Sermon March 24, 2019

First Christian Church, Olney, IL

Isaiah 55:1-9

Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

“Fed by the Glory”

Holy One, through your everlasting covenant we can find delight in the abundance that you provide. In the realm of your making, all have enough to eat and drink. In your kindom, the family of your people are witnesses to all that you do for creation. No one is left out, even those who do not know your name will be drawn into your presence. We thirst only for you; we seek your glory and your steadfast love. We sing for joy. May we be satisfied, knowing of your faithfulness to all generations. We reveal who you are in us through the fruit that we bear—the actions that we take—the love that we share. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

This morning our text is from the prophet Isaiah—the prophet-poet who, one might say, expresses the full biblical message in these nine verses. “God loves us, no matter what, and reaches out to us even (or especially) in the worst of times, making promises that are not just pie-in-the-sky, not just theoretical.”^[1]The promises are about the moment when the prophet is speaking—and not about what would happen someday. 

Isaiah affirms and reaffirms that the message of God to and through the Jewish people was one of hospitality, inclusion, and plenty. Isaiah reminds and announces that God’s covenants with peoples are eternal and unbreakable however those covenants are test and tried. Isaiah raises up God’s hospitality and welcome generosity, like others had before and since, to encourage hope and to reveal, yet again, that through God’s people, God is calling to the entire world. 

The Jewish people were in exile in Babylon when the prophet addressed them with these words of sustaining joy and hope. In Isaiah, the prophet had spoken to them sternly when needed, yet also spoke tenderly, even joyfully, as here to convey that whatever had happened—like defeat in battle and exile—God had not abandoned them and that God’s great mercy and love were still theirs. 

After many decades in exile, the people needed a message of hope—a soon-to-be fulfilled promise of an end to their captivity and a new way of life in their home where they could live lives faithful to God who had made an everlasting covenant with them. These words, we might say, are a “comfort food” for the soul of the people. 

The people who would be returning from exile would have told the stories of their ancestors: stories of the journey out of Egypt when the people ate manna and drank the adequate, but never overwhelming, water that was available in the desert. God gave them enough in the wilderness; yet on this return home, it’s not manna and just enough water. Isaiah characterizes the food on this return as wine and milk—rich and nourishing drink. Isaiah says that they will delight in rich food—good food. 

One writer compares this call to the Jewish people in exile to his mother’s voice calling him to supper as a child: “Come and get it!” was music to his ears, not a command but

"good news." He and his brother were happy to run home when they heard these words, just as the people long ago, in exile, in “desolation and death," would have thrilled to hear an invitation to come and enjoy free food, wine, milk, and the restoration for which they longed.^[2]It would have sounded to their hungry hearts like their mother, calling them home to supper. The same might be said of us, today.

In this time and place when our appetites and our food sources tend to run toward over-indulgence or fattiness, we might not think of wine, milk, and rich food as a blessing. Our nation and culture are relatively wealthy, food is always available even if we can’t buy it. Another part of our problem is that historically, our bodies were made to use calories very efficiently to conserve the food that we ate. Now we have such abundance that fat is the problem. 

But during most of human history, fat was absolutely the best. As cooks and chefs know, fat carries flavor probably because our taste buds are made to respond to it—even if our digestive systems sometimes struggle. One of my seminary professors and friends says that this word delight, in Hebrew, comes from the word fat—so that this text might say, delight yourselves in delightful food or fatten yourselves with the fattiest food. Maybe not as appetizing today, but in days of famine or poverty, fatty foods are life giving. In this nine verse poem, Isaiah presents God as a provider of all that is needed and so much more. 

Isaiah also recalls poetically the everlasting nature of God’s promises, God’s covenant with God’s people by recalling the stories of David. David was promised that his line would be everlasting, and yet, David’s line suffered the consequences of his often horrible choices, of their mindless and horrible choices, and of the consequences of the of changing empires and political power struggles within and nearby the united kingdom of Israel and Judah. Isaiah was writing this as their exile seemed to be endless. In other words, the people were feeling that God, the God of Abraham and the God who loved David, had abandoned them—with exile that promise felt over. 

Yet in this time of despair and disappointment, Isaiah brings God’s word of hope for a time of restoration and for a time when the hope of Israel would be a beacon to the world—that is when God’s power and presence would shine in and through Israel, drawing all people, nations, to God through them. 

What is God saying to us today through this poetic prophetic scripture of Isaiah? 

The voice beginning the text sounds almost like a street vender:

Ho, everyone who thirsts,

come to the waters;

and you that have no money,

come, buy and eat!

But then it is: 

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without price.

Having gotten our attention, HO!—come and buy!—then what? 

As the spiritual goes, “God is trying to tell us something. . .” We may have settled so comfortably into a routine and worldview that keep us busy and distracted that we've lost touch with our deepest selves, made in the image of God, and our spirits may be thirsty, starving, and homesick, even if we can’t name those feelings on our own.

Another author describes the heat of the southwestern United States, where the humidity is so low that they post signs like those in the Grand Canyon National Park that say, "'Stop! Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not.'" Isaiah the poet is doing the same thing, "telling us something true about ourselves at every moment of our lives," he writes. "We may not be immediately aware of how we have wandered away from God – how life has lost its meaning in pursuit of a promotion or raise, how we have gotten buried under the demands of economic and social status".^[3]

We may not realize how thirsty we are, indeed. We may not realize how weary we have become, how buried, how pressed down. And we may have lost a sense of how precious we are in God's eyes.

What is it that we are worth to God? How do we or God determine our value? 

This text, in its beginnings, challenges worth in monetary or quantifiable terms. Come buy and eat!—without money! Come, drink and live! without money or price. 

Just as its original audience wonder if God thought it was worth it anymore to redeem them from their exile we, too, may have wondered why we are worth God’s redemption. I struggle as many do, with an uneasy peace in this world that imposes a "pseudo-order" on our lives. Just as “they gave their lives (and their faith) over to imperial productivity" (Texts under Negotiation), we are easily trapped from our earliest days into

thinking that worth is equated with productivity, that a dollar amount can be assigned to our value (think of the term "net worth”).

