How We Arrive on Easter

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.

On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. Luke 23:55-24:3

I am thinking about how we arrive at church on Easter morning.

Some of us come on Easter with great faith and confidence in the resurrection.

Some of us come with more questions than faith, more perplexed than confident.

Some of us come because the only way to get to the big Easter meal is to go to church with family. (And we welcome you. That’s not a bad reason.)

Some of us come not believing at all but wanting to join the celebration.

While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. Luke 24:4-12

I don’t think that the first visitors to the tomb believed much of anything, or had any idea what to make of what they found. The women find the empty tomb and they stand there wondering. They go to tell the disciples what they have seen, and the disciples think that it’s nonsense. Peter alone goes to see for himself. And what does Peter do when he has seen the empty tomb with his own eyes? He goes home, just like us!

On Easter, instead of thinking that it’s time to get all of our questions about the resurrection answered, what if we did just the opposite? What if Easter is a time for getting our thinking knocked out of joint enough that we can see the world from new angles. Instead of questioning the truth of the resurrection, what if we allow the resurrection to question us?

Where are the places in life where you have given up hope too soon?

What gifts have you buried away out of fear or weariness or distraction?

When have you been surprised by goodness when you expected something worse?

Noah...the movie

It had seemed that the days of the great Biblical epic movies – films such as The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Story Ever Told - were long over.  But there I was in the movie theater, waiting for the show to begin, when Noah’s Ark appeared on screen, surrounded by Oscar winners Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, and Jennifer Connolly, plus Emma Watson (remember Hermione from the Harry Potter films?). Noah will be released later this month, but it is already provoking discussion and controversy. Personally, I think it is crazy to review a movie without first seeing it. But with the Noah story coming to theaters and on people’s minds, this is a good time for some preparation.

First – let’s be clear that this movie is, and I quote, “inspired by the Biblical story.” So it isn’t necessarily trying to be faithful to the text of Genesis or to any particular Jewish or Christian theology. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, a challenging and dark director who last made Black Swan, this movie is likely to take artistic liberties with the story and have its own message. In fact, the New Yorker quotes Aronofsky’s description of Noah as “the most unbiblical Biblical epic.” And I’m fine with that.

I value the Bible. It is central to the faith that I live and share. It is sacred. But I do not believe that it requires rigid defense. It’s strong enough to take care of itself, and people will still be reading it long after any movie is forgotten. I would much rather err on the side of having too much creative play with Biblical stories than being so rigid that we can barely re-tell them except in the most stilted, cautious way.

As long as we understand that the movie is not the same as the Bible, I think that the movie actually gives us an opportunity to hear a familiar story with fresh ears, even if we decide that we don’t like the movie or that it distorts the message of scripture. It’s a chance to remember what the story of Noah and the flood in Genesis is telling us.

The story of Noah and the flood is one of those Biblical stories that surprises us for exactly the opposite reason that it surprised the people who first heard it. We are used to thinking about God as caring and protective, and so it surprises us to think that God would cause a flood to deal with the presence of evil and violence among humankind. That doesn’t sound like the God we know. But in ancient Israel, the story of God causing a flood was absolutely normal and unsurprising. There are old Sumerian and Akkadian texts which tell of the Gods who cause the world to flood, and one person who builds an ark to save the animals and start anew. In the Akkadian version, the Gods are upset by all the noise and clamor that humans make, and there’s no telling when they’ll do it again. When people first heard the story of Noah, the idea of a God who causes a flood to destroy nearly all people is not surprising.

What would have been surprising at the time is the promise by God never to flood the world again. When the ark comes to rest on land, when Noah and his family and the animals step out onto the world again, God puts a rainbow in the sky like a hunter hanging up a bow. The rainbow is a reminder of the promise God makes. One may even think of the Noah story as a theological contradiction of those other stories. It is a way of saying that the God worshipped by the Hebrews, the One God, is not like Gods you have heard about before. The story of Noah is one of the reasons that we now take for granted the picture of God as one who loves and protects us.

Ash Wednesday and 'I'm Done With Snails'

A girl in the third grade begins a poem:

When my third snail died, I said,
'I'm through with snails.'

