Sermon March 4, 2012

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Psalm 22:23-31

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

“Living Legacy”

Have you ever thought that it would be nice of God would just tell you what to do clearly, face-to-face and with no chance of misunderstanding? Or that God would sit you down or more likely you wish God would sit down with a relative or friend and explain the circumstances of their lives? In our scripture from Genesis this morning, Abram has that chance. This isn't the first or last time either. Genesis describes several times when God walks and talks with the patriarch formerly known as Abram, telling him exactly what will happen and why—if not how. And the man we know as Abraham would tell you that working with God is always fraught with change, transformation, and the cost of being faithful to God's intentions for our lives.Even face-to-face, God is God and we are not.

All readings today speak of both blessings and costs. That puts Christianity at odds with much of today’s culture. People are wary of joining anything with “strings attached,” and churches struggling with numbers are not keen to make discipleship harder. But have you noticed that even today, people who are truly committed to the success or failure of a mission are more likely to join if there is a cost. The cost of mission seems to make it more genuine. We seem to understand intuitively that very little genuineness or commitment means very little results.

When I first expressed to my mother the possibility of becoming a minister—not that I wanted to preach, I was interested in learning more, going to seminary and, honestly, becoming what my husband calls a “professional student.”—she was, let’s call it, dismayed. Shocked, appalled, worried, upset, angry and that’s just what I know from how what she said, I have no idea what was going on inside. She wanted to talk me out of it, partly because I am a woman and partly because she saw the difficulties involved in living life as a minister. The small church I grew up in had student ministers from Phillips when it was in Enid, Oklahoma, and she used to joke, half seriously, that when those young ministers left Aline they had twins, got divorced or both. Ministry, even in her limited view inside that small church in that small town, was a stressful call to answer.

But she also saw, knew and loved many of the young ministers and their families who served there. They were not always treated with the most respect—or the respect due them—many were blessed and tested, and were blessed and discouraged, often at the same time. And I would say, looking back, that my mother was right about the difficulties of the ministers whose lives she had witnessed. And she was right about this being a difficult call to answer. And I would say that there is no easy call to answer, when God is calling. And God does call, each one of us to give our lives in some kind of service. God does call, each one of us differently and I believe that call continues throughout our lives though the call may change, adjust, and evolve as our lives change, adjust and evolve to the situations in which we find ourselves and the context of the world around us.

I understand that we are all not called to ministry in the same way—not to preach formal sermons or to take on the administrative responsibilities of a congregation or all the other weird little things that consist of my calling. Even different ministers are called to do different varieties of things within their ministry—we are all different. But I do believe that God calls us and we are ordained to that calling through baptism—by water, by spirit, and on rare occasion, by fire. In every one of our lives, in particular ways and with our own particular gifts, we are called to live the gospel of Jesus Christ, from the time of our baptisms until we take our final breaths.

I have heard it said how much easier people have it when they have faith in God—and I understand that sentiment, but I also know that it isn’t easy to be faithful to a God who calls us to go beyond our wants and desires and beyond the spotty and changeable moralism of modern culture.. It isn’t easy to consider the needs of our neighbors, when our neighbors are located in the house with the messy yard next door and in the trashed out apartment building across town and in the synagogues, temples, mosques, churches and in the palaces, refugee camps around the world. But in Jesus' words we are called to love our neighbors wherever they are when we are baptized into discipleship of Jesus Christ.

But we can be assured that the faithful women and men who have been called by God have never found absolute obedience that easy—I would even venture to say that, considering attitude, none have been absolutely cooperative, even if they have eventually obeyed.

The lectionary reading this week stops just short of Abraham's response in verse 17: "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed." Sarah wasn't around to hear directly from God about her impending pregnancy (or, for that matter, her name change), but we find out in the next chapter how she reacted when she finally got the news: "Sarah laughed to herself" (18:12).