In a practical example, the compensation received by family members of those who died on 9/11 was based on the victims' earning potential. Stop and think about the grief(and the needs) of the widow of a minimum-wage worker in a restaurant in the World Trade Center. How can we tell her that her husband's life was worth less than that of the executive 100 floors above?

Perhaps our exile from the ways of God, the ways that Jesus taught us, unlike that of many others is self-imposed. Like the Jews who assimilated in ancient Babylon and found a relatively comfortable way of life if they adopted the values and ways of the empire, we might not perceive ourselves as exiles, either, Brueggemann writes (Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile).

However, like the sign that warns us that we may not realize that we are thirsty, the prophet wakes us up with a call to come back to God, the source of what will truly satisfy our souls. 

And what satisfies our souls is nothing we can purchase. What we need is what is given without cost to ourselves, without any price we can actually pay. 

We are all caught up in a world that is greed-driven, profit-focused, yet what we really need, what will really satisfy our deepest hunger and thirst is God. That’s what Isaiah tells us. That is the truth that lies within us—making us restless in the midst of plenty and especially in the midst of excess. 

In this day, when our economy seems a little better, yet poverty persists and is growing in the vast differences between rich and poor, I don’t know about you, but I get frustrated. I get frustrated when I read that 3 people in this nation own enough to be worth more than the bottom 50% of the people in this nation. 

Most of us in this room work honestly and hard to provide for families or have worked throughout most of our lives for that purpose and to be able to contribute to the wider community and to the church. That’s not an evil thing—to work hard and provide for ourselves and for other who cannot live with their means. Instead, God calls us: Come and eat! Come and buy! … to demand from our wider society the kinds of course corrections that will avoid turning more of us into something that violates the kinds of values that we share: generosity, hope, mercy, justice, gratitude, love, etc. 

In the church, we give thanks for all good gifts and struggle to discern and articulate alternatives to the powers—the systems and practices —that deny those gifts to any of God's children. Like our secular culture these days, we're mindful that we can consume junk food for our spirits as much as our bodies, and we have to learn to say no.

And … we have to be aware that this bread “always comes with a price. Eat royal bread and think royal thoughts. Eat royal bread and embrace royal hopes and fears," but we remember that “we are children of another bread". [Our bread is holy, perhaps, a sign of all that Jesus offers us: life, relationship, justice in economics as well as justice in worship and particularly at the table, but it is not reserved for a select few. It is a sign of Jesus’ intentions.]

Like Jesus speaking of the reign of God, we are called to “redescribethe world," so that we might know the difference between exile and home, and learn to "live out of the promise,” together.^[4]

I don’t know if anyone is attempting a Lenten discipline or has given anything up so that giving or sharing what you have is easier in this season, but in this second full week, we may have become discouraged, because we are trying to rely on pure willpower as the strength and determination for our lives. That’s not surprising. We tend to live in the pool of self-determination in our culture—whatever you or I do or do not do must be your own or my own full responsibility, no question. But maybe Lent is here to teach us how to reorder our priorities instead of our diets—maybe we should be hungering and thirsting for justice, mercy, peace, healing, acceptance, hospitality, love—not only for ourselves, but for all of God’s children. This core of the biblical message sounds like shalom. 

When we gather at the table in just a little bit, we are reminded of everyone who lives beyond our walls, in the neighborhood, in the city, in the countryside and world around us. Those of us here need the realization of our great hunger and thirst for the presence of God—and those outside these walls and other walls this morning also hunger and thirst for a community of meaning in which to put down roots. 

Ho! We bring glory to God who calls out to us from all around in the plenty of creation, in the need of bodies and souls, in the hope of our future in relationship with one another. Amen.

---

^[1]http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_march_24_2019

^[2]Ibid. (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts) 

^[3]Ibid. (Daniel Debevoise, Feasting on the Word Year C, Vol. 2) 

^[4]Ibid.1. Finally Comes the Poet 2. Hopeful Imagination

Sermon March 17, 2019

First Christian Church, Olney, Illinois

Luke 13:31-35

(This post contains material that need references--will be added later.)

“Journey toward Trust”

Adonai, God, our Shield, you make promises and keep your word, providing for us what we need in the ways that you choose. As Abram received both son, descendants, and land from your hands, we receive your gifts as you choose to give them. Hear us when we pray, hide us in your sheltering tent. Teach us your way. Help us to live as citizens of your realm and way of life. May our values reflect our citizenship in you and in no other. May we live those who follow you faithfully. We seek to trust you, sheltering under your wings, willing to love you as you love us. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Each Sunday as we approach the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, we receive in the lectionary texts of some foreboding—drawing our eyes, ears, and awareness toward the cross and crucifixion—and texts of promise and fulfillment. Sometimes a text is a mixture of the two. 

Luke reminds us that Herod the Tetrarch—who’d like to be called king—had killed John the Baptizer and that he was very capable of killing anyone including Jesus. The foreboding text reminds us that God’s people of that day were drawn away from the way that God would have them live because Herod’s leadership was counter to God’s own. The foreboding also reminds us, as we walk this lenten journey, that part of the Lenten message is repentance—repentance from trusting in the power of violence, from following the ways of greed and abusive power, and from the distraction of our own comforts and security. 

In it the Pharisees warned Jesus about Herod’s desire to kill him. Now, often we talk about the Pharisees as if they were the most dangerous people around, though they argued with Jesus, argument and debate were and are ways in which people learn particularly in the Jewish faith.  But I think that in this case they understood that Jesus was treading on thin ice since Herod had killed John the Baptizer. 

Jesus wasn’t afraid—at least he wasn’t concerned anymore than he had been. Instead, he pointed out that he wasn’t yet done with his work and that the fox in the henhouse would be there to do what he was going to do when Jesus was done doing what needed to be done.