She was writing poetry because her class had been visited by the poet Kathleen Norris, who had moved to her grandparents home in South Dakota to write, to rediscover the Christian faith in small Protestant churches and a Benedictine monastery, and to help school children in those small Dakota towns to discover the arts.

Norris reflects on the way that death surrounds this girl who is writing the poem in class:

"She sits up to let me pass down the aisle, the visiting poet working with the third grade: in this dying school, this dying town, we are writing about our lives."  (Dakota, page 189)

This week, Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday we invite each other to look ahead to where Lent always leads. The cross. We make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, of all places, and we hear the words "from dust you were made, and to dust you will return." It is a reminder that we share in death that Jesus faced, or that Jesus shares in the death we all face.

Ash Wednesday is a powerful experience in our 2014 American culture, in which our tendency is to do everything we can to keep from thinking about death until the very last possible moment. And why not? Isn't it painful to be reminded of our mortality? Is it any wonder that the Ash Wednesday worship service draws so few of our regular worshipers in the Protestant tradition?

And yet, I find the reminder of our mortality, within the ritual safety and assurance of worship, to be just the opposite of grim. It doesn't make me morbid; it makes me more alive. It is a powerful reminder of the incredible gift that life is, and inspires me to re-focus, to re-connect with God, to repent of anything that keeps me apart from the deep life of following the way of Christ. Worship on Ash Wednesday is solemn, but it is not weighted by death.

Kathleen Norris writes "the little girl calls me, holding up her paper for me to read:
When my third snail died, I said,
'I'm through with snails.'
But I didn't mean it.

Evolution, Creation, Science, Theology, Truth

A spike of attention given recently to a evolution vs. creationism debate between Creation Museum president Ken Ham and Bill Nye “the science guy” made me thankful for my faith tradition, and for the memory of Ian Barbour. More about Barbour in a moment.

The debate, in case you haven’t heard about it, pitted Bill Nye, who advocated the scientific approach of critical thinking and hypothesis testing, against Ken Ham, who advocates finding “answers in Genesis.” Ken Ham believes that the Bible is literally true, without errors of any kind. To him, that means that the universe is around 6,000 years old, and that the earth and all living things (including humans) were created in the span of six days.

One of the issues that I have with “answers in Genesis” is that Ken Ham seems to be asking questions that Genesis was never intended to answer. (A second issue comes later.)

What was missing in the debate were the many voices of faithful Christians and faithful people of other religions who see no conflict between scientific and theological (choose your word…) truth, knowledge, understanding.  This is the tradition in which I was raised, in the United Church of Christ, although certainly not limited to our denomination.

Which brings be to Ian Barbour, professor of science and religion, and member of the United Church of Christ, who passed away last month at the age of 90. In a wonderful obituary from theNew York Times:

He was well known for describing four prevailing views of the relationship between science and religion: that they fundamentally conflict, that they are separate domains, that the complexity of science affirms divine guidance and finally — the approach he preferred — that science and religion should be viewed as being engaged in a constructive dialogue with each other.“This requires humility on both sides,” he wrote. “Scientists have to acknowledge that science does not have all the answers, and theologians have to recognize the changing historical contexts of theological reflection.”

My second issue with the approach that Ken Ham takes is that a focus on Genesis for accurate chronology about the origins of the universe and life actually distracts us from the intention of Genesis. The opening chapter of Genesis is a poetic, liturgical celebration of all that exists. It is meant to evoke wonder and praise, and to assure us of a theological truth, which is repeated at the end of each day of creation. The truth is this: everything that God has created is good. There is no inherent evil. There is no meaningless existence. There is only what has been created by God for good. 

Faith at the Movies in 2013

When we think about our lives – what we value, what is right and wrong, what gives us meaning – we can get very precise and analytical using the language of theology, ethics, and philosophical terms. There’s a place for that, but we what we really need are stories: parables, novels, fables, and, yes, movies. This is the movie award season, and my annual look at faith in the movies of the past year.