That's not all that the carefully chosen verses of the lectionary reading leave out: the rest of this 17th chapter tells us that the gift of "the land" is an important part of the promise, "for a perpetual holding," and then spends a good amount of time on the sign of this covenant, circumcision. One author* acknowledges that Christians may find these themes "relatively uncongenial": the promise of the land (which continues to be the source of great controversy today), circumcision (think of the struggle in the early church about its necessity), and finally, "doubt, manifested in laughter" (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 2). Great ancestors in the faith don't doubt or question, right? We certainly don't want them to fall off their pedestals.¹

The bible doesn't tell us about all of the conversations Abraham and Sarah probably had about the possibility of conceiving a child, about the possibilities of a successful pregnancy and all of the stuff that goes along with that kind of story. We can imagine that these were not the only times they laughed about it. And the times they cried about it. And the times they argued about it.

But God had made promise of an innumerable set of descendants—making this family of Abraham and Sarah an eternal family, if you think about it. And to begin this family some particular actions had to be accomplished. Abraham had to follow instructions; Sarah had be on board with the plan. Eventually they were sidetracked by taking matters into their own hands, but God made those folks a part of the promise, too— made Abraham's son by Sarah's maid, Hagar, another set of nations, according to the Bible. God's promise was doubly kept in Abraham's life—what is two times a multitude?

As each promise is made and each promise is kept, the faithfulness we witness and experience doesn't necessarily become clearer. But the promises are kept—and the promises are God's.

It is, of course, God who is at work in this story. It's God's initiative, and God's plan in motion. God is shaping a family, and commits to be at the heart of that family's story, to travel with that family when they wander and dwell with them when they reach their home. This covenant and its blessings aren't just for the sake of Israel, however, because God intends, through Israel, to restore all of humanity. But it starts here, with a man and woman who leave home and all that is familiar, including its security and its gods, to set out in response to the irresistible call of this "God Almighty." Thus begins a relationship, at times beautiful and at times troubled, between the children of Israel and their one God, whom they trust to be with them always.²

Though I know we are called to participate with and within God's promises—making ourselves available and expressing our discipleship in daily life. I also know that God will work wonders if we just don't get in God's way.

Perhaps this is Jesus' message to Peter, too. Though it seems a bit harsh to call him Satan, Jesus was in a very stressful situation, knowing that suffering and a painful death were around the corner. We don't have to like the road we're traveling and probably parts of it will be and have been very difficult.

Really, we do just need to be reminded that God's plan is everlasting—the covenant God made with Abraham to continue this family forever is everlasting. So we know we can be creative with God, sometimes just by getting out of the way of God's spirit. Let's don't trip up the wind of the spirit with worry and grief at what no longer is, but allow it to flow through us, moving us, shaping us and making all of us a part of this legacy God has promised, again and again and again.

To the glory of our God, full of steadfast love, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.

1http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-4-2012-second-sunday.html *W. Sibley Towner

2http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/march-4-2012-second-sunday.html

Sermon February 26, 2012

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-10

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15 

“Blessed Connections”

Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that my choices and my behaviors have little or nothing to do with those around me. I don't do it in every second of every day, but when I get lazy and don't think or reach out to other people, I forget that everything that I do and say—and many of my thoughts and feelings—impacts other people, sometimes profoundly. And I am reminded how desperately I—and all of us—need the grace of God.

The natural world carries messages of God’s grace. We will encounter some of these messages in the readings through Lent. Ancient people understood: all creation fell and rose together, what affects one species affects all – human actions have planetary and even cosmic implications. The oneness of creation under God’s grace shines in every rainbow arching through the clouds, a witness to God’s promise that the earth from which we come will never again be reduced to its primordial chaos.

And though God's creation is one it is also broken, troubled, as broken in some times and places as it is beautiful in other times and places. And many times the beauty is revealed in very painful moments.

The scripture that we read this morning from Genesis describes God's promise to Noah and all of creation, the first covenant God make in the scriptures. This promise—this covenant—conversation occurs after the flood story that describes how God was so angry at human beings and their murderous actions that God decided to destroy every one of the people except for Noah, Noah's wife and their three sons and their wives. All people accept the household of Noah were destroyed in this account of an earth-covering flood.