Herod was bent on conforming the people to the values of the Roman Empire—that’s what would have benefitted him most. Jesus’ mission was to call the people to repent and to remember who they were and to be faithful to the ancient promises of God. 

Now, it’s true that Luke later offers a glimpse into Herod’s psyche later in the gospel that may mean he was fascinated by Jesus as a wonder working celebrity—but his fascination was that of a spoiled man looking for entertainment rather than someone interested in deepening or discovering his faith. And here on the road to Jerusalem Jesus revealed that Herod’s scheming was no more than words in the big picture of God’s plan. God’s word has power; Herod’s words were useless. Jesus trusted in God; Herod’s plotting was nothing. 

The actions of the powers that be: Herod in Galilee, Pilate in Jerusalem, religious leaders concerned with their own power, the wealthy and prestigious, and the mighty Roman Empire itself—had a lot of havoc to wreak in the meantime, but Jesus headed toward Jerusalem fully aware of the kind of dangers he faced. All of the powers of one kind or another, some dependent upon others, dislike the way Jesus talked about the first being last and the poor being rich and the rich being poor and the hungry being filled and the full being hungry, etc. The good news wasn’t good to those with prestige and power. 

Jesus pointed out that he wasn’t the first prophet to say these kinds of things: Jesus’ words of concern for Jerusalem sheltering like chicks under his mother hen wings recalls God’s ancient promises of God’s tender care. They also remind us that Israel was held to a high standard of faithfulness because God’s covenant was carved upon their hearts. They are, were, and had alway been God’s chosen people because God wanted Abraham’s descendants to be a light of God’s presence to the world. When Jesus spoke and healed and raised people from the dead and drove out evil and feeds masses of people, he did what God had been doing throughout God’s relationship with human beings. All that Jesus did was rooted in the Jewish ways of thought and life, where the Israelite and the foreigner were treated with respect and where poverty was addressed with generosity and hospitality. 

Jesus was a prophet in a long line of prophets who proclaimed both God’s mercy and God’s judgment. Jesus’ cry of anguish in this text would have been familiar as much as it was distressing. God was always trying to gather God’s children—the children of Jerusalem—into God’s unwavering love even when God’s children ignored that desire or just wanted something else. 

Jesus lamented over Jerusalem with the image of a mother hen who tenderly, if passionately protects her chicks. She’s fierce and unselfish, doing whatever it takes to care for her chicks, even it meant losing her life. The end of his life was, after all, where Jesus was heading. 

One commentator draws on the image of a "farmyard fire" as the threat to the hen's babies, when "those cleaning up have found a dead hen, scorched and blackened, and live chicks sheltering under her wings." In the same way, Jesus longed to save Jerusalem, to warn her of impending doom; she would not listen to his warnings, and he would end up offering his life as well.

Jesus’ tenderness and despair was certainly for those were afraid to come close to him—those in Jerusalem and elsewhere, but his despair was also for those powers that be who thought of themselves as foxes, wolves, and powerful predators and in the long run were powerless in the face of God’s powerful protection. 

Jesus lamented the ones who would ultimately reject him. How would our Lenten observance be affected if we took the opportunity to lament those who deny Jesus’ love, "the unjust….U.S.-based and global terrorists…. those who deny resources to the poor and who oppress those with no advocate?” 

Thinking of oppressors of the poor as “terrorists” certainly expands its current meaning and adjust our perspective, maybe uncomfortably so. Where would we put ourselves in this picture. What about "our own silence and collusion with international crimes of poverty, hunger, and disease?" Would Jesus cry over our cities, our institutions, as well?

Thinking of oppressors of those who live under racial discrimination and religious bigotry as “terrorists” may help us to understand and stand up against the violence that has happened recently in our world. When a synagogue was shot up in Pittsburgh, did we think of the man who did it as an individual who was deranged or did we think of him as a man participating in the oppression of Jewish people, often derided for their particular faith? When we heard about the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand where a man shot and killed 49 people at prayer—children, women, and men—does it help us realize that his hateful violence and claims of white supremacy are an attempt to terrorize Muslims and other non-white people all over the world? When the most powerful segment of any nation (or world) tries to eliminate another segment through violence, coercive actions like removal from their ancestral lands, or stripping them of their culture or language can we see that as terrorism, historical and contemporary? 

If we think of these moments of violence as weakness or sin of individuals, we can’t stand up against the system that produces them. If we realize that they are symptoms of a larger oppressive structure that has caused the blame for societal ills to fall upon Native Americans, African Americans, and Latino Americans, then we can talk about that and teach the truth instead. Instead of setting the poor of each of these groups and poor whites against one another, as they often are, we can realize that systems keep all kinds of people in poverty: low wages and high costs of medical care are just one small set of circumstances that can send people into poverty very quickly. And poverty becomes generational very easily. 

The great 20th century preacher, William Sloane Coffin, Jr said, “Nothing is more dangerous than misunderstanding evil. Evil has an irremediable stubbornness about it. And it must be recognized, it has to be constrained, but it can never be resolved. St. Augustine said, “Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of yourself.””

All of us bear responsibility for evil as it is perpetrated in our world when we don’t criticize bigotry and hatred or hold ourselves to a standard of living that prioritizes compassion, mercy, and love over violence, prejudices about race, gender, sexuality, religious, or even past sins and crimes. It’s not enough to avoid doing evil in our individual behaviors, we need to look at the ways that some of the stories we tell about ourselves as Americans, as descendants of Europeans, and even as Christians. We can participate in greed even if we ourselves aren’t particularly greedy because our money and lives revolve around systems of greed. We can participate in racism even if we ourselves don’t carry racist beliefs because many systems like city zoning, legislation, and law enforcement policies have built in policies that perpetuate bias according to race. 

