are Pharaoh. If you are a Pharaoh, be afraid, be very afraid, for God has promised to come with justice for the oppressed.

Though you may feel like a slave, though you may feel like you are trying to make bricks without any straw, do not be afraid.

Though you may feel like an exile in your own land, do not be afraid.

Though you may feel you have no strength, and no voice, do not be afraid.

In Jesus, God has come to us as a slave, and an exile. In Jesus, God seemed to have been silenced and beaten. The power of God and the mercy of God and the hope of God’s people seemed to have died on the cross with Jesus. End of story.

But that was not the end of the story.

On that Easter morning, our story begins again, as it first began, “Do not be afraid. God is with us.” Emmanuel—God is with us, even to the end of the age.

This is the resurrection experience: the courage to live without fear.

Say it with me, Christ is risen. CHRIST IS RISEN. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.

The Last Week

2011-04-17T16:29:00.003-05:00

Palm Sunday, 17 April 2011

Palm Sunday is sometimes called the “little Easter.” This week we shout “Hosanna!” as if rehearsing for next week’s “Halleluiah!” But between that triumphal entry on one Sunday, and the resurrection the next, was a week in Jerusalem, Jesus’ last week. It was a descent into hell on earth for those who loved him, because they witnessed the betrayal and arrest, the torture and the execution of their beloved Jesus. He was someone’s son, and someone’s brother, and somebody’s friend, and somebody’s mentor.

Most of us skip that part. We do, we skip the formal observances of Holy Week, because we are busy with other things and, frankly, because they are real downers. We are, culturally speaking, a people who prefer to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Palm Sunday and Easter feel good. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday feel bad. So, we skip it. Advance to Go, collect $200, avoid paying rent on Boardwalk. We can do that.

The liturgy of Holy Week may not fit our optimistic Hollywood USA version of life, but the liturgy of Holy Week is actually more like real life than perhaps we care to admit. And I believe that reenacting the whole week, in the liturgy of the church, year after year, can strengthen our spiritual muscles for the suffering that is a natural part of life.

There is so much pain and suffering. I know, because sharing the sorrow is part of my job. In addition to celebrating family weddings and baptisms, I have the privilege of sharing in the intimacies of disappointment, sickness, and grief. I’m not complaining—it is a big, full life. That’s why I call it a privilege, it is. By virtue of office, I get to be part of the family in all the big moments of life: joys and sorrows. And that is my point. Life is not just made up of a series of peak experiences. There are valleys. Sometimes they seem like bottomless chasms, but they inevitably level out and begin to rise again. That’s life. That’s what ages of experience has taught us. And every religious system in the world has some way of coming to terms with suffering-- in Christianity, it is the incarnation of God.

In our United Church of Christ statement of faith, one of the most meaningful lines for me is “In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, God has come to us, and shared our common lot.” That means there is nothing we experience that God has not experienced. God knows from experience our ecstasies and our agonies. God knows what it’s like to be a child and pick wildflowers for mom, because Jesus did that. God knows what it’s like to hit your thumb with a mallet, because Jesus probably did that too. God knows what it’s like when people tell you that you are their savior, because God experienced that through Jesus. And God knows what it’s like to be run out of town, because Jesus experienced that too.

God knows intimately what it is to be betrayed by someone you loved. God knows what’s it’s like to be in prison, because Jesus was there. God knows what it’s like to be beaten, because Jesus was there. And God knows death.

Why did Jesus die? Because he was fully human. Because that is the way life is. There is a beginning and an ending. That’s the way all our stories go.

Some stories seem to end way too soon. Like Jesus’ story.

But for me, the life of Jesus sanctifies my suffering. Through the Jesus story, God takes my suffering and makes it holy. Through the Jesus story, the endurance of suffering becomes a spiritual virtue, that shapes our future and redeems our past.

Through the life, suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus I know that suffering is not all there is, that there is always a resurrection, a rising up.

May the remembrance of Christ’s suffering strengthen us all in faith and hope, that our hearts may rise up in joy. Amen.

The Jesus Experience: I Was a Dead Man. And Now I'm Alive.

2011-04-12T09:27:00.002-05:00

Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 10, 2011

John 11:1-45

Kathleen Norris tells a story in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith:

[Here I read an excerpt from pp. 18-22. Too much to reprint here, but to summarize, it’s the true story about a small town cowboy whose life goes off the rails. Only when he found himself in a car with a murderer, did he realize that he was on the wrong road. He had only just come home to work out what to do next, when he told the author this story. “And that is salvation,” Norris wrote, “or at least the beginning of it.”]

….

And in Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom tells the story of Henry Covington, a man whose life journey took him from his childhood in Brooklyn to dealing drugs in Detroit, through reform and recovery, and then a new life, as pastor of a poor congregation which met in an old church building with a leaky roof. The congregation, despite its poverty, housed the homeless, fed the hungry, and tried to bring the dead drunk back to life.

How many of us know the living dead? How many of us have grieved for brothers or sisters, friends or relations, who have become dead to the world, cut off from the land of the living by addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling or the thrill of crime? People who were our childhood companions, whose life took a strange turn, who are unreachable, dead to us?

For some folks like Henry Covington, the Jesus experience is like coming back from the dead. Returning from a hell on earth, given a second chance at life. It is possible that our brothers and sisters will rise again, in this lifetime.

It isn’t easy to make that journey. A man doesn’t go from prison to the pastorate overnight. There are many steps from the grave to the arms of family. Many metaphorical stones to roll away.

When brother Lazarus comes out, where will we be?

I have heard recently from a local counselor who works with recovering addicts, some of whom have been released from prison on parole. Employment is a condition of parole. If a person cannot find a job, it is back to the tomb of prison. When unemployment is near 15%, who hires the parolee?

Lazarus had his sisters, his sisters had their friends, who congregated outside the tomb. Who will be there for the next Lazarus?

Let us contemplate what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church.

The Jesus Experience: Like Opening Your Eyes for the Very First Time

2011-04-04T14:29:00.001-05:00

4^th Sunday in Lent, 3 April 2011

Text: John 9

I can remember the first time the letters on a page became words. In first grade, Mrs. Landon’s class. The words were “jump, Jane.” Jump Jane, jump! Woo-hoo! I was reading! And after than moment, I understood that letters were not just letters, that they all made words and meant something. From the back seat of the car I read signs. “Gas. Food. Eat at Maid Rite.” And I remember thinking how odd it was that I couldn’t really remember what it was like not to read. I mean, just a few weeks earlier I had passed the same stores and gas stations and had no idea what I was missing!

For some people, that is the Jesus experience. It is like opening your eyes for the first time, and seeing things you had never seen before: the earth, the sky, your mother’s face. A whole new world appears before you. It is wonderful! And then, things get complicated.

In yesterday’s daily devotional, Tony Robinson commented on how, to hear some people tell it, the Jesus experience changes life only for the better. To hear some people tell it, the Jesus experience comes with tangible benefits: “Jesus came into my life and now our business is great, my husband and I are super in love, and my son is getting straight A’s.”

If that’s your story, good for you. But meeting Jesus doesn’t always mean that life gets materially better. Sometimes, Jesus comes into our lives uninvited, and brings chaos. As in today’s gospel story.

The blind man had his place in the community. He used to sit and beg. His neighbors pitied him, his parents looked after him, did best they could. But then the disciples of Jesus came by, and drew Jesus’ attention to the man. Though the blind beggar never asked anything of Jesus, Jesus muddied the man’s face and then told him to go and wash; and he did, and then he could see. It must have been amazing! What joy! What a wonder! But, not for long.

Forced to tell his story over and over again, hauled from pillar to post as people argued over him, he was accused of being a fraud. Denied by neighbors, barely acknowledged by his parents, and then cast out of his congregation-- he was hardly a success story.

And Jesus is mostly absent from this story. Jesus is the cameo appearance, at the beginning and the end. In the middle, the man formerly known as the blind beggar is on his own.

Isn’t that the case for most of us? Moments of enlightenment come and go, and in between, we struggle to live this new life. We want others to understand, but as hard as we try, some people just don’t get it. They don’t see what we see.

Those in authority are particularly threatened by a sighted population. As long as we blindly accept our given place in the world, as the beggar, as the baby, as the drone or the worker, then all is peaceful. Not good maybe, but calm. But when we are given the sight to see that the powerful of this world stand on our backs, and count on us to remain blind to our own enslavement, then the very foundations of the world begin to shake. If we dare to rise up to claim our freedom, we become the outcast.

And that is where Jesus finds us. Jesus seeks us out and searches for us. We know Jesus’ story: we know that Jesus is no stranger to abandonment, betrayal, and denial. What we see at the end is the promise of God, given through the prophet Isaiah:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (49:15)

The Jesus experience. Once our eyes are opened, we will never not see again. That may not make us popular, but, we are promised, we will never be alone. We are part of a family now that reaches back into history and forward to the reign of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Jesus Experience: Like Water for the Parched, Thirsty Soul

2011-03-28T08:12:00.003-05:00

for the 3^rd Sunday in Lent, 27 March 2011

John 4

This Lenten Season, we continue to read from the gospel of John, wherein we meet four people who each have a “Jesus Experience.” These stories invite us to contemplate how we experience Jesus in our lives.

We meet the woman at the well today. The Samaritan woman. Both words are significant. As the text reminds us, Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans. The writer assumes we already know what everyone living on the rim of the Mediterranean would know, in the first centuries of Christianity: Men do not speak to women. Correction: virtuous men do not speak to women who are not their mothers, sisters, or wives. And a virtuous woman would not respond to a man who is not her father, brother or husband. That is why, later in the story, the disciples are scandalized to see him talking with a woman. They are so preoccupied with Jesus’ boundary violation, wondering furthermore if he took food from this woman, that they don’t notice what is happening around them.

While the disciples are preoccupied with Jesus’ rule-breaking, boundary-busting behavior, the Samaritan woman is doing their job! She is telling people what she knows about this Jesus. Intrigued, the villagers come out to meet Jesus for themselves. The disciples listen, dumbfounded, as Jesus tells them they will reap where another has sown, and here comes the sower herself, bringing in the harvest!

But let’s go back, to the Jesus experience at hand. What do we know about thirst? Do we know thirst like the Samaritan woman’s thirst? Jesus knows her, she is the woman who has had five men, and the man she has now is not her man, he is, presumably, someone else’s man. She is the woman who is searching for that one person who will make her life complete, who will quench her thirst for meaning. Can we relate to that? She is looking for that one perfect opportunity which will allow her to use her full potential. She is searching for the perfect place that will finally feel like home. She is thirsty for love, hungry for ultimate meaning. That is the woman at the well.

In Jesus, she finds someone who knows everything that she has ever done, but does not condemn her. In Jesus, she finds everything she has been thirsting for-- so much so, that she forgets why she came to the well in the first place. Leaving her water jar behind, she begins a new life, as a witness, an apostle, a messenger of the gospel. She tells everyone in town what she has experienced, and they run to Jesus to see for themselves. They, in turn, have their own encounter, and invite Jesus to stay with them. And Jesus accepts their offer, and stays with them for days.

The woman who first came to the well alone, utterly alone, returned to the well with a family, a whole community. The one who was an outsider, and accursed, was honored by that community as the one who brought them the living water. She became the vessel, she became the water jar, of living water.

Now I invite you to enter into a guided meditation. Consider for a moment, what are you thirsting after? What is it you are constantly returning to, to quench that thirst? What’s your well or watering hole? Go there now, in your imagination.

If Jesus were to meet you there, and tell you “everything you ever did,” what would he say?

And if you were to leave something behind, like a water jar, what would it be? What is encumbering you? What’s getting in the way of your freedom to tell others what you have experienced as Jesus in your life?

And finally, when you leave that water jar of yours behind, what will you say to the others. How can you share your Jesus experience with others?