You may have missed Philomena . If you did, I urge you to find a way to see it. Based on a true story, Judi Dench plays Philomena, a woman who tries to reconnect with her child who was adopted from the judgmental convent in Ireland where she gave birth to him. Records have been destroyed, but a journalist helps her to rekindle her search. This movie shows the variety and complexity of Christian faith. Some of the nuns are very cruel in their vindictive judgment, but Philomena herself, despite the harm she suffered, has a mature faith that seeks to live with joy and mercy, even when it is hard.

In one of the best moments, the journalist is amazed by Philomena’s forgiveness for the people who did her harm. He doesn’t believe that they deserve her forgiveness, and he says to Philomena something like “Forgive? You’re going to do it just like that?!” 

Philomena snaps back “It’s not ‘just like that.’ That’s hard! That’s hard for me.”

What a wonderful window into the life of faith, so simple and yet so brave, so demanding of strength beyond our own.

 

In the movie 12 Years A Slave, we are reminded of the horror of American slavery, and reminded that the Christian faith was used to justify and maintain the institution of slavery. On more than one slave plantation, we see what passes for a Sunday morning Christian service which consists of the slave owner reading to the slaves

from the Bible, and always choosing the passages about obedience to the master. These are heartbreaking scenes. They are a powerful reminder that we need to be very careful and critical in our understanding of what scripture means. Just because someone says that this is what it means does not make that the final word.

Finally, Gravity was a beautiful and visually stunning movie about the danger and isolation of astronauts in space, orbiting our planet. It is also a story of the weight of grief, and a metaphor that reminds us that grief can feel like a death of our former life. It also reminds us that beyond death there is new life, a rebirth. It is not an overtly religious movie, but that is the good news of our faith.

Text and Subtext

I once found myself giving a long and detailed description to my twenty-year-old stepson about how to install a new toilet. I'd asked him to help me with it so that I could teach him, having only recently learned it myself. But the one I'd bought had a different way of mounting the tank and I soon found that my confident and knowledgeable lesson was breaking down into lots of thoughts along the lines of “now, let's see here...” and “let me just look at the diagram again....” It was not my finest parental lesson, and my son's interest was understandably lowering.

At some point, it was necessary for me to give up on the text of the lesson and get down to the subtext of the moment, which is what was really important in the first place. Text and subtext are terms I borrow from literary work. The text is the actual content of the words. In this case, the text had to do with the setting of screws in the base of the toilet. The subtext is the unspoken message which is being conveyed under and behind the text. Nine times out of ten, or maybe all ten times, the subtext is the more important part of the message. For me, the subtext of my bad plumbing lesson contained several messages.

1.      You're growing up and I want you to be prepared for adulthood.

2.      I wish I'd learned more about taking care of a house when I was growing up.

3.      I love you, and I want to teach you what I have to pass on.

That's a lot to pack into a lesson on installing a toilet, and when the lesson broke down, I decided I'd just tell him those things, in more or less the words I just used. These were not new messages to him, but they were worth saying out loud again.

I've been thinking about the subtext of some of the things we do at church.

Text: We have ministry programs for children and youth = Subtext: we want a safe and nurturing place for the young people we love.

Text: We have a writing group for elders = Subtext: we value our life stories, and we believe that if we listen closely and honestly to our stories, we will hear the story of God.

Text: We work with outreach partners locally and around the world = Subtext: all people are our neighbors. Even if they are strangers to us, they are relatives in the family of God.

Those are just a few, but you get the point. These are not new messages, but they are worth saying out loud as often as we can.

Singing Christmas

We were singing the Christmas carols from memory. Someone would call out a name, and we would all sing the first verse together (the first verse seems to be the most we can manage from memory).

Stock photo for dramatization (not me)

The First Noel

O Come, All Ye Faithful

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Away in a Manger

Then someone said “Go Tell it on the Mountain” and we all started to sing the refrain:

“Go tell it on the Mountain, over the hills and everywhere;

Go tell in on the mountain…” but there was confusion at the end.

“…that Jesus Christ was born” sang some.

“…that Jesus Christ is born” sang others.

The first one makes sense. We are the carol singers, and we are singing with joy because of the day long ago when Jesus Christ was born. Past tense. It is the day we remember every year, the day when the word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.