Even if the intention isn’t there, (and sometimes it is) racism is there when, for example, Native Americans are incarcerated at a rate 38% higher than average. In South Dakota, Native Americans compost 60% of the federal caseload, but only 8.5% of the population. 

In 2016, Black Americans were 12% of the U.S. population and 33% of the prison population; Hispanic Americans were 16% of the U.S. population and 23% of the prison population; and white Americans were 64% of the U.S. population and 30% of the prison population. Too many poor people of any race are there and Black and Hispanic and Native Americans are over represented by race. Too many people profit from mostly the poor being incarcerated. The poor and vulnerable of all races suffer when people stand to get wealthy from imprisoning others. 

Our problems as a nation and world are deeply rooted in historical practices that continue to echo with race biases that came from Europe and this nation perfected. They are deeply connected to the ways that Christian traditions have treated people who originated outside Europe. And we need to find ways to understand those problems, confess them as sin, repent from them (that means leaving them behind), and repaying the losses that they have caused. 

That’s one way we can reject the world that Herod wanted—one of a greed for power and alliances with those who can get us the most. Jesus offers a different world—a kindom of God’s way, God’s standards and ethics, God’s mercy and love. 

We can accept what Jesus offers—shelter and life through repentance and living lives according to his way: love one another, loving our enemies, the last being first/the first being last, etc.—as chicks under his wings. 

If we are moving toward trusting God more in the face of the horrible things that happen in the world, then we have to realize that moving close to Jesus means being real about who we are and who Jesus wants us to be. 

Just like the ancient prophets that Jesus pointed out were rejected, Jesus imagined a world for all people where his disciples, where we, protect the vulnerable and care for the weak, whatever the objection, whoever it offends. Jesus loved the city of Jerusalem even as it "refuses what makes for shalom," and his words warn us today against the kind of lives that are more anxious about our own selves than we are about our neighbors. 

“Neighborliness is a beautiful and compelling vision for both our internal and external affairs, and it would fulfill both religious aspirations and secular ones, finding common ground for all of us to stand on, whether we are "religious" or not. 

“In other words, it's a vision we could all embrace. We don't need to impose our religious beliefs on one another, or punish one another for infractions of religious laws. But we can all hold up an ideal, an ethic, of neighborliness that would inspire us to share, to be just, to include rather than exclude, to heal and repair and strengthen, to protect the vulnerable, to care about one another and show respect for every person. …"neighborliness" [is] a vision for every city, every community, every nation”. 

This journey we travel through life is no less difficult and foreboding than the stories that accompany us through our journey with Jesus through Lent. We can trust that the way of Jesus, the way that God had given the prophets, the way of equity, justice and mercy is the way that will lead us, as the body of Christ together, to a world where we have more neighbors and friends than enemies. 

To the glory of God, One God, The Most Gracious, Dispenser of Grace. Amen.

Sermon March 10, 2019

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Luke 4:1-13

“The Space Between”

Adonai, God of Abraham and Sarah, wandering Arameans who sought your will for their lives, if we find ourselves enjoying the benefits of settled lives with adequate resources that satisfy our needs, we come to you in thanksgiving and joy, celebrating your abundance by sharing what we have. We stand, we live, we hope in the shadow of your presence and trust in your provision for us and for those who need us. We hope in the Living Word, Jesus Christ, in whom there is no distinction between people, wherever they are born, wherever they live. May his words teach us your word in ways that build up, ways that connect all people to your love, ways that do not separate anyone from your love. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

The season of Lent is modeled on the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism. We are told the story of his temptation. This was a time of preparation  for his entry into the activity that would characterize him as Messiah, as Son of God, as Savior. I imagine the struggle in the wilderness also included his own concern about living out God’s intentions for him as well as the most faithful ways that he could do all that God wanted. 

The story of Jesus in the wilderness something with the story of the people of Israel from Deuteronomy—both Jesus and Israel are on the cusp of a new kind of life. Jesus was about to begin his ministry, revealing how God wanted to be revealed and how lives were meant to be changed by God’s presence renewed; Israel was about to begin their lives in the land of God’s promise: after their presence in Egypt first as economic refugees, then as slaves and finally with their identity as God’s people with a rule of life that revealed how God lived in and through them. 

They each stand in the space between their former lives and the lives God has given them to live—and for similar reasons. God called Abraham and Sarah and their descendants to be a light to the world, revealing the one God and creator of all to all peoples. Jesus, in a reaffirmation of God’s desire to love the entire world, was also beginning his life of revelation, beginning the work God had given him to do. 

While Lent isn’t the only time that we can consider what kind of life God is calling us to live—it is a time of introspection when we can consider that life particularly as a community as well as the lives we live as individuals. 

You, as a congregation, are in a space and time between so in this Lenten season we can take the time to consider who we are, where God calls, and what happens next.And today is just the beginning—the moment before the journey, really, it’s the moment before the next leg of the journey or the next phase in our lives. 

The book of Deuteronomy is a second telling of the story of Moses and the people coming out of Egypt, it was written or found in a time later in Israel’s history when they needed to be reminded who they were and where they’d come from. So this story is a reminder of a story within a reminder. “Your ancestors did this to remember who they were—don’t forget who you are.” They were thankful—and hopeful. They brought the first of the harvest to celebrate that they were living in the land God had promised. And it wasn’t just blessed and taken back. It was shared with the Levites (those who depended upon the temple for their livelihood) and the aliens, people who were not a part of the original promise, but enjoyed the bounty of God’s gifts alongside everyone who was. 

They remembered who they had been—and knew that it would always be a part of their lives. They’d been immigrants, descended from Abraham and Sarah. They’d been slaves, first dependent upon Egypt for food and life, then enslaved and oppressed by their benefactors. They’d been freed, only through God’s power and will, then spent time in the wilderness (40 years) learning to be a free people after their enslavement. And finally, they were a free people with a land of abundance where they could settle and live peacefully among the other inhabitants of the land. 