I invite you to contemplate these questions, as we listen to the interlude and prepare to sing the hymn.

The Jesus Experience: Like Being Born. Again.

2011-03-21T09:41:00.005-05:00

for the 2nd Sunday in Lent, 20th March 2011
text: John 3:1-17

During this season of Lent, the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the list of scriptures used by many churches, assigns passages from the gospel of John. Now John’s gospel is, to put it in polite Minnesotan, “different.” I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, staring with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. [This was when I was in high school. I used to read the Bible before I went to bed at night. Because I didn’t want my parents to worry that I was turning into some religious freak, I hid the bible in a shoebox under my bed.] When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. There are stories and characters in John’s gospel that appear nowhere else. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, [as I wrote previously in my blog] perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a poetic ballad is to a historical novel. Perhaps the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. John’s gospel was compiled as many as 40 years after Mark, decades after Matthew and Luke. It is different. The gospel according to John is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles-- the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. So the gospel of John had another mission. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to explain to new Christians “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John-- Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus—each one is, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
This week, we will consider how the Jesus Experience is like “being born again.” Next week we will consider how the Jesus experience is like drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again. The following week, how the Jesus Experience is like seeing the world clearly for the first time ever, and finally, like coming back from the dead. “The Jesus Experience” is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.
So, meet Nicodemus. A Pharisee. One of THOSE people who were always critical of Jesus. And yet, Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus. This is Nicodemus’s first appearance in the gospel, but we will meet him again, as we read along. At this point, in the third chapter of John’s gospel, Nic’s relationship with Jesus is just beginning. In the beginning, Nicodemus seems to be suffering from a divided self. Nicodemus follows Jesus in secret, because he is firmly entrenched in his family and community as a leader of the conservative movement, the movement that views strict adherence to the law, or to a particular interpretation of the law of Moses, as Israel’s only salvation. He continues to live as a Pharisee, but follows Jesus in secret, and that’s what I mean by a divided self, he is trying to live in two worlds. So the story goes that he comes to Jesus in secret, to say (in paraphrase), Hey, I’m on your side. I know you are from God, because no one could do what you do apart from God.
Jesus called him out. You can’t follow me half-way.
Jesus said, you must be born again, born anew, born from above. (All acceptable translations.)
“Born again” is one of those terms that people in my tradition say with at least a hint of derision. My tradition is “cradle Christianity.” It was the goal of 19th century Congregationalists and Presbyterians and others in the mainstream Protestant tradition, who invented the “Sunday School,” that a child born into the church should never know what it is NOT to be Christian. I think they did their job well, so well in fact that it is hard for us “cradle Christians” to understand just how difficult it is to make a change from being “not particularly religious” to claiming the name of Christian. It is like being born again. Because a person who leaves one identity, one community, one family for another is completely vulnerable, naked and scared, and in need of special care and protection. Like a newborn infant.
The image of being born again of water and the Spirit is a reference to baptism; that reference would have been clear to the first Christians reading John’s gospel. In the early church, adult converts were baptized during the great Easter vigil. In the pre-dawn darkness, catechumens were led to the baptistery, a circular building outside of a church, often a womb-like structure, where they undressed, immersed themselves in the water, and emerged cold and wet as a new born babe. They were then received by their new family, their Christian family, toweled off and anointed with oil, and dressed in a new white robe. Just like a newborn baby.
If you are, like me, a cradle Christian, if you have a hard time imagining what it would be like to embrace a life that is wholly foreign to your family and your community, then perhaps you can think of a different sort of change in your life that has been like being born again. Your coming out, your leaving home, your return from battle. Think of a welcome change, which made you tremble in anticipation of – you knew not what.
That is what it is like having Christ in your life, it is like being born again, naked and screaming.
Now, in the past, if a church like ours has grown, it has grown because people who were raised in a tradition like ours moved to our town and transferred their membership from their church in Anoka or Wadena or Zumbrota to became a member of our church. That was then, this is now.
Now, the fastest growing religious demographic in America is that group that checks the box “no religious preference.” Now, when a young couple comes to me for a wedding, and I ask them if they are affiliated with a local church (because, I believe being a professional means I shouldn’t steal some other pastor’s wedding!), usually they have to go back two generations to identify a religious affliliation. The bride and groom didn’t go to church, their parents didn’t go to church, but they seem to remember that Grandma used to go to St. Something or Other until she moved to Florida. So now, if the church is going to grow, it is going to have to be ready to care for infant Christians. We as a church have to be born again, we have to change our way of thinking and relating to the world. The old assumptions no longer apply.
We now need to be ready to care for those who are completely new to the faith. Those who, because of their decision to follow Christ, might need a new family. Our newest members will need us to be their family. We will need to think like a nursery, if we are to help other people have the Jesus experience that we cradle Christians have taken for granted. The Jesus experience is too good to keep to ourselves. It is an experience that we want to share with others.
But, I don’t want you to get the idea that it’s all work, work, work. Just as a new baby brings joy to a family, newborn Christians infuse the church with new joy. New and newly born folks tend to have the energy and stamina and enthusiasm to bring new life to an old congregation. If we let them.
We have watch ourselves, lest we be tempted to say those killer words, “We’ve never done it that way before.” We ought to be ready to say, “We’ve never done it that way before. Let’s try it!”
We may even find ourselves being born anew, to a new understanding of our faith. Being born again doesn’t necessarily happen only once. As one of my favorite musicians named after two apostles, Paul Simon, sang:

I was born before my father and my children before me
And we are born and born again like the waves of the sea.
That’s the way it’s always been. That’s how I want it to be.
(Senorita with a Necklace of Tears, 2000)

Born and born again. That’s the way it’s always been, and God willing, that’s how it will be. Thanks Be to God. Amen!

The Jesus Experience

2011-03-11T11:20:00.003-06:00

An American missionary was hiking in the wilderness of New Guinea, through the forest, up the mountain. Two Guineans served as guides and companions on the rigorous trek. When they arrived at their destination, a mountain village, the villagers brought them water and food and asked about their journey. Each of the guides took turns telling the story of the hike, and as they told it the American was wondering if he had been on the same journey! The story the guides told was, to put it politely, embellished, to put it crudely, pure bull$*@#.
When the villagers left the travelers to their rest, the missionary asked the guides how they could lie like that. “What do you mean?” they asked.
“None of that stuff actually happened.”
“We spoke the truth,” the guides insisted.
But as the missionary settled in and became accustomed to village life, he learned that the kind of stories they people told each other were true, in the way that poetry is true, in the way that folktales are true. The guides were trying to convey to their listeners the experience of the journey. Not a map of the journey, but the experience. Their story was meant to convey what it was like to climb the mountain that morning.

...an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus in our lives.

The gospel of John stands in sharp contrast to the other three gospels. I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, starting with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a ballad is to a historical novel.
I think the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. It is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles, the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to say, “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John, Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus, are each, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
Having the Christ in our lives is like
-- being re-born. (March 20)
-- drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again (March 27)
-- seeing the world clearly for the first time ever (April 3)
-- coming back from the dead (April 10)
That is what I am calling “The Jesus Experience.” It is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.

Mountaintop

2011-03-07T09:56:00.004-06:00

A Communion Sunday Meditation.
Text: Matthew 17:1-9

The day we had set aside to climb Camel’s Hump Mountain was wet with a gentle rain, but it wasn’t pouring, so we went anyway. We had hiking shoes and slickers, and the trail was well traveled, and we made it to the top of Vermont’s second-highest peak with just enough difficulty to make it feel like an accomplishment. The peak is above the tree line, just skree and moss, like a rock garden, and many hikers were unpacking their knapsacks for lunch. It was like a meeting of the nations, people from all across the country and some foreign visitors too, enjoying their tour of the Long Trail. There was a sense of camaraderie. Then, for an instant, there was a clearing in the fog, a break in the clouds, through which the sun shone and you could see the green mountains spread out below, and it was such a sight you could hear a great collective sigh. I think some of us applauded. It was just a brief moment, and then it passed. And eventually, we gathered up our granola bar wrappers, and checked our boot laces, and one little group after another went on, down this mountain.
It was an experience that defies description. As much as I have tried to keep the memory of that day, I know I have lost many of the details. As much as I have tried to convey it to you, to share the way the rocks felt beneath my feet and the way the mist caressed by face, you really had to be there.
Everyone needs to have their own mountain top experience.
I believe that is the intent of the gospel story, of the mountaintop experience shared by Peter, James, and John. It was a moment of enlightenment. They told the story to convey the experience, to share it with the other disciples, who in turn passed the story on to others.
You have probably had your own mountaintop experiences, which you have treasured in your own hearts, and have longed to share with others. If only we could bottle those experiences and return to them whenever we feel the need. But the presence of the holy rarely comes in the same way twice. We always have to come down from the mountain, or home from the wilderness. After enlightenment, the laundry.
We keep these stories for each other. We keep them to remind ourselves that the Spirit moves, in this life, in this world. We keep the stories to remind each other that God’s presence comes, the spirit comes, the Christ comes, and comes again. Holy ground is wherever the Spirit is present, Holy time is whenever the Spirit is present, a holy meal is whenever we break bread together.
We break the bread and share the cup in the presence of our Lord, the one who comes to us on the mountaintop and the one who walks with us down the mountain, the one who is host, and guest, and servant at the table all at once. May this be for us a sacred moment, a memory and a foretaste of the full presence of God in our lives. Amen.