The story of a universal flood isn't exclusive to Jewish scriptures—the story of a flood is contained in many ancient texts. What makes the biblical account unique is that it wasn't about a battle between gods, who destroyed human beings because they distracted them from their lives. Those gods then decided to use water to wipe the planet clean and start over. The biblical story is about God's outraged response to humanity's violence against each other—and saving the one family who were righteous and could be trusted to teach that to subsequent generations.

And then the story continues in this morning's scripture when God see the destruction of the flood and promises never, ever to do it again. And God sets a reminder in the sky—not a reminder to human beings or to the other living things of creation—God said, '¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’(Genesis 9:14-16)

God wanted to remember the promise and covenant of life, so that life would be the result of God's actions toward all of creation. Though God's destruction stopped humanity's violence against other human beings, God saw the promise, the covenant, had to be made with God and all living creatures who suffered destruction and loss in God's anger.

Though there was brokenness before the flood, God's covenant was an attempt to re-join, to re-member the unity of creation bringing it closer to God's harmonious and unified intention.

In the flood story and especially in its conclusion, we are reminded by repeated affirmation:

1. I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature
2. This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature
3. it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth
4. I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh
5. I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth
6. This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth

Six times in ten short verses, God says that Noah (the human family) and every creature and the earth itself are together, one party, in this covenant.

The rainbow covenant binds us to each other and all living things:

“Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, nonharming, nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility and respect towards the other.”¹

What I do has an effect on you (all of you) because I am connected to you and what you do (all of you) has an effect on me (and one another) because we are connected. Sometimes and with some people that effect is more obvious—the closer my relationship to you, the more immediately what I do impacts you. Unless we are very close, you might be able to ignore what I do for awhile.

And when relationships are broken in various degrees, from slightly imperfect to incredibly estranged, the brokenness impacts us all. The story of the flood describes that kind of brokenness, when humanity was so incredibly murderous, violent, bloodthirsty that God chose to destroy life rather than preserve it—things must have been bad. And yet, when it is all over with, though God has no assurance and must have the very real knowledge and awareness of our violent capabilities and future, God promises never to destroy life on that scale again. God promised never to over turn the order of creation to the destruction of the primordial watery chaos that preceded creation.

So if we are compassionate, as God realized the need to be compassionate in this first covenant, then we recognize that for anyone to live in peace, in kindness and in free of unnecessary suffering, we must all make choices that promote peace, kindness and justice for all living things. If God can recognize a need to promise never to destroy again, we, too, need to recognize how our hands cause pain and acknowledge and confess how our choices contribute to war, apathy, and injustice.

And we can recognize that making different choices can make a difference for the good in this world. It might take some time, study, conversation, contemplation, prayer, etc. to figure out what the better choices are, but I am positive that all of our lives can be made more compassionate, just a little bit at a time.

Throughout our scripture readings this morning, we have seen how lives are transformed in relationship to God and to one another. In 1 Peter, the author compares Noah and his family's passage through waters to baptism, where the life of an individual becomes one with the Body of Christ—and takes on those attributes. In Mark's gospel, it is in Jesus' baptism where he recognizes and God acknowledges Jesus as God's Beloved Son. Together these texts—along with the text from Genesis, show us the power of relationship and how transformation means life, hope, salvation, and redemption from evil for all of creation.

When we know our brokenness, we know how it is that God has made us whole. When we understand how we have fallen short, we recognize how it is that God's compassion has drawn us the rest of the way. When we realize that we are never alone, but always and every day connected to God and to all living things, we realize that our lives can be blessings and so can the lives of all living things.

To the glory of God, our compassionate and loving creator, redeemer and savior. Amen.