At a time like this, in the space between where we’ve been and where we are going, we can stop and remember who we have been, who you have been in this community and to one another and hold onto that as you become who you’ll be. According to one credible witness from your past, you are a small, loving and faithful congregation. As far as I can tell, that has always been the identity you’ve claimed and there is no reason to believe that that isn’t who you’ll always be. Small, to a certain degree, is a flexible characteristic; loving and faithful are non-negotiable. 

How is it that you live out that history? And how do we do so in ways that God calls us in all circumstances to be the light of the world, a conduit of God’s grace, witnesses to God’s love in Jesus Christ and in the ways we relate to one another? 

In just this short time I’ve been with your community so far, you’ve shared generously with a family so that they’d have a Christmas celebration, not just have what they need, but an abundance to be able to smile and laugh together with happiness.  You’ve shared time and resources to care for the hungry and food insecure in Olney at Good Samaritan. You have been loving people who need whatever extra we have so they can get from day to day more easily, maybe with less suffering and anxiety. 

I know—also from what you’ve said that it’s not as easy as it has been at times in the past, but if loving and faithful is who you are, then holding onto that is vital to who you will be tomorrow and vital to your specific revelation of God, your particular and specific message from God to this community. Your message may not be the biggest or the loudest, but if you embrace loving and faithful as who you are, it could be the most loving, merciful, and even the most generous and neighborly or hospitable around. Your welcome could mean life to a stranger, life to someone rejected by their family or others, life when some one feels like all hope has been lost. 

I’m not dictating your message or identity; I am simply telling you what I’ve seen and heard from you in these last few months, in this space in between how it’s been and what the future brings. 

Jesus, as I’ve said, was in that space as he fasted in the wilderness following his baptism.  Matthew and Luke tell a detailed story of Jesus’ temptation, where the devil—offers Jesus some very specific choices that characterize how Jesus could choose to use his power, claim his identity, and carry out his purpose. In one way, I see it that the Jesus is tempted to the convenience of what the devil offers and Jesus knows that the means to the goal of his life and calling were inextricably interwoven with the purpose of his life. The message of his life was the way that he lived it and the way he lived his life was the message. 

The works that the devil tempted Jesus to do were not out of the realm of possibility and power that Jesus’ would express. Jesus didn’t turn stones to bread, but he fed 5,000 to 15,000 people with just a few loaves and some fish and he fed others, not just himself. He gave of his power so that the poor folks who followed might survive to the next day. Jesus expressed power over nature when he calmed the seas; and he did it for the sake of his friends and their faith, not just to claim power. Jesus called upon God for help as he faced his crucifixion and understood that God’s love and will for the entire world meant that he had to face his own painful and violent death without violence and resistance so that his death would lead us all to resurrection. His life and teachings, his death and resurrection means that we can live our lives unconcerned with mere survival; we can live with purpose and meaning, pursuing better lives for the people in our world and finding meaning there. 

We are in a space between in other ways, too, in a position to choose our next place of movement or being. One step away may be where we circle up and take care only of ourselves, focusing on survival, slowly dying in the process or toward nurturing the tender life we carry together. In another direction, we step toward some identity that is not our own, owning judgment or exclusion instead embracing a name that points toward love and grace. One step takes us toward despair; another step might cultivate   invitation and inclusion and the contagious joy of warmth and hospitality. We might join to embrace difference and nurture our core identity of love and faith all at the same time. 

We won’t always enjoy the steps we need to take as we sort out the best of ourselves from what we need to leave behind. We might need to ask difficult questions that are hard enough to ask, let alone answer. We might even have to argue with one another with understanding and love to decide and take the steps we need to take into the future God has for us.

We can take this season of Lent as our time in between considering the past, present, and future as we focus on who we have been and who we can be. We can pray and wonder, as we hear stories of God’s intentions for God’s people and hear of Jesus’ work and journey toward Jerusalem, where God’s will leads us for the sake of God’s coming kindom and for the nurture of God’s people here and throughout the world. 

And—in the words of Julian of Norwich, 14th century scholar and poet, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

To the glory of God, our joy, our hope, our love. Amen.

You could say it's been interesting

Psalm 122

A Song of Ascents. Of David.
¹ I was glad when they said to me,
   ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ 
² Our feet are standing
   within your gates, O Jerusalem. 

³ Jerusalem—built as a city
   that is bound firmly together. 
⁴ To it the tribes go up,
   the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
   to give thanks to the name of the Lord. 
⁵ For there the thrones for judgement were set up,
   the thrones of the house of David. 

⁶ Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
   ‘May they prosper who love you. 
⁷ Peace be within your walls,
   and security within your towers.’ 
⁸ For the sake of my relatives and friends
   I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’

(The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=356611975)

I think I've been a little lost, somewhat sad, and drifting along. I'm feeling that blessing/curse, "May you live in interesting times." Interesting times are varied, changeable, unusual, unexpected.

I know that many of us have been stunned by the national events of the past six months. At the same time, many of us have also gone through personal life changes that have increased our emotional stress, despair, and/or depression. 

I left the congregation I'd been serving for over 6 years in August of 2016--a decision made because there were barriers arising. I believe that they were signs of the end of a fruitful relationship between us. In spite of some glimpses and glints of green sprouts, there were those determined to stamp them out, purposefully and not.  If you've been a pastor or other leader in the church, you might recognize those times when the same mouth speaks both words of affirmation and death. You might know the one(s) who both recognizes your gifts and rejects them--God only knows why. 

So . . . I've been lost, sad, and drifting for the reasons I share here. 

Woman traveling in pear.

And I struggle with spiritual disciplines--I always have and suspect that I always will. I love the idea of sitting down at the same time several times a day and working on my conversation with God in several creative and exciting ways. The reality is different. I'm not sure I have a scheduled discipline gene, but I still try and hit the mark about 30% of the time--more often if my discipline is helping another be disciplined. I think, as my mother and I used to joke, that's why we travel in pairs.  