Busting Down the Walls

2011-02-20T20:21:00.000-06:00

20 February 2011
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

In this season of Epiphany, which begins with the light of the star that marked the place where the child Jesus lay, we have been celebrating the light of Christ. Simultaneously, we have been enjoying a little more light day by day. So little, that you hardly notice it at first. But the other day, as we were driving up highway 371 on a return trip from the Cities, I noticed something wonderful. It was 5:00 p.m., and we did not need our headlights yet! I could still see well enough to keep on knitting. (Relax, Richard was driving. I’m not so accomplished yet as to drive and knit at the same time.)
The season begins with the cold light of the star, the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. The darkness, personified by King Herod, tries but fails to snuff out the infant light.
The Old Testament writings reminded us that God gave us Israel, our spiritual ancestors, as a “light to the nations.” And Jesus called us to be the light of the world. In the Sermon on the Mount, which we have been reading bits of for several weeks now, we are shown how to let that light shine.
And at the same time, our part of the globe leans into the sun, like a sunflower drawn to the light, as if to remind us of our calling, to resist darkness, and lean into the light.
Meanwhile, beyond the church doors, we have been reminded of the eternal struggle. When we see in Egypt the crowds of peaceful resistors standing up to a dictator, we see it in terms of light versus darkness. And when we see the Wisconsin State Capital overflow with peaceful protestors, we see light versus darkness. My brother-in-law and I may disagree about who represents light and who represents darkness, but we both tend to see it as good versus evil. As if the drama of real life were as simple as High Noon or Star Wars.
But real life is complicated by the problem of sin. Whether it’s “original” or “new and improved,” sin is a part of each of us, and we deny it at our peril. Self-identifying with the white-hats, and casting others who are not like us as the villains, that is the very thing that drove Jesus into full-time ministry.
Jesus didn’t have a problem with sinners. He spent a lot of time with them. Jesus had a problem with the self-righteous, the pious, those who prayed, “Thank God I’m not like those people.” Jesus had a problem with the scripture, particularly those scriptures that build walls between “us” and “those people.”
We all remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, who took care of the man who had been beat up and robbed, after three nice religious people passed by on the other side. But do we remember what preceded the parable, do we remember the set-up? Someone was asking Jesus which commandment was the greatest, and then answered his own question. Jesus prompted, “What’s in the law, what do you read there,” and the person who asked the question answered: “To love the lord and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s straight out of Leviticus, we heard it in our Old Testament lesson for today. Leviticus is most well known for being the source of the holiness code, the laws that build walls between “us” and “them:” the dietary codes, the purity laws, the “you shall not eat” and the “you shall not touch.” Leviticus is the book that uses the word “abomination” a lot, and it is the book that justifies a death sentence for those who violate the code.
Now, those people in the parable, who passed by on the other side, they were following the code. They were staying away from blood, so as to remain ritually pure. The Samaritan (feel free to read any despised person here, to personalize the paraphrase—the good Iraqi, the good Mexican, the good Muslim) didn’t follow the code, but allowed himself to be ritually violated by blood. And in doing so, in that beautiful paradoxical way that we find in scripture, fulfilled the law. The good Samaritan fulfilled the law by breaking the rules.
Go and do likewise.
Go and violate the laws that build walls. Go and break the rules if necessary, to keep the spirit of the law of loving your neighbor as yourself.
“Who is my neighbor?” is the title of the antiracism event we are co-sponsoring on Saturday. I want you to be ready for this. The event itself is not a protest or a demonstration. The gathering at the courthouse on Tuesday was a demonstration, a symbolic act. Symbols are subject to interpretation. Saturday’s workshop is our effort to provide an interpretation.
One possible interpretation of the demonstration might be that it was an effort to paint the accused as “evil” and identify the demonstrators as “good,” to symbolically paint black hats on the accused and white hats on everyone who gathered outside the courthouse. If that’s all it was, then we are no better off for having gathered. If that’s all it was, then it only served to put up more walls between “us” and “them.”
The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the difficult truth that real life is not that simple. The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the sin of racism, and the place that it has in our own souls and in our communal soul.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” begins Robert Frost’s poem. Conversely, something there is that loves a wall. Sin is that wall-builder. Sin is that impulse that points the finger and says “that is not us.” Grace acknowledges a brother or sister.
The beating of Willie Navy held up a mirror to our community. We didn’t like what we saw, so we have done our best to deny it, to say, “That is not us.” But that is us. When we hold up a mirror to our community, we want to see the cover of the Lake Country Journal. That is us too, but that is not the whole picture. We must come to terms with the whole picture.
On Saturday, we are going to take a good look at the whole picture in the mirror. Once we acknowledge the whole picture, then we can chose how to change it for the better.
Here is a new parable for you. A gardener planted a garden in the Lake Country. To keep the critters out of it, she put up a fence. The deer leapt the fence, so she built it higher. The rabbits went through the gaps in the chain link, so she built it up with stone. And behind the stone walls, the garden withered and died, for lack of light.
Then she realized, if she wants this garden to grow, she’s got to start busting down those walls.
Go and do likewise.

The Unhistoric Acts of the Saints

2011-02-01T09:58:00.001-06:00

(For the February church newsletter.)
In January, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr Day. In February we will celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on Presidents’ Day, and observe Black History Month. While we all owe a debt of gratitude to great historic figures for their great historic acts, we should also remember, as George Eliot wrote, in her novel Middlemarch, that…

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

We are dependent not only on the historic acts of historic figures, but on the unhistoric acts of people who live faithfully, who do justly, who love kindly, and walk humbly with God. I’m sure you can think of someone who intervened in your life at a key moment. I am thinking of my sixth grade teacher.
In elementary school, I was an indifferent student, and an embarrassed reader. One day my sixth grade teacher called me to sit beside her desk and quietly explained to me that I would fail reading that semester, unless I read a book a week for the next nine weeks. I didn’t think that was possible. I didn’t come from a family of readers, we were avid watchers of television. As a child, I felt I was as much (or more) a part of the Brady family and the Partridge family as the Griffin family. I was sure I could not read a book a week, but my teacher was sure that I could.
So I went home that day, with a book from the school library, a book that my teacher recommended. When I got home, instead of sitting on the sofa for the usual fare of Gilligan’s Island, followed by Hogan’s Heroes and Star Trek, I sat in a chair and told my mom I had to read. And I read. The book was called Freaky Friday. That’s right, like True Grit, it was a book before it was made into a movie based on a movie! When Mom called me for supper, I was astonished to realize that I was one chapter away from the end of the book. I had read almost a whole book in a day, and I hadn’t thought I could read one in a week.
My sixth grade teacher changed the course of my life, by telling me I could do better. Through this simple, unhistoric act, she saved me—she became an agent of my salvation. I was saved from being a sixth-grade failure, and from whatever comes of being a sixth-grade failure.
Sometimes, people just need to know that they can do better. The apostle Paul knew this, and I believe that is why he began nearly all his letters with thanksgiving to God, for the people to whom he was writing. Sometimes he wrote to correct the people, sometimes to encourage the people, but whether to comfort or cajole, he first expressed his thanks for the people. In giving thanks, he was reminding them who they were. Not isolated individuals but members of one body in Christ; not powerless, but endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul speaks to us through these pages, to remind us of who we are: We are God’s children, fed by God’s Holy Spirit, given authority to continue the work begun in Christ, saving the world in Christ’s name. We each have our part to sing, our role to play, our work to do.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the past, to the historic and unhistoric acts of the saints who have gone before us. And the best way to pay our debt to the past (wrote John Buchan) is to put the future in debt to us. Without ever expecting to collect interest, for all that we are we owe to others, who have themselves been agents of our salvation. Let us go, and do likewise.

Why everything we think we know is probably wrong

2011-01-30T15:08:00.000-06:00

A Sermon for January 30, 2011
Texts: Micah 6:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12

In the title of this sermon I promise to tell you why everything we think we know is probably wrong. I’m also going to tell you why that is good news. When we survey the scriptures, we find that whenever people think they have God figured out, God begs to differ. That’s why everything we think we know is probably wrong, and why meekness is a virtue.
Take for example this passage from Micah. Now, in Micah’s day, which was a time of rebuilding Israel after the long Babylonian exile, people were trying to figure out how to get Israel back on top. They had heard the stories from their parents and grandparents, about how great it was back in the day, back when Jerusalem was the center of the world, back when queens and princes from faraway lands would travel by camel caravan just to see the glory of that city. But, you know, how grandparents can embellish stories, right? How the stories become tall tales, so the past becomes legendary. The Jerusalem of the stories probably far outshone the Jerusalem of history.
Rebuilding a city and a nation was not as simple as it had seemed. They did not find it as their great-grandparents had left it. After decades of neglect, Jerusalem was a ruin, the land of Israel forgotten. What do we have to do, the people were complaining. We returned, we cleaned up the temple, we devoted ourselves to the worship of God the way our grandparents told us. They promised that if we do this, the riches of the nations would come pouring back into Jerusalem. Well, what more can we do? We have kept our part of the bargain, where is God?
You think you know me? God says, through Micah. You don’t know me! It doesn’t matter what you do inside the temple, if you don’t do right outside the temple. What happened was, the returning exiles turned the restoration of Israel into a big land grab. When they came back to the city they acted as if they had a right to all the best houses and all the best lands, and they displaced the people who had been living there for generations, whose families did not Go into exile. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. The retuning exiles thought that justice was something God would do for them, once they got their ritual on. God, through Micah, turned the world upside down and inside out. Justice is not the reward at the end of the journey, it is the journey. Everything the people thought they knew about God was wrong, and that was good news! Because God was working through them to build the city of peace, Jeru-salem, (that’s what the name means, the dwelling place of peace).
And in Jesus day, people thought they knew who was blessed and who was cursed, just by looking at them. Obviously, the wealthy person with a house full of children is blessed by God; obviously the beggar at the gate was cursed. But Jesus, he saw things differently. Through him, the people learned to look with the eyes of their heart and see things differently. Once again through Jesus, God turns the world upside down and inside out, blessing the cursed.
And in the days of the apostle Paul, when the people of the church in Corinth were trying to outdo one another in claims to wisdom, God did it again—turned the world upside down and inside out through the words of the apostle Paul. What you think you know, Paul said, is foolishness, and that is good news. You don’t have to depend on your own cleverness, and that is good news. ‘Cause you aren’t so clever as you think!
And even now God is calling us to turn our vision inside out. Turning the church inside out is one of the keys to success—and I’m a bit uneasy with the term—in church development. I’m uneasy with the term “success” when it comes to the church because what we think of as success conflicts with the Jesus movement. Jesus turns our idea of success upside down and inside out too. Look at Jesus. He was not the leader of a mega-church. Jesus had a small church, a small band of disciples. And sometimes, Jesus would say something that would make people mad, and they would leave. Jesus didn’t even have a home or land or a big family, and he didn’t live to a ripe old age—these were the measures of success in his day. He was arrested, tortured, and killed. Hardly a success story, by our conventional standards.
According to the Center for Progressive Renewal, the vital, successful church is one that is turned inside-out: the one where people come in, for the purpose of going out. So, when we think of a “successful” church, we shouldn’t picture the church of the past, the church of history or legend, where everyone up and down the street went to worship every Sunday morning, and the Sunday schools were bursting at the seams. I don’t think recreating the protestant church of the 1950’s is high on God’s list of priorities. But God has shown us what success means: what is high on God’s list is that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God
Humility, is one virtue I still have to work on, when it comes to my church. Because I am so proud of my church. Even when people say, “First Congregational, which Lutheran Synod is that?” Or “United Church of Christ? Church of Christ, like Pat Roberton?” I say, no, no that’s a different church, and we have no connection to that famous person. The Congregational church and the United Church of Christ—remember the pilgrims? You know us. We invented America. And we invented the abolition of slavery. And women’s rights. And we even invented Unitarianism.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot sit back and bask in the reflected glory of the faithful past. When we get together here in this church, we come to fill up on the nourishment of the scriptures, and to build one another up in love, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of the faith. We come here to fill up, so we can go out there and give it away. The Holy Spirit comes to us all, and gives each of us gifts, but not for our own sake. The Holy Spirit comes to us on its way to somebody else.
So, go from this place and do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. And come back for more, to go out again. Thanks be to God for the Spirit in our midst.

Called to Rise

2011-01-24T10:27:00.000-06:00

A Sermon for Sunday, January 23. Text: Mark 4:12-23

There are no prerequisites for discipleship. That’s what today’s gospel lesson is about. It’s totally an entry-level position. No educational requirements, no pre-certification. If those fishermen were qualified, then so are you.
There are no prerequisites, but there are expectations, great expectations. The expectation is that when we are called we will rise up and follow.
Disciples are called to rise. Called to rise to the occasion. Called “for such a time as this,” or for such a time as will be.
Moments of decision come while we are mending our nets, washing our dishes.They come when we are on our way to important meetings, or going nowhere in particular. There is a call, a plea, a searching look, and we can return to our nets, our sink full of dishes, the business of the day, or, we can rise to the occasion, and be someone we did not think we could be.
Rosa Parks, the woman whose arrest in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, rose to the occasion by remaining seated. Now, when I was a child, I learned in school that Rosa was tired from working all day, and just decided right then and there that she had had enough. I got the idea that it was social change through weariness. Well, a few years ago when I was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I learned that that is not the whole story. Rosa Parks had been a member of the NAACP for a more than a decade. She had participated in voter registration drives. She had attended training sessions on civil disobedience. She was prepared for the occasion. She had practiced, and role-played so that when someone said to her, “If you don’t get up out of that seat we are going to call the police and they will arrest you,” she was ready to say, simply, “You may do that.”
What we are about in the church is practicing faith. Practicing for the occasions to come, so that we will be ready to rise. One of my summer jobs when I was in college was camp lifeguard, and one of the responsibilities of the lifeguard is to train, every day, in order to be ready when the occasion comes. So I swam a half-mile every day and occasionally a mile. With the other lifeguards I participated in search and rescue drills, and we practiced carrying people to safety. Most of the time, lifeguarding is about watching. In three years, I never had to rescue anybody. But I had to be ready, should the need arise.
We might never be called to greatness. We may never be called to save a life or start a movement. Or, we might. Unless we are ready we won’t know what God may do through us. We may have a role to play in someone else’s greatness, like Mother Pollard, a woman who encouraged Martin Luther King, Jr, when he was frightened and his faith was failing. You can read about her in Dr. King’s book, The Strength to Love. The story leaves me wondering if Dr. King would have been Dr. King without the encouragement of this elderly, poor, uneducated but profoundly wise woman, who offered encouragement to the struggling young pastor who led the bus boycott in 1956.
Here we are. Practicing the faith together, that we might be ready to rise when the occasion calls us, with words of encouragement, acts of love and justice. New life begins here, with the call to rise, where it might lead, God knows.