1The Art of Happiness: a Handbook for Living by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C.Cutler, MD
(Australia, Hachette, 1998), p. 114

Sermon February 19, 2012

2 Kings 2:1-12

Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Mark 9:2-9

“Thin Places”

The title for today's sermon, “Thin Places,” is a Celtic term for places in the world where people have experienced visions, heard music, felt changes or been transformed by the influence of another world beyond this one. The Celts, early people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, had a keen sense for thin places. Biblically, places like a mountaintop were thin places, though they certainly weren't the only ones—places like rivers, lakes, bases of mountains, and broad valleys were also places where people were transported or experienced God quite vividly. They revealed God's call toward what came next—for Moses, for Elijah, for Jesus, Peter James and John and perhaps for each one of us who follow in their footsteps.

When Peter and James and John went up to a mountain with Jesus, they were probably knowingly approaching a thin place. They knew the stories of the mountaintop and how God was often encountered there.

If you think back to the lives of Moses and Elijah, the mountaintop was where they had vividly, actively and fully known God's presence in their lives. Moses first encountered God at the foot of Mount Horeb in a burning bush, but then during the journey through the wilderness, he visited, spoke, communed, and otherwise experienced God at the top of the same, Mount Sinai or Horeb.

When Elijah had killed the prophet priests of Ba'al, after Ahab and Jezebel had been killing the prophets of Yahweh, the Lord God, he ran to escape their vengeance, eventually ending up in a cave at the top of Mount Horeb. And he was told to wait for God there, eventually hearing God in “a sound of sheer silence.” —or as the King James says, in a “still small voice.”

The mountaintop was a thin place—a place where God's presence peaked out of eternity and into the temporal and limited place of humanity. As one author describes it, “Truth abides in thin places; naked, raw, hard to face truth. Yet the comfort, safety and strength to face that truth also abides there. Thin places captivate our imagination, yet diminish our existence. We become very small, yet we gain connection and become part of something larger than we can perceive. The human spirit is awakened and will grow if the body and mind allow it.”¹

Moses represented the iconic lawgiver, though he was a prophet and leader of the whole nation of Israel, his presence, his name represents the Torah, not just the rules, but the God's word of law itself, written and unwritten. Elijah is seen as the symbol of the prophet, though he was a passionate upholder of God's law, too. He represented the power of the prophet to speak against the power of the king and the queen, any ruler who ruled unjustly and without righteousness.

The story we heard this morning from 2 Kings describes the power that Elijah—and is the seed of the idea that because Elijah did not die, his presence heralds the coming of the Messiah to the Jewish people.

So when Peter, James and John were led up a “high mountain apart. . .” as Mark describes it, we are supposed to remember these stories from the mountaintops, these memories of the thin places where God has been experienced in faith history. And once they are there, the three disciples knew that something incredible was happening—the location would have been convincing evidence alongside their experience and their eyewitness. Jesus' presence and conversation with the personified Law and Prophet, was a revelation even before the voice from the cloud proclaimed him as God's Beloved Son.

It isn't often in Mark's gospel that Jesus proclaims his own identity—the title he gives himself almost exclusively is Son of Man, which can simply mean “human being,” but it is also a title for the Messiah, God's chosen or anointed one. In the telling of this story, as Mark describes Jesus alongside the Law and the Prophet, he takes his place within that tradition—and as a new word given by God. He is revealed as a continuation of God's revelation, as he said, “until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”

Peter and James and John were chosen, it seems, as particular witnesses, to remember this moment and take not of it within his whole life among them.

All three of these disciples come to moments in this gospel where we know they struggle, as we do, with how to be faithful. Just before this event in the gospel, Peter questions Jesus' decision to go to Jerusalem because Jesus has just told them it means he will die. Shortly after this event, James and John ask to stand at his right and left hands in his coming kingdom. It may be this reason that Jesus calls them to wait until they experience the crucifixion and resurrection for themselves before they try to express what they had just seen.