It's not that I must be always accountable to someone else--someone with skin on, someone incarnate maybe? But it certainly helps.

It helps me because relationships help me reach goals I've set. I stay accountable to promises made within a relationship with someone else--more accountable than those promises I make to myself. I'm sure that says something about me, about my self-worth. I also think that it says something about what I find important. It is important for me to live up to the expectations and promises that I have made to other people. This may be done out of a need for approval; it may also be done because I deeply when someone doesn't live up to a promise or a responsibility in my life. So when I fall short, I anticipate the disappointment felt by that person. I know how much it hurts me when people ignore a commitment to me--a commitment of any size--that I don't want anyone else to feel that way. 

So, right now, feeling adrift from the church as a part of a regular congregation and and having few concrete nearby relationships I am adrift from discipline--spiritual and otherwise. But I've decided to work on it through this blog and hopefully in ways that move me into communities where I can form and re-form relationships.

Psalm 122 reminds me that God's people have needed a place, time, or people to help us maintain our connections to God and one another. The biblical witness of God's relationship with human beings is rarely (if ever) a matter of an individual's relationship to God. God approaches individuals--Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. with the purpose of creating a people whose existence will be a witness to God, who will be a light to the nations, who will be the conduit of God's word for all generations. The way that God relates to people is to extend God's presence into the people and through their lives into a community. God's covenants establish God's desire to relate and God's promises and expectations establish what it is that we are to reveal about God's desire to be revealed as peace, as love, as a light to all peoples.

"Transformed by Extravagant Welcome"

Sermon December 20 2015

Micah 5:2-5a

Luke 1:39-55

As I read today’s gospel text about Elizabeth and Mary, my mind was full of thoughts about the women in my family and I immediately began to realize the structure for relationship and connection that they had been. I struggle with some stories about family, kinship, connection, and generational family support in people’s story and in scripture because my family has experienced a lot of disconnect, especially after my grandmother died. I remember the days when we’d gather all together for holidays—and on summer vacation times—just to be together as a family. I’m sure I wasn’t aware as a child of all that it took to do that: all the shopping and cooking and cleaning. But I was aware of the laughter and tears and occasional shouting and arguments in the children and in the adults. We used to gather and find connection to one another through the agency of my grandmother and my aunts and uncles and parents, but after my aunts died, my mother died, and my grandmother died, it was very difficult to be connected to each other in significant ways. It was as if we lost the heart to do it anymore.

We lost the magnet that drew us together. Every single person wasn’t always there when we gathered, but when my matriarchs were alive, most were. They created within them and between them a net that caught us up and held us together, sometimes whether we wanted it or not. It was transformed for the worse when our main connection became more patriarchal and financial. What we had was a difficult thing to replace when it was lost—it may be impossible with some families.

So, sometimes I wonder we need to stop trying to recapture the past and instead create a new kind of connection for the future based in love and relationships that may include family and expand relationship and hospitality means.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t have relationships where people in families are connected to one another. It does reminds us that the kinds of connections we have in families and beyond are more fragile than we seem to act and that every kind of relationship takes work. We cannot take one another for granted, but live and act knowing that every bond and every gathering and every system of relationships we build must contain a very deep sense of hospitality and actions of extravagant welcome.

Within our particular faith system, we celebrate a tradition of extravagant welcome within the teachings of the Bible and within the traditions of our Christian faith to greater and lesser degrees over time.

We may not think of the teachings of the first testament of the bible when we think about hospitality and welcome or inclusion of many kinds of people in communities. But not only does the law provide for those born outside of the tribes of Israel, there were often times that God’s call to the people was very wide. The prophets saw God working in all kinds of people and called leaders and those with power to treat the poor, no matter who they were, with justice and mercy.  That’s just to say that hospitality didn’t start in the New Testament; it was and is a matter of survival and joy for people who live in a harsh environment and really for us all.

The story we read in today’s gospel lesson—a lesson that includes both a story and a song—is about what happened in Mary’s life right after God called her to be the mother of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Mary and Elizabeth create a mutually supportive commu­nity, which in turn acknowledges ties to a communal his­tory. Their brief, but meaningful encounter in today’s scripture creates a picture of the community and family into which Jesus would be born. Just before this text, Mary meets Gabriel who tells her that she has been chosen to bear the child of God, born of the Holy Spirit, and she agrees, “Let it be done to me as you say. Then a few days later, she left and went quickly to a town in Judea where Elizabeth and Zechariah lived.

We can speculate about why Mary left Nazareth so quickly, but it’s probably not too strange an act considering that she just found out that she, a single young woman, found out that she was going to have a baby. It may be a situation we don’t worry too much about here today (whatever our level of approval), but one that just a few decades ago would have been a scandal full of shame and in Mary’s day it was a family, faith, and cultural problem for her that might have been fatal. We have legends and stories about Mary’s parents, but nothing in the bible that names them. If I were looking at this like a story from my family, I’d say that it looks as if she went to Elizabeth for a more sympathetic face—one that could see her situation with a little more objectivity and distance than her mother and father might have. We are only told that Elizabeth is a kinswoman with no clear relationship, but I know that there were times that my sister or an aunt or older cousin was a much less judgmental face than either of my parents.

Mary may have known from prior experience that Elizabeth would provide her welcome, time, and space to understand her situation without parental pressure for explanations or decisions. Sometimes those we know best, daughters, sons, grandchildren, parents, close friends are judged more critically because of our disappointment or how their situations cause us pain. 

When we speak or act out of a belief or story that our church is a family, we sometimes carry the same kinds of expectations, disappointments, and assumptions we have learned in our families. We might have learned who to welcome and who to reject and in church we have to learn to welcome all or we might experience the different kinds of judgment or welcome that we and others have learned in all of our families.

Certainly the pregnant Elizabeth’s reaction to Mary and her pregnancy was a matter of faith—yet I also think it was a matter of knowing how much Mary needed her radical welcome, embrace, and approval. Mary needed her blessing and she got it in ABUNDANCE! Elizabeth greets Mary with three blessings: “blessed are you among women,” “blessed is the fruit of your womb,” and “blessed is she who believed.”