Why the Christmas Story is Good News, and Why It Matters to Me

2010-12-24T10:13:00.001-06:00

On Christmas Eve I have always preferred to let the Christmas story preach itself. Carefully placed and rehearsed and paced, read out from the pulpit of this beautiful sanctuary, accompanied by pipe organ and carols, the seven lessons are like seven gems in a filigree setting. What more can one say, but that which has already been said:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

And,

“Do not be afraid.”

And,

“I bring you good news of great joy. Unto you is born this day a savior, who is Christ, the Lord.”

This story is trustworthy and true. It may not have actually happened this way, but it is trustworthy and true. The Jesus Story is just one version of the overarching story of God and God’s people. It is the story of what lengths God will go to, for the people, to save the people-- to save us from each other and to save us from ourselves. This story is an invitation: God invites us into relationship. We get to decide how to receive the invitation. Whether to receive it as good news, bad news, or no news, is up to us.

According to the gospels of Luke and Matthew, the story of God’s incarnation was received with mixed reviews. The same may be true today. God comes with justice. This is good news. It is good news for shepherds in the field, good news for low-wage workers, good news for the alien wanderer in the land. Good news for the merciful and the meek. But bad news for Herod. Bad news for those who oppress the workers and visit violence upon the homeless traveler. The light that shines in the darkness is not the innocuous glow of the twinkling tree. It is a searchlight, which allows no injustice to hide from God who comes with justice, to set the prisoners free, to bring down the mighty from their thrones and life up those of low degree.

According to God, we are free. We get to decide whether or not to turn and walk back into our prisons. According to God, our eyes have been opened! We get to decide, whether to keep watch and bear witness, to call out when we see suffering, or whether to close our eyes and pretend not to see.

We get to decide how to live in response to this story. Living faithfully, day after day, is not easy living. It is thoughtful, spiritual, mindful living. Fortunately we are not left on our own. We have the church, and the promise that God will guide us. We are in good company.

This is a church that seeks to know and share the love of God which we find within us, and within these stories. We live to be faithful in our relationships with one another, with the church universal, with other people of faith, and with God. You, all of you, are welcome to come and be a part of this church. We don’t pretend to have all the answers. God knows. But we are a safe place to ask the questions, about how to live faithfully, do justly, and walk humbly with God and with each other.

Whatever we decide, about God, about the story, about the church, God is always seeking us out, inviting us in, because God is love; and I hope you will agree, that is good news.

May the peace of Christ be with you, this night, and always. Amen.

God Is With Us

2010-12-23T08:32:00.000-06:00

19 December 2010

Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matt 28:20b (the last word)

In life, in death, in life beyond death,

God is with us.

We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

--“A New Creed,” United Church of Canada, 1980

Today we have lit the candle of Love, and we have read and heard the story of the birth of Jesus, from Matthew’s point of view. Matthew’s birth narrative is much briefer than Luke’s; and where Mary is the focus of the birth narrative in Luke, in Matthew’s gospel Joseph plays the pivotal role.

Poor Joseph. In our crèche, his figure stands like an accessory to Mary, like Ken to Barbie. He is always in the background. In Catholic tradition, Mary becomes the Queen of Heaven, but Joseph, he is just a saint. Sure, he has a few hospitals and a children’s aspirin named after him, but there are few great works of art that focus on his love and care for the child. In Christmas pageants too, he gets few lines, if any. Stage direction: Joseph approaches Inn, knocks on the door. Enter innkeeper. Joseph: “Got a room?”

Because Matthew’s version of events is recorded so tersely, I believe an appreciation for Joseph requires some faithful, respectful, and I hope not too fanciful, expansion of the story. To be faithful to the time and place, we must set aside our modern, western notions of marriage. For most of the world, throughout much of history, marriage was considered far too important to be initiated by a boy and a girl. Marriage was arranged by elders and relatives who knew better. Joseph might not have even seen Mary before the betrothal ceremony, and may have had little contact with her after. The two ceremonies-- one for betrothal, when a woman was claimed by the husband’s family; and one for the marriage, when the man and woman began to live together as husband and wife—were separated by a sufficient amount of time (6 months or so) to confirm that the bride’s family was not trying to pass off “damaged goods.”

So, for Mary to turn up pregnant during this time is a grave dishonor, a shame upon Mary’s family, and upon Joseph’s too. All deals were off. Mary would not only have been disgraced, she could have been killed according to the law-- stoned to death as an adulteress.

That Joseph had resolved to dismiss her quietly shows that he is not only a righteous man (that is, a man who would not take an adulteress as a wife), his resolve to dismiss her quietly also shows that he is a compassionate man. This internal struggle, between righteousness and compassion, between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, mirrors the moral struggles of the church to which Matthew addressed his gospel. And it foreshadows the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount: all those “you have heard that it was said” sayings that call us to go beyond the letter of the law, even to ignore the law, to be compassionate, as God is compassionate.

After he had resolved to do this, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Do not be afraid.” This is the fulfillment of God’s promise—Emmanuel—God is with us. This is the beginning of the Gospel, and this is the end: Emmanuel, God is with us. Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

When when Joseph awoke from his dream, the pathway was clear. Confronted with the law, torn between obligation and compassion, Joseph, emboldened by the promise of God’s presence, chose compassion. So may we all.

Isaiah's Vision; Paul's Hope

2010-12-06T09:54:00.000-06:00

Texts for Sunday, December 5: Isaiah 11:1-10’ Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matt 3:1-12

The scriptures provide the following job description for kings: justice for the poor and meek, deliverance for the needy. Peace will come, the prophet promises, with a leader who will serve the last and least of the people. And on that day, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the cow and bear will graze, the lion will eat straw like the ox. And pigs will fly, the prophet might add. Like, “That’ll be the day.”

Cynicism is easy, too easy. Anyone who is paying attention to news from Washington knows that our kings and princes have recently decided against deliverance for the needy. The least of these don’t even make the list of very important people. That is not how it should be.

Jesus and the prophets held up a different picture. A vision of peace, that peaceful place where predators become herbivores, and prey have no worries. And this is written to give us hope, the apostle Paul wrote. Hope is the antithesis and the antidote to despair. Hope is powerful. Hope is not just wishful thinking, hope is a commitment to live in the present as if the future has already arrived.

It is hope that drove the people into the wilderness of the Jordan, to be baptized by John. John announced the coming of the prince of peace and taught the people to prepare for his coming. “Repent!” was the word he used. Repent means “turn around.” Repentance is a reversal of course. Repentance clears the way for a new and better future. And repentance confirms in each of us the hope for a better future.

Hope, three times in this brief passage Paul uses that word. Hope is extraordinary. Hope requires a minute shift in vision, just a small but powerful movement. Elsewhere in the letter to the Romans, Paul explains it this way: Suffering produces Endurance, and Endurance produces Character, and Character produces Hope. Somehow that proclamation seems counter-intuitive, because we all can think of examples of how suffering produces nothing but more suffering. But we also have witnesses to the power of hope. We have Paul, and we have Gandhi, and we have King, and we have Tutu. We have Wiesel, and Kushner, and so many others, people without headline names. We have witnesses to the power of hope, hope that the wrong shall fail, and the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to all.

And our witnesses show that living in hope gives us the power to join the movement of the one who ushers in the age of justice, and righteousness, and peace.

May the God of hope fill you with all peace and joy in believing, that you may abound in hope, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Amen.

Tick Tock-- This is Your Wakeup Call for the First Sunday in Advent

2010-11-23T13:56:00.002-06:00

The word from the prophet Isaiah, and the word from the Psalm appointed for today, is Peace. The prophet, speaking to people who had enough of war, enough of hunger, enough of exile, shared a dream of a new Jerusalem, where God would live. People of the world would stream in through the gates of the city to sit at God’s feet and learn of God’s ways, directly from the source of all life. Nations would not go to war over boundaries or water or food or oil; instead they would come to God for binding arbitration. God would judge between nations, and there would be no arguments, no appeals, so the weapons of war could be broken down and reformed into tools for the farmer and the orchard keeper-- plows and pruning hooks, for wheat and olives, for bread and oil. The stuff of life, courtesy of the author of life.

The psalm transports the worshipper in exile to Jerusalem, not Jerusalem as it was, or is, but as it ought to be, as God wills it. My feet are standing within your walls, Jerusalem, built as a city, where, as in Isaiah, justice is established, because God is judge.

The judgment of God is that all have the things that make for life. Biblical justice is overwhelmingly not retributive justice—not eye for eye as in Leviticus—but distributive justice, as in everyone having a share of the things that make for life, as in the miracle of the manna from heaven, and the feeding of the 5,000, and the wheat that never ran out, and the oil that was never spent.

The prophets promise that Peace is coming, that God will bring it to fruition. But that is not to say that we can sit back and wait for peace to over take us. We can participate in God’s peace now, we can practice living in God’s peace while we are still waiting for the fullness of time. The apostle Paul assures us, Peace is nearer to us now than when we first began to believe. Be Ready! The gospel warns, keep awake and be ready, for the Prince of Peace is coming. How will it look if he comes and finds us sleeping? Or worse, if he comes and finds us at war? As the Vaughn brothers sang, “Tick tock, people. Time’s ticking away.”

We may never see the fullness of God’s peace in our lifetime, but we can participate in God’s peace even today. The paths of peace are before us, and the milemarkers are justice, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. Let’s be on our way.

Waiting for a King

2010-11-22T12:28:00.001-06:00

Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6

The shepherds Jeremiah was referring to were the kings and princes, the rulers of Israel whose duty, according to the prophet, was to use their power for good and not evil. Instead of caring for the people they exploited them. The leaders of Israel were no better than the pharaoh of Egypt, from whom God had delivered the people to create the nation of Israel. Imagine, leaders chosen to serve the people, turning on the people they were called to serve. Enslaving them the way that Pharaoh had enslaved their ancestors, to the benefit of the leaders themselves, and their wealthy benefactors. Sound familiar?

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Through the prophet, God promised to “attend to” the leaders of Israel, a vague, but no less ominous threat. Because you did not attend to my people, I will attend to you. And afterward, God will be the shepherd, God will be the king.

Which is the way God wanted it in the first place. Back in the days of the prophet Samuel, before there was a king in Israel, the people asked for a king, so they could be like other nations. God warned them, through the prophet, God warned them about kings—they will send your sons to war; they will take your daughters as concubines; they will take away everything God has given you. But still the people said, give us a king! And in a private conversation, when Samuel was grieving over the people’s rejection, God said, don’t worry Sam, they are not rejecting you, they are rejecting me. Give them a king.

And when it all went down just as God said it would, did God say, “I told you so.” Probably. But God also promised to return as the good shepherd, the true king of Israel.

Next week we begin the season of Advent, a season of anticipation. We will return to the days of waiting, anticipating the return of the king. Because Christian doctrine teaches us that Jesus is the Messiah, the true king, the one of whom the prophets spoke.

But here we are, still waiting for a King. Maybe not a king, exactly, but waiting for someone who will free us from the corrupt leaders, who gorge themselves on the wealth of the nation, while the poor of the people become destitute, and desperate. When was the last time a leader stood up for the poorest of the poor?