But that isn’t how the lyrics go. We sing in present tense: “Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born!”

If we think about Christmas in the past tense, we miss the message. Christ comes to be among us in our own time. Christ is born in whatever place will make room for God -actually, Christ is born even if we don’t make room. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you. Jesus said that by reaching out to others we are reaching out to him.

Sermon - What Time It Is

Preached on December 1, 2013, the first Sunday of Advent, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.

Scripture: Romans 13:11-14

¹¹Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; ¹³let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Sermon

Living by darkness or living by daylight. Living as one asleep or waking up. The apostle Paul asks us to think about our by these stark contrasts. “The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” For all of the complexity of life, for all the shades of gray that we live in, sometimes it’s helpful to put life into stark terms.

Do you remember the parable of the two wolves that comes to us from the people of the First Nations? A grandparent says to the grandchild, “there are two wolves inside of you. One wolf is good, kind, patient, loving. The other wolf is evil, mean, selfish, full of hate. They are locked in a great struggle.”

The grandchild asks “which wolf will win?”

And the wise grandparent answers, “the one you feed.”

What kind of lives are we living? And what lives will we begin today? “You know what time it is,” writes Paul. “Now is the time for you to wake up.” And here is where I think that Paul’s metaphor is really helpful, because Paul recognizes that it isn’t just up to us. We are awake when the sun is out and we sleep in the darkness. We are affected by what’s going on around us, sometimes by light and sometimes by darkness.

Sermon - Mission:Impossible?

Preached on November 17, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC

Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 

I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Sermon

The prophet tells of God’s promise to make new heavens and a new earth on which there will be no more weeping or suffering or violence of any kind, and I wonder if it seemed to those who heard it an impossible mission. The people to whom this vision was first shared were the Israelites who had survived two generations of captivity after the empire of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, laid waste to their fields and vineyards, and took the people away into Babylon where they handed down their grief from generation to generation. And now they returned to the words of this impossible vision given by the prophet from God. God is about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight, and no more will there be weeping. No more will people die before old age. No more will the homes they build or the vineyards they keep be taken by someone else. No more will they cry out to God and wonder whether God has even heard their cry because God will hear before they cry and answer while they are yet speaking.

And what’s more (as if all of this weren't enough already) God’s peace will be so complete that even the wolf will stop preying on the lambs, even the lion will change to a diet of straw, and eat side by side with the ox, and the serpent always biting at our heels, the very symbol of evil, will no longer be a threat to any breathing creature. It will get by eating the dirt as it crawls.

Can we believe this? Is someone putting us on?

"What no one else knew"

A mild-mannered, retired accountant with a pristine lawn in the south of England receives a letter one day which sparks an unusual desire to walk to a town in north England. So begins a novel called The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce. His walk becomes a journey of weeks. Along the way his character and his unusual quest invite the trust of strangers he meets. One day, while eating in a crowded city café, he shares his table and his teacake with a well-dressed man who opens up to him in a surprising way.

The silver-haired gentleman was in truth nothing like the man Harold had first imagined him to be. He was a chap like himself, with a unique pain; and yet there would be no way of knowing that if you passed him on the street, or sat opposite him in a café and did not share his teacake....  It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.   (pages 88-89)

I wonder, how life would be different if everyone wore a sign that told of the unique pain that each person carries, whether the pain is fresh or old, intense or almost forgotten. Might we be a bit more patient? More forgiving? More likely to show kindness?

When Jesus met a rich young man who was anxious about obtaining eternal life, there is a beautiful short line in the gospel: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (Mark 10:21). May God give us the vision to look at people in the same way.

Sermon - Lost and Found

Preached on September 15 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture: Luke 15:1-10

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” ³So he told them this parable: ⁴“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 

⁸“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? ⁹When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Sermon

 

We're talking about sinners today. If you've been waiting for a sermon on sinners, this is it. We need to talk about sinners because they are...we are...sinners are the topic of these parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the parable that Jesus will tell next about the lost prodigal son. Sinners are the reason he told them. Or, more specifically, the grumbling of the religious leaders about Jesus welcoming sinners is the reason he told these parables.