If these thin places reveal the truth, the cold, uncomfortable truth, then they reveal it about God, the eternal certainly and they reveal it about ourselves. In Peter, we hear his misunderstanding continuing, as in the previous chapter, he doesn't understand that the end of Jesus' story, the death and resurrection are necessary to understand the rest of Jesus' story. So he wants to make this glorious visual experience the ultimate meaning—like the festival of the booths that celebrates the Jewish journey in the wilderness—because he doesn't yet know the rest of the story. In his eyes and in the throne and crown filled eyes of James and John, Messiah was meant to destroy their most recent oppressors, the Romans, but the meaning of a crucified Messiah had to be demonstrated. It had to be real, really real.

The glory of Jesus' life and his story would be set among the word of God, the Law and the Prophets as God's very own Word, God's very own Son, but that glory would come in humility and it would come through a demonstration of God's power over violence. It would not come, as they would someday learn, through a violence work of vengeance, but that in the reality that the life God gave Jesus could not be defeated.

And we learn, through our experience of the holy, eternal God, that we are valuable, beloved daughters and sons of God, and yet small parts of the infinite whole that is all that God has in store for God's church. Our own desires have to be set within the life and purpose of all creation.

We aren't to build memorials to one experience or to one another—and just stay there—our experiences of God must move us, shake us and take us forward. We are fed and encouraged by the thin places, urged toward transformation and energized toward the purposes that God gives—and each one of us fits within the whole universe of what God has in store.

To God's glory—on the mountaintop and on the cross. Amen.

1http://www.thinplaces.net/openingarticle.htm by Mindie Burgoyne

Sermon February 12, 2012

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Mark 1:40-45

“Healing Presence”

All of the texts today remark on the physical: physical disease, the nearness of death, athletic prowess and exercise, and restoration to health. And though they are truly concerned with the physical: the emotional, the spiritual, individually and communally cannot be completely separate experiences.

Personally, I have never been ill with anything that seriously threatened my life. But I know that that is a temporary situation—death is inevitable for all of us human beings. I've experienced pain—most severely, I've had back pain that kept me in bed for about 2 weeks a few years ago. I honestly couldn't move sometimes without tears. And I've experienced emotional pain when friends have hurt me; I've experienced mental pain and depression; I've known the pain of loneliness and unwelcome solitude; and I've experienced the pain that comes in a family where adulthood means marriage. I also know the pain of sexual discrimination within my family, my church and in the world. And I have been loved, truly and honestly, by people in my life and by God in Jesus Christ.

Disease and pain, suffering and deadly illness have historically been reasons for rejection, causing pain even beyond the illnesses themselves. The pain of rejection that has been connected historically with disease is still a painful part of our world. People with AIDS, and other communicable diseases, even people with some forms of cancer are blamed and rejected for their conditions. Ignorance and hostility, fear and hatred cause more pain to those already suffering.

In two of the scriptures today, we hear about people who have leprosy. Biblically, leprosy could have been any skin disease that caused discoloration—even buildings could have leprosy when mold or something like that caused the walls to change color. Disease on the outside of the body was often associated with some hidden sin, an immorality of the individual or even from the parents. Pure things, clean things came in one color or were of one substance—impure things, even things called abominations, could have simply been mixtures or unexpectedly odd. Skin diseases known as leprosy might cause discoloration or scaliness, so the person might look like they had fishy skin or scales like a lizard. Modern leprosy or Hansen's disease can be more serious than other conditions they might have called leprosy in the bible.

In the bible, folks whose skin was mottled, scaly, and those who truly had Hansen's disease, were kept separate from those without those conditions because they were considered unclean. It wasn't just a matter of real contagion, passing on bacteria or viruses—but the idea that sin and evil could be experienced as physical illness and would make other sinful or evil by association. In other words, an unclean person (such as a person with leprosy) could make a clean person unclean with a simple touch. Evil rubbed off and righteousness was no protection.

In the story of the good Samaritan—in Luke's gospel—we hear how the priest and the Levite, two people who had to maintain ritual cleanness wouldn't touch an injured man for fear that he was dead and would make them ineligible to do their duty because they would be unclean.