Still we keep waiting, waiting, waiting for the world to change.

What if we are the ones for whom we wait?

For we are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.

Then we are not just sheep. We are (paradoxically) also the shepherd. Or, at least, members of the body of the Good Shepherd. While none of us, individually, may have the power to save the world, all of us, together, with the Holy Spirit, have tremendous power, and we are called to use that power for good, and not evil, for the least and last of the people. For the old sheep, and the young lambs, for the lost and stray. If we fail to attend to the sheep, God will attend to us.

This week, we live in the land between time. Between Pentecost and Advent, between the old year and the new, between the already and the not yet. And that is a metaphor for the whole of Christian history, lived between Resurrection and Return. We see paradise on the horizon, we ache for it, and it remains just beyond where we are right now.

But paradise is our joy and our hope, and we hear the promise on our savior’s lips, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Today is a very long day—a day that holds within it an age, an infinite lifetime. While it is still day we have the opportunity to be a part of what God is doing in the world, and the promise that, before the day’s end, we will be together in Paradise. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Communion Table as a “Thin Place”

2010-11-05T10:43:00.002-05:00

The island of Iona, in the Irish Sea, is said to be full of “thin places,” places where the division between this life and the afterlife are very thin. That may be why St. Columba built a monastery there, because the place was already considered to be holy ground.

In Saving Paradise, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker describe the early church’s understanding of Holy Communion as a numinous moment, when the veil between the “saints above” and “saints below” was drawn aside. When the church gathered to share the bread, believers feasted with the saints in paradise.

You know I lost my dad in 1992, and my sister and her husband in 2001, and my mom in 2003. Some weeks after my sister’s death, on an ordinary Sunday when we were sharing communion, I was suddenly surprised by the presence of my family. This is not a ghost story. It was not a hallucination. As I sat in the choir loft, while the ushers passed the trays of bread and wine, I felt my sister beside me, and my parents too. I had a sense that Cindy was stifling a giggle (something we often did in worship—try to make the other laugh). And then the moment passed. It was numinous moment. It was as if the difference between us, the living members of the family and the dead, was meaningless. We were all communing together.

When you come for communion this Sunday, remember you will share the feast with all the saints, the ones in the pews and the ones who sit at the table in Paradise, and in that moment, we will all be united in the presence of Christ. Amen.

Cindy and I, ready for Thanksgiving Worship at First Congregational in Moline, c.1980

Trying to See

2010-10-31T21:02:00.001-05:00

31 October 2010

Luke 19:1-10

Reading Luke, you might think God loves the poor and hates the rich. It starts with the Magnificat, Mary’s song:

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

“He pulls the mighty down from their thrones and lifts up those of low degree.” In one of Jesus’ parables, a rich man is tormented in hell, and as if to rub salt in his wounds he can look up and see poor Lazarus in heaven. “The hungry he fills with good things and sends the rich away empty,” the way the rich man who lacked only one thing, to sell all he had and give to the poor, went away empty, still hungry for eternal life.

The Gospel truth is that God loves. God loves rich and poor alike, God shows no partiality. God is particularly fond of each one of us. The thing is, we who are rich seldom realize how poor we are. And we who have full stomachs and fuller refrigerators and pantries, sometimes we forget that we cannot live by bread alone, or even by bread stuffed with cheese and pepperoni. There is an emptiness that food cannot fill. So, sometimes, pulling the mighty down from their thrones is salvation for the mighty. Think of today’s gospel as a parable illustrating that truth. Here is a story of a man who sat up high, and was then brought low, and that is how salvation came to Zaccheus.

Neither poverty nor richness is the key to salvation. It isn’t that simple. Salvation comes to Zs’ house because he is looking for it. Yes, he is a rich man, but he doesn’t put his trust in his riches. His material wealth does not anesthetize him to the pain of his spiritual poverty. He senses there is something more and he goes looking for it.

Now I feel the need to wander off into an academic point. I learned something new this week from David Lose, professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, who runs a web site called workingpreacher.com. You know I’m a bit of a geek and I get really excited about these things—so please humor me with this excursus. I always trusted that the NRSV translation was trustworthy, but it turns out that at some point doctrine trumped scholarship in the translation of this story, and that decision, to translate a couple of verbs to coincide with doctrine, changed the meaning of the story in what I think is a significant way. Going back to the Greek, Z doesn’t say, “I will give” and “I will pay.” What he said is, “Half my possessions I give to the poor. And if I defraud anyone of anything, I pay back four times as much.” In the present tense. It is not promise of repentance, it is a statement of fact. This is important, and here is why: someone, somewhere down the line decided, that it was important to make this story fit the belief that repentance precedes salvation. Somebody decided to agree with the judgment of the crowds, that this man, Z, was a sinner. But being rich is not in itself a sin, and Z was apparently being a good steward of the wealth he had received, not hording it, but sharing it, and if he realized that he by oversight or faulty paperwork by one of his employees, perhaps, defrauded anyone, he made it right. More than right, he paid the victim back four times as much. This indicates that he was trying to be a righteous man, to live according to the law and the prophets and then some.

Why is this important?

I think it is important to understand why Jesus announced, Today, salvation has come to this house. It was not in response to repentance, or even in response to Z’s declaration of faithful practice.

On the way through Jericho, Jesus looked up and saw a man who was looking for him, a man who was searching. Jesus saw a man who was willing to, in a poetic literary reversal, humble himself by climbing up high. And Jesus lifted him up high by calling him down. Jesus said, I’m coming to your house today. That is salvation. Jesus coming to your house is salvation. Z didn’t do anything to earn it. He was just trying to see.

Seek and you will find.

I close with a few questions for contemplation:

What are we willing to do for a glimpse of God? Where are we seeking salvation?

The church is called to be the body of Christ, who came, and Jesus himself said, to seek out and save the lost. Like the crowd in Jericho, we may have our preconceived notions of who is and is not worthy. But the gospel tells us that God doesn’t see people the way we do. Who are we willing to seek out, to save?

Unchained

2010-10-11T09:39:00.004-05:00

Sermon for Sunday, October 10, 2010

Primary Text: 2 Tim. 2:8-15

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David--that is my gospel,
for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.

This is one of those sacred moments when the lectionary—a list of scriptures, appointed for a given day years in advance—just happens to coincide poetically with current events. All week I had been contemplating the lives of those who, like Paul the apostle, suffered imprisonment for what they believed about God, and freedom, and life.

Our pilgrim ancestors jailed in England for seeking the freedom of conscience to worship as their conscience directed them.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer, jailed in Germany for his resistance to Hitler.

Martin Luther King Jr, jailed in Birmingham for having the audacity to insist that he was a man, with rights equal to any white man’s rights.

Steve Beko and Nelson Mandela, in South Africa, Tebetan monks and nuns in China, Roxana Saberi in Iran, Mary Benson and others in the US.

All of these people jailed for seeking freedom from oppression, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. But the chains and the prison bars could not stop the power of God, which is always a liberating force.

And then on Friday came the announcement that lifts up another hero of freedom—Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, currently in prison for resisting the restrictions on free speech in China.

The word of God is not chained. The power of God that was in Jesus is not chained to a historical moment, not chained to one particular nation, not chained even to a particular religion because the power of God can not be contained in one box, and commodified.

The power of God is unchained, even when those who are chained for asserting God’s power are killed—as was Bonhoeffer and King and the apostle Paul himself. Because you can not kill God’s power. Everything we do for good, for setting the oppressed free and lifting up the lowly, for pulling the mighty oppressors down from their thrones, is eternal. The deeds of the righteous will stand long after the chains that bound them have rusted away.

Jeremiah proclaimed God’s power to the exiles: The exiles are encouraged to live as if they were not in chains. Jesus proclaimed God’s power to the lepers: The lepers are unchained from their leprosy.

Paul was in chains but even from his prison cell he could live as a free man because the word of God is unchained.

The truth is we are all

Simultaneously:

Imprisoned and Free

Alcoholic and Recovering

Stranger and Saint

Dying and Alive

And we are called to live a life unchained.

We Feed Each Other

2010-09-09T10:45:00.001-05:00

Texts: Joshua 5:10-12; Psalm 34:1-8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Mark 6:30-46

As we bring this uncommon lectionary season to a close, I am returning to a theme from early June, when I preached on the feeding of the five-thousand. In that scripture which we heard again this morning, Jesus said to his disciples, "You give them something to eat."

"But, we have nothing, but a few loaves and a couple of fish," they protested.

But the disciples gave what they had, and Jesus took it, blessed it, and gave it back to them, to give to others. And by the grace of God it was more than enough.

That is the miracle that we witness in every church, in every age.

Jesus calls the church to give the poor of the world something to eat. You give them -- those who are poor in spirit as well as those who are literally starving-- something to eat.

We have nothing, we might say, nothing but this old church, a couple of hundred members, only one pastor, only our limited budget to share. But what we have, we give to God, and God takes it, and blesses it, and gives it back to us to give to others. And, by the grace of God, it is enough, and more to spare.

Worship is a meal in which God feeds us, and we feed each other, so that we might have the strength to feed those beyond our church doors. Worship is, in another sense, putting on our own oxygen mask before assisting others.

Most of us have the altruistic impulse-- the desire to help others in need. But, as the flight attendant reminds us before takeoff, we won't be much good to others if we don't take care of ourselves. Neglecting the spiritual disciplines of prayer and worship, on the excuse that we ought to spend our time and resources in mission-- well, that would be like rushing to help other passengers (in the event of loss of cabin pressure) with their oxygen masks without putting on our own. We won't be much help to others when we are passed out in the aisle. We can't feed others if we don't take the time to eat.

Our uncommon lectionary is one example of how we feed each other. Every time we come to worship we all bring with us the gifts of the Holy Spirit that God has given to each, for the common good. Every time we gather together it is like making stone soup, or setting out a spiritual smorgasbord. But even more so with the uncommon lectionary, which has allowed us to share our stories with each other. Not only the scriptural stories which we claim as our own, but also our life stories, our comforts and our concerns.

If following the Revised Common Lectionary is receiving the manna in the wilderness, our uncommon lectionary is like the fruit of the land of Canaan. It is as if we have arrived at the promised land, and now we eat what the earth and our own labor has produced, and we drink from the wells that we ourselves have dug. The bread is still from heaven, because the earth is God's, and everything within belongs to God. And yet we have a hand in production. Our experiences season the broth. It's a Lake Country Harvest of another kind.

The next great idea to come out of the Vision Quest group is called Heart-to-Heart. It's a structure for small group gatherings, to help us get to know one another so that we can better support each other on the journey of faith. It will be another opportunity to feed each other and be fed by God's holy word, as the Spirit speaks to the church using familiar voices. Together we will listen for God's still-speaking voice, together we will discern what the spirit is saying to the church.

The members of the church are here for service to Christ, using the gifts which the Holy Spirit gives to each for the common good. Today we feed each other, tomorrow and the next day and the next we get to work, feeding others as we have been fed. Every week we will return to receive bread for the journey. For what we are about to receive, thanks be to God. Amen.

Who Will You Bring to the Welcome Table?

2010-08-28T19:43:00.005-05:00

Texts:

Acts 8:26-39; Romans 12:3-21; Luke 14:1, 7-24

We would like you to preach on any scripture that some Christians point to as proof of God's view on homosexuality. We'd like to know the "actual" meaning of those verses so we can be armed against it with knowledge, for us and for our daughter. (L & M)

As we come to the close of our summer season, we are also coming the the close of the Uncommon Lectionary series. I address L & M's request in the August newsletter, and I have re-posted my old "Bible Bullets" paper to the website. If you go to uccbrainerd.org and click on the "Bible Bullets" box, you will be linked directly to the paper. In it, I address several of the scriptures that some people fire at GLBT and allied folk. But knowing the "actual" meaning, as M and L call it, in quotes, will not stop the assault of anti-gay rhetoric.