Sinners. Jesus welcomed them; Jesus ate with them; and this upset the religious leaders of his day. Now, given that this is what Jesus does, you would think that the religion of Jesus, the religion of Christians would not have the reputation of being petty and judgmental about sins. And yet that's just what people think of the Christian church. You who are here know better. You know that the church is not petty and judgmental, not holier-than-thou or self-righteous. Well, maybe we are those things sometimes, but that's our sin, and I pray that God is saving us from that sin more and more. In general, I don't think that we deserve the reputation we have. But there it is. Polls of people who do not have a religious affiliation show that many of them perceive the Christian church as petty, judgmental, prejudiced, and unwelcoming. Just exactly the opposite of what Jesus was doing when he was criticized by the religious leaders.

They thought that he should be more judgmental - that he should have some higher standards. How will people known right from wrong if there are no consequences for sin?  Sinners must be held responsible.

But how do you hold someone responsible for being lost? And what good does it do to complain that the lost shouldn't be found?

Robert Farrar Capon

This past month, the Episcopalian priest and author Robert Farrar Capon died after a long, passionate, and good-humored life. I got to meet him once, during a weekend retreat when I was in seminary. He gave a series of lectures on the parables of Jesus in which he showed how the theme of the parables is the overwhelming grace of God. He said that God’s work to forgive and redeem the world is already done, even if it is not yet complete. I remember how he smiled as he addressed the view that we needed to do something to receive God’s grace. Don’t we need to ask forgiveness, or to believe, or to turn our lives around? “No,” he said. “God’s work of salvation is done. It’s Done. IT’S DONE!”

Here’s an excerpt from his book The Parables of the Kingdom, in which he expands on his short answer to the question of what the Bible is about:

If scripture has a single subject at all, I said, it is the mystery of the kingdom of God.

…I can think of no better way of reformulating my answer than to lean heavily on the imagery of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. Accordingly, my new version of what the Bible is about reads as follows: it is about the mystery by which the power of God works to form this world into the Holy City, the New Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Note, if you will, how much distance that puts between us and certain customary notions of the main subject of Scripture. It means that it is not about someplace else called heaven, nor about somebody at a distance called God. Rather, it is about, in all its thisness and placiness, and about the intimate and immediate Holy One who, at no distance from us at all, moves mysteriously to make creation both true to itself and to God.

Capon spent a life reminding people to give up the idea that it all depends on us. It depends on God, and God can be trusted.

Sermon - Everyday Encounters

Preached on September 1, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture: Hebrews 13:1-2

Let mutual love continue. ²Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Sermon

Is it possible to be in the presence of God and not know it?

You'd think that you would know, right? You'd think that to be directly in God's presence would be an overpowering, majestic, unmistakable experience. You'd think that it would be impossible to encounter God directly and have there be a chance of missing it, or misinterpreting it, or confusing it with something very ordinary.

But that's not necessarily the case. And the mistaken idea that encounters with God are always mind-blowing has, sadly, left too many people thinking that only other people have experienced God, or even that no one has experienced God because God doesn't exist.

But what if you could meet God and possibly not know that you had?

An anonymous writer of the very early church sent a letter to a group of Jews who had become followers of Christ. We call it the book of Hebrews, and at the end of this letter, after writing about how to understand Christ in relation to the history of the Hebrew people, the writer starts to review the kind of practices that shape a life of following Jesus. Here is the reminder to remember and visit with those who are in prison or being tortured, as happened a lot to followers of Jesus. And there are these words: “let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

It's actually a reference to what often happened Abraham and Sarah, the founders of the Hebrew people. They were at home in their tent when Abraham saw three men approach on foot. Now, living in the Middle East has never been easy, and travelers depended on others for hospitality. Abraham and Sarah had depended on others along the way, so they welcome these strangers, give them drinks to rehydrate, make up some food, give them a place to rest. And then, as any Hebrew child knew, the strangers told them that Sarah would become pregnant even though she and Abraham were by now quite old. And that’s what happened. It turned out that the three men were messengers of God, or angels, or God's way of meeting with people (those all mean about the same thing in the Bible, by the way. Angels were a way of God appearing to people, so the presence of an angel is the presence of God). Abraham and Sarah encountered God when they showed hospitality to those strangers, and they had no idea until they learned something that put their own lives in a new perspective. They had entertained angels without knowing it.