While she certainly was a supportive family member and maternal/feminine role model and figure; Elizabeth acts a prophet here. Elizabeth loved God, and she loved Mary. She was a prophet of the Most High, for she prepared the way for Mary to praise God. I can imagine and this text feels like Elizabeth’s words created a way for Mary to be grateful, exuberant, and full of anticipation in her pregnancy and not just obedient and willing to serve God’s will. The second would have been adequate, but to be an eager participant in God’s plan of salvation and life made God even more present to all those involved.

Mary’s life—body, mind, and soul—was changing radically with the birth of her child. What she taught him and how her life was centered was important, I would say vital, to all that Jesus would accomplish in his life. With this initial blessed welcome and embrace of her situation by Elizabeth, Mary sang her song of God’s salvation; a song that would be echoed in Jesus’ teachings, especially his first teaching in Nazareth where he read that the blind would see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the imprisoned would be free.

Elizabeth’s welcome ushered in Mary’s embrace of her pregnancy, which in turn led to her song of praise to God:

⁴⁶ My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸ for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   and holy is his name.
⁵⁰ His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
⁵² He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
⁵⁵ according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

The birth of Jesus happened in the life of one young woman who lived in Nazareth; it happened in the lives of Mary’s family and friends, yet it also happened in the midst of the Roman occupation and oppression of the lands called Galillee, Judea, and in Ephrathah and Judah. And it happens to us as we accept and extend the extravagant welcome of the Elizabeth and Mary in our story.

And God’s promises are brought to life as we and others live out the presence of Christ in our lives and live Christ’s presence for all that it means.

It might mean embracing a young woman who might be rejected by some for her radical decisions and desire to thrive. She and others might need to throw off a family’s well-meaning, but restrictive expectations. We can create a situation for Jesus to be present in our lives and in the lives through our welcome and hospitality within our families and certainly within our churches. In our welcome and hospitality, we reveal our love and God’s love like Elizabeth, like a prophet, like one who sees the power of love and makes it real in others’ lives.

Mary’s song, the ‘Magnificat,’ invites us to be and become a community that celebrates God’s will for justice, hospitality, and peace. Mary sings the story of how the world changes for the good of all – there are still lowly ones to be lifted up and there are still thrones of power in need of bringing down. May we follow Elizabeth’s blessing and embrace how God is transforming us, our community, and our world.

To the glory of God this day and always. Amen.

"Born of Fire"

Sermon  December 6, 2015

Malachi  3:1-4

Luke 1:68-79

God, we turn to you for the peace that we cannot find by ourselves. We want to live in your light as your beloved children. Open our ears to the prophets of scripture and to the prophets in our midst. Lead our feet in the ways of peace that we may walk more and more closely with you. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Through the Prince of Peace, we pray. Amen.

For hundreds of years in the early church there was no celebration of Jesus’ birth. People worshiped on the first day of the week for a weekly celebration of the resurrection where they celebrated the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper or Communion and when they remembered Jesus’ crucifixion around the time when the Jewish people celebrated Passover.

For a long time, people didn’t commemorate Jesus’ birth. There is no story about Jesus’ birth in Mark’s gospel or in John’s gospel. But after a few hundred years, a bishop or two decided to create a celebration of the birth and God’s incarnation in Jesus. And to prepare for this celebration, as Christians prepare for the remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, there was to be a time of preparation—a time to think about Jesus’ coming: yesterday, today, and forever. So Advent began as a little Lent. A time to discipline ourselves, deny ourselves, and repent of our sins as we prepare for a terrific joy when God erupts into the world in a howling baby.

In our world (and in the ancient world, to some extent) Advent as a time of preparation has competition with the chipper, exuberant, fun of Christmas music and celebration. Events usually cleansed of specific religious content, though chock full of fun and sentimental anticipation or remembrance. And celebration is great! Advent can be joyful; it is also pensive, penitent, and a call to prepare. And not for dinner, gift-giving, or company. We are called to prepare our lives for the presence of Jesus by getting rid of or allowing God to get rid of the worst of who we are.

In the book of Malachi, which means “messenger,” we receive a message that most would not consider terribly cheerful, but some understand to be a necessary way of getting ready for joy, health, wholeness, peace, grace, love, serenity, contentment to come. God’s messenger comes to call people to repentance—to call, in this prophetic book, specifically the “Sons of Levi,” the priests and other servants of the temple to repent of anything that stands in their way of standing before God in the temple.

And in the New Testament, as people await the Messiah, as wait for the story of Jesus’ birth and the story of his life, we hear about the Messenger—the prophet—the preacher of repentance who will get people ready to stand before the Son of God as God sends Jesus with his teachings, his love, his life, and his death and resurrection into the world. On this day of preparation and anticipation, when we still await Jesus, then, now, and into some future, we hear from the father of another baby.

All of the gospels tell us that John the baptizer leads in the ministry of Jesus. In Luke’s gospel we hear about his family, too. His father was Zechariah, a priest who served in the temple in Jerusalem. All the priests rotated in to their duties, as I understand it, and 9-10 months before our scripture he’d been serving in the Holy of Holies/the inner sanctum/the place of the altar and sacrifice. And as he served, a terrible angel appeared to him and he was afraid.

This is another clash of culture we get from the Christmas celebration and cards. Angels, according to every reaction described in the scriptures, weren’t all that friendly looking or seeming. Here and elsewhere, the first things most people did when accosted by an angel was shake and nearly pass out.

So in our Advent preparation story, Zechariah heard—from this scary angel—that he and his wife were going to conceive and have a son that he would name John. And he would be like the nazarites, not drinking wine or other spirits. He would have the power of the Holy Spirit to call people to repent from their sin. But Zechariah was doubtful and the angel made him unable to speak until John was born—actually until John received the name the angel gave him.