Somebody said-- maybe it was Brett Farve-- somebody said "The best defense is a good offense." Explaining why we don't hold those few verses in the bible as God's final word on sexuality is a defensive tactic. Articulating what we do believe about God's embrace of all the people, that would be the offensive tactic.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch is, to me, one of those revelations of the wideness of God's mercy, the breadth of God's embrace. It is an affirmation that those who have been marginalized and ostracized and disenfranchised belong in the church. They are not just allowed in the church, as if through a side door, they belong in the church as members of the body of Christ, and as leaders too.

The man in the chariot was a student of the Hebrew bible, the law and the prophets, but he could not become a Jew. Not because he was an African-- but because he was a eunuch. He was without, and according to the Levitical code-- the same code that is quoted to condemn gays, by the way-- according to the Levitical code he was barred from the temple.

The man in the chariot, the Ethiopian eunuch, had been reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, about the suffering servant, "in his humiliation justice was denied him," and in that verse he found someone he could relate to, having just come from Jerusalem, where he was doubly the outcast (a foreigner and a eunuch), doubly humiliated. About whom does the prophet speak? About himself, or somebody else? Philip told him about Jesus, and he almost did not dare believe it. Could this mean there was a place for him?

"Here is water, what is to prevent me from being baptized," he asked. "What is to prevent me--" no one else in scripture speaks in this way, as if he is preparing himself for rejection, once again. Waiting to hear the reason-- "You're black. You're a eunuch." But no. There was no rejection.

The man was baptized at once, and went on his way rejoicing. Post-canonical legend has it that the Ethiopian later became the founder of the Christian church in Ethiopia. If so, then who and when was the first sexual minority elected bishop? It wasn't Gene Robinson in 2003 after all!

This isn't the only story, the scriptures are full of affirmations of God's expansive embrace. The table of the Lord is a welcome table. In an age when so many people decline the invitation, why would the church deny a place at the table to anyone who responds to the call?

What if we made the parable of the great banquet our story? What if we decided, as a congregation, that this is our metaphor for ministry in the coming months? Every week, a banquet is prepared. A sermon stews for days, until it's just right. The musicians rehearse. The table is adorned with flowers. The hosts make lemonade and coffee to go with the desert, the greeters are ready to open the doors, Shirley is at the guestbook with pens and the extra nametags.

Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, where are all the people? Sixty, Seventy, Eighty people, that's good, but there is still room. Ninety, one-hundred, one-hundred and ten... still room! Go out into the highways and compel them to come in, the host says in the parable, my table must be full. People can't eat, if they're not here.

Many people received the invitation and declined. Does the host say to the servants, go out and beg those people to reconsider, please? No. The host focuses on the people who haven't yet received an invitation. The host sends the servants out to find the people who do not know that a banquet is prepared and they are welcome.

I met a man last week who started a GLBT support group at the VA hospital. He asked the group how many of them had grown up in a church. Nearly all raised their hands. Then he asked how many were involved in a church at present. None but a few raised their hands. Most didn't know of a church where they would be welcome.

Who else missed the invitation? Maybe they are under the mistaken impression that they aren't invited, because they are poor, and they think the church is only for people with money to give, or they are single, and they think the church is only for traditional families, or they have no children, and they think the church is only recruiting people who can fill the Sunday School. Maybe they are tone deaf and think the church is only for people who can sing.

If you were one of those servants, called to fill up the welcome table, who would you find? Who would you bring?

Who will you bring to the welcome table?

The Heart's Desire

2010-08-26T16:50:00.002-05:00

For Sunday, August 15, in the Uncommon Lectionary Series.

Texts: Philippians 4:10-23; Luke 16:13-15; Luke 20:45-21:4

"For the Uncommon Lectionary, will you read the story of Jesus going to the temple and seeing the poor widow put her tiny coin into the offering box, and pointing out to the arrogant rich guys that she has given more than they have. This was one of my favoirtes when mother read to me from Hurlbut's Stories from the Bible." --Doris A.
"Luke 16 Puzzling!" -- Anonymous

Jesus, in the passages we read today, offered a lesson in contrasts: those who contribute relatively little, and make a big show of it, compared to those who give their little all, without fanfare, without any expectation of receiving accolades in return. Those who publicize their generosity have at least mixed intentions-- if we assume they have at least some inclination to do good, that intention is mixed with the need to lift themselves up above others. Their heart is divided-- serving others and themselves. But the widow gives with a singular heart, devoted to God and to others in need. I imagine her smiling, rejoicing as she approached the treasury, pleased that she had something to share.

I have seen it again and again, those who know what it is to be in need are often first in generosity. I remember during the great Midwestern floods of 1993, Bangladesh sent sandbags to Iowa. Iowa farmers, who had likely given to poverty relief through their churches, received aid from those whom they had previously looked upon as the less fortunate! It was biblical.

The church in Philippi was, according to the letters of the apostle Paul, particularly generous. Even though the Philippians were poor, as compared to other communities, they outshone the wealthier churches in generosity, and Paul lifted them up as an example to the church in Corinth (you can read about it in the 8th chapter of 2nd Corinthians).

Jesus taught his followers that they could not serve God and wealth. The first Christians, according to the book of Acts, shared everything, and if anyone had lands or properties, they sold them, and gave the proceeds to the church, to distribute according to need. Yes, according to the New Testament, the voluntary redistribution of wealth is a Christian virtue. We call it generosity.

But not everyone is equally virtuous. We admire St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but not everyone can be St. Francis or Mother Teresa.

Paul explained this in terms of spiritual gifts. We may earnestly desire the higher gifts, we may earnestly desire to be like St. Francis, Mother Teresa, or the widow at the temple, but that level of generosity and devotion may be beyond us, for a time. We can practice generosity to the best of our ability, and trust that we may grow in this as well as other spiritual gifts.

I like the way the apostle Paul put it in his final greeting to the church that he loved so dearly. "I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. "

Paul does not say what the secret is, just that he learned it. I believe the secret has something to do with the heart's desire.

Consider your heart's desire. If our hearts are set on wealth, on material comforts, we are sure to be miserable, always searching for more. But with our hearts set on union with God, we will know such joy! Because the story of scripture assures us that we are God's heart's desire. God yearns for us passionately. So let us set our hearts on God. Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

How Can We Keep from Shining

2010-08-26T16:35:00.003-05:00

Another sermon in the "Uncommon Lectionary" summer series at First Congregational UCC, Brainerd. Preached August 8, 2010.

Text: Matthew 5:1-16

I've been thinking of the summer "lectionary." My confirmation verse was Matthew 5-- about "your little light shine"/bushel basket. I found it a childhood dilemma... one message to show your light (your gifts) to the world... yet (as Garrison Keillor so sagely nails it) "Don't call attention to yourself."

--Jan Kurtz

Yes, it is a classic dilemma of the well-behaved midwestern child. Someone once told me that a Scandinavian proverb goes, the tall stalks of wheat are cut back. So don't get above yourself. Nobody likes a show off.

Dana Carvey based his "Church Lady" persona on the ladies from his childhood church in Montana, who kept children like him in check, by responding to anything that smacked of self-satisfaction with, "Well. Isn't that special." We all have our inner Church Lady, I suppose.

But when I think of this verse, especially at this time of year, I think of the sunflowers that bloom in the fields of western Minnesota and the Dakotas, and in our gardens all over the Midwest. Great big brown faces edged with yellow petals, follow the sun all day as it courses through the sky. I ask you, can a sunflower stop being shiny? Heck no! Do we judge the sunflower for drawing attention to itself? Not if we are sane and well-adjusted!

If, like the sunflower, we keep our face turned toward the light of God, how can we keep from shining? When we spend time each day in the presence of God, when we make the effort to be mindful of all that we have received from God, the light shines. Unselfconsciously. You can't help it, you shine.

Still, it's probably a good idea to balance, "Let your light shine," with "beware of practicing your piety before strangers, in order to be seen by them." Don't serve at the soup kitchen for the photo op. Serve at the soup kitchen so that people can eat, and thank God (not you) for the bread.

Let your light shine! Let your salt season the bread! Let people see God's love reflected in you.

Be Not Afraid!

2010-08-26T15:54:00.004-05:00

Texts: Psalm 111 (...the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom....) and Matthew 14:22-33 (Do not be afraid.)

Chuck Watson asked me to address his question in our Uncommon Lectionary series. His question is about fear, and others have asked me the same question. Why are we supposed to fear God? Both old and new testaments commend the "fear of the Lord." It seems to be at odds with the gospel of Jesus, who said, on many occasions, "Be not afraid."

To begin to address this question we must remember two things about language: One, the scriptures were not written in English (I hope this is not a great surprise to you). They were taken down in Hebrew and Greek and copied over and over, many times before the English language evolved. Two, English is a living language, and the meaning of words change over time. The Hebrew word which is translated "fear" might be better translated as reverence, respect, esteem, awe, worship. When the Hebrew Bible was first translated into English, about 500 years ago, the word "fear" meant all these things. The Brewsters, the first family among the Pilgrims, named one of their daughters "Fear." It was typical among the Puritans to name their children after virtues (they also had a son named "Love"), and Fear was considered a virtue, akin to reverence.

Reverence for the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Does that sound better? It follows from the first commandment, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. Know that God is God, and nothing else is-- that is the beginning of wisdom.

Fear, and I'm talking about fear as we use the word today, fear is a natural, normal reaction to danger. If we didn't have the fear response we might not have the sense to get out of harm's way. But persistent, unreasonable fear can itself become a poison. If we live in fear of someone or something, we give that person or thing power over us. In other words, we come to revere, or stand in awe of, the object of our fear. To fear something other than God is to come very close to idolatry.

Jesus came preaching "do not be afraid, little flock," do not worry about what you will eat or what you will wear, do not fear. To those who approached him in fear and trembling Jesus said, Do not be afraid.

To the church in every age and to us, Jesus says, as he said to his disciples in the story, "Do not be afraid."

The early church, the people to whom these gospel stories were first told, had much to be anxious and troubled about. Following the Way of the crucified and risen Jesus meant giving up ties to their families, their synagogues, even giving up their homes sometimes, to become part of something new and unknown. The early church was much like a boat on uncharted waters. In fact, in early Christian art, as seen in the catacombs and caves that were the early Christians' refuge, the boat was a symbol of the church. And it must have felt to them, at various times, like a boat on stormy seas.

Long-term unemployment, job insecurity, volatile financial markets which make a peak at our previously secure retirement funds feel like a trip to the casino... yes there is much to make us anxious and troubled. Glaciers evaporating, ice caps softening, oil plumes persisting in the gulf, we wonder what sort of a world we will be leaving to our grandchildren.

Here we are on this gospel ship, with our leaky roof, in the storm. And along comes Jesus, saying, Courage! Take heart! It is I! Do not be afraid!

He even calls Peter to come and walk with him on the water, in the storm. And Peter courageously steps out of the boat, and walks toward Jesus. In a moment, Peter looses focus, he lets the storm and the wind overwhelm him, and begins to sink. Even then, Jesus reaches out and lifts him up, and brings him back to the boat. And with Jesus in the boat, all is calm.

In what way is Jesus calling us to step out of our boat? In what way is Jesus calling us to leave the relative safety of a lifeboat in a storm, and step out into the storm itself?

When we take that step, how will we keep our eyes upon the one who keeps us above the waves?

How can we make room in the boat, to save others who are sinking?

Let us contemplate these questions, as we consider what the spirit is saying to the church.