The Biblical scholar James Kugel writes that there are many of these instances in the scripture in which people are temporarily unaware that the stranger they have met is God (from Kugel’s The God of Old, 2003, chapter one). When they realize the truth, what they are surprised by is the message that God gives (“Sarah's going to be pregnant?”) or they are surprised that they didn't realize it sooner, as when Jacob says “surely God was in this place and I, I did not know.” But what they are not surprised by is the fact that they would encounter God in a way so ordinary, so everyday, that they might not even have noticed. They are not surprised that a God encounter could seem like an everyday encounter because they expected to encounter God in everyday life. They are not surprised, Kugel writes, because there was once a time when people did not think that there was such a strong border between the regular world and the world of divinity. Today we think of the natural world and the supernatural world as very separate (if there is one). For them, there was one world which was both natural and divine at every moment. In such a world, a person can encounter God and later say “it was just an ordinary, everyday thing that was happened, except for what I now know.”

You can encounter God in a way that seems perfectly ordinary, everyday, except that you will learn, as Sarah and Abraham did, something that puts your life in a new perspective.

Storms

Driving into the entrance of a park among the hills and gorges around Ithaca, New York, I was astounded by what the water had done. This was the morning after a heavy summer rain and the road was covered in mud, sticks, brush, debris of all kinds from the surrounding forest. A work crew with several heavy trucks and machines had already cleared most of the road and were now working to unclog pipes that run under the road to accommodate the many narrow mountain streams that had backed up and washed over the roadway during the night. Although the rain had stopped, the water continued to run down the mountains at high volume.
It was early August, and Betsy and I and our son James were in Ithaca to visit our younger son, Sam. Sam was spending the summer with the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and he had discovered many new hikes that he wanted us to see.  Sadly, most of the park’s hiking trails were closed until the damaged paths could be repaired. But first, the crew was busy clearing the way for the water to flow safely under the roads, joining with larger streams and flowing eventually into the Cayuga Lake.The water needs a place to go.It got me thinking about the storms of our lives. When our lives meet with sadness, pain, loss and anger, we can be overwhelmed by the deluge. These painful emotions wash over our lives, and, like the flood water, they have the power to do great damage to us. Our storms need a place to go. We need a safe place to direct and take the hardship that threatens to hurt us, to upend and distort our lives. We are in danger of taking out our emotions on others, or deadening our emotions with distraction and addictive consumption, or steeling ourselves away in bitterness.When storms hit, we have a clear path to take them to God. The storms are too big for us alone. We need the safety of God who can bear to know and hear all that we share in anger and confusion. The God who was there for Job, the God who wrestled with Jacob, the God who heard the cries of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt is a God who can receive our sorrow and our anger and our grief. When storms hit, we have the memory of the cross and the empty tomb. Our suffering is shared by God. Our pain is understood by God. With God, we can unleash the torrent of our misery and know that it will be safely received. And then, somehow, it will be redeemed. 

Sermon - Peace and Division

Preached on August 18, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.

Scripture: Luke 12:49-56

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Sermon

When Jesus was born, the gospel of Luke tells us that the angelic host proclaimed “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.” When Jesus rose from the dead, he came to the room where the disciples had hidden away and greeted them with the words “Peace be with you.” Jesus is “the prince of peace” we proclaim in scripture and hymns. And yet, what peace followed in his wake? The disciples faced persecution and often violence, and Jesus himself saw conflict and cruelty rise up against him leading finally to his arrest and his execution. What gives? Is the way of Jesus a way of peace or is it a source of division? Even Jesus seems to contradict that he is the prince of peace when he says “do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No I tell you, but rather division.” And the division will go down even to the most basic of relational ties: households will be divided, parents against children and children against parents.