And that’s the story that Luke tells, even before he tells the story of Jesus’ birth—even before he tells the story about the angel visiting Mary to announce his birth—Luke prepares us to be prepared by repentance, even before he prepares us to prepare for the birth of the Savior. We don’t have to stay all frowny faced and judgemental, like the words of Malachi can feel, but we do have a call to prepare, to realize what it is that God was/is/will accomplish through the people God calls.

In the time when Jesus was about to be born, life was difficult for the Jewish people--life was often difficult for them. The Hebrew people, throughout their history, experienced “the hands” of foreign domination: the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and – in the time of Jesus – Rome. All had their effect on the suppression of culture, religious traditions, and a sense of peace. They felt, at these times, unable to serve God freely and fully.

They were looking, as they had always been looking, for the fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel. Zechariah, as a priestly servant, as a man steeped in God’s word and ritual knew this and when, finally, his son was born, he saw in him—as Mary saw in this first part of Luke—God’s action, God’s breaking into the world through these two infants that God had sent and that God would call.

Sometimes, we think we are too old, too young, too inexperienced, or not smart enough to be able to be a good servant of God. We think that is a job for someone else to do and not something we can accomplish. When we think of prophets, we think of people who look and act very different from us. But in the gospel, we have a husband and wife who are simply living out their marriage—Elizabeth and Zechariah—and their son, John, born and then called to be a prophet. The texts today invite us to put on the robe of the prophet and see how it fits. God wants us to embrace our special role as messengers who will deliver God’s word and light to people who are in need.

Imagine Zechariah’s joy at the birth of his son. He holds his child in his arms and he sings praises to God. He doesn’t just trust in what God has done in the past to save his people from those who want to do them harm. He sees God’s promise for the future in his newborn baby. Zechariah knows that God is not just the God of his ancestors but that God is God of the today and tomorrow, and makes a prophecy about his son.
What might God be calling you and me to do? What kinds of oppression to we live under in today’s world? I think we live under various kinds of oppression, some of it that concerns more of our personal lives and more that causes pain, suffering, and even violence in our culture and world. Zechariah’s song concerned how God was addressing the kinds of societal oppression and suffering that suppressed the Hebrew people and many nations in all times and places.

On this day, the first thing that comes to my mind is the oppression stemming from the violence of the past few weeks. As we mourn deaths committed by people with guns in places that are undeclared warzones, I believe we are called to stand up and speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves. Let us speak for those most recently dead and for those thousands since the victims of elementary school children at Sandy Hook Elementary.

We may not be under the oppression of a foreign power like the Assyrians, Babylonians, or like the Romans, but I feel a persecution from a culture that reacts to violence with violent desires of retribution instead of the ways that Jesus has taught us to react. The birth and then the teachings of John the baptizer paved the way for Jesus’ teachings by telling us to repent. The words of God in Malachi teach us that there are ideas in our lives that have to be burned away, washed away, to make our lives the valuable things with worthy purposes that they can be.

Reacting to violence with violence shows us and everyone that we are afraid of the violence.  If we are blind to how fear oppresses us, we are no less oppressed. We are agreeing to the fear, agreeing to the process of violence against violence, instead of seeking out answers, responses, or actions that produce less fear and better futures.

Imagine your own parent holding you in his or her arms and looking into your newborn face, as you hear these words:  You, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way.

What is God preparing you to do; to be?
Maybe God calls you and me to speak up against violence. Maybe God is calling us to speak up for the children of this community and our surroundings whose educational futures are getting more and more precarious because our state government can’t agree to pay for it. Maybe God is calling us to speak up for the sake of the lowest wage earners who will suffer most if social security and retirement ages are raised because those with lower incomes live shorter lives. Maybe God is calling you and me to really see the living conditions of those whose lives are marked by the chaos of poverty and look beyond the mess and see that it isn’t more responsibility that is needed but more support and compassion. Maybe God is calling us to open our eyes to a life without fear of other humans and a life full of love for God and all of God’s children.

Imagine that this parent looks at you and says, “You will tell God’s people about forgiveness of sins.” What word of grace might God be wanting you to share with another?
Yes, we have done things that need to be forgiven. And God forgives without hesitation everything and anything that we have done or will do. Can we look into the eyes of the criminal, the sinner, the annoying and the messy, the irresponsible, the addict, and the life without hope and embrace the person, the human being that lives that life.

Because of our God’s deep compassion, the dawn from heaven will break upon us, to give light to those who are sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide us on the path of peace.

Who do you know that could use God’s light in their lives? Where is there brokenness that you may be the one to bring healing?
Maybe it’s your life that could use a little of God’s light and maybe there are few people who can see it. Maybe you know someone else who could use your support and encouragement and you have a little light to share. If you help light their candle, there is more of God’s light to shine.

If you are broken, if you need time to heal, if you need someone to listen and to care, then call upon God and appeal to the church as your community of love to help. If you can see the brokenness and you can sit with the hurting—you don’t have to have solutions or special powers, the presence of God’s people is enough.

Zechariah’s song—often called the Benedictus—announces with a past tense kind of certainty that God has already kept God’s promises to Israel. And then as he looks at his newly born son John he sings the promises of God for a “kin-dom,” a dawning, a pathway, full of the lovingkindness of God’s own heart. It’s a big promise to hang on a new little one—but there’s a bigger promise about to be hung on another little one, another tiny child soon to be born.

The season of preparation—a birth by fire—of Advent—and the seasons of life—are full of collisions of joy and sorrow, love and painful transformation; sorrow at the way things are; joy at the world God is bringing; love in the eyes of our heavenly parent; and transformation in a rebirth of ourselves and our communities. Advent is a reminder to see that all are happening in our worship and in our world and in our hearts. As our holy parent looks at us and speaks to us with joy and hope, may we hear and know the expectations and gifts and love we are being given.

To the glory of our ever-living, ever-loving God. Amen.