(Preached Sunday, August 22, 2010)

Money, Money, Money:

2010-08-10T12:20:00.003-05:00

It's a rich man's world. Or is it? Some thoughts on the theme for Sunday worship, in our uncommon lectionary season.

"For the Uncommon Lectionary, will you read the story of Jesus going to the temple and seeing the poor widow put her tiny coin into the offering box, and pointing out to the arrogant rich guys that she has given more than they have. This was one of my favoirtes when mother read to me from Hurlbut's Stories from the Bible." --Doris A.
"Luke 16 Puzzling!" -- Anonymous

Jesus blessed the state of poverty and the cursed the state of wealth. Jesus drew attention to the generosity of the poor and ridiculed the self-importance of the wealthy. And the wealthy ridiculed him right back.

Let Your Light Shine!

2010-08-05T10:37:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking of the summer "lectionary." My confirmation verse was Matthew 5-- about "your little light shine"/bushel basket. I found it a childhood dilemma... one message to show your light (your gifts) to the world... yet (as Garrison Keillor so sagely nails it) "Don't call attention to yourself." --Jan K

I ask you, can a sunflower stop being shiny? Heck no! Do we judge the sunflower for drawing attention to itself? Not if we are sane and well-adjusted!

A family acquaintance belongs to a church that sends missionaries to the world's poorest people, and when they go they bring no food for the hungry, no medicine for the sick, they build no shelters for the homeless. They tell the people that if they believed in Jesus, they would have all these things. Now, that's just messed up. But here is the theology behind it: the members of this church are so afraid of "works righteousness" that they refuse to do any work at all, lest God think they are trying to buy their way to heaven.

Let your light shine! Let your salt season the bread! Let people see God's love reflected in you!

Sisterly Love: Martha and Mary

2010-08-03T16:44:00.002-05:00

Proverbs 31:10-31; Luke 10:38-42

The story of Martha and Mary was submitted by Marcia F., who, as most of you would guess, identifies with Martha. But she is not the only one. When the story comes up at prayer circle, for example, a number of women whom I admire get really ticked off at Jesus, for being so unkind to Martha. I am surprised at the women who get ticked off by this story. I strongly suspect them of being older sisters in their families of origin. I, being the younger sister, identify with Mary, so I really like this story. It makes me feel good and vindicated.

But not everyone loves this story, which is sad, because, sisters, we don't have many stories in the Bible about us. There aren't many biblical characters with whom we can identify like we can identify with Martha and Mary. Of all the people named in the Bible, the overwhelming majority are male. And, when a female character makes an appearance, she is rarely named-- usually she is identified as the wife of or the concubine of or the mother of or the sister of some guy. But here is Martha, and Mary, two women who are defined by their relationship not to some guy but to each other!

So, Sisters, why do we have a problem with this story? Perhaps we over identify, over personalize it. Maybe because we have so few biblical women with whom to identify, or maybe it is a gender-specific characteristic. Men don't seem to do this-- men don't get bent out of shape because Jesus was mean to Peter when he rebuked him.

In a video entitled "How to Irritate People," comic actor John Cleese related a story about his fellow Python Graham Chapman, who conspired with Cleese to demonstrate gender difference at a party they were attending. As if speaking to Cleese, Chapman said, very loudly, "The problem with women is they take everything personally." Immediately, three women turned on him and said, "Well I don't."

Perhaps we do. So Martha, I want to tell you, that this story, it's not about you. Don't take it personally. And Mary, it's not about you either (I say to myself). So stop feeling so smug and self-satisfied.

There is much to be commended in both women. Martha is the epitome of the wise and capable woman of the Proverb, with one exception-- she doesn't seem to be anyone's wife. But she is a caretaker, a capable woman, head of her household. Her sister Mary is behaving badly. Mary is sitting where she does not belong, at the rabbi's feet. That is the place for the honored student; if the disciples were an orchestra Mary would be sitting in the first chair, violin section, so to speak. Mary is taking a place that is not hers to take. In politest terms, Mary is being inappropriate, presumptuous. In less polite terms, Mary's behavior is scandalous. Some people might think she's acting like some sort of floozy.

Martha, as the head of her household is duty-bound to protect her sister and preserve the honor of the house. Martha expects Jesus to help her, but to everyone's surprise, Jesus does something completely different. Jesus turns the world upside down, again.

He rebuked Martha. The same way he rebuked his disciples for sending the children away, and found an opportunity for teaching a whole new way to look at the world. It is an amazing, liberating, new teaching.

Remember the story of Jesus and the children? They (Who were they? Might they be women, mothers perhaps?) were bringing children to Jesus that Jesus might bless them, but when the disciples saw it, they ordered them to stop. An important rabbi like Jesus doesn't have time to waste on little children. But when Jesus saw what was going on, he rebuked the disciples, and said to them, "Let the little children come to me!" They are first in the kingdom of God.

How about that. Women and children are part of God's new world, and so are the blind, and the lame, and the demon-possessed, the Samaritans, the alien and the sojourner in the land. The story of Martha and Mary is one gospel story among many that says to the church, that whatever we do, if we do not include the people on the fringe, then we are not complete.

We are the church. We are Mary and Martha, and Peter and Andrew, and we are the Gerasene demoniac, the leader of the synagogue, and the Syro-Phonecian woman. We are all of these. We need to be all of these together.

God knows the church needs Martha. But sometimes we are, like Martha, anxious and troubled about things that really are not all that important, when it comes right down to it. We are accustomed to providing certain programs and services as a congregation, but, unless we spend some time with Mary, at the feet of Jesus, we will not have the energy to do the many good things that we can do. We need to balance the "doing" of Martha with the "being" of Mary.

The annual leadership retreat is usually very "Martha." We do budgets and calendar and planning and reviewing. So this August, on the 14th, when we get together for our leadership retreat, we will spend some time being Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening.

Thanks be to God for Martha, and Mary, and for what the Spirit is saying to the church. Amen.

Responding to a Fundamentalist

2010-08-03T08:33:00.004-05:00

An acquaintance of mine, who is a fundamentalist, sent me the following note after the publication of "Do We Always Have to Win?"

I read with interest your article in the Dispatch dated Friday July 30, 2010. In fact I was so interested in what you said that I couldn't go to sleep last night without reading it again. Would you please answer these questions for me?
1. Do you believe that the Bible is really the Word of God?
2. Is the Bible only a "collection of stories" or actual happenings?
3. What was the purpose of Christ's death on the cross?
4. Do you truly believe He was not a winner?
I look forward to your answer.

Here is my response. I hope it was both honest and kind.

Thank you for reading my article and thoughtfully responding. As for your questions: 1 and 2 I think you can quite clearly understand from reading the article. This is consistent with biblical scholarship. The scriptures are our theological inheritance from generations past. They require thoughtful interpretation, critical study, an understanding of the culture out of which they arose and the language in which they were told and written. This is consistent with 2,000 years of orthodox, catholic, and protestant teaching. "Biblical inerrancy" is a 20th century fundamentalist concept, with which I disagree.

3. What was the purpose of Christ's life? That is the more important question.
4. Was Jesus a winner? It's a question, not a statement. Jesus was handily defeated by Barabbas in a popular election. He was not a wealthy man. His followers did not constitute the A-crowd. He was betrayed, arrested and executed as a criminal insurrectionist. By all that constitutes "a winner" in ancient or modern culture, was he a winner? In order to answer yes, he was a winner, how would we define winner?
Neither you nor I can "win" any disagreement we have about the faith. I do not expect to win you over. If your faith works for you, then, good for you. Your interpretation of the faith does not fit my understanding of the world, the church, the scritptures, or the life of Christ. I will not try to make you a mainline protestant; and I hope you will not try to make me a fundamentalist.
Winning, however, is not what Christ taught. He taught love, and I trust that is the way to the heart of God.
Sincerely,
Rev. Deborah G Celley

God is Holding Our Lives

2010-07-25T14:53:00.003-05:00

Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:4-9, Luke 13:31-36

When asked what scripture most informed and shaped our faith life, several of us wrote of the power of trust and surrender. Jill T. contributed the verses from Proverbs, Kathy O., the verses from Philippians. Psalm 23 was an anonymous suggestion and I added the gospel for good measure, and in a moment I'll tell you why I picked that lament over Jerusalem.

But first, I want to assure the activists and type A's among us-- who are probably squirming in the pews and thinking, Oh Lord, here it comes, another "Let Go and Let God" moment-- that it's OK to have a mission. It's OK to have a plan. It's OK to have goals and objectives and target dates and check lists. The wisdom of surrender, the wisdom of letting go and letting God, is not a concession to injustice, or a command to throw away our five-year plan.

But, when our plan is set askew by forces beyond our influence, when injustice happens and cannot be justly ameliorated, that's the time to remember that God is holding our lives. That is the time to remember these words of wisdom from our people.

An image of wood and water which I read somewhere comes to mind. Wood is good, useful, strong. You can build a boat with wood, and ride out the flood. But, wood doesn't do well against rocks. When thrown upon the rocks, the wood will insist on holding its form. It may stand up to the first toss against the rocks, maybe the second and third as well, but eventually its resistance will fail and it will shatter. The water, on the other hand, finds is way around the rocks, and eventually, the water will wear that rock away. Sometimes, it's good to be wood. But against the rocks, it's wise to be water.

The wisdom of surrender comes from thousands of year of experience. It's the wisdom of Joseph, betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused unjustly imprisoned, who later becomes the savior of his family, and is able to forgive his brothers and say to them, "You did what you did, it was wrong... but God used it for good." God is holding our lives, and saving them no matter what.

It's the wisdom Ruth, widowed, homeless, and childless, an alien in the land, who becomes a great grandmother to King David, an ancestress of the royal house. We see in her story, that God is holding our lives.

It's the wisdom of Jesus, who refused to be afraid when people came to warn him that Herod was aiming to kill. I'm not surprised, Jesus said. But I must do what I have come to do. I'm going to keep on preaching, keep on healing, keep on teaching, come what may. Because God is holding our lives.

Jesus, in this moment is to me like the antithesis of chicken little. Someone is shouting, "Run Jesus run, the sky is going to fall on you." And Jesus says, "We'll see."

For all of us who are anxious little chicks, God, like a mother hen is opening her wings and saying, "Come on in from the heat of the day, come on in from the cold, cold night."

Whether or not we have the will or the wisdom to seek the shelter of the Lord, to return to our mother's wingspan or our prodigal father's open arms, this is true: God is holding our lives.

(25 July 2010)

To Go and Do Likewise (preached July11)

2010-07-22T11:47:00.007-05:00

Texts: 1 John 4:7-8; Luke 10:25-37

Today our uncommon lectionary intersects with the Revised Common Lectionary. When asked
"What's your story?" or "What scripture informs your faith?" Love was a common theme.

"The one that says 'God is Love'" was one unsigned submission.

"How to truly love our neighbors as ourselves" was another. And from Marcia Ferris, this request came with a song: "The greatest love of all."

I believe that children are the future

Teach them well and let them lead the way

Show them all the beauty they possess inside

Give them a sense of pride....

...The greatest love of all is happening to me...

...Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.

I remember singing along with Whitney, whenever that song came on the radio. All the residents of Stanger Hall (I was in college at the time) would sing along. Sometimes I worried that it was a bit sacrilegious, to sing that "the greatest love of all" was love of self (rather than the love of God). But, for many people that is indeed where it needs to begin: with an understanding of how God sees each and every one of us: as a beloved child, loved just for being.

Unfortunately, many children are brought up knowing that they are unloved and believing that it is because they are unlovable. My parents were two cases in point: they each lost a parent at an early age, and so they were brought up, during the Great Depression, by people who never let them forget what an imposition they were. In my father's case it was a stepfather, in my mother's case it was foster parents. Fortunately, they also had people in their lives who did love them, and they were able to heal enough to be good parents to my siblings and me.