When Jesus was approached by the man with leprosy and begged for healing—an unclean man required by society to shout, “Unclean, unclean!” whenever he saw others coming near—Jesus was, the bible says, “moved with pity.” The words used, however, could also be translated “moved with anger.” And if Jesus was angry, can you imagine who was the target of that anger—the people who suffered from disease or the people who cast them out?

Jesus had a choice—to follow the prohibitions of his society and religious law or he could make him clean. Probably moved by pity and anger, Jesus touched the unclean man and made him clean. He turned expectation on its head—when Jesus took the time to touch him, the man was clean again. When Jesus touched him, he was a part of the community again. Jesus, by his courage and his belief in justice drew him back in, instead of keeping him out.

Though it's not the exactly same, sometimes folks who do not fit into a accepted way of living are treated as if they must declare themselves to be unclean to keep from contaminating others. One of these exclusions include people who have never married and are never quite accepted, in my experience, (and in my family) as real adults. Some people are legally or culturally excluded from marriage and the very real emotional, financial and societal benefits of marriage. Some families, churches, cultures, or traditions never accept that women in any marital state are fully and responsibly adults. Even milder mental illness are still suspect in some circles. Very young people and the elderly are often excluded from any participation in decisions and conversations. Racial prejudices can make us question the legitimacy of some folks' humanity and participation in decision making, government, family responsibility and other institutions.

The majority culture might not think of all of these folks as contagious exactly, but there is a fear that broad inclusion and the idea of real equality among all human beings will somehow weaken all people. What if we allow “that” person into our lives, then what? Where “will” we draw the line? Without rules about who is in and who is out, won't there be chaos?

On the other hand, it is likely that each one of us has experienced a moment, a time, a relationship where we have known friendship and love that has redeemed us, restored us to wholeness. When we experience that connection with God in Jesus Christ, we realize that we are loved—though we are aware of our imperfections—we still know and are known to be loved. And though we come to know that love primarily through Jesus Christ, someone, somewhere in some way welcomed me, welcomed you, invited me, invited you to know that kind of love. For some it may have been family and surrounding culture, for others that kind of welcome came from someone who knew that love and saw that you didn't know it yet.

It was Jesus' willingness to be present with the leper, that gave him the opportunity, the welcome and invitation to become a part of his community again.

After Jesus made him clean, he told the man to go to the priest—according to the law of Moses—and show him his skin so that he could participate fully in his faith. Jesus never left his Jewishness behind him—this was an important part of who he was. Jesus wanted the man to be able to go to synagogue, to go to Jerusalem, to participate in scripture readings, times of prayer and community mourning. Full participation in all of those things: weddings, births, etc. required the priest's declaration of cleansing. Not to mention, that would have been a testimony to God's healing power, even without the hand of Jesus. And Jesus told him to keep it a secret, too.

This is another little quirk of Mark's gospel—Jesus told people several times in Mark not to tell anyone about their unusual experiences with Jesus—and every time, they told anyway. Scholars speculate about the reasons. Perhaps Jesus was aware that unless people had faith in what God was doing in Jesus, the action would be misunderstood as a kind proof instead of a revelation of what God was doing in the world.

But the excitement and passion that came from those encounters with Jesus seem an almost irresistible temptation. The excitement and passion that our initial experiences of God can give us a hint about the charisma of the physical presence of Jesus might have meant.

And we are meant to bring that presence with us in our lives, to carry Jesus Christ with us—imperfectly and with the brokenness of what it means to be us—but into all the lives that we touch. We can reveal in ourselves the welcome and love, the healing that we have received. When we know Jesus, we can remember and realize that the God's love, known in him can take us through all kinds of situations. We won't escape death, but we'll do it as beloved children of God. We won't escape hardship, disease, pain, betrayal, suffering and life in general, but we won't do it alone. We do it as a community of faith, welcomed here by the presence of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Spirit. We do it as redeemed and restored patients, in various states of brokenness, age, sinfulness and healing. And we do it because we are loved, all of us—all the time.

To God's glory and in God's infinite love. Amen.