To get behind this question of peace and division I want to look more widely at the teaching of Jesus, and in particular one of the parables he told which is remembered in the gospel according to Luke. It is the well known parable of the prodigal son, and it’s a story we can't tell often enough. A wealthy landowner has two sons and the younger one comes to him and says “give me my share of the inheritance.” He takes his share and he leaves. Well, usually the inheritance is distributed upon the parent's death, so not only has the young son forced the family to sell off a portion of land and assets in order to give him cash to leave, he has also treated his parents as if they are already dead. This son goes off to a foreign country where he wastes all of his life's inheritance while still a young man.

He hires himself out on a farm to care for, of all things, pigs, an unclean animal among his own people. Could he fall any further than this? He’s a poor man in a foreign land caring for unclean animals, and he’s so hungry that the food they eat looks good to him. Even the most menial workers on the old family farm ate and lived better than this.  So he decides to go home, knowing he has given up rights to be the son, to at least be a hired hand. He composes a speech: “father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be your son, but take me on as one of the hired hands.” Have you ever practiced a speech? Can't you picture him walking the long way home, practicing... “father, I have sinned. Father, I'm no longer worthy. Hire me on.”

But you remember what happens. While still a long way off, the father sees him (has the father been looking for him all this time?) and he runs off down the road (running down the road is not what respectable landowners do – but he runs) and he throws his arms around his son. The son begins his speech “father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be your son, but...but...” but that's all he gets out before the father is telling his people to get a robe and shoes for this haggard son, and to put the family ring on his finger, because he was lost and is now found, and he will be restored as a son!  Not because he deserves it, but because the grace of God, the justice of God, does not work according to what we deserve but according to what will restore us as people, whatever we have done.

This kind of grace, this kind of welcome, this kind of love is what the peace of Jesus looks like. Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth. Indeed.

Except: do you remember what it does to the older brother - the brother who has stayed with his parents on what's left of the land, all of which should one day be his portion of the inheritance? The grace and peace of God which we celebrate in the father's restoration of the prodigal son is the very act that brings division between father and elder son, between son and father, brother and brother. And Jesus leaves the story unfinished. Will the elder son come in and join the party to welcome his brother home, or will he continue to act as if his brother is dead? Will there be peace in the house or will it remain in division?

Sermon - The Practice of Being Present

Preached on July 21, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Sermon

In the gospel according to John, Jesus says to his disciples “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

I wonder if there is a truth embedded in today’s passage from Luke that we need to hear, a truth that has the power to set us free. It is the truth Jesus tells to Martha: “You are worried and distracted by many things.” Is that true of us? And might the telling of that truth set us free?

Jesus is welcomed into the home of two sisters, Mary and Martha, and Martha goes to work doing…well, doing who knows what: preparing food to share with their guest, making the home more presentable for company. The text doesn’t say, so maybe she’s returning calls from the office or catching up on email. At any rate, she’s distracted by many tasks, probably to do with hospitality because she thinks her sister should be helping. So there’s Martha, making preparations, banging things around louder than necessary to get Mary’s attention.

But Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to his words. And let’s take a little side trip here to notice that Mary has taken the position of a disciple, a reminder to us that Jesus taught men and women, and didn’t care much for customs or traditions that excluded some people in favor of others. He approves of Mary adopting the role of a disciple. We do well to remember this.

Martha can’t stand it anymore. She has waited for Mary to get up and help, and she has finally become convinced that Jesus, at least, should not tolerate the obvious unfairness. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”

And Jesus says “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”

Is that a truth that is needed by our culture today?

Is that a truth that we need to hear?

Practice, Practice, Practice

Faith is a practice. No one is perfect at it. That’s why we keep practicing.

I was reminded of this truth last week when I went to a Yoga class for the first time in several years. Our instructor told us that yoga is a practice, and this freed me to do as much as I could and not worry about what I couldn’t do or didn’t know. It freed me to trust that each time I came back, my practice would be fuller.

The Christian faith is a set of practices, including prayer, music, study of scripture and theology (all the things we do in worship), and also community relationships, service, forgiveness, and compassion for our neighbors. That’s just a partial list, but you get the idea. As we practice our faith, we are drawn more and more into the life of God, the eternal and abundant life that Jesus promised. It doesn’t happen all at once.

Have you heard about the “Couch to 5k” program?  It is a plan to help non-runners work up to a five kilometers. I love the name, because it recognizes the simple truth that you can’t just get up one day with no practice and run a 5k race. Couch to 5k takes nine weeks, three workouts per week. Start slow, and practice. Keep it going, and you’ll run a marathon.

Christian practice takes time. The attentiveness of prayer, the joy of celebration, the strength of our compassion, our willingness to be generous and to forgive: all of these abilities grow over time as we practice them. Often, we are already well practiced at distraction, resentment and fear, but the qualities of faith are already sown in us. To practice the faith is to uncover our real selves and let them flourish.

The Dalai Lama says that the practices of faith will make us like a strong tree with deep roots. Such a tree can well withstand even a terrible storm, but the time to grow roots is not when we see a storm on the horizon. Faith practices take time, and when we are battered by storms, we will find that our spirits are strengthened by a well-practiced attention to God, good relationships with a community, and a depth of compassion for ourselves and for others.

We are blessed by a community in which to practice our faith together.

We aren’t perfect. We practice.

Sermon - Changing the Question

Preached on July 14, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

  ²⁵Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” ²⁹But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

³⁰Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³²So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ ³⁶Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Sermon

It is a Jewish tradition to hold great discussions – spirited, questioning, testing, even arguing discussions -  about the scriptures, also called the law. These are discussions about how to interpret the scripture for our lives today, and we in the Christian faith continue this tradition in our own ways. In survey after survey of churchgoers about what they want from a sermon, the top answer is not history or information, not encouragement or inspiration, but simply this: apply it to our lives today.

That's what the lawyer asked of Jesus. The lawyer here is a student of the law – the scriptures – and was probably eager for any chance to discuss the law with a rabbi.  In this case it is the traveling rabbi called Jesus.  “Teacher,” he says, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Eternal life: a good place to begin the discussion. How do we inherit eternal life? Who must we be to receive eternal life? And maybe we should start with “what is eternal life?” because it is not only about life after our death, but is really about life right now.  Eternal life is a life lived in tune with the eternal God here and now. How do we receive that kind of life? How do we live that way?

And Jesus answers this question with his own question: “what is written in the law? What do you read there?”  It's typical for Jesus, in the tradition of good rabbis, to answer a question with a question.

There's an old joke about a rabbi whose disciple became so frustrated he finally burst out: “Teacher, why do you answer every question with another question?” The rabbi thought for a moment, and then answered, “why not?”

Jesus answers with a question: “what is written in the law? What do you read there?”

And the lawyer, who is a good student of the law, gives a good answer. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your strength, and all of your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

But that's kind of abstract, isn't it? Love your neighbor: what does that look like? And just how big a neighborhood are we talking about? Do I need to love the people next door, or do I need to go as far as my whole street, or is it bigger than that?

Sermon - Not As Expected

Preached on July 7, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

Sermon

In 2006, Smith Magazine invited people to a creative challenge with the question: “can you tell your life story in six words?”  Since then, they have collected thousands of these six-word memoirs, which tend to be little clues about a person’s life. 

“Made a mess. Cleaned it up.” Reads one.

From a Journalist: “I asked. They answered. I wrote.”

From a veteran: “Two tours, no injuries, thank God.”

One of my favorites, from a 13 year old: “Who says weird isn't a compliment?"

One of the best entries, which became the title of a whole book of memoirs, is this one: Not Quite What I Was Planning. Could that be the story of your life?  My guess is that it applies to a lot of us.  Not Quite What I Was Planning.

When we think back on the lives of our ancestors, we know that life was never what they planned, never what they expected. Our lives are not what we planned, and not as expected, especially when God is at work. If the Bible had a subtitle, I think it should be just that: The Bible: Not Quite What I Was Expecting.

Take today’s story from 2 Kings about Elisha the prophet healing the foreign army general called Naaman. We heard the way the healing went, but let’s step back and imagine how Naaman expected it to go. Naaman is the celebrated general of the army of Aram. He’s a war hero, a respected man in his community, with a nice home and diversified investments. Everything is going well, except that he has this terrible skin disease: leprosy.