Ideally, every child should all be nurtured from the cradle, to know that he or she is a beloved child of God. Every child should know someone whose love is unconditional, someone who models God's love to him or her. Ideally, that love should be strong enough to stand up to the challenges of contradictory messages which will besiege the child as he or she grows. The messages that say she is unattractive, he is unworthy, they are incomplete without something or other, which they can buy for the low, low price of....

Ideally, but so many of us, we have to learn to love ourselves, so that we can know what it is to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believe worship is, to some extent, group cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is the practice of learning new thought patterns, reinforcing healthy messages and blocking unhealthy messages. When we address God in prayer, as just and merciful, we say these things not to "butter God up" to get on God's good side. God knows who God is. We say these things to remind ourselves who God is, lest we forget, lest we forget. Praying in this way is like holding up a mirror, to see ourselves as God sees us. Beloved. Welcome. Forgiven, and Blessed.

But we can't get too stuck on ourselves. We also are reminded that we are not God's only children. We have brothers and sisters in the neighborhood who are equally loved, welcome, forgiven and blessed. Who are these brothers and sisters? Wherever you go, whoever you see, your looking at them.

"Seeking to justify himself," the scripture says, "seeking to justify himself," the lawyer asked, "So, who is my neighbor?" What kind of an answer was he fishing for? I suppose one that would allow him to go on living and loving his own family and friends, while ignoring the suffering of strangers, and being an accomplice after the fact, which is one way to describe a person whose indifference compounds suffering-- an accomplice after the fact.

How do we truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves? This is an open question. It is a question we should carry into our lives every day. We should never presume to have any answer beyond that which lies hidden in plain sight, in the parable. That is the only solution to the puzzle, the only answer that Jesus offers.

Which of these, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

Go and do likewise.

Do We Always Have to Win?

2010-07-05T08:15:00.009-05:00

This spring, when I invited members of the congregation to submit ideas for our "uncommon lectionary" series, two responses were very similar, both along the same lines of how to relate to people who believe differently than we do:

I have been thinking about the story of Elijah's contest with the priests of Baal. What does this say to us about relationships with Muslims, Jews,Hindus, etc.-- Do we have to “win”? How about our relationships with “the evangelicals.” Are we right and they wrong, or visa versa? Or does that miss the point of the story? (Dorothy L.)
“No one comes to the father but by me.” Fundamentalists often throw this up when someone suggests Gandhi might be in heaven (or Nirvana?). There are a few other verses like this that people use to justify mission work that resembles more the crusades than the work of Jesus. (Erik S.)

We opened our worship with one of Stan Lundberg's favorite hymns: "Immortal, invisible, God, only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes...." This was not one of my favorites, but Stan convinced me of the brilliance of this hymn, which evokes humility and wonder, both of which are necessary postures when we approach the unknowable God. Time and again in scripture, when people think they have the last word on God, God interrupts their story to assure them that they don't know even the first thing. For example, when God needed to let people know that God is more merciful than they could imagine, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, "Your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are my thoughts than your thoughts, and my ways than your ways."

And you know how the story of Job ended. Job and each of his three friends thought they knew what was what, they thought they knew the be all and end all of God, but at the end of the story God spoke from the whirlwind and said, "You think you know me? You don't know me! Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

Which is why we should approach all questions about God with great humility. Because God is so much larger than any language can describe. We have our language, our story, our customs, handed down from the ages, and all of these are limited. But God is limitless. That is why we relate to people of different faiths as brothers and sisters, all children of God. Because who are we to say that God has not spoken through Buddha or Mohammed?

So what do we do with stories like Elijah and the prophets of Baal? We must remember that the Bible is a collection of stories, handed down through the ages, and the stories are not told in a unified voice. In the scriptures we hear many voices. Some of those voices in the Hebrew scriptures say, "It would be better if the Jews were the only people in Israel." These voices tell stories that imagine genocide as an answer to the problem of foreign influence. (The prophets of Baal were brought to Israel by the foreign Queen Jezebel, wife of King Ahab.) But there are other voices too, voices of faithful foreigners, like Ruth the Moabite, an ancestor of king David. The story of Ruth tells us that a foreigner can be righteous and faithful and Godly.

Whenever we read the Hebrew scriptures, we really ought to remember that they don't belong to us. We borrowed them from the Jewish faith, and so we really ought to consult the people who have the primary claim to the scripture. Rabbinic traditions recognize that scripture is full of arguments... the scriptures argue with each other. And in reading and studying, we join in on a longstanding family argument. The voices of dissent are not silenced, they are preserved, because they come from family. Working it out, finding the balance, that is part of practicing the faith.

In the United Church of Christ, and in many other mainline progressive Christian faith communities, at this point in time, we choose to honor-- no! conscience calls us to honor-- the faith practices of others. We do not seek to convert faithful Muslims, or Jews, or Hindus or Buddhists, or American Indians, though we once did, we do not do that anymore. Instead of preaching Christ and forcing conversion, we practice what Jesus taught, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. We seek to imitate Christ: to feed the hungry, heal the sick, teach those who have no one else to teach them, work for justice, walk the path of peace.

So, more often, our problem is not how to relate to people of other faiths or no faith, but how, how do we relate to others who claim the same name, Christian, but who condemn us for failing to live up to their expectations of what Christian means to them. Some Christians think that converting souls to Christ is the primary moral obligation of the Christian. And, as Erik pointed out, one of the scriptures they cite is from the 14th chapter of John's gospel.

"I am the way." To me, that means "follow me." Walk this way. Do what I do. To me that means that in every nation, whoever does what is righteous and merciful and, well, Christ-like, is "on the way." Take Erik's example of Gandhi. Born into a good family, trained in the West as a solicitor (what we Americans call a lawyer), he could have had a very comfortable life. But, moved by the suffering of others, he gave it all up, and put on the clothes of a servant. He touched the untouchables, and ate with them. He worked with them and he bled with them.

The apostle Paul described Jesus as the one who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in human form he was obedient to death (Philippians 2:6-8).

So, who is more Christ-like, I want to ask, Gandhi, or the American televangelist?

I also think it is important to remember that the "I am the way" statement comes right after Jesus speaks of God's house having "many rooms." If there is room for you and me, why not room for all God's children, all over the world?

That's what I want to ask, but, that would not be helpful, when talking with an evangelist, trained to follow the script, given a flow chart of scripture verses to answer every protest. That remark would not bring peace, but further division. How can we respond in a Christ-like way to someone who uses scripture like a weapon? Probably not by doing as they do.

This is not a new problem. A Quaker Friend, Steve Long and I were discussing this after we finished a worship service at Bethany, where I was preaching and Steve was playing the piano. When I have the nursing home marathon (five worship services, five locations, in two mornings), as I did last week, I consider it an opportunity to give the upcoming Sunday's sermon a practice run, so Steve heard this sermon and he could relate to this problem. How does a pacifist respond to hostility?

Faithfully. Patiently. Balancing certitude and openness. Balancing self-regard with regard for others. Remembering that the opposition are children of God, and so are we. Sometimes it feels like a high-wire walk, all this balancing.

Do we always have to win? What does winning have to do with the Christian faith? Was Jesus a winner?

Do we have to be right? Do we have to prove others wrong? No, I don't think so. We are called to be faithful followers. Don't look down, don't look behind: let's keep our eyes upon the one who calls us to follow in the servant way, and walk on.

Sunday's scriptures:

1Kings 18:20-40

1 Cor 10:23-11:1

John 14:1-7

Noah and the Message from the Birds

2010-06-23T19:24:00.003-05:00

After forty days Noah opened a window and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying around until the water was completely gone. Meanwhile, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down, but since the water still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to light. It flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in. He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again. It returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water had gone down. Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove once more; this time it did not come back.

--Genesis 8:6-12 (TEV)

In the universal language of symbol, birds bring messages from the spirit world. Around the globe, across cultures and all along the time line, this is so. The eagle, the owl, the heron, the crane, the raven, the dove, all have been assigned spiritual attributes in various cultures. I remember an Anishinaabe elder explaining that when the loon makes that victorious yodeling call, it means a warrior has entered the spirit world.

In this old, old story of the flood and the ark, we have a tale of birds bearing a message from God. Four messages actually: 1. Wait. 2. Not yet. 3. Almost. 4. Now, it's going to be alright. In other versions of the story, God and Noah speak directly to each other, but in this version, the birds are the intermediaries. The birds carry the hope of humanity up to the heavens, and return with the gospel, the good news from the Great Spirit. Peace.

Even though we humans have almost forgotten the old language of the spirit, even though we have nearly forgotten how to read the signs of nature, because we have fixated on our own languages, as if we are the only sentient beings on the planet, even now, if we listen, we can hear it-- the spirit who speaks through the birds.

Listen to the brown pelican, in the gulf. It says, "I'm dying out here."

Listen to the loon on Gull Lake. It says, "These mercury levels are higher than they ever have been."

Listen to the passenger pigeon... oops, too late!

Remember how the story of Noah ends? God says, "I'm never going to destroy the earth again. Ever. That was a stupid idea and I will never do that again."

God has given us everything we need, and messengers to help us get it right. Do we listen?

Are We Following Jesus-- Or Just Believing in Christ?

2010-06-21T10:11:00.002-05:00

Title credit goes to Bryan Sirchio, it's from the chorus of the song entitle "Follow Me (87 times).

Are We Following Jesus, or Just Believing in Christ

Because, I can believe and not change a thing,

but following could change my whole life.

Jesus never said, "Come, acknowledge my existence."

Or, "Believe in me, I'm the second person of the Trinity."

But 87 times, he said, "Follow Me."

Conscientious people, really thoughtful people, the kind of people you want to have in your church, are often the least ready to become members of the church. Not that that means all who are members have no conscience! Not at all! But usually when confirmands or prospective members are struggling with the decision of whether or not to stand up in church and declare their faith, it is because they dread hypocrisy most of all vices. No one wants to be a fraud.

If becoming a member of the church is about declaring one's own perfection in belief, with complete confidence, then there should be no members of the church at all, except maybe a few dead saints. But I don't think that's what it's about. I don't thing that has ever been the intention of church membership.

Maybe we shouldn't even use the word membership. It was a good word, once. It intended to mean that we are all members of one body, the ways arms and legs are members of our body, but we rarely use the word that way any more. More often we use it as a term of belonging to a social club. A member of the club remains a member in good standing so long as the dues are paid. That's not what we are talking about when we speak of membership in the church. Not at all.

Maybe a better word would be "followship" if there were such a word (but my spellchecker asserts there is not), and we are followers of Jesus. Maybe, we should call each other travelers, because we are signing on for a journey. Not a literal journey. Maybe pilgrim, if we could get the John Wayne accent out of our heads when we said it, "Pilgrim."

Whatever we call it, what we are about is following Jesus, to the best of our ability. We look to the stories of Jesus for guidance. We notice that for Jesus an ethic of compassion overrides an ethic of law, and so we seek to do likewise. We notice that Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, forgave sins, and so we seek to do likewise. We notice that Jesus prayed often, in silence, and with others in the congregations (that is what synagogue means, congregation), and so we seek to do likewise. We note that Jesus, even Jesus, learned from others, and so we seek to do likewise.

Like the first followers, we get it wrong once in a while. It isn't easy, this followship, but we are not left to follow all alone. We have this company of followers called the church, and when we walk together we help one another. Sometimes we carry, sometimes we are carried. Sometimes we feed, sometimes we are fed. Sometimes we lose sight of the goal, and others draw our attention back to the one who goes before us, Jesus. Jesus, the pioneer, Jesus the one who completes us.

And that is why we are here. That is the duty and delight of the follower of Jesus. We will walk together in all God's ways, made known and to be made known, by God's gracious Spirit, arm in arm, side by side, hand in hand. Let's